phaedrus

69 ms·

601.
by phaedrus 16y ago
In the Marines I was taught that there's always one more thing you can do to improve your situation. That's what I do when I'm stuck on a programming project or unsure where to start: identify one thing that will improve the situation, and
602.
by phaedrus 16y ago
Has anyone commenting actually tried it though? The multiple sign in link mentioned in the post does not show up on my Google account page.
603.
by phaedrus 16y ago
The idea behind how this works using regular expressions is very similar to how some C++ template metaprograms work.
604.
by phaedrus 16y ago
A few posts down from the link, the author of the game describes how he came about writing it. It's a great window into the game creator's process of working, and a very good read.
605.
by phaedrus 16y ago
His story will resonate with anyone who's written software for business. At my very first "real" programming job, my boss thought that this was how you motivate programmers - take whatever the real deadline is and cut the time in half, on t
606.
by phaedrus 16y ago
Like a program binary, which has been developed by trial and error without a design, which uses overlapping instructions that mean different things depending on the entry point, and which makes extensive use of self modifying code (via gene
607.
by phaedrus 16y ago
There have been some epic ROM hacks done though. Check out "Somari" - it's a combination of "Sonic" and "Mario". What's impressive is they managed to make a very Sonic-like game on the 8-bit NES. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somari
608.
by phaedrus 16y ago
Still a terrible thing to do. I think it's possible just calling printf() itself could do wacky things if printf is depending on the stack being set up a certain way by the C runtime startup code prior to main. But the real issue is that w
609.
by phaedrus 16y ago
There is a need then for a stackoverflow-based site for practical or less research-level math, for questions like, "How do I do this Laplace transform?" or "How do I do this difficult integral?"
610.
by phaedrus 16y ago
That can be a problem. When I wanted to "freeze" a version of Io to use as a base for making the game engine scripting off of, there wasn't a point release I could refer to as "the last stable version". So I just took the then-most-recent
611.
by phaedrus 16y ago
It has gotten faster. The way I deal with the speed for games is I use it for object creation and hooking things up, and then I let C++ code in the libraries I use take care of the low level. For instance when I create a game object I use
612.
by phaedrus 16y ago
I'm using it for scripting for a game engine. Its lazy evaluation feature allows me to define domain specific languages right inside the Io language, so for instance I've used it to implement a syntax for declaring the properties of 3d obj
613.
by phaedrus 16y ago
I've written a very powerful C++ binding library for Io. It allows you to mirror object-based C++ APIs inside Io and will do most conversions for you automatically. (For instance you don't have to worry about calling methods by pointer or
614.
by phaedrus 16y ago
I tried to, but the markdown ate my formatting & I don't know the escape code.
615.
by phaedrus 16y ago
Look up .NET Terrarium. You programmed behaviors for "bugs" that could either be herbivores or carnivores. It was pretty amazing - it would serialize people's AI controller classes and inject them into other players' instances so copies o
616.
by phaedrus 16y ago
Some comments on your proposed additions (my other comments were about the proposed reductions): - I don't think .NET-style generics can be implemented in a statically typed language that doesn't have a common base class (e.g. everything de
617.
by phaedrus 16y ago
Yes, the biggest problem with #includes is the namespace cross contamination they can cause. I once tracked a build problem down to someone #defining usleep(time) to 'sleep(time/1000)' (or something similar). Problem was, usleep was inclu
618.
by phaedrus 16y ago
1. Instead of the ability to directly call and be called by C/C++, include a really kick-ass Foreign Function Interface that can JIT the hookups and wrappers. And more important than call compatibility IMO is C++ object ABI compatibilit
619.
by phaedrus 16y ago
I find his talk about a language's suitability for kernel writing to be like people buying sporty cars they will never race or off road vehicles they will never drive off road. Most people, even including embedded programmers, will never
620.
The Impossible Function (a C puzzler)
6 points by phaedrus 16y ago|5 comments
621.
by phaedrus 16y ago
I don't get that feeling from HN, but I get the exact feeling you describe when (trying to) read MathOverflow.com. For some reason the level of math being discussed there has quickly risen to such a rarefied atmosphere that I although go t
622.
by phaedrus 16y ago
That's what I've written a library to fix - it makes it quick and easy to bind C++ api's to make them callable from a dynamic language. Not only can you bind a C++ function with 1 line of code, but if that function returns an object, the r
623.
by phaedrus 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
624.
by phaedrus 16y ago
Because we're having too much fun writing cool things in C++ to bother to write rants.
625.
by phaedrus 16y ago
The problem with std::string is that when I type a quoted string in my code, it isn't natively a std::string, it's natively a char* and gets converted to strings. C++'s biggest mistake was not standardizing early on an official object-orie
626.
by phaedrus 16y ago
I love C++, but I upvoted this because most C vs. C++ rants focus on things that are not actually C++'s biggest problems. This is one of the few C++ rants that actually brings up of legitimate points. They are not reasons that would stop
627.
by phaedrus 16y ago
The article says the data recorders indicated the brakes were not applied at all but the accelerator pedal was floored. In other words, people thinking they're standing on the brakes when really they're standing on the gas pedal. A person
628.
by phaedrus 16y ago
The self-healing thing in Minix 3 really works. Some years ago I installed Minix 3 on a very old Thinkpad that had an esoteric video hardware quirk that would crash most OS's. It was "designed for Windows 95" and by God they meant it becau
629.
by phaedrus 16y ago
"Problem is that it's virtually impossible to tell what's a good investment until well after the fact. In money as well as in time." That reminds me of a Will Rogers quote: "Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and ho
630.
by phaedrus 16y ago
Wow that really works: I got "neutral", and it said: "Your national identity is more important than your local identity, because you don`t really have a local identity." So true! Also: "Or maybe you just moved around a lot growing up."

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