Channel 9 - Discussions by thumbtacks2

Coffeehouse - 3d on the brain..

thumbtacks2 — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:29:41 GMT

Interesting ideas...

This stuff would be quite easy to mock-up using a bit of OpenGL (and probably DirectX, too).

Coffeehouse - Your Own Window Manager

thumbtacks2 — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:21:57 GMT

Curious...how much work would it take to develop your own lightweight window manager? For say...oh, I dunno...Linux. Seeing that several window managers could potentially be sucked into patent trouble, I'm wondering if it is worth it to revisit some old UI ideas.

For fun, ya know.

Tech Off - Removable drive events?

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:44:05 GMT

Good question. I did a bit of searching and found this:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363480.aspx

Apparently there is a WM_DEVICECHANGE message, which would be handled via a wndproc function (in C/C++). I haven't actually tried this, however...but it looks interesting.

Tech Off - !sizeof

thumbtacks2 — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:21:13 GMT

In C#, it's my understanding that variables are created as objects. Does anybody know how large those objects are? In C, you have the sizeof operator, and it returns the size of an object in bytes. But in C#, from what I read here, it's sizeof operator "can only be used in the unsafe mode". Hmmm. Is there an alternate keyword that serves the same purpose?

Also, how does C# perform when you are manipulating large sets of data? Or is that not recommended. Just an academic interest on my end...nothing serious planned.

Coffeehouse - So .NET is "Resource" Sourced... what's next?

thumbtacks2 — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:30:44 GMT

ScanIAm wrote:

wkempf wrote:
For Mono, it's definitely not silly. They have a huge risk of violating patents that Microsoft very well could defend.

For everyone else, give me a break. You know, MFC, ATL and several other libraries were under very similar licenses, and there's not been one instance of trouble caused by this. Let's stop spreading FUD.

Exactly, and in fact, I'd bet that Miguel has seen the code through reflector before. Remember, MSFT doesn't 'sell' .Net, so there's no market to protect.

Does anybody know how many users actually use anything that the Mono project has created?

Coffeehouse - So .NET is "Resource" Sourced... what's next?

thumbtacks2 — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:47:39 GMT

AndyC wrote:

thumbtacks2 wrote:
In all seriousness, who really cares if anybody has seen the .NET code or not?

If you want to work on mono, it might be an issue. For anyone else it's really not a big deal, especially if you're working as a .NET developer (why would you copy code from the BCL when you can just use the BCL?)

It would be a silly if Mono doesn't hire you because of "seeing the source code". That's their own choice, though, and I can see the legal issues they are trying to avoid.

Coffeehouse - So .NET is "Resource" Sourced... what's next?

thumbtacks2 — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:15:36 GMT

In all seriousness, who really cares if anybody has seen the .NET code or not? How else do developers learn? Now if you go and copy the code line by line and incorporate it into your own product, and then ship that, then you do so at your own risk.

Coffeehouse - Something about Charles

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:21:09 GMT

Charles wrote:

You will also meet some incredibly interesting geniuses soon (some of whom do not work for MS or even contribute directly (or at all) to our stack, but who are working on the same hard industry-wide problems....)

And what difficult problems would those be?

Coffeehouse - nada

thumbtacks2 — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:39:54 GMT

With site design (and even small database design) there are often several issues involved...(warning: preaching ahead)

1) How the information behind the scenes is organized
2) What the UI looks like
3) How easy it is to navigate
4) How it handles changing future business needs

Often, you'll have to make many compromises on these and other issues.

For #1, this is a huge consideration for developers and the people who have to maintain the site. The end user may or may not care about this part...although I would argue that a well designed and well organized back-end make things go a lot smoother on the front end.

For #2, this can be a selling point for an end user, but if you behind the scenes organization is bad, or the tab order (for instance) is all whacked (#3), nobody will care.

For #3, poor navigation can kill a site fast.

For #4, this can be a pain for both the end user and the developer, but often many of these issues don't crop up until a system is already in place and in use. Here's where previous experience can really pay off.

That said, I think the look of your idea is great. I noticed several differences in the organization of the information between all three versions, however...so I'm not sure what I can comment on there. I don't know who your end users are.

btw, thanks, now I'm thinking of picking up a bacon double cheeseburger from Burger King for lunch.

Coffeehouse - iPod itouch

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:41:28 GMT

Harlequin wrote:

Maybe Microsoft needs to get things close to done before announcing it, then it doesn't look like they take years and years for things to come to fruition, which they do. But with Apple they have a press conference, BAM new iPods. When are they out? The next weekend. That's how you sell half a million phones in a month.

Microsoft announces something. When is it coming out? Well, we're only in beta 1 but we'll have a tech preview in 6 months, yada yada yada.

I think you really hit on something there. Part of it may be that Apple can get away with this practice due to the relatively closed nature of their platform. Also, Microsoft is still trying out this whole "transparency" thing...with mixed results...and they have to try to make their software work a gazillion different hardware configurations. Sometimes an open hardware platform isn't always the best way to go.

Coffeehouse - Software changes do not occur overnight!

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:00:57 GMT

Tim Sneath wrote:

To be fair, the goal of the tutorial is not to lead you through the steps to produce Outlook in the minimum number of pages, but rather to provide a comprehensive learning guide to our designer and developer tools while building a fun and useful sample.

(And that's not to say that building an Outlook-like interface is a trivial task, either - particularly if the controls are real, working, data-bound controls. I'm sure it was significantly more work for the Outlook developers to build this code in Win32.)

I suppose the logic here is that "in the era of 1,000+ page programming books, what's another 90 pages?"

Out of curiousity, how hard is it to write your own WPF controls anyway?

Coffeehouse - Whiteboard coding interviews are bad

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:01:48 GMT

This is definitely an interesting approach. Personally, I would probably benefit from such an interview style. Plus, if the developer gets hired, I think it would become pretty clear within days whether or not the candidate actually has the skills they claim to have (or not).

Coffeehouse - Software changes do not occur overnight!

thumbtacks2 — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:16:56 GMT

vesuvius wrote:

After (eventually) traipsing through a tutorial at http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/06/13/wpf-hands-on-lab-build-an-outlook-2007-ui-clone.aspx I’ve come to the realisation that you’re either a designer or a programmer (shock horror). Linq may increase productivity, but this is voraciously negated by the amount of time it will take to get your UI right in Expression Blend and Visual Studio.

What's with this part:

Tim's Blog wrote:

Two engineers from Microsoft Switzerland, Ronnie Saurenmann and Ruihua Jin, have put together this 90-page lab that starts at File / New Project and ends with a facsimile of the Outlook 2007 user interface.

It takes 90 pages just to come up with the interface?

Coffeehouse - OWL Lives On

thumbtacks2 — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 19:43:52 GMT

Wow. I never thought I would see this...OWLNext.

http://owlnext.sourceforge.net/about.html

Coffeehouse - Good C# Book

thumbtacks2 — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:52:38 GMT

PaoloM wrote:

By definition, a book on C# is limited to be a showcase for the language characterists. These characteristics can be exposed via simple programs, usually console samples.

I noticed that before...hence my post. So I suppose a Winforms book might be better, then? Preferably one where they actually have a visual of the forms they create might be nice, too.

Coffeehouse - Good C# Book

thumbtacks2 — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:47:45 GMT

Hi...what would you recommend as a good, all-purpose C# book? I have a fair amount of C/C++/Win32 experience already and I would like a book that doesn't strictly limit itself to console-type applications.

I need to build some extra tools that may involve GDI+ and WinForms (for personal use). :O

Tech Off - Problem with strcmp in C

thumbtacks2 — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:09:26 GMT

Or, if you just need a function to break up the CSV file by a delimiter (in this case, a comma), you could also use strtok.

Coffeehouse - LINQ to Channel 9 (sort of)

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:58:07 GMT

Speaking of LINQ, has anybody ever tried combining it with a game? For instance, could you fill a container with objects in your game world, and do quick queries on it? Okay, so that's probably a sign of extreme boredom...

I wonder how the performant that would be...

Coffeehouse - Are Virtual Function Calls Still Expensive?

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:57:14 GMT

littleguru wrote:

Have you ever seen an intelligent fish

Yes, I have...they're called "game fish". They evade my hook more often than not...

I don't know how intelligent muskies are, but they do tend to survive a long time in most lakes and grow rather large (4-5 foot range in some cases).

Coffeehouse - Are Virtual Function Calls Still Expensive?

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:23:06 GMT

littleguru wrote:

Tons of stupid fishes

What? No AI ability?

Coffeehouse - Are Virtual Function Calls Still Expensive?

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:21:35 GMT

littleguru wrote:

If you have some time try to have a look at paralax mapping and when you have enough of that at relief mapping. Relief mapping is just awesome (go to page 44 and following). It produces so nice outputs.

Interesting...I'll have to check those out. Much of this also depends on the camera angle I pick...whether it is a FPS-type angle (from a ground perspective) or something elevated (like looking down at a 45 degree angle onto the terrain).

Coffeehouse - Are Virtual Function Calls Still Expensive?

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:51:41 GMT

DigitalDud wrote:

thumbtacks2 wrote:

That's been a major consideration of mine as of late, because in this iteration, the engine (and the game) will take place mostly outdoors.

Just use an octtree to subdivide volume, nice and simple for outdoor environments.

I'm looking at the whole gambit of data structures/containers out there...from octtrees to BSP trees to a bunch of other ideas. If it doesn't hinder performance, and doesn't take too long to implement, I may also try using a custom container. It's not that I don't find use in BSP trees or things like that, but I want to experiment with a few things. But the proof will be in the implementation, I guess.

Coffeehouse - Are Virtual Function Calls Still Expensive?

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:41:26 GMT

littleguru wrote:

actually it were 2,000 to 10,000 triangles per fish... I forgot to mention that. Btw. try also to use some features of MMX or SSE (or even SSE2) if you can. That's also a booster in some areas.

Thanks. Were those triangles complete with textures also? Or just shading? I have yet to check out your game, btw, but will probably do so at some point...

Coffeehouse - Are Virtual Function Calls Still Expensive?

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:17:30 GMT

littleguru wrote:

In our game (FishSalad) for university, we had like 60+ fishes (with 2,000-10,000 triangles and pixel + vertex shaders) on the screen. Each of these objects was an instance of a class that had virtual methods, because it inherited from a base class (our base model class). Well it worked very well.

That's good to know...I also found a nice 175 slide presentation from SIGGRAPH 2003 here. It's a little outdated, and maybe the info is a rehash of techniques found elsewhere.

littleguru wrote:

What's the biggest problem is the GPU. You need to make sure that stuff that is not in visible range is not drawn etc. That will higher your fps a lot.

That's been a major consideration of mine as of late, because in this iteration, the engine (and the game) will take place mostly outdoors.

Coffeehouse - Are Virtual Function Calls Still Expensive?

thumbtacks2 — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:10:24 GMT

Stebet wrote:

Or use Vertex Buffer Objects. I think most video drivers translate display lists into VBO's internally anyways.

Thanks...I'll look into those also.