Too many people here saying it's obvious and trivial.
Saying it is easy does not make it so. Academic research is often about finding precise quantitative methods to realize intuitive goals by thus explaining and formalizing the original intuition.
Newton "explained that objects fall to the ground": easy? No, because he actually used quantitative models and knew how and to what accuracy he could compute predictions.
...USrael!!!
Seriously, circumcision? In EU the circumcision rates are amazingly low, and yet I do not see such huge problems.
Circumcision is a religious practice, and as such has no room in scientific discussion. Much like Creationism in schools! Oh wait...
Well, since all guides suggest that it works better with rooted devices, and rooting a device before being able to do stuff is very "appliance-y", my argument stands:)
Computer Science degrees have been publicly available since the birth of the modern Internet: most papers and tutorials, ranging from basic programming language introductions to lambda calculus and AI, have been freely available for years for whoever is curious about the topics.
The things that a university really offers are accreditation that you have truly mastered the topics and professionals who put together a reasonable, sequential curriculum and help you absorb it. Did they solve it here? Doesn't seem so...
Also, European universities are essentially free, at least for their good students: an Italian PhD student has a total net cost of about -20000 euros, that is after your PhD between scholarships and taxes you have earned 20k (personal experience!).
So this is really of limited interest, and it is so only for the US...
I paid a total of 10000$ to get a BSc, an MSc and a PhD in Computer Science in Italy. I now work happily as a researcher in the Netherlands.
Higher education should not be treated as an enterprise. Higher knowledge is a very scarce commodity (an online recording system/whatever is not the same thing, otherwise the easily available books would be more than sufficient to get any degree); this means that schools are effectively a monopoly without much competition.
Who can solve this? The state. Look all over Europe for the simple solution: higher education benefits everyone and is paid (because paid it must be) by the state mostly and the end user a little bit. The little bit in some cases is increased if the student is not passing enough exams. There are also *lots* of scholarships that both look at ability and low income, and these often end up supporting poorer students who do not necessarily have excellent results but just ok results.
Why does the state need to step in? Because Communism is great and Mother Russia is close-by? No: the state needs to step in because the gain with more educated citizens is of the collective, not just the subject of the education.
My understanding, and what I meant originally, is that all of.Net will not be available when targeting WinRT, just a (rather large) subset. Is this incorrect?
C# for tablets, yes; C++ for tablets, yes as well. They won't make the same mistake they made with WP7: you want to go native, you can, you don't, you can too:)
WinRT is the new Windows 8 runtime, which will be accessible by C++, C# and any.Net language. The.Net standard libraries will be available for Windows 8 Desktop applications but not for Metro applications, which will be written targeting WinRT.
So, the summary is wrong because: a) Metro is not a development framework b).Net-related skills remain central in Windows 8 even when targeting Metro
Ok, not AI but physics and game logic run at 60 fps.
Still, js is not a viable platform for many (not all) games, and will never replace other traditional means of development. It will certainly gain lots of support, and it *may* kill some alternatives, but there are loads of shades of gray in this field...
...and why the fuck do their predictions matter in the least?
Secondly: javascript has nowhere near the performance needed for anything but games with simple mechanics. You simply cannot afford the overhead of js when dealing with thousands of entities with AI at 60 frames per second. Either stuttering or excessive battery draining will happen.
As always, variety is good, and it is obvious that HTML5/js will be a good fit for many games. Many others will still require *at least* flash, silverlight (silverlight 5 will integrate XNA and may work on OS X, very interesting for a game dev), or even C/C++.
The last question is why does a new technology always seems to imply that alternatives will automatically shrink? The world is not a zero sum game, and we constantly *expand* our horizons...
...when you keep teaching the same boring crap in the most boring way. Yes, even with laptops, iPads, projectors and all the bells and whistles.
Actually, I do know what I am talking about: I teach/research functional programming and game development, and guess what? I use the latter when teaching the former, to make it more entertaining. More than one student, after one such lesson, approached me to tell me that he was quite surprised to find that functional programming could actually be "fun" (pun intended).
The problem is that students are surprised when something is shown in a fun and entertaining fashion, and they accept it when stale notions are pushed down their throats. I'd start by fixing this...
You are saying a bunch of crapload. Ignorance is less excusable if you are also aggressively pulling falsehood out of your ass.
The days when performance was extremely sensitive forcing you to stay close to the metal are over, and we live in a blessed day where a variety of tools can be used together. Gamedevs are among the last ones to make this transition *partially* away from C/C++ and this is a gargantuan step for a very technologically-conservative industry. Yes, C/C++ still has an important place in gamedev. No, you can (and will) use other languages as well in the final game. Designers do not program in C/C++, they never have and they never will, but you cannot hire a frigging dev to code for every designer you have; and so you use LUA, Python and C#.
And by the way, in C# you can easily use contiguous blocks of memory (arrays) where you do your own allocation, and you pass around value types that act as pointers and that nicely access the "custom heap" with appropriate properties. At that point the speed difference between C# and C++ becomes almost negligible (5%). So spare me your bullshit.
Yes, but still, "in general" applies here. In this case C# and F# are the best choices (I have used both for XBLIG games and they can be fast at runtime and cheap in terms of dev time).
In other cases/platforms you will have other best choices.
In game development, the idea is this: If you have 20+ devs, 3 years of dev time and 5+ million dollars, then great, go with C++. If you have 3 devs, 3 months of dev time and 5 dollars to buy snacks every other day, go with C#.
Why should a language that is not the *best choice* for everything be the *best language*?
Suppose you have a very tight budget and little time and need to design an algorithm that must be correct or else you will incur in a grave penalty: C++ would be a very poor choice, and Haskell might probably be a better idea. Need to build a simple invoice management application for a hairdresser for 1500$? Go with Java or C#. Need to build an indie game to sell on Steam, the XBox and the iPad? Again, go with C# and XNA/Unity/MonoTouch.
The *best language* does not exist. The *best language for the job* does exist, and it is not just one.
Slashdot Mirror
I worry more about my inability to install Linux on an iPad...
Too many people here saying it's obvious and trivial.
Saying it is easy does not make it so. Academic research is often about finding precise quantitative methods to realize intuitive goals by thus explaining and formalizing the original intuition.
Newton "explained that objects fall to the ground": easy? No, because he actually used quantitative models and knew how and to what accuracy he could compute predictions.
Same for this paper.
...USrael!!! Seriously, circumcision? In EU the circumcision rates are amazingly low, and yet I do not see such huge problems. Circumcision is a religious practice, and as such has no room in scientific discussion. Much like Creationism in schools! Oh wait...
Well, since all guides suggest that it works better with rooted devices, and rooting a device before being able to do stuff is very "appliance-y", my argument stands :)
...but for the love of God, why can't we just have small personal computers instead of small personal walled gardens?
Why do I have to spend hours to connect a damn bluetooth keyboard to my phone to be able to do some typing when on the go? Why?!?
The world is much, much bigger than the USA alone... Also, in regard to TFA, well, the world is big and science is not really a competition.
Computer Science degrees have been publicly available since the birth of the modern Internet: most papers and tutorials, ranging from basic programming language introductions to lambda calculus and AI, have been freely available for years for whoever is curious about the topics.
The things that a university really offers are accreditation that you have truly mastered the topics and professionals who put together a reasonable, sequential curriculum and help you absorb it. Did they solve it here? Doesn't seem so...
Also, European universities are essentially free, at least for their good students: an Italian PhD student has a total net cost of about -20000 euros, that is after your PhD between scholarships and taxes you have earned 20k (personal experience!).
So this is really of limited interest, and it is so only for the US...
Indeed. It's like the "World" Series in baseball, the US may need to open up more in this global age.
I paid a total of 10000$ to get a BSc, an MSc and a PhD in Computer Science in Italy. I now work happily as a researcher in the Netherlands.
Higher education should not be treated as an enterprise. Higher knowledge is a very scarce commodity (an online recording system/whatever is not the same thing, otherwise the easily available books would be more than sufficient to get any degree); this means that schools are effectively a monopoly without much competition.
Who can solve this? The state. Look all over Europe for the simple solution: higher education benefits everyone and is paid (because paid it must be) by the state mostly and the end user a little bit. The little bit in some cases is increased if the student is not passing enough exams. There are also *lots* of scholarships that both look at ability and low income, and these often end up supporting poorer students who do not necessarily have excellent results but just ok results.
Why does the state need to step in? Because Communism is great and Mother Russia is close-by? No: the state needs to step in because the gain with more educated citizens is of the collective, not just the subject of the education.
Merely clarifying, not bitching.
Oh, that!
My understanding, and what I meant originally, is that all of .Net will not be available when targeting WinRT, just a (rather large) subset. Is this incorrect?
I can't see where I wasn't quite right: WinRT is a new runtime that is fully accessible from both C++ and .Net languages. Where am I wrong?
C# for tablets, yes; C++ for tablets, yes as well. They won't make the same mistake they made with WP7: you want to go native, you can, you don't, you can too :)
Metro is a UI on top of Windows 8.
WinRT is the new Windows 8 runtime, which will be accessible by C++, C# and any .Net language. The .Net standard libraries will be available for Windows 8 Desktop applications but not for Metro applications, which will be written targeting WinRT.
So, the summary is wrong because: .Net-related skills remain central in Windows 8 even when targeting Metro
a) Metro is not a development framework
b)
Ok, not AI but physics and game logic run at 60 fps.
Still, js is not a viable platform for many (not all) games, and will never replace other traditional means of development. It will certainly gain lots of support, and it *may* kill some alternatives, but there are loads of shades of gray in this field...
...and why the fuck do their predictions matter in the least?
Secondly: javascript has nowhere near the performance needed for anything but games with simple mechanics. You simply cannot afford the overhead of js when dealing with thousands of entities with AI at 60 frames per second. Either stuttering or excessive battery draining will happen.
As always, variety is good, and it is obvious that HTML5/js will be a good fit for many games. Many others will still require *at least* flash, silverlight (silverlight 5 will integrate XNA and may work on OS X, very interesting for a game dev), or even C/C++.
The last question is why does a new technology always seems to imply that alternatives will automatically shrink? The world is not a zero sum game, and we constantly *expand* our horizons...
...as long as it works, who cares how many people use it?
Learning isn't boring, it's a process motivated by the pleasure of discovery. Grow up.
...when you keep teaching the same boring crap in the most boring way. Yes, even with laptops, iPads, projectors and all the bells and whistles.
Actually, I do know what I am talking about: I teach/research functional programming and game development, and guess what? I use the latter when teaching the former, to make it more entertaining. More than one student, after one such lesson, approached me to tell me that he was quite surprised to find that functional programming could actually be "fun" (pun intended).
The problem is that students are surprised when something is shown in a fun and entertaining fashion, and they accept it when stale notions are pushed down their throats. I'd start by fixing this...
Sims 3 used mono http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software)
You are saying a bunch of crapload. Ignorance is less excusable if you are also aggressively pulling falsehood out of your ass.
The days when performance was extremely sensitive forcing you to stay close to the metal are over, and we live in a blessed day where a variety of tools can be used together. Gamedevs are among the last ones to make this transition *partially* away from C/C++ and this is a gargantuan step for a very technologically-conservative industry. Yes, C/C++ still has an important place in gamedev. No, you can (and will) use other languages as well in the final game. Designers do not program in C/C++, they never have and they never will, but you cannot hire a frigging dev to code for every designer you have; and so you use LUA, Python and C#.
And by the way, in C# you can easily use contiguous blocks of memory (arrays) where you do your own allocation, and you pass around value types that act as pointers and that nicely access the "custom heap" with appropriate properties. At that point the speed difference between C# and C++ becomes almost negligible (5%). So spare me your bullshit.
Asshole.
C# and Unity would have been a better choice, btw.
Unity, which uses C# and works greatly on all platforms.
Apparently (my experience as well) LLVM does a great optimizing compiling final step.
.Net runs in the xbox thanks to XNA, and Unity brings C# (through Mono, not .Net) to Wii, PS3, iOS and Xbox.
You are an idiot.
Yes, but still, "in general" applies here. In this case C# and F# are the best choices (I have used both for XBLIG games and they can be fast at runtime and cheap in terms of dev time).
In other cases/platforms you will have other best choices.
In game development, the idea is this:
If you have 20+ devs, 3 years of dev time and 5+ million dollars, then great, go with C++.
If you have 3 devs, 3 months of dev time and 5 dollars to buy snacks every other day, go with C#.
Why should a language that is not the *best choice* for everything be the *best language*?
Suppose you have a very tight budget and little time and need to design an algorithm that must be correct or else you will incur in a grave penalty: C++ would be a very poor choice, and Haskell might probably be a better idea. Need to build a simple invoice management application for a hairdresser for 1500$? Go with Java or C#. Need to build an indie game to sell on Steam, the XBox and the iPad? Again, go with C# and XNA/Unity/MonoTouch.
The *best language* does not exist. The *best language for the job* does exist, and it is not just one.