Episodic content is annoying like that when you have to wait so long to get to the next chapter.
Really, that's only a problem if the company making the episodes isn't very good at it. Valve may have popularised the idea, but to be honest, they suck balls at it. They realised the "smaller" and "cheaper" parts well enough, but made a complete pig's breakfast of the "more frequent" part. I just don't think Valve as a studio is capable of doing episodes properly.
Rather, you should be looking at Telltale. Once they start a season, they release an episode once a month. I think they could improve by actually releasing on a predictable date as opposed to whenever so long as it's not next month yet.
It's not a problem with episodic games, it's a problem with Valve (to say nothing of whoever it was that was doing SiN Episodes).
Actually, I'm an incredibly picky eater. However, it seems to be more about texture than taste. For instance, I don't mind the taste of tomatoes, but I loathe the texture.
I don't drink. But it's not because I'm a tightwad: I just hate the taste of alcohol. I can taste it in seemingly trace amounts in everything other than drinks with ridiculous amounts of sugar.
There is a smaller reason in that I've seen a lot of people, including friends, do... inadvisable things while drunk. The thought of not being in possession of my faculties and not being able to tell scares me.
I also know I have a somewhat addictive personality. So on the whole, I think I'll continue to not drink booze.
Programming in D is nice, but the situation is a bit annoying.
1. Tango vs Phobos. Phobos is the official standard library, but it seems most use Tango. Phobos is also pretty low level compared to Tango.
This is somewhat alleviated in D2 via a shared core runtime. The problem is more or less that which library you use is based on the task at hand, and personal choice. There have been numerous attempts to merge them, or kill one off, and they've never succeeded because people don't want to give up the library they (legitimately, for their circumstances) see as better.
For D1, your best bet is probably to give Tango + Tangobos (which is Phobos implemented on top of Tango) a shot. For D2, there are efforts to fix the situation.
2. The reference compiler dmd is 32bit only, gdc is outdated and abandoned, and ldc is still alpha status and has missing features. Ldc is quite promising though.
Yeah; I think LDC is the future of D. We'll just have to be patient.:)
3. D2 is maybe the biggest issue. It has very useful features, such as partial C++ compatibility, but D2 is a moving target and practically no library supports it. It's also unknown when or if ever D2 will become stable. I haven't seen much discussion about it in the newsgroup either.
That's because it's not finished. You can't complain that an experimental version that changes on a regular basis doesn't have library support.
As for when D2 will be finished, I deeply suspect it will be like it was with D1: Walter and the community will get fed up with it as a moving target, draw a line in the sand and *boom* finished; let's start on D3.
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/memory.html#stackclass - Objects in D are not always allocated on the heap.
No, but making it an attribute of the class where they are allocated makes no sense at all. A general-purpose class cannot be defined to use stack allocation, and because D doesn't support multiple inheritance I can't mix the trait in without reimplementing it for each class I want to use that way.
In fact, you can force a class to be scope allocated by putting "scope" at the front of the class declaration. This doesn't remove the requirement for 'scope' at the allocating statement; merely makes it mandatory.
Note that you cannot use this to give a class value semantics; if you could, you would open the door to the slicing problem. By making it a property of the allocating context, you avoid that.
But the syntax is all wrong. It's easy to forget that an object is allocated as 'scope', because the syntax is the same as in heap allocation.
And the template system is D is exactly the same as in C++. The differences are superficial, only in syntax. D's templates is a Turing complete system, just like in C++.
I guess that means the differences between C++ and assembler are superficial, only in syntax. After all, anything you can compute in C++ you can compute in assembler.
As you already say, if you are very concerned about performance in a situation with lots of small objects you can use structs. Simply ignoring structs because you are too lazy to use them does not make D slow. With a bit of experience and a few rules of thumb it's not hard to choose.
But structs do not have the same treatment as classes.
Your point is... what, exactly? They're for completely different purposes; of course they're treated differently. Otherwise, we'd only have classes or structs, not both.
I think maybe you're talking about what is called "scope" now. It allocates the memory for the class on the stack. Yeh, it doesn't cover every possible use case of by-value classes, but it can be a nice optimization.
And a heck of lot difficult to spot. At least, in C++, it's obvious what is a pointer and what it is not.
This is a valid concern, but I can't see what this has to do with the particular quoted part of the gp's post. He's pointing out that scope is useful, and you're complaining about not being able to tell if an arbitrary identifier has value or reference semantics. Huh?
That said, just because something doesn't have a star out the front in C++ doesn't mean it's a value type; I've seen some truly terrifying abuses of operator overloading. At least in D, it's trivial to find out: stick in a pragma(msg, whatIs!(x)) and bob's your uncle (note: whatIs is not in the standard library, but I've written similar templates before without much trouble.)
Yes you use structs when you want an efficient aggregate value type. Classes and structs have different semantics in D. It's pretty easy to choose once you get the hang of it. If you are likely to want to put virtual functions on the thing, make it a class. If you want to pass lots of them around by value, make it a struct. If you can count on your fingers how many instances you will have, make it a class -- the hit from allocation won't matter. There is some gray area in-between, granted, but in practice it's usually pretty clear, and the benefit is that you do completely eliminate the slicing problem by going this route. If you really can't decide you can also write the guts as a mixin and them mix them into both a class and a struct wrapper. Or just write it primarily as a struct, and aggregate that struct inside a class. The use cases that are left after all that are pretty insignificant.
Why do all that? no thanks. C++ is much better in this regard.
Yeah, why bother designing your program before you write it? After all, maybe you want to make your 16-byte vectors into classes, or turn GUI widgets into value structs!
Honestly, I'm amazed every time I see this argument. Let's try it from the other direction: Java seems to do pretty well without "plain old data" structs; clearly, you don't need structs to write a program. If you really don't want to have to engage your brain, just pretend structs don't exist.
D's template system has gone far beyond C++'s.
Nope. It hasn't.
It's even far beyond what C++0x is going to be.
Nope, it isn't.
Alias template parameters
C++ has typedef.
Yeah, so this combined with the 'auto' comment before lead me to believe you don't actually know what you're talking about.
Tell me, how do you typedef a function in C++? Or a string value?
template mixins
Mixins are bad from a design standpoint.
I personally think you're wrong, but that's an opinion and not a valid argument.:)
If I had to guess, I'd say it's because that would involve introducing another function call between D and C. Currently, a lot of the C library functions exposed in D are just extern(C) declarations, so code is calling them directly. Placing a C wrapper around those calls would slow things down (and Walter doesn't like slow.)
Incidentally, there's a tool Walter wrote called htod which actually runs a C or C++ header through the C++ compiler and then converts the internal AST into a D header. Sadly, it runs it through the DigitalMars compiler, and DMC doesn't run on mac.:P
The sloppy fat geek computer genius semi-buried in a pile of pizza boxes and cola cans is a mythical creature, best buried deep, never to be seen again.
No... no, I really can't. Hence the bit about Telstra having to upgrade their infrastructure in the area.
It doesn't matter what plans are available if the lines and exchange are physically unable to support them.
Let me give you some perspective: my parents live in the Northern Territory. They bought a block on a brand new estate. The exchange is listed by Telstra as "ADSL enabled."
Sadly, although the network is capable of supporting ADSL to that exchange, the exchange itself is unable to support it. Add to this that Telstra have basically put everyone on the estate on to a single copper line thus ensuring that no one can even get a reliable dialup connection.
I had to move a year ago to where I am now from literally 200 meters up the road just to get off dialup.
Never, ever believe anything Telstra says about broadband penetration in Australia; it's a complete crock of shit. Those plan listings are a best-case scenario that in my experience rarely plays out.
When asked for comment on what they intended to do with the rocks now that they had them, the lead researcher responded:
"Oh well, you know. Put them on a shelf. Maybe look at them from time to time. We might, when people come around to visit, take them down and let people not touch them! It's all terribly exciting... in fact, I think I need a lie-down."
Note: this is just my AU$0.02. Opinions stated herein are void where prohibited.
Actually, I think it's a little of both.
OpenGL is really lagging behind DirectX now. I know I was personally looking forward to OpenGL 3 bringing it back up to parity, but Khronos went and neutered that. If you want the best performance with the latest features, you pretty much have to use DirectX.
Also, DirectX provides a lot more than just graphics; it provides audio and input as well. Getting OpenGL, OpenAL and SDL all talking to each other is a pain in the butt by comparison.
There's also the issue of reach; there are way more Windows users than Mac users, period. Boot Camp is kinda shooting the "but some people have Macs" argument, too, since dev houses could just as easily argue that those Mac users can now boot into Windows.
At the end of the day, berating dev houses isn't going to break MS's stranglehold on the market. Making it easier to develop cross-platform would probably be a good start.
So what they've built, then, is a device for detecting people deliberately acting suspiciously?
How do you test for "mal-intent" when you're telling people "OK, I want you to stand there and sort of dart your eyes backwards and forwards; like you see in the movies. And then, I want you to think REAL HARD about robbing a bank."
Do they go up to people on the street and ask "our system says you're thinking about knocking off that jewelry store; are you?"
I once had a chat to some Mozilla guys on IRC; I'd just gone through the rigmarole of posting a bug in Bugzilla, and was saying how it wasn't exactly easy to work out.
Their response was that Bugzilla isn't intended for end-users to submit bugs; it's for developers.
The average user is going to take one look at Bugzilla and run screaming so fast the air friction will burn their face off.
I'd actually say: teach him how to do in-game mod programming. It allows him to make something that has graphics and sound without having to actually learn how to do graphics and sound just yet.
A good example is World of Warcraft. Lua is pretty easy to pick up, and he can make little graphical toys or try simple automation. Maybe start with the WowLua addon (which adds an interactive Lua interpreter to the game) and perhaps the TinyPad addon which lets him write small scripts and run them from within the game.
'Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software,...'
Now hold on just a second; if you have such great software, why does my phone crash every few days? Why is it that when I'm out somewhere, and need to look up a number for someone, or add something to my todo list, or hell, even make a simple phone call, I have to poke fruitlessly at the screen before hard rebooting the damn thing and waiting for it to all load again.
The rest of it is true enough, but don't lie about the software. Your software is a stinking pile of garbage. The biggest thing I'm hoping Android does is light a fire under your ass so I can get a stable PDA phone from someone, whoever that happens to be.
What no one wants is a proprietary system that benefits one company. It is a big drain to a company like ours to have to deal with incompatible systems.
that they're doing this is that the country is suffering a short-fall on energy production.
Enter their brilliant plan: take George Orwell's coffin, strap magnets to it, and then systematically destroy the individual's right to privacy. Viola! Instant energy!
The worst controller ever was (and still is) the Playstation controller.
I'm not entirely sure why, but every single time I play on one of them, my hands end up cramping from the awful shape. I refuse to even pick the damn things up anymore because they're so uncomfortable.
The second sin was the f**king d-pad. I've always had this thing with the + shaped d-pads -- it makes it somewhat harder to do diagonal movements then the nice big ones you got on the original Saturn controllers. But making each of the directions a seperate button? Aaarrggh!
And finally, the naming convention used for the buttons on the right. I am yet, to this very day, work out where the hell the square is without looking. As far as I'm concerned, the PS controllers are a total botch job.
(OTOH, the best controllers I've ever use were the original Saturn controllers which had lovely big buttons, and big chunky "wings" that rested in your hands, and the Dreamcast controller which was far more comfortable than it looked (even if it did have that awful + d-pad)).
Seriously, why don't these people worry about getting broadband to more people before they go off trying to make it possible to download porn^H^H^H^H^H entire movies in the blink of an eye? I can't get broadband in my area because the wiring is apparently too old and crappy. And I'm only a five minute drive from the city centre!
As another poster pointed out, parts of the internet are becoming unusable to me because they're "broadband only". Even if I could get just 128K broadband, it would be a god-send.
Plus, then it wouldn't take a week to get the latest World of Warcraft patch...
Every time I turn on the damn TV, I get bombarded with people telling me that I really DO need a new home, that the more green pills I pop the better, and that I should try various feminine hygine products or risk severe discomfort (not to mention the news which is half an hour of government ministers lining their pockets at our expense, and dozens of innocent people dying horiffically every day).
The worst part is, there isn't even any shows left to make it worth putting up with this crap. Who the hell wants to watch yet another rip-off of Everybody Wishes Raymond Would Piss The Hell Off?
It's no wonder I haven't turned my TV on in over a year. If there's a show I want to watch, I either download it off the net, or buy it on DVD. The constant force-feeding of ads and bullshit have completely turned me off TV. I feel at least some satisfaction in knowing that they won't be getting any advertising revenue because of me.
But if they start putting ads straight into shows... well, I suppose I'll just have to read more. Who knows, maybe this is a blessing in disguise!
Slashdot Mirror
Episodic content is annoying like that when you have to wait so long to get to the next chapter.
Really, that's only a problem if the company making the episodes isn't very good at it. Valve may have popularised the idea, but to be honest, they suck balls at it. They realised the "smaller" and "cheaper" parts well enough, but made a complete pig's breakfast of the "more frequent" part. I just don't think Valve as a studio is capable of doing episodes properly.
Rather, you should be looking at Telltale. Once they start a season, they release an episode once a month. I think they could improve by actually releasing on a predictable date as opposed to whenever so long as it's not next month yet.
It's not a problem with episodic games, it's a problem with Valve (to say nothing of whoever it was that was doing SiN Episodes).
"Hot water, good dentistry and soft lavatory paper."
Actually, I'm an incredibly picky eater. However, it seems to be more about texture than taste. For instance, I don't mind the taste of tomatoes, but I loathe the texture.
I don't drink. But it's not because I'm a tightwad: I just hate the taste of alcohol. I can taste it in seemingly trace amounts in everything other than drinks with ridiculous amounts of sugar.
There is a smaller reason in that I've seen a lot of people, including friends, do... inadvisable things while drunk. The thought of not being in possession of my faculties and not being able to tell scares me.
I also know I have a somewhat addictive personality. So on the whole, I think I'll continue to not drink booze.
To quote Douglas Adams from one of the HHGTTG books (forget which one; it's the one involving the Krikkit):
"Let us bow our heads in payment."
Programming in D is nice, but the situation is a bit annoying.
1. Tango vs Phobos. Phobos is the official standard library, but it seems most use Tango. Phobos is also pretty low level compared to Tango.
This is somewhat alleviated in D2 via a shared core runtime. The problem is more or less that which library you use is based on the task at hand, and personal choice. There have been numerous attempts to merge them, or kill one off, and they've never succeeded because people don't want to give up the library they (legitimately, for their circumstances) see as better.
For D1, your best bet is probably to give Tango + Tangobos (which is Phobos implemented on top of Tango) a shot. For D2, there are efforts to fix the situation.
2. The reference compiler dmd is 32bit only, gdc is outdated and abandoned, and ldc is still alpha status and has missing features. Ldc is quite promising though.
Yeah; I think LDC is the future of D. We'll just have to be patient. :)
3. D2 is maybe the biggest issue. It has very useful features, such as partial C++ compatibility, but D2 is a moving target and practically no library supports it. It's also unknown when or if ever D2 will become stable. I haven't seen much discussion about it in the newsgroup either.
That's because it's not finished. You can't complain that an experimental version that changes on a regular basis doesn't have library support.
As for when D2 will be finished, I deeply suspect it will be like it was with D1: Walter and the community will get fed up with it as a moving target, draw a line in the sand and *boom* finished; let's start on D3.
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/memory.html#stackclass - Objects in D are not always allocated on the heap.
No, but making it an attribute of the class where they are allocated makes no sense at all. A general-purpose class cannot be defined to use stack allocation, and because D doesn't support multiple inheritance I can't mix the trait in without reimplementing it for each class I want to use that way.
In fact, you can force a class to be scope allocated by putting "scope" at the front of the class declaration. This doesn't remove the requirement for 'scope' at the allocating statement; merely makes it mandatory.
Note that you cannot use this to give a class value semantics; if you could, you would open the door to the slicing problem. By making it a property of the allocating context, you avoid that.
But the syntax is all wrong. It's easy to forget that an object is allocated as 'scope', because the syntax is the same as in heap allocation.
And the template system is D is exactly the same as in C++. The differences are superficial, only in syntax. D's templates is a Turing complete system, just like in C++.
I guess that means the differences between C++ and assembler are superficial, only in syntax. After all, anything you can compute in C++ you can compute in assembler.
Ease of use is definitely overrated.
Your point is... what, exactly? They're for completely different purposes; of course they're treated differently. Otherwise, we'd only have classes or structs, not both.
This is a valid concern, but I can't see what this has to do with the particular quoted part of the gp's post. He's pointing out that scope is useful, and you're complaining about not being able to tell if an arbitrary identifier has value or reference semantics. Huh?
That said, just because something doesn't have a star out the front in C++ doesn't mean it's a value type; I've seen some truly terrifying abuses of operator overloading. At least in D, it's trivial to find out: stick in a pragma(msg, whatIs!(x)) and bob's your uncle (note: whatIs is not in the standard library, but I've written similar templates before without much trouble.)
Yeah, why bother designing your program before you write it? After all, maybe you want to make your 16-byte vectors into classes, or turn GUI widgets into value structs!
Honestly, I'm amazed every time I see this argument. Let's try it from the other direction: Java seems to do pretty well without "plain old data" structs; clearly, you don't need structs to write a program. If you really don't want to have to engage your brain, just pretend structs don't exist.
Yeah, so this combined with the 'auto' comment before lead me to believe you don't actually know what you're talking about.
Tell me, how do you typedef a function in C++? Or a string value?
I personally think you're wrong, but that's an opinion and not a valid argument. :)
If I had to guess, I'd say it's because that would involve introducing another function call between D and C. Currently, a lot of the C library functions exposed in D are just extern(C) declarations, so code is calling them directly. Placing a C wrapper around those calls would slow things down (and Walter doesn't like slow.)
Incidentally, there's a tool Walter wrote called htod which actually runs a C or C++ header through the C++ compiler and then converts the internal AST into a D header. Sadly, it runs it through the DigitalMars compiler, and DMC doesn't run on mac. :P
Oh yeah?! Well, I don't believe in you, either!
No... no, I really can't. Hence the bit about Telstra having to upgrade their infrastructure in the area.
It doesn't matter what plans are available if the lines and exchange are physically unable to support them.
Let me give you some perspective: my parents live in the Northern Territory. They bought a block on a brand new estate. The exchange is listed by Telstra as "ADSL enabled."
Sadly, although the network is capable of supporting ADSL to that exchange, the exchange itself is unable to support it. Add to this that Telstra have basically put everyone on the estate on to a single copper line thus ensuring that no one can even get a reliable dialup connection.
I had to move a year ago to where I am now from literally 200 meters up the road just to get off dialup.
Never, ever believe anything Telstra says about broadband penetration in Australia; it's a complete crock of shit. Those plan listings are a best-case scenario that in my experience rarely plays out.
Not if you live in Australia. The best I can ever hope to get* is 1.5 Mbit, and even that's relatively expensive.
* barring Telstra upgrading infrastructure, but they'll do that when hell freezes over, the pack of purse-pinching bastards.
When asked for comment on what they intended to do with the rocks now that they had them, the lead researcher responded:
"Oh well, you know. Put them on a shelf. Maybe look at them from time to time. We might, when people come around to visit, take them down and let people not touch them! It's all terribly exciting... in fact, I think I need a lie-down."
Note: this is just my AU$0.02. Opinions stated herein are void where prohibited.
Actually, I think it's a little of both.
OpenGL is really lagging behind DirectX now. I know I was personally looking forward to OpenGL 3 bringing it back up to parity, but Khronos went and neutered that. If you want the best performance with the latest features, you pretty much have to use DirectX.
Also, DirectX provides a lot more than just graphics; it provides audio and input as well. Getting OpenGL, OpenAL and SDL all talking to each other is a pain in the butt by comparison.
There's also the issue of reach; there are way more Windows users than Mac users, period. Boot Camp is kinda shooting the "but some people have Macs" argument, too, since dev houses could just as easily argue that those Mac users can now boot into Windows.
At the end of the day, berating dev houses isn't going to break MS's stranglehold on the market. Making it easier to develop cross-platform would probably be a good start.
So what they've built, then, is a device for detecting people deliberately acting suspiciously?
How do you test for "mal-intent" when you're telling people "OK, I want you to stand there and sort of dart your eyes backwards and forwards; like you see in the movies. And then, I want you to think REAL HARD about robbing a bank."
Do they go up to people on the street and ask "our system says you're thinking about knocking off that jewelry store; are you?"
What if they say "no"?
I once had a chat to some Mozilla guys on IRC; I'd just gone through the rigmarole of posting a bug in Bugzilla, and was saying how it wasn't exactly easy to work out.
Their response was that Bugzilla isn't intended for end-users to submit bugs; it's for developers.
The average user is going to take one look at Bugzilla and run screaming so fast the air friction will burn their face off.
Hexen II used either software or OpenGL. At most, it might have used DirectDraw to throw pixels on the screen.
I'd actually say: teach him how to do in-game mod programming. It allows him to make something that has graphics and sound without having to actually learn how to do graphics and sound just yet.
A good example is World of Warcraft. Lua is pretty easy to pick up, and he can make little graphical toys or try simple automation. Maybe start with the WowLua addon (which adds an interactive Lua interpreter to the game) and perhaps the TinyPad addon which lets him write small scripts and run them from within the game.
Failing that, there's always Logo. :P
Now hold on just a second; if you have such great software, why does my phone crash every few days? Why is it that when I'm out somewhere, and need to look up a number for someone, or add something to my todo list, or hell, even make a simple phone call, I have to poke fruitlessly at the screen before hard rebooting the damn thing and waiting for it to all load again.
The rest of it is true enough, but don't lie about the software. Your software is a stinking pile of garbage. The biggest thing I'm hoping Android does is light a fire under your ass so I can get a stable PDA phone from someone, whoever that happens to be.
...you mean like some sort of proprietary technology that locks you to one platform? Why you poor, inconvenienced people, you!
that they're doing this is that the country is suffering a short-fall on energy production. Enter their brilliant plan: take George Orwell's coffin, strap magnets to it, and then systematically destroy the individual's right to privacy. Viola! Instant energy!
The worst controller ever was (and still is) the Playstation controller.
I'm not entirely sure why, but every single time I play on one of them, my hands end up cramping from the awful shape. I refuse to even pick the damn things up anymore because they're so uncomfortable.
The second sin was the f**king d-pad. I've always had this thing with the + shaped d-pads -- it makes it somewhat harder to do diagonal movements then the nice big ones you got on the original Saturn controllers. But making each of the directions a seperate button? Aaarrggh!
And finally, the naming convention used for the buttons on the right. I am yet, to this very day, work out where the hell the square is without looking. As far as I'm concerned, the PS controllers are a total botch job.
(OTOH, the best controllers I've ever use were the original Saturn controllers which had lovely big buttons, and big chunky "wings" that rested in your hands, and the Dreamcast controller which was far more comfortable than it looked (even if it did have that awful + d-pad)).
I'm still on dialup, you insensitive clod!
Seriously, why don't these people worry about getting broadband to more people before they go off trying to make it possible to download porn^H^H^H^H^H entire movies in the blink of an eye? I can't get broadband in my area because the wiring is apparently too old and crappy. And I'm only a five minute drive from the city centre!
As another poster pointed out, parts of the internet are becoming unusable to me because they're "broadband only". Even if I could get just 128K broadband, it would be a god-send.
Plus, then it wouldn't take a week to get the latest World of Warcraft patch...
Every time I turn on the damn TV, I get bombarded with people telling me that I really DO need a new home, that the more green pills I pop the better, and that I should try various feminine hygine products or risk severe discomfort (not to mention the news which is half an hour of government ministers lining their pockets at our expense, and dozens of innocent people dying horiffically every day).
The worst part is, there isn't even any shows left to make it worth putting up with this crap. Who the hell wants to watch yet another rip-off of Everybody Wishes Raymond Would Piss The Hell Off?
It's no wonder I haven't turned my TV on in over a year. If there's a show I want to watch, I either download it off the net, or buy it on DVD. The constant force-feeding of ads and bullshit have completely turned me off TV. I feel at least some satisfaction in knowing that they won't be getting any advertising revenue because of me.
But if they start putting ads straight into shows... well, I suppose I'll just have to read more. Who knows, maybe this is a blessing in disguise!