Drupal is designed so terribly, the entire book could be devoted on optimization, and it would not be enough.
now, the Woodrow Wilson PTA for Podunk, Middle of nowhere might be served fine by Drupal. if your group needs this application to grow, run away. some of the SQL queries are hair raising-ly terrible.
i'm seeing a sad trend among non-profits taking a real shine to Drupal, due to low upfront costs. unfortunately, what they don't know is that long term scaling is pretty out of the question for Drupal. you will end up rewriting 90% of the code to get it usable. and don't get me started on upgrading or even creating forms in Drupal.
having personally used Drupal 4 and 5, i hope the rest of you will stay away and never need to read this book.
Just because Halo started off for the Mac doesn't mean it could stay there. Dev for the XBox is a completely different creature. They probably had to throw out everything in order to take advantage of what the NVidia chipset offered. So a game born on a Mac finally returned to the Mac after a trip through XBox and PC development land.
At the end of this convoluted process, the code finally got to porting stage. Now, Westlake used to be awesome at porting. Unfortunately, they are starting to lost their edge with the newer 3D games. They turned out decent and stable ports for mid level gamers, not the CPU choking gibfests for the hardcore fans.
While hardware specs on graphics cards between Mac & PC are reaching parity, the driver support is not. Either way, Mac games lose out.
This is all irrelevant, in the face of growing console sales and shrinking computer game sales. Developing for the PC/Mac was supposed to be easier than console, but they have historically been less stable and more difficult to run than console games. The QA doesn't come up to snuff.
the saturation in South Korea is not normal. it's more than just a small landmass. it's a cultural and political phenomenon. the country has consciously been moving away from industrialization and towards digitalization and knowledge industries.
my mother recently went on a trip to see old school friends in Korea. at the end of a big dinner, the half dozen friends all gave her e-mail address and cell phone numbers. they all made fun of my mother fot not being into e-mail. this from middle-aged women.
also, take in mind that virtually all new housing developments are coming wired with fiber, therefore making broadband de rigeur.
as a programmer trying to make two transitions: computer professional -> game industry -> game designer, your odds are pretty terrible.
these days, a coder/designer is extremely rare. you will find them at small independent shareware type devs, but not at larger developers.
a designer HAS to understand not only the basics of gameplay, but also design documents, write the game manual, level design, and tie in art/technology to make something fun. it does help (wrt being adept at using a level designer), but is not a main issue. designers are more often from other more creative industries, like writers. so in a way, your technical background could hurt your chances.
payscale wise, you won't be able to make the transition to a single game designers wage with a family. to get positioned into a game designer, MAYBE you can squeeze in as a level designer implementing written specifications. but that will mean drastic changes in lifestyle.
programmers who are in the game industry and making decent pay (almost never necessarily on par with the tech average) usually start off being paid beans in QA/play testing and then work their way up.
for a better sense of pay, check out Game Developer Salary Survey. mind that the majority of developers are in CA, with higher cost of living, so don't think "WOW, programmers average $65k a year"
the grammar and syntax of mathematical theory may be there, but if you are looking to go into a CS field, it's more often a liability. most CS and engineering jobs require understanding systems and flows, not simply solving a system of equations.
sure, it helps, but of the advanced science/theory type majors turned programmers, about 75% i've come across are virtually worthless and 25% are not. this includes inefficient code, poor design, and lack of appreciation for the art of programming.
OpenGL 2.0 is years away from exposing the hardware to the level DirectX has. The ARB is slow, but hopeful in getting the extensions mess cleaned up.
Microsoft Research has some heavy hitting names in graphics who are paid to do PURE research. This is a pretty formidable resource for Microsoft to leverage into making D3D indispensable to developers. Not every garage game hacker can whip out mesh skinning algorithms.
On the Mac OpenGL side... The Mac OpenGL games have a few titles out now with full screen anti aliasing. One is the Spiderman 1.0.1 Patch just this month for ATI cards.
The challenge with Mac/OpenGL support is developing a good relationship with ATI/Nvidia. Try getting into the community more. Not everyone has the connections Carmack has. The Mac Games Dev list (mac-games-dev@lists.apple.com) is very active.
And yes, get a lawyer immediately. People will make life choices thinking a big gig will come through, but more than likely it will NOT happen. I have not heard of deals like this ever ending happily for the smaller company. Just because your client is larger and probably well known, there is no guarantee of "safety" in making such a lopsided deal with them.
It's been replaced with HIDManager for straight OSX. InputSprocket is guaranteed only under Carbon, and the API only.
At the last WWDC, Apple strongly encouraged HIDManager to be used instead. InputSprocket allowed for nasty, low level access which should not be available. HIDManager abstracted things out much better. There was a nice response to a request for Apple to maintain a databse of HID compliant device mappings, lifting the burden of creating configuration mappings for all those Input Devices.
let's call for the next/. poll to ask: should the stock market's plummet have an article on/.?
/. doesn't like to post negative net/linux news. more often than not, even good news about linux ends up as some type of flame fodder.
let's be honest, i'm sure several dozen, if not hundreds, of people have posted about the stock crash. i'm not sure what kind of justification anyone can have against considering this a non story.
the math comes to this gentleman, assuming 8 hrs a day, biling at a rate of $250/hr. so oops, i underestimated! of course, he is not your run of the mill programmer.
my fiance had an offer two months ago for a position in SF for a 280k annual salary at a startup. and yes, it was for Perl. that comes to ~140/hour, but self employment (incorporating, etc) and salaried bases can have very differenct meanings to net income.
it never ceases to amaze me how people can shoot of their mouths w/o offering a shred of evidence.
perl is FAR from out grown. there is a reason good developers have no problems charging 150/hr.
as for perl, it's OO duct tape.
books teaching PERL programming are not very easy to write, much less programming skills alone. hopefully, more people will make an attempt to learn as opposed to reverting to a script kiddie.
Slashdot Mirror
Drupal is designed so terribly, the entire book could be devoted on optimization, and it would not be enough.
now, the Woodrow Wilson PTA for Podunk, Middle of nowhere might be served fine by Drupal. if your group needs this application to grow, run away. some of the SQL queries are hair raising-ly terrible.
i'm seeing a sad trend among non-profits taking a real shine to Drupal, due to low upfront costs. unfortunately, what they don't know is that long term scaling is pretty out of the question for Drupal. you will end up rewriting 90% of the code to get it usable. and don't get me started on upgrading or even creating forms in Drupal.
having personally used Drupal 4 and 5, i hope the rest of you will stay away and never need to read this book.
Think of it this way.
Just because Halo started off for the Mac doesn't mean it could stay there. Dev for the XBox is a completely different creature. They probably had to throw out everything in order to take advantage of what the NVidia chipset offered. So a game born on a Mac finally returned to the Mac after a trip through XBox and PC development land.
At the end of this convoluted process, the code finally got to porting stage. Now, Westlake used to be awesome at porting. Unfortunately, they are starting to lost their edge with the newer 3D games. They turned out decent and stable ports for mid level gamers, not the CPU choking gibfests for the hardcore fans.
While hardware specs on graphics cards between Mac & PC are reaching parity, the driver support is not. Either way, Mac games lose out.
This is all irrelevant, in the face of growing console sales and shrinking computer game sales. Developing for the PC/Mac was supposed to be easier than console, but they have historically been less stable and more difficult to run than console games. The QA doesn't come up to snuff.
used on: Cinema Display, Studio Display, and Sony WEGA. works beautifully. has no alcohol or ammonia. comes with spray and cloth.
lasts forever. the small kit at the Apple Store has a lot of product in it. worth the $25.
the saturation in South Korea is not normal. it's more than just a small landmass. it's a cultural and political phenomenon. the country has consciously been moving away from industrialization and towards digitalization and knowledge industries.
my mother recently went on a trip to see old school friends in Korea. at the end of a big dinner, the half dozen friends all gave her e-mail address and cell phone numbers. they all made fun of my mother fot not being into e-mail. this from middle-aged women.
also, take in mind that virtually all new housing developments are coming wired with fiber, therefore making broadband de rigeur.
for more head over to wired. "The Bandwidth Capital of the World"
broadband in Japan is no where near the levels in Korea. there hasn't been an initiative.
as a programmer trying to make two transitions: computer professional -> game industry -> game designer, your odds are pretty terrible.
these days, a coder/designer is extremely rare. you will find them at small independent shareware type devs, but not at larger developers.
a designer HAS to understand not only the basics of gameplay, but also design documents, write the game manual, level design, and tie in art/technology to make something fun. it does help (wrt being adept at using a level designer), but is not a main issue. designers are more often from other more creative industries, like writers. so in a way, your technical background could hurt your chances.
payscale wise, you won't be able to make the transition to a single game designers wage with a family. to get positioned into a game designer, MAYBE you can squeeze in as a level designer implementing written specifications. but that will mean drastic changes in lifestyle.
programmers who are in the game industry and making decent pay (almost never necessarily on par with the tech average) usually start off being paid beans in QA/play testing and then work their way up.
for a better sense of pay, check out Game Developer Salary Survey. mind that the majority of developers are in CA, with higher cost of living, so don't think "WOW, programmers average $65k a year"
the grammar and syntax of mathematical theory may be there, but if you are looking to go into a CS field, it's more often a liability. most CS and engineering jobs require understanding systems and flows, not simply solving a system of equations.
sure, it helps, but of the advanced science/theory type majors turned programmers, about 75% i've come across are virtually worthless and 25% are not. this includes inefficient code, poor design, and lack of appreciation for the art of programming.
OpenGL 2.0 is years away from exposing the hardware to the level DirectX has. The ARB is slow, but hopeful in getting the extensions mess cleaned up.
Microsoft Research has some heavy hitting names in graphics who are paid to do PURE research. This is a pretty formidable resource for Microsoft to leverage into making D3D indispensable to developers. Not every garage game hacker can whip out mesh skinning algorithms.
On the Mac OpenGL side... The Mac OpenGL games have a few titles out now with full screen anti aliasing. One is the Spiderman 1.0.1 Patch just this month for ATI cards.
The challenge with Mac/OpenGL support is developing a good relationship with ATI/Nvidia. Try getting into the community more. Not everyone has the connections Carmack has. The Mac Games Dev list (mac-games-dev@lists.apple.com) is very active.
Put everything in writing.
And yes, get a lawyer immediately. People will make life choices thinking a big gig will come through, but more than likely it will NOT happen. I have not heard of deals like this ever ending happily for the smaller company. Just because your client is larger and probably well known, there is no guarantee of "safety" in making such a lopsided deal with them.
It's been replaced with HIDManager for straight OSX. InputSprocket is guaranteed only under Carbon, and the API only.
At the last WWDC, Apple strongly encouraged HIDManager to be used instead. InputSprocket allowed for nasty, low level access which should not be available. HIDManager abstracted things out much better. There was a nice response to a request for Apple to maintain a databse of HID compliant device mappings, lifting the burden of creating configuration mappings for all those Input Devices.
HID Manager
Very similar situation applies to DrawSprocket.
let's call for the next /. poll to ask: should the stock market's plummet have an article on /.?
/. doesn't like to post negative net/linux news. more often than not, even good news about linux ends up as some type of flame fodder.
let's be honest, i'm sure several dozen, if not hundreds, of people have posted about the stock crash. i'm not sure what kind of justification anyone can have against considering this a non story.
old thread at deja
the math comes to this gentleman, assuming 8 hrs a day, biling at a rate of $250/hr. so oops, i underestimated! of course, he is not your run of the mill programmer.
my fiance had an offer two months ago for a position in SF for a 280k annual salary at a startup. and yes, it was for Perl. that comes to ~140/hour, but self employment (incorporating, etc) and salaried bases can have very differenct meanings to net income.
it never ceases to amaze me how people can shoot of their mouths w/o offering a shred of evidence.
perl is FAR from out grown. there is a reason good developers have no problems charging 150/hr.
as for perl, it's OO duct tape.
books teaching PERL programming are not very easy to write, much less programming skills alone. hopefully, more people will make an attempt to learn as opposed to reverting to a script kiddie.