At my company, in my group, Agile is completely screwing us. The developers use the Sprint method, and each spring they invariably de-prioritize our small, simple feature so that they can work on bigger things. End result: our changes which require maybe 2-4 hours in actual work* get postponed for 8, 10, 12, or even more weeks. We miss deadlines for our clients, basically we get royally screwed.
Their "solution" to this problem was to split their team into multiple smaller teams, so now they have 3 Sprints instead of one. The reality is that our pending task is looked at by one single sprint, and they still de-prioritize it every two weeks like clockwork. (I mean, obviously-- it's the same people as before.) It didn't fix anything.
*) Before you gripe, I used to work in the exact dev group I'm talking about, and I *know* the tasks take 2-4 hours. I'm not pulling numbers out of my ass.
Frameworks aren't "automatically generated code" (typically), they're libraries of code written and tested by other teams in the past, along with a skeleton code structure to fill-in.
I agree with your sentiment, but it doesn't apply to frameworks.
They should use whatever Firefox is using, since it: 1) Is close enough to native that 95% of people won't notice they're not-native. 2) Correctly supports accessibility features on every OS it runs on that has accessibility features.
The second point is the most important, there. Make sure whatever widget set you choose supports accessibility!
If you removed the Java, then you would need to write the interface code for each platform you support. I gather that can actually create a fair bit of extra work, and make it harder to maintain.
If the UI code is in Java (BTW, it's not), then it's wrong anyway. Java doesn't have any entirely correct widget sets, they're all wrong in subtle (or obvious, in some cases) ways.
If you're writing a GUI app, and not using native widgets, you're just proclaiming to the world: "I hate my users!"
And it is different from other forms of gambling, how exactly?
There is curious tendency to pick exclusively on lotteries.
Here in the US, lotteries are government-sponsored. Casinos aren't. Lotteries exist in almost every county, in almost every state. Only a small percentage of counties have a casino.
I get your point about the thrill of gambling, although I don't personally experience that. But it should be obvious why lotteries are "picked-on" instead of casinos.
There's also OAuth and OpenID, which are particular egregious because they're so new. Who designs a protocol that *requires* Internet access *and* a web browser to work? WTF.
This is one of the areas where I with the open source movement were more pro-active. Why isn't there already an open source Java/.net-alike?
I mean, the closest that exists now is Mono, which I personally don't have a problem with, but enough open source developers do that it'll probably never catch-on.
A bigger problem is that money == votes. How did that happen? People see a TV ad and their brain shuts down? They become incapable of deciding for themselves because, hey! TV!
In an ideal world, candidate spending wouldn't matter because voters wouldn't be influenced by it. We should keep that in mind as well, if we fixed that problem the problem of corporate spending on candidates just evaporates.
The gun control people haven't been able to amend the constitution, hell they don't even seriously consider it anymore. How much luck do you think a *tax* amendment would have?
For better or worse (note: worse), the Constitution is no longer thought of as a "living document" but is how some kind of holy declaration from on-high chiseled into stone.
Let's assume that the eventual abolishment of all unions has already happened (since with the amount of money corporations can pour into races it will). How do you feel about this law? Comfortable with it?
I am, yes.
I'm also not crying over the abolishment of horse buggies, or ice delivery vans, or any other now-obsolete products of the turn of the (last) century.
When climate prediction started in earnest, the earth had even been cooling slightly for four decades.
Why was it cooling when we were burning the shit out of coal and wood back then? It's not like slash-and-burn agriculture or using coal for heat/power was brand new in the 1960s.
Yeah, and remember when those killer bees in Texas were going to move north and kill us all? I think there was an Irwin Allen movie made about it... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078350/ I wish I'd been tallying how many times I've been told the world was ending, and how many different reasons for it.
Look, let's just all agree that humans are evil horrible thoughtless creatures and we're going to blow up the world, do our little Charlton Heston "you maniacs!" moment, and move on to live our lives, ok?
It's also possible a lot of people are using Android as a stop-gap until Windows Mobile stopped sucking shit. Now that Windows Mobile 7 is out, and seems to not suck shit, you might see a decline in Android-based phones. (Just a theory, but I know it applies to a couple people I've talked to.)
That used to be the case. It is not so anymore with the change to the Khronos group in control. I'm afraid much of your reply uses out of date information.
Fair enough.
The truth is that OpenGL works on Windows *as well as* all the up-and-coming platforms.
I never claimed otherwise. I'm not even sure what you're replying to here...
I did claim that DirectX is significantly easier to develop for, both from the perspective of the hiring manager, and from the perspective of the developers themselves. (You can debug all the way into your shader, line-by-line, for example.)
I can only lead a horse to water. You can resist the future which is more heterogenous in hardware. However, if you choose your development tools carefully you can be well insulated from this - and save on development costs in the process.
Dude, I'm not pissing in your cornflakes. Relax.
I'm just saying that, with all costs considered, for a significant number of developers, DirectX is still the best choice. I don't even see *why* I need to say this, as the pure quantity of DirectX games makes this pretty self-evident.
Here's what I'm not saying: 1) I'm not saying OpenGL is bad 2) I'm not saying DirectX solves every problem with game development ever in history ever 3) I'm not saying you're a jerk
HD format for disks, you know so you can have more content on a disk and higher resolution images.
So by "HD" you don't mean "high definition" you mean "high capacity?" HD is a video format; it has nothing to do with putting more content on disks. Like I said, even the original Xbox was HD by any reasonable definition of the term.
Anyway, here's the real choice: 1) a $400 console using a normal DVD drive 2) a $600 console using a higher capacity drive, and releasing a full year later
Which do you pick? Well, Microsoft picked 1, and Sony picked 2. That doesn't make Microsoft right and Sony wrong (or vice-versa), that just means there was a hard choice and they both had to make it and they did.
Blu-ray support or hell if the 360 had supported HD-DVD, for watching HD videos.
Well, if that's important to you, it's important to you. To me? Not important.
Bluetooth support, you know so one can use their bluetooth headset to game with, rather than sending Microsoft another 50 dollars.
Huh? I don't get it. Are you trying to say headsets are cheaper when they're bluetooth? Where does the $50 come from? Are you ok paying money for headsets, as long as you're paying someone other than Microsoft? I don't understand what you're getting at here.
Wifi would have been really nice to have on the original 360 models,
Yes, it would have.
but again they stick buyers with another 50-100 dollars for something that came standard in the Wii and PS3
At launch, only the more expensive PS3 had wifi built-in. Don't rewrite history.
Look, if you hate the Xbox so much, why the fuck did you buy 3 of them? Microsoft must be doing *something* right! Even their loudest critics buy THREE. God knows how many you'd have bought if you liked them.
The Xbox 360 is a fantastic product? So you've never owned one have you?
I owned one, which lasted about 3 years before it RRoDed, BTW. I replaced it with another one. I'd say it's a fantastic product.
RROD pops to mind and the overall 16.1% failure rate over 6 to 10 months use.
Yes, yes.
Plus the fact that it didn't support an HD format for games,
Maybe I don't know what you mean by "HD format" but... yes it does? Duh? Xbox 360 games are HD by default. Hell, the original Xbox spit out 480p by default, and 1080i if games wanted.
no Blu-ray support now,
I don't care about that.
no Bluetooth support,
I can't even imagine a universe where I'd care about that. It has wireless controls, wireless IM keyboards, it just lacks the Bluetooth protocol specifically-- who gives a shit about the protocol if it has all the same peripherals?
Well, part of the problem goes back to the "standard always a few years out-of-date" aspect, meaning that if you want to use the newest card features, you usually need to have three different code paths: * The "fallback" to use the older, standard, way for Intel or older cards * The ATI plug-in version * The NVidia plug-in version
This is stuff that DirectX will just plain do for you.
I'm just fed arguing with the "3D means DirectX games on Windows only" crowd. with Apple's ascent it is time for them to eat crow since their point-of-view was as sensible as the web-development "target IE6 only and forget about W3C compat" crowd (which was a battle we had to fight in the enterprise space as many "ohh, shiny" operations people have short-term horizons). This snideness is vindication and not intended to insult the sensitive, so please don't take it personally.
I didn't realize that there was a "3D means DirectX games on Windows only" crowd. Nor do I really know what that even means...
I understand your general point, but everything you bring up still doesn't necessarily make OpenGL the best choice for game development. Developers should pick the best tool for their task-- if they don't care about porting to consoles or Mac, if they don't care about mobile, if they don't care whether the game runs in 5 years-- DirectX could very well be the best tool for their task. And demonstrably is, for a lot of PC/Xbox games. Otherwise they wouldn't choose it.
Huh? The official graphics API for the PS3 at the lowest level is OpenGL. Of course ports can be done. It simply takes more time (eg. money) if you start with DirectX instead of OpenGL... and you should be thinking about the long-term *money* if you are a half-decent architect.
I didn't say the PS3 didn't have OpenGL, or that OpenGL wasn't "official", I said most PS3 games didn't use OpenGL. Which is true; most use LibGCM. OpenGL is mostly there to enable quick porting.
Nope, you need to look at the whole equation. The tools and experience of the developers really counts. A single game sales might be two years tops but the tech a studio chooses (investing time and developer experience in) has to last a lot longer than that somce they don't like to change their technology often.
Yes, but on the other hand: 1) Game development with OpenGL consumes significantly more time than equivalent development in DirectX. 2) There are a LOT of DirectX-skilled developers around, which could hugely drive down your staffing costs. 3) Microsoft is doing a very good job, with programs like XNA, of exposing developers to DirectX. OpenGL, in comparison, has very little in the way of community outreach except a few outspoken commenters on Slashdot.:) This helps keep the number of qualified DirectX programmers up. 4) DirectX's new features are driven by a small focused team who ensure that mainstream video cards fully support the features in a reasonable timeframe. OpenGL's new features are the results of a committee that's consistently 3-5 years behind the state-of-the-art, and implemented by OS and video card driver programmers who (and let's be frank) don't do a very good job.
And finally: 5) Your point falls a little flat, since it's really not very difficult to port a game from DirectX to OpenGL if needed. Again, it's been done dozens of times before, and it only (at most) a few months worth of work. You bring this up yourself in your last sentence, which I didn't quote.
All I'm saying is OpenGL is a good tech to investigate that has *lots* of strategic benefits compared to its closest competitor (for those still mezmerized by the now-waning DirectX hype).
Look, if you have two politicians, A and B. A's in the news every day, running TV ads, plastering the city with flyers and posters-- who do you think people are going to vote for? If OpenGL doesn't have an evangelism, it doesn't get any users... that should be self-evident to anybody who's not completely aspie.
Since OpenGL is managed by a slow, bloated committee and not a single party who's interested in growing its marketshare, well, there's no evangelism, and thus there's not as many users. Again, there's no surprise here.
I hope all you DirectX programmers take note. Those who wrote for DirectX might have been able to make money on the PC+XBox but the software doesn't move to the PS3, iPhone/iPad, Android, Linux (while still running on Windows too) like OpenGL does. You all fell for Microsoft's deliberate plan to keep you on that platform (where is the Slashdot "it's a trap" tag when you need it, lol). You never know exactly what the future will bring but you do know that devices and operating systems will change. This makes OpenGL the best strategic (long-term) choice for 3D development and the OpenGL SuperBible is a great book to get you there
1) Don't be so snide. 2) It's really not that hard to port a DirectX game to PS3 (I won't say OpenGL, since most PS3 games don't use OpenGL.) Dozens of games have already done that, including DirectX-supporting companies like Valve. 3) In the gaming world, you only care about the game working for its sale period, which is maybe two years at best. Trying to sell game developers on long-term technology are a waste of time.
Slashdot Mirror
At my company, in my group, Agile is completely screwing us. The developers use the Sprint method, and each spring they invariably de-prioritize our small, simple feature so that they can work on bigger things. End result: our changes which require maybe 2-4 hours in actual work* get postponed for 8, 10, 12, or even more weeks. We miss deadlines for our clients, basically we get royally screwed.
Their "solution" to this problem was to split their team into multiple smaller teams, so now they have 3 Sprints instead of one. The reality is that our pending task is looked at by one single sprint, and they still de-prioritize it every two weeks like clockwork. (I mean, obviously-- it's the same people as before.) It didn't fix anything.
*) Before you gripe, I used to work in the exact dev group I'm talking about, and I *know* the tasks take 2-4 hours. I'm not pulling numbers out of my ass.
Frameworks aren't "automatically generated code" (typically), they're libraries of code written and tested by other teams in the past, along with a skeleton code structure to fill-in.
I agree with your sentiment, but it doesn't apply to frameworks.
They should use whatever Firefox is using, since it:
1) Is close enough to native that 95% of people won't notice they're not-native.
2) Correctly supports accessibility features on every OS it runs on that has accessibility features.
The second point is the most important, there. Make sure whatever widget set you choose supports accessibility!
If you removed the Java, then you would need to write the interface code for each platform you support. I gather that can actually create a fair bit of extra work, and make it harder to maintain.
If the UI code is in Java (BTW, it's not), then it's wrong anyway. Java doesn't have any entirely correct widget sets, they're all wrong in subtle (or obvious, in some cases) ways.
If you're writing a GUI app, and not using native widgets, you're just proclaiming to the world: "I hate my users!"
And it is different from other forms of gambling, how exactly?
There is curious tendency to pick exclusively on lotteries.
Here in the US, lotteries are government-sponsored. Casinos aren't. Lotteries exist in almost every county, in almost every state. Only a small percentage of counties have a casino.
I get your point about the thrill of gambling, although I don't personally experience that. But it should be obvious why lotteries are "picked-on" instead of casinos.
That'll be amusing until one of the scissors cuts off the dog's tail, you monster!
There's also OAuth and OpenID, which are particular egregious because they're so new. Who designs a protocol that *requires* Internet access *and* a web browser to work? WTF.
What about the library size and GUI tools? I see those as crucial.
But it sounds really promising, from what you're describing. I'll have to play with it.
There's always Mono, if you could get the community to dial-down the frothing rage a bit.
This is one of the areas where I with the open source movement were more pro-active. Why isn't there already an open source Java/.net-alike?
I mean, the closest that exists now is Mono, which I personally don't have a problem with, but enough open source developers do that it'll probably never catch-on.
A bigger problem is that money == votes. How did that happen? People see a TV ad and their brain shuts down? They become incapable of deciding for themselves because, hey! TV!
In an ideal world, candidate spending wouldn't matter because voters wouldn't be influenced by it. We should keep that in mind as well, if we fixed that problem the problem of corporate spending on candidates just evaporates.
The gun control people haven't been able to amend the constitution, hell they don't even seriously consider it anymore. How much luck do you think a *tax* amendment would have?
For better or worse (note: worse), the Constitution is no longer thought of as a "living document" but is how some kind of holy declaration from on-high chiseled into stone.
Let's assume that the eventual abolishment of all unions has already happened (since with the amount of money corporations can pour into races it will). How do you feel about this law? Comfortable with it?
I am, yes.
I'm also not crying over the abolishment of horse buggies, or ice delivery vans, or any other now-obsolete products of the turn of the (last) century.
Anecdotal, but my mom was unable to get her dues back from the Washington State Teacher's Union, when she opposed their political spending.
When climate prediction started in earnest, the earth had even been cooling slightly for four decades.
Why was it cooling when we were burning the shit out of coal and wood back then? It's not like slash-and-burn agriculture or using coal for heat/power was brand new in the 1960s.
Yeah, and remember when those killer bees in Texas were going to move north and kill us all? I think there was an Irwin Allen movie made about it... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078350/ I wish I'd been tallying how many times I've been told the world was ending, and how many different reasons for it.
Look, let's just all agree that humans are evil horrible thoughtless creatures and we're going to blow up the world, do our little Charlton Heston "you maniacs!" moment, and move on to live our lives, ok?
It's also possible a lot of people are using Android as a stop-gap until Windows Mobile stopped sucking shit. Now that Windows Mobile 7 is out, and seems to not suck shit, you might see a decline in Android-based phones. (Just a theory, but I know it applies to a couple people I've talked to.)
At the very least, it could randomize the list of candidates so it's a *random* name getting selected by accident. Not that that justifies the bug...
That used to be the case. It is not so anymore with the change to the Khronos group in control. I'm afraid much of your reply uses out of date information.
Fair enough.
The truth is that OpenGL works on Windows *as well as* all the up-and-coming platforms.
I never claimed otherwise. I'm not even sure what you're replying to here...
I did claim that DirectX is significantly easier to develop for, both from the perspective of the hiring manager, and from the perspective of the developers themselves. (You can debug all the way into your shader, line-by-line, for example.)
I can only lead a horse to water. You can resist the future which is more heterogenous in hardware. However, if you choose your development tools carefully you can be well insulated from this - and save on development costs in the process.
Dude, I'm not pissing in your cornflakes. Relax.
I'm just saying that, with all costs considered, for a significant number of developers, DirectX is still the best choice. I don't even see *why* I need to say this, as the pure quantity of DirectX games makes this pretty self-evident.
Here's what I'm not saying:
1) I'm not saying OpenGL is bad
2) I'm not saying DirectX solves every problem with game development ever in history ever
3) I'm not saying you're a jerk
Ok? Relax.
HD format for disks, you know so you can have more content on a disk and higher resolution images.
So by "HD" you don't mean "high definition" you mean "high capacity?" HD is a video format; it has nothing to do with putting more content on disks. Like I said, even the original Xbox was HD by any reasonable definition of the term.
Anyway, here's the real choice:
1) a $400 console using a normal DVD drive
2) a $600 console using a higher capacity drive, and releasing a full year later
Which do you pick? Well, Microsoft picked 1, and Sony picked 2. That doesn't make Microsoft right and Sony wrong (or vice-versa), that just means there was a hard choice and they both had to make it and they did.
Blu-ray support or hell if the 360 had supported HD-DVD, for watching HD videos.
Well, if that's important to you, it's important to you. To me? Not important.
Bluetooth support, you know so one can use their bluetooth headset to game with, rather than sending Microsoft another 50 dollars.
Huh? I don't get it. Are you trying to say headsets are cheaper when they're bluetooth? Where does the $50 come from? Are you ok paying money for headsets, as long as you're paying someone other than Microsoft? I don't understand what you're getting at here.
Wifi would have been really nice to have on the original 360 models,
Yes, it would have.
but again they stick buyers with another 50-100 dollars for something that came standard in the Wii and PS3
At launch, only the more expensive PS3 had wifi built-in. Don't rewrite history.
Look, if you hate the Xbox so much, why the fuck did you buy 3 of them? Microsoft must be doing *something* right! Even their loudest critics buy THREE. God knows how many you'd have bought if you liked them.
The Xbox 360 is a fantastic product? So you've never owned one have you?
I owned one, which lasted about 3 years before it RRoDed, BTW. I replaced it with another one. I'd say it's a fantastic product.
RROD pops to mind and the overall 16.1% failure rate over 6 to 10 months use.
Yes, yes.
Plus the fact that it didn't support an HD format for games,
Maybe I don't know what you mean by "HD format" but... yes it does? Duh? Xbox 360 games are HD by default. Hell, the original Xbox spit out 480p by default, and 1080i if games wanted.
no Blu-ray support now,
I don't care about that.
no Bluetooth support,
I can't even imagine a universe where I'd care about that. It has wireless controls, wireless IM keyboards, it just lacks the Bluetooth protocol specifically-- who gives a shit about the protocol if it has all the same peripherals?
Well, part of the problem goes back to the "standard always a few years out-of-date" aspect, meaning that if you want to use the newest card features, you usually need to have three different code paths:
* The "fallback" to use the older, standard, way for Intel or older cards
* The ATI plug-in version
* The NVidia plug-in version
This is stuff that DirectX will just plain do for you.
I'm just fed arguing with the "3D means DirectX games on Windows only" crowd. with Apple's ascent it is time for them to eat crow since their point-of-view was as sensible as the web-development "target IE6 only and forget about W3C compat" crowd (which was a battle we had to fight in the enterprise space as many "ohh, shiny" operations people have short-term horizons). This snideness is vindication and not intended to insult the sensitive, so please don't take it personally.
I didn't realize that there was a "3D means DirectX games on Windows only" crowd. Nor do I really know what that even means...
I understand your general point, but everything you bring up still doesn't necessarily make OpenGL the best choice for game development. Developers should pick the best tool for their task-- if they don't care about porting to consoles or Mac, if they don't care about mobile, if they don't care whether the game runs in 5 years-- DirectX could very well be the best tool for their task. And demonstrably is, for a lot of PC/Xbox games. Otherwise they wouldn't choose it.
Huh? The official graphics API for the PS3 at the lowest level is OpenGL. Of course ports can be done. It simply takes more time (eg. money) if you start with DirectX instead of OpenGL ... and you should be thinking about the long-term *money* if you are a half-decent architect.
I didn't say the PS3 didn't have OpenGL, or that OpenGL wasn't "official", I said most PS3 games didn't use OpenGL. Which is true; most use LibGCM. OpenGL is mostly there to enable quick porting.
Nope, you need to look at the whole equation. The tools and experience of the developers really counts. A single game sales might be two years tops but the tech a studio chooses (investing time and developer experience in) has to last a lot longer than that somce they don't like to change their technology often.
Yes, but on the other hand: :) This helps keep the number of qualified DirectX programmers up.
1) Game development with OpenGL consumes significantly more time than equivalent development in DirectX.
2) There are a LOT of DirectX-skilled developers around, which could hugely drive down your staffing costs.
3) Microsoft is doing a very good job, with programs like XNA, of exposing developers to DirectX. OpenGL, in comparison, has very little in the way of community outreach except a few outspoken commenters on Slashdot.
4) DirectX's new features are driven by a small focused team who ensure that mainstream video cards fully support the features in a reasonable timeframe. OpenGL's new features are the results of a committee that's consistently 3-5 years behind the state-of-the-art, and implemented by OS and video card driver programmers who (and let's be frank) don't do a very good job.
And finally:
5) Your point falls a little flat, since it's really not very difficult to port a game from DirectX to OpenGL if needed. Again, it's been done dozens of times before, and it only (at most) a few months worth of work. You bring this up yourself in your last sentence, which I didn't quote.
All I'm saying is OpenGL is a good tech to investigate that has *lots* of strategic benefits compared to its closest competitor (for those still mezmerized by the now-waning DirectX hype).
Look, if you have two politicians, A and B. A's in the news every day, running TV ads, plastering the city with flyers and posters-- who do you think people are going to vote for? If OpenGL doesn't have an evangelism, it doesn't get any users... that should be self-evident to anybody who's not completely aspie.
Since OpenGL is managed by a slow, bloated committee and not a single party who's interested in growing its marketshare, well, there's no evangelism, and thus there's not as many users. Again, there's no surprise here.
I hope all you DirectX programmers take note. Those who wrote for DirectX might have been able to make money on the PC+XBox but the software doesn't move to the PS3, iPhone/iPad, Android, Linux (while still running on Windows too) like OpenGL does. You all fell for Microsoft's deliberate plan to keep you on that platform (where is the Slashdot "it's a trap" tag when you need it, lol). You never know exactly what the future will bring but you do know that devices and operating systems will change. This makes OpenGL the best strategic (long-term) choice for 3D development and the OpenGL SuperBible is a great book to get you there
1) Don't be so snide.
2) It's really not that hard to port a DirectX game to PS3 (I won't say OpenGL, since most PS3 games don't use OpenGL.) Dozens of games have already done that, including DirectX-supporting companies like Valve.
3) In the gaming world, you only care about the game working for its sale period, which is maybe two years at best. Trying to sell game developers on long-term technology are a waste of time.
I wonder what I'm obligated to know, based on my UID in the high 5-digits. Is it enough that I just know what a CPU is?