genbattle

I think games are hard (if not impossible) to test with unit tests or codified tests like the ones you mentioned.

At the company I work for we rely mostly on manual testing for testing the games and applications we make. We do some automated testing in the form of Tinytask tasks that are left on overnight to hammer an application. In terms of release testing, especially with a custom game engine, there's no easy way to codify a test which actually plays through a game where there is some random mechanic, or checks for things like the visual accuracy, windows flashing up on the screen when they're not supposed to, etc.

Web development frameworks like Selenium are great for UI testing, but they require identifying interface elements by their IDs, or performing a 100% image recognition match for targeting. If anyone knows of a good UI testing framework that would work for games/DirectX apps, I'd definitely love to hear about it.

I'm not bagging automated testing, I think it's a great way to save time and avoid the boring bits. I just don't think it's very relevant to game design, but for the OP's enterprise app job it would definitely be suitable.

I don't know how they'll resolve this...

Ban all the steam accounts of people who've activated the keys? They'll get a whole lot of people who legitimately submitted hardware keys at the same time.

Invalidate/revoke the keys from steam? The hardware IDs they were using to run the promotion are still going to be out there in the wild, so they can't re-run the promotion, this would just minimize their losses in terms of lost profit.

As far as the keys being in plain text on the server, this doesn't even make sense from the perspective of how you design a web app; why not put the data on a separate remote/secure server? Why not at least encrypt it? Also, how are they matching the hardware IDs to the keys when people submit the official promo; are they actually doing a search through each text file to find the matching hardware key? The .htaccess mis-configuration is bad enough, but it's not the only issue here.

That's true, and you can probably assume that people who will be doing this will use their 360s as media/file servers which need minimal restarting.

This seems to be a fairly complex hardware hack to pull off, and it only works 25% of the time. This will possibly satisfy the hardcore homebrew community, but I have doubts about whether they'll be able to refine the process into a single low-cost mod-chip.

This is definitely a good step forward though. At this rate by the time the 360 is retired from the marketplace we'll have a reliable boot method that allows everyone to turn their old 360s into media servers/toasters/whatever.

Great guide on basic hardware hacking techniques.

It is really surprising how much low level electronics rely on standard interfaces and protocols.

Also, all electronics designs tend to rely heavily on the example implementations on component datasheets for their actual implementations, which can help greatly with reverse engineering board layouts and finding the right pins and jumpers to probe.

Completely agree. The old adage is "it's now what you know, it's who you know".

This is especially true in the computer industry. If you want to create a startup you need to know people with money to fund you, and business/technical people you can get to help you out with your ideas. On the other side, you can get a great start on a job as a programmer if you know someone who's willing to give you the time and exposure you need to learn and grow.

Turns out i'm not the only one contacted about this book.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2926354

Just added my email to my profile, feel free to contact me.

I think that we have been contacted by the same publisher about the same book. And have the same feelings on the book and the offer to co-author it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2926505

I was also critical of the author and outline. An unknown author with a single book on ruby to his name. The outline was poorly organised, and there wasn't anything that you couldn't get from the publicly available documentation and tutorials on the language.

It's hard to know the exact situation the author was in, but it certainly seems like there would have been a quicker fix than what he proposed. He never says the game wasn't fixed before it was shipped (and he probably wouldn't know if it was), he just states that it still shipped.

Because you only get his side of the story, you don't know if the reason he was fired was because the other devs knew it wouldn't take that long to fix, or because he had some negative history with the company.

I'm not writing the guy off here. It just pays to be wary with stories like this that end with "and then i was fired", because the outcome and tone of the story automatically makes the reader feel that there is some sort of residual bitterness that has shaped the author's view negatively.

But I suppose if you get fired you have every right to be bitter about it too.

I agree, but I also think that to a certain extent no matter where you work in the software industry there is always a certain amount of this going on.

People just tend to get screwed over more often in the games industry because people think it's the holy grail of jobs, so you have 10 more poor saps lining up to replace every 1 who gets fired over something like this.

Wow, i've been looking for an open source library like this for ages. This is prettymuch exactly what we have where I work (Unlimited Realities/Fingertapps), but the engine is proprietary and based on a custom scripting language.

Having an open alternative to play around with in my own time will be awesome, thankyou!

I share this sentiment completely. This makes helping people learn something really hard, because mistakes are an important part of learning, and most people would rather make the mistakes themselves than have you steer them around it.

As a computer programmer, and particularly a hacker, I can't help but try and optimize everything. Every inefficiency or middleman causes an internal ticking, something that must be addressed before it causes further annoyance and costs people more money and time.

Regarding inefficiencies; most people tend to not notice them. Non-programmers look a a system and see something that either works or doesn't. As a programmer I see a system of variables that need to be tuned, or a process with discrete stages and actors, specific inputs and outputs.

Another pet peeve which is more specific to me and my experience designing user interfaces and user interactions is the assumptions that people make, often knowingly, before they even start a project. When building a UI for a touchscreen application, programmers and designers that have come from a more traditional software background will automatically map check-boxes to boolean inputs, and radio buttons to pick-one inputs, all while making the assumption there isn't a better way of getting input from the user. They won't consider sliding buttons (like those used on iphone and android phones) as a better alternative to a checkbox, or a selection list in place of a set of radio buttons. It is just as important to identify the reason for your assumptions as it is to identify the assumptions themselves. Often I find situations where assumptions are rendered invalid because people try and use them outside of the specific context in which they are created.

Never be afraid to question the status quo, especially when the only reason it remains so is because no one questions it.

And now i'm just waiting for the guy who commented earlier to take his dual 5970s and start brute-forcing ASB internet banking details.

Good thing i'm not with ASB.

Having a patent pending is a scare-tactic use by alot of companies to scare off competitors. Some companies will keep re-applying for a patent even after being turned down, simply so they can keep displaying a "patent pending" mark on their product.

I'm no expert on patent law, but I would enquire as to which patent applications he's referring to (an ambiguous "we has patents" statement doesn't get them anywhere), and then I would check the applications and the filing party's previous filing history. If they're a pending troll, ignore and move on. If they don't have any actual pending patents relative to your work, ignore and move on. If your work predates his patent application, file a prior art declaration with the patent office against his patents, and move on.

Personally I dislike software patents to the extreme. I believe copyright is enough for software. If people want patent protection on their software, they should have to demonstrate working code that shows their concept in action, and they should submit the full source code with build tools and instructions. The point of patents is that 50 years after a patent is granted, the public should be able to pick up the patent and exactly replicate the original invention from the patent materials alone. I know that is certainly not the case for most modern patents, especially software patents.

Lol, just did the prerequisite research and found out the movie wasn't released till 1994. Apparently this refers to another technology manufacturer.

And here i was hoping for something to break the monotony of technology companies in the top 100.

And coming in at number 25: 08/05/1986 STARGATE.COM

Stargate must have been the first movie ever to get it's own .com domain? I guess it reflects the crowd they were aiming for.

I think being an introvert is almost a requirement for being an effective programmer. I don't mean to sound like an arrogant asshole by making such a statement. To really be at the top of your game you have to be constantly reading about the latest trends and technologies, working on personal projects, concentrating in a monolithic fashion on the task in front of you. Programming is an antisocial/introverted activity by definition.

That said, there are many different styles of programmer and developer, and there are indeed some types which require lots of regular social interaction. I guess for me there has always been a feeling that programming alienates those who have a deep understanding of the subject from those who don't. I think this is because of the unique mindset required to understand how a computer really works at the low level. As a programmer I can break situations and problems down to variables, data types, logical expressions and conditions. Non-programmers are probably perfectly capable of solving the same problem, but as programmers we often approach such problems in a very specific way.

I would definitely count myself an an introvert, prettymuch exactly as described by the article. Social situations feel awkward and draining, while I am most comfortable in a peaceful and solitary environment. Despite this I still long for meaningful social connections with other people, I just struggle to relate to other people whose interests differ so greatly from my own.

Can't say i'm impressed by Nintendo's offering. It's like they've spent the last 5 years resting on their laurels, then in the last few months before E3 they slap something together with every possible feature you can have in a single controller, and upgraded the hardware to handle HD graphics.

The console itself is fairly decent for it's size, it would be interesting to see whether long-term hardware issues will arise out of shrinking down such high-performance components. All of the tech demos seem very smoke-and-mirrors at this stage; when the Wii was revealed there were real demos with playable games that people could pick up and enjoy. Overall the hardware feels current-gen, and with MS and Sony already planning their next consoles, it won't be long until Nintendo is again at the back of the hardware rankings. No media playback seems like a bit of an oversight; it uses a proprietary disk format, and there is no mention of media playback, except Youtube integration. Seems it will follow the same path as the Wii did with DVD/media playback.

The controller seems strange; you can use it in several different ways, but it seems to be optimized to a tablet-type usage scenario. The placement of the shoulder buttons seems very awkward with the size and shape of the controller. As i said, it just looks like they've tried to incorporate everything including the kitchen sink at the last minute, with no _real_ use-cases or target applications.

In the end the biggest disappointment for me is that Nintendo hasn't addressed the areas it admitted it failed with the Wii. Not so long ago they said they knew they had failed to engage developers on the same level as MS and Sony, and they had failed to create a healthy online ecosystem. Their announcements at E3 haven't addressed either of these failures, so I can only assume that they are still working on a solution, or they are going to continue with the same strategies that they have used in the past.

I think pastebin is still a very good site for code pastes. I haven't seen a site which offers more features and functionality. Sure if you just want a quick public anonymous post of some plain text, any will do. In my case pastebin.com is the only one i've found that had syntax highlighting for some of the more obscure languages I use (such as Go).

My last laptop was a 15.6" beast (Core2 T7200 I think with a GeForce 8400M G), but it was just underpowered enough to not do everything I wanted when I wanted, and was too bulky and power hungry to be considered portable.

Last year I switched to an i5 desktop with more than enough CPU and GPU grunt to push through the most demanding tasks (such as video encoding). However, if i wanted to slowly hack away at some code while watching TV in the lounge with my partner or do some coding while at my parents place, I was out of luck.

To solve this problem I bought a AMD C-50 equipped Acer Aspire 522 the day they were available here. Despite having only a 10.2" screen and a "netbook" processor, I find it does everything I want to do with a portable computer. The battery life, size and weight give me great portability (+1 for couch-hacking). The dual-core APU never locks up or stutters, even when playing 1080p video via the HDMI port. The DX11 capable graphics even play WoW and Minecraft great at native resolution (1280x720), and allows me to hack around with OpenCL GPGPU programming from my couch. NOTE: I upgraded the memory to 4GB, i would recommend an upgrade to at least 2GB for anyone who has/is getting this laptop.

I definitely think switching to a lighter form factor with more portability has allowed me to get more done because I can literally have this machine with me at all times. That said, I waited for this laptop specifically because it was portable, cheap, and had a decent screen resolution. If i were recommending a laptop for someone, I would probably reccomend something in the 12-14" range, unless they're going to have a desktop to do the grunt work, as I do.

I think this is more like a superset of features which describe many different types of nerd; some nerds implement all features, some only satisfy a subset of these interfaces. Each one is different depending on the level of nerd, and the activity the nerd centralizes their life on.

Definitely passing this along to my partner.

This is my school of thought; it would be nice to know which are the hot comments. Previously you could skim through only the higher rated ones if you were in a hurry, but now you sort of have to trawl through masses of text to find the gems.

One idea i thought might help the whole points vs. no points situation is changing karma from being the total points over all posts to just being the average points over all posts, so then people will be motivated to create fewer high-quality posts to boost their karma, rather than just trying to saturate HN with lots of posts that nab a point or two each. (somewhat hypocritical maybe)

I sort of feel mixed on this one. I myself took a very low starting wage because the company I work at does gaming technology, and it's in a fairly small town, so my costs are very low. This wouldn't be a problem except that the technology the company uses is so specialized that it can't be applied anywhere else in the world (they have their own programming language and game engine technology which is used exclusively internally).

Now, 2 years in, I have the experience out of uni to be able to move to other jobs, but i'm still on a pathetic salary, with no additional benefits or anything, even during crunch times.

Since coming to this realization, I have made a plan to do something about it, so I have started learning new programming languages and tools, generating a portfolio of project euler problems, brushing up my CV, etc. Articles like this serve as good motivation/reminder that I need to keep doing this and aim for something better.

In the end a University degree is just a piece of paper. What matters is the quality of the knowledge and mentoring you receive from your lecturers and from the university as a whole.

I think this situation is a result of the financial crash; Thiel is right, people have fled to something they see as a safe investment to increase their personal worth. People are going (back) to university so they have the qualitifications they need to get a job that would have previously required very little in the way of formal education. The market is flooded with educated job-seekers, so people must now set themselves apart with something else.

I'm on the younger end of the age-scale (23), and i would have to agree that less people are learning C as a matter of course these days. Over the whole programmer population the percentage would be very low, but the hacker population is almost defined by its use of C. Many notable and large hacker projects are based on C; Mozilla, Linux Kernel, GNU tools, etc. I think this is in part because the community has such a strong legacy and is driven to keep building and extending what has come before, but also because of the higher average programming ability in the hacker community compared to the general programming population.

From my perspective using Linux is one reason i know some C, but the greater reason is because my formal education included embedded C programming with microcontrollers. Programmers going through pure software engineering courses seem to focus much more on computer science and web development concepts, rather than systems design and programming. That said, i'm sure my experience is not typical, and other universities probably use C in some part of their courses.

In terms of actual programming, i haven't yet found a project which required the use of C, and in the cases where i have used it i've often stumbled more with the bulky IDE and build configurations than the language itself. My particular trouble is around external references and including code not in the standard library, and then the further dependency hell.

Searching around i haven't really found any C tutorial that really covers this sort of stuff really well, most tutorials focus on the language itself (which i don't really have an issue with). Does anyone know any good resources on how to set up an optimal and easy to manage C development environment?

Gah, why do i never seem to hear about these events... -1 for living in Palmerston North i guess. Is there some website or newsletter where these events get published and promoted?

Hopefully the childish behavior on both sides doesn't reflect poorly on Kiwis as a whole -_-

No, explicitly banning whole websites seems like a brute-force way of preventing bad content from getting submitted/upvoted on hacker news. I think it's better to modify the mechanics of the community so that inappropriate articles get filtered out, rather than banning sites wholesale.

As far as TC goes, I think some people are unnecessarily picking on it at the moment. There's no reason to give it special consideration over every other website on the internet, it's not really that terrible, even if the consensus is that it has gone downhill.

As far as banning websites goes, you're removing choice, and I think it would go against the spirit of an open and free community.

If people don't like the content, it won't get upvoted (bots and unscrupulous characters notwithstanding).

I feel your pain in just about every respect. Having personal projects can help. From what others have said having a solid non-programming hobby and getting back some balance is a key to maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Interesting and somewhat related blog article: http://heycarsten.com/employment-the-hard-parts/

Also, another article i found really interesting on the topic: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JoelChristiansen/20110110/6763/Pa...

Dell Stage: http://www.dell.com/us/p/stage/pd

It's very much a consumer-facing product, built on technology somewhere between a game engine and Flash.

edit: Also working on learning Google Go and OpenCL in my spare time, as well as recovering from a burnout phase and trying to get my programming mojo back.