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Legacy code is everywhere. Every bit of software we use, whether in an app on a phone, in the cloud, or installed on our PC is legacy code. Every bit of that code is being managed by a team of people who need to do something with it: improve it, maintain it, age it out. The process of evolving code over time is much more challenging than it appears on the face of it. Much like urban planning, it is easy to declare there should be mass transit, a new bridge, or a new exit, but figuring out how to design and engineer a solution free of disruptions or worse is extremely challenging. While one might think software is not concrete and steel, it has a structural integrity well beyond the obvious. The most courageous efforts of software professionals involve moving systems forward.
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To be successful as a Game Developer first and foremost you have to be passionate about what you do, whether it is programming, art, design, writing, or something else. You need to be passionate about games and your chosen field. In addition I believe my love of learning has been a huge asset in my career development and growth. I am not afraid to dive into new technologies, or get my hands dirty in a code base I do not understand. I believe doing this helped me get into the industry, and continuing to do so makes me valuable. From playing SNES to coding Gears of War.
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Adobe's Flash Player was once the best way to add animation, video and interactivity to your websites. That's all changed in the last few years.... But reports of Flash's death have been exaggerated. While it's no longer the catch-all behemoth it once was, it continues to be a useful tool that's used throughout industry for specific tasks, especially gaming. And nor has it been abadoned by Adobe, which has been hard at work over the last few years on the next generation of Flash Professional, codenamed Hellcat. Still doing Flash development? Tell us what you're working on.
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Ready to write your first Windows Store app? Or have you already been writing Windows Store apps using HTML/JavaScript, C# or Visual Basic, and you’re curious about the C++ story? With Visual C++ component extensions (C++/CX), you can take your existing skills to new heights by combining C++ code with the rich set of controls and libraries provided by the Windows Runtime (WinRT). And if you’re using Direct3D, you can really make your apps stand out in the Windows Store. Write Windows Store apps quickly using modern C++ idioms.
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Adafruit Industries just posted the first episode in a new educational series aimed at teaching kids about electronics. The episode is entitled “A is for Ampere” and teaches the basic theory behind electrical current. The subject seems like a common one for A-to-Z themed electrical tutorials.... After demonstrating a mains circuit breaker tripping the episode goes on to discuss electron flow and how current is measured. Ohm schooling.
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As of this Tuesday, Rock Band DLC support will be done, and so too will end this generation of music games. There is always the possibility Harmonix or Activision could resurrect their dormant music franchises somewhere down the road, but it seems readily apparent that that won't happen for some time, if at all.... Given all these nostalgic feelings I'm having, what say we go back through the last five-or-so years and pick out some of the highlights (and a few of the lowlights) of Rock Band's brief, but memorable existence? Alex looks back at the brief, but memorable life of the Rock Band franchise.
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You’re in a virtual world hunting the ultimate easter egg. You’re standing in the back of an empty 80's pizza joint, staring at an old arcade machine with an immobile quarter sitting on top of it. The game: Pac-Man. You sit down and crack your knuckles. Your goal: the perfect score. I’m not going to tell you what happens next. Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One can tell you. What I will tell you is a story — no, a legend — of one of the world’s oldest video games. And how my wife didn’t believe I could code it in a day. He tried to write his own Pac Man, and discovered some the clever firsts the game pulled off.
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Above all, however, Kay is known for the Dynabook — his decades-old vision of a portable suite of hardware, software, programming tools and services which would add up to the ultimate creative environment for kids of all ages. Every modern portable computer reflects elements of the Dynabook concept — the One Laptop Per Child project’s XO above all others — and yet none of them have fully realized the concept which Kay was writing about in the early 1970s. Actually, Kay says that some gadgets with superficial Dynabook-like qualities, such as the iPad, have not only failed to realize the Dynabook dream, but have in some senses betrayed it. Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.
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Kay is a true legend, someone we'd all be living in a different and poorer world without.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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In 1977-78, Alan Kay was Guest Faculty at Caltech, and taught(?) a Computer Science course with the semi-official name of The Alan Kay Mystery Hour 
It was a discussion and survey of current interesting ideas in computing.
That was one of my favorite courses!
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Sometimes when designing, things come together effortlessly—everything falls into place as if it were inevitable. It just flows. As I looked for images for the book covers, I came across some odd-looking animal engravings from the 19th century. They seemed to be a good match for all those strange-sounding UNIX terms, and were esoteric enough that I figured they’d probably appeal to programmers. And, as I investigated the attributes of the real animals, I quickly discovered that there were intriguing correspondences between specific technologies and specific animals. My first was the tarsier. Which animal got you started?
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If you aren’t using any form of source control in your project then stop right now and fix this. To get up and running with Git takes a whole 10 minutes to set up, and you will have your source code up in the cloud, should your computer blow up in the future (or you absent mindedly delete an important file). Last year I wrote a blog post explaining how you could get free online source control for your personal projects by using a combination of a free account at http://bitbucket.org/ and the GREAT Git client created by GitHub http://windows.github.com/. Things have progressed so it is time to write an update. Free mix-and-match source control in the cloud. We live in the future.
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Yesterday ended my first month of being an active Windows 8 app publisher. The way I define “active” is that I have been consistently working to improve it since its launch. There are many apps that are thrown into any marketplace, never to see an update of any kind. In the first month, I shipped EIGHT updates.... Every app is going to have a bug or two, and there’s nothing terribly interesting about those, but the ads WERE tricky. You can make money with ads. But you have to turn them on, first.
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This post is NOT about how to get rich fast: I spent many nights and weekends, polishing the code, staying up late at night until 2AM coding. This is not easy: to build apps that can be used by half a million people from many different countries. I read all reviews, thousands of them, answered thousands of questions, made hundreds of improvements suggested by users to achieve this result. The truth is: any app reaching this stage is a work of art, it requires a lot of work, patience, time and dedication. This is simply my account of what an individual developer can achieve in Windows ecosystem in just about 6 months. I build everything: code, graphics, artwork, database, Azure backend. Everything. Are you finding success on the Windows Store? Tell us about it.
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The irony. This very post was removed as spam from CP last week.
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I was thinking the same thing. 
Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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"I've solved this problem before." "I need to sort out the technical requirements first…" "I've already implemented the following…" If you ever hear someone utter phrases like these at the start of a project, chances are you are in for a world of trouble. It's not that knowledge of a problem domain, determining technical requirements, or getting a head start on solving a challenging technical problem are so inherently bad. The cardinal sin is focusing on any of these before you have sorted out the most important thing of all: the user experience. You're solving a user problem first, not a code problem.
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This is the first Part of n, or lets say many entries in this blog. In total I hope to be able to cover most papers in 3-4 blog posts, giving the reader an overview over the suggestions and changes for C++ at the coming C++ Committee Meeting in April. In total there are 98 Papers, so I will skip some, but try to get as much covered as possible. I'll skip papers with Meeting Minutes for sure, and try to focus on those focusing on C++11 or C++14 features. If you can't get enough C++, start here to read up on the next spec.
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Five years ago, an IBM-built supercomputer designed to model the decay of the US nuclear weapons arsenal was clocked at speeds no computer in the history of Earth had ever reached. At more than one quadrillion floating point operations per second (that's a million billion, or a "petaflop"), the aptly named Roadrunner was so far ahead of the competition that it earned the #1 slot on the Top 500 supercomputer list in June 2008, November 2008, and one last time in June 2009. Today, that computer has been declared obsolete and it's being taken offline. I feel much better now. I really do. Look, Dave, I can see you're really upset about this...
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Alright, so Microsoft is in no danger of toppling iOS or Android anytime soon. But the analytics firm Kantar has seen significant growth for Windows Phone, largely at the expense of BlackBerry. In practically every major market WP8 has started to chip away at its competitors... I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!
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It was Google that kicked off the age of Internet April Foolery back in 2000, and the company continues to ratchet up the quantity and ambition of its hoaxes each year. I cheerfully concede that it does a much better job than most of the others which have followed its lead. Still, Google has never topped a prank it played in 2004 — one which was so effective that most people, to this day, don’t think of it as a prank. I speak of the launch of Gmail, on April 1, 2004. You've got free mail. No, really.
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April 1st is upon us, and that can only mean one thing: pranks, gags, and joke products of dubious comedic value, as the tech world tries to make you crack a smile. Whether you love it or loath it, April Fools is inescapable, so join us as we run through 2013′s cons and let us know which – if any – convinced you, and which you thought were actually funny. This article is not an April Fool's joke.
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According to this rom, the Facebook Phone looks to be a mostly stock, mid-range Sense 4.5 phone that was attacked by a mutant Facebook app. Everything seems to be focused on the Facebook app - they haven't made their own Android Skin, or anything like that. Sadly, we can't get too many more details, because just about everything requires that you have special access to Facebook. Of course, you should also keep in mind that we're tearing down an unreleased, developer version of Facebook's software, and everything is a work in progress. Facebook should show off the full details April 4th. The Myst-ery here is whether folks will Like, Comment, or Share this phone.
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Wrox is branching out into the 'learn as you type'[^] style of training. The nice thing about this version is that is actually seems to work within VS, so it should help prevent it being too abstract.
They're also making your first taste[^] free, including these choices:
- Object Oriented Programming
- ASP.NET Web Development
- Windows 8 App Development with JavaScript & HTML5
- Windows 8 App Development with C# & XAML
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TTFN - Kent
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