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If you think about it, a JIT is not that different from a program that calls printf(), a JIT just so happens to emit machine code rather than a message like "Hello, World!" Sure, JITs like the JVM are highly complicated beasts, but that's because they are implementing a complicated platform and performing aggressive optimizations. If we work with something simpler, our program can be much simpler too. Just in time: start 2013 right by building your own simple JIT compiler!
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The indie gamedev community is awesome: so willing to share tips, tricks, advice, and even detailed tutorials explaining important concepts. Here, I’ve rounded up a few dozen of my favourite examples from around the internet, covering coding, maths, game design, and being a game developer. Read these, then code us up an online, multiplayer version of Risk Legacy, please.
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Really? Lazyfoo is not on the list? o.o Seems fishy 
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If you’re not familiar with it, TypeScript adds a lot of necessary features to JavaScript to make it suitable for building real apps, while still “compiling down” to JavaScript to maintain JS’s single biggest advantage: ubiquity. Further, TypeScript has tooling inside Visual Studio so that it works nicely with a wide variety of Windows projects, including Win8/JS projects. However, while Microsoft has made a nice Win8/TS sample available, there are currently no Visual Studio project templates for building my own apps. Luckily, it was easy enough to build some... Start your TypeScript projects with these Visual Studio templates.
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When Joe Woodland dreamed up the bar code in the late 1940s, it looked like a bull’s-eye — a series of concentric circles. But although Woodland went to work for IBM in the early ’50s and helped Big Blue push the UPC into the market, he sold his original bull’s eye patent to another company, and the code IBM settled on looked more like a rectangle — a series of short, parallel lines.... Laurer first realized the code could be construed as some sort of apocalyptic signpost while it was still under development in the early 1970s. His daughter happened to be studying the Book of Revelation, and he couldn’t help but notice that the code harbored a few 6′s — though not the 6′s alleged by the urban legend that’s still bouncing around the internet. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice say, "Attention shoppers...."
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My response? They (the [REDACTED] protestors) are all ID-TEN-Ts and have a non ending BrainNotFoundException, coupled with an IAmVeryGullibleexception and an IAmStupidException.
Bob Dole The internet is a great way to get on the net.
 2.0.82.7292 SP6a
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This might come as a surprise to readers not into computer programming, but professional and hobbyist programmers alike all use the same tools as we did 60 years ago — one-dimensional, sequential plain text. It’s like writing a single document in Word without using any formatting, with the goal of instructing a large symphony orchestra to perform a complex musical piece. That app you’re using could as well have been built in the 1950s, had we the same powerful hardware back then. We are thoughtlessly using Grandpa’s old toolbox to build a spaceship. Your favourite fancy-pants modern programming language is from the 1950s.
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What an idiot. "Writing code" just works. Nothing better has come along because there (probably) is nothing better.
Would you want to try dragging and dropping images? It's very limited in what it can do. Currently I'm writing a lot of SSIS packages -- and it just sucks! It's horrible to work with and in a many many cases I'm left writing code anyway.
How would you discuss problems and solutions with colleagues if you can't use words to do it.
I'm just glad I never used punch cards or switches.
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We're also using glass in our windows, which is essentially the same technology that the ancient Egyptians were using in 2000 BC.
We're also using clay bricks to make houses, which is essentially the same technology that the ancient Mesopotamians were using in 3000 BC.
We're also using water to bathe ourselves, which is essentially the same technology that has been used since before the last ice age.
Invent something better if you don't like it.
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Rasmus Andersson-
I'm amazed that the majority of people commenting on your article have a 'what we have is as good as it can get ' mentality. I think from the first line of your article I had a bit of an epiphany--not one that I can fully explain yet and not one that I would dare describe to a seemingly short-sighted group of peers.
Several contributors point out that processors execute operations in a sequential manner, and that it 'all comes down to 1s and 0s in the end' or something like that. Well guess what guys, assembly language takes a certain variant of programming discipline to do well. And even at that level, while you are telling the processor to load data and executable code with values in registers from specific memory segments, even assembler is an abstraction. Assembly code is compiled down to the actual bit values that a processor can understand.
My point here is that as programming has evolved; we've seen the introduction of object-oriented languages. Yes, of course it still all comes down to bit vales for the processor at run-time, but OO design helps us as HUMANS to take abstract needs and use the concept of classifications (more often than not called classes) to allow ourselves to create solutions for complex real-world business requirements using a much higher level of abstraction.
Even modern OSs and run-time platforms help us to abstract with high-level languages because we don't have to worry about handling the threads notifying our applications of events triggered by the user, e.g. button clicks, scroll bar movements, etc. We are to a certain extent freed from a lot of the mundane, thanks to the OS, the compiler and in many cases the run-time support. And let’s not forget the extensive pre-built libraries we have at our disposal.
Yes, we have all of the above, better ways to organize software using classes, conceptual tiers for separation of concerns, software designs lending themselves to extensibility and reuse. But as Rasmus points out, we still sit at a console typing text to ‘classify’ much of these pieces of code, and defining how they will interact once they become objects during program execution
Text is linear, even when defining classes that may interact in a multidimensional manner when used in an application.
We use linear text to describe how multiple threads should run simultaneously. That is certainly an example of using a one-dimensional language to describe a multi-dimensional process.
Rasmus Andersson is perhaps a bit too forward-looking for the audience here (no put-down intended). I happen to think he is quite correct in challenging future creators of development tools and environments to take us to the next level, where we can concentrate more on the problem, in an abstract way, much more in the way the user would describe it, and be able to translate the solution in a manner that is more efficient than writing text for the most part (although I will always believe in the ability to get to the lowest-level instruction layer when needed).
In any case, whether you happen to agree with Rasmus or not, we may want to prepare psychologically for a future in software design and development in which being adept at writing code textually in a classic IDE is of diminishing value, and the ability to embrace radically different tools that increase productivity immensely are going to be what keeps us as good developers in business.
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