About C / C++ / C#: Programming Contest 39 Marked

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C / C++ / C# C / C++ / C# Fundamentals Tips & Tools Going Pro From David Bolton, your Guide to C / C++ / C# No, Contest 39 isn't finished, as it runs until next Sunday. But I've marked 9 entries and am still accepting more. I've got three or four to mark now but still time to get your entry (or re-entry) in. I was really impressed with the PuffPuff open source iPhone game. Not just because it's goodware but it's very well designed and coded as well. Don't forget... Make it a great week! Programming Contest 39 Marked It's not over for another week yet and Pedro Graca's entry which is fastest seems to have an impossibly fast time (0.000000!), so maybe a few more decimal places are needed for the timing of his entry. One other entry was submitted in C 99 which Microsoft Visual C++ does not handle, sorry! I'm going to have to switch to another C compiler, probably GCC or CLand/LLVM or one from the free C Compiler page. I much prefer to compile everything with the same compiler but clearly that's not possible with C, C++ and C#. So far the C/C++ code is much much faster than C# as the results show, but it's not over yet. Keep the entries coming in. PS: the Links to the files don't work yet. No source code will be published until the contest is over! Link to Programming Contest Thirty Nine Calculating Levenshtein Distance Link to Free C Compiler List PuffPuff Stuff - Open Source iPhone game About 7 weeks ago, game authors 6thmega released version 1.0 of PuffPuff a full game (with graphics, sounds) in the App Store to open source. It's not a trivial game either and the iTunes version 1.1 has a topical edge with the addition of a gulf oil spill game. I built it in Xcode and once I'd commented out 4 OpenFeint symbols in the file MenuScene.mm (you need to have your own I understand for OpenFeint integration to work), it compiled ok. It also ran perfectly in the simulator though was pretty unplayable there due to the game controls, but still I was very impressed with it. It's been released to open source because 6thmega is a social business. Link to Code Library for iPhone Richard Stallman and Australian Patents The founder of the Free Software Movement was protesting a few days ago at a meeting organized by the European Patent Office about software patents in Australia. Currently the Australians are free to write software without any risk of being sued because of software patent infringement. The same is true in Europe but the "mega corporations", in Richard Stallman's words, hold half the world's software patents and would love the whole world to have to pay their "innovation tax". There's a lot of money involved and it's not hard to believe that some of it is used to try and influence official opinion. Software is already adequately protected by copyright and trademark law and patenting it didn't exist 35 years ago when Microsoft was starting (and they wouldn't have been able to produce Office had software been patentable then). As Stallman said, "there is no problem that requires software patents". It's all about patent holders making more money. Computer software is so complicated that almost any non trivial program probably infringes on hundreds if not thousands of software patents (in countries that have them, like the USA and Japan), many of which are worthless and should never have been passed in the first place. But "mega corporations" that hold thousands of patents have a "we won't sue you if you don't sue us" attitude to other large corporations and they try to extort money from anyone smaller who is becoming successful. I fully support Richard Stallman's position against software patents in this and urge you to do so. Here in Europe we have to remain vigilant else this type of thing could occur. In the US the EFF is slowly overturning bad patents but it takes a long time and the issue remains that because of the money involved, a broken system remains in place. Link to Why Software Patents are bad article Development Projects from Initial Design to Completed Code Each project is a complete application with notes on the requirements, the design, the architecture, code and final project review. With full source code in C, C++ or C#. C / C++ / C# Ads Source Code Review C# Code C++ Compiler C# Csharp C# Examples Featured Articles Reviews of Software - Tools, Compilers, Editors etc Book Reviews Top Tools, Utilities and Resources Glossary of Programming Terms Welcome to the C++ Area with Articles about C++ Development Other Blogs You might find Interesting   More from About.com Is it a Cold or the Flu? Knowing whether you have a cold or the flu can help you treat your symptoms more effectively. More> Concerned About Your Drinking? This short quiz can help you identify whether or not you have a drinking problem. More> This newsletter is written by: David Bolton C / C++ / C# Guide Email Me | My Blog | My Forum   Sign up for more free newsletters on your favorite topics You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to the About C / C++ / C# newsletter. If you wish to change your email address or unsubscribe, please click here. About respects your privacy: Our Privacy Policy Contact Information: 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2010 About.com   Must Reads Programming Challenges About C, C++ and C# C++ for Beginners C++ Programming Intro to OOP Advertisement

About C / C++ / C#: Just back from a 10 Day holiday

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C / C++ / C# C / C++ / C# Fundamentals Tips & Tools Going Pro From David Bolton, your Guide to C / C++ / C# Which saw me drive over 1,100 miles, fail to win in three poker tournaments (I came close but...) and just relaxed away from work, but by the time you read this I'll be back at work. The vacation also taught me just how useful a smart phone can be when away from my desktop computer. Free wifi also helped as most places where I was in the UK out of town have abysmal 3G from my service provider. I also attended a seminar on taking control and being a success, so in their words "Make it a great week!" MySQL type alternatives to MySQL MariaDB is a fork of MySQL with a number of differences; it has a new database engine called Aria (It was called Maria but renamed to avoid confusion with the MariaDB). The biggest difference is probably not the technology, software etc but the license. MariaDB is GPL'd. This avoids issues with Oracle over MySQL's licensing. Conceptually though MariaDB is compatible with MySQL (Well that's the aim). MySQL has been exceptionally popular over the last few years driving a large proportion of websites, and probably only recently surpassed by SQLite in smart cellphones. There was always a fear that when Sun bought MySQL that the licensing of MySQL would change and then Oracle buying Sun exacerbated that fear so that spurred the development of MariaDB. At least now if that happens, (although I consider it unlikely but...), the sky won't fall in! Link to C Code Library XNA Studio 4 Released This is available in two versions, a version for Windows, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone 7, using C# and Visual Studio 2010, or a standalone for Windows XP that includes only Windows and Xbox 360 functionality. The XP installation requires that Visual C# Express 2010 or Visual Studio 2010 Professional or higher be installed. Unlike Silverlight, both WPF and XNA development are open to users of the Express versions. XNA Game Studio 4 adds support for the Windows Phone 7 platform (including 3D hardware acceleration), framework hardware profiles, configurable effects, built-in state objects, graphics device scalars and orientation, cross-platform and multi-touch input, microphone input and buffered audio playback and Visual Studio 2010 integration. I was also hoping that MonoXNA might have progressed further but no code has been published yet. This was an attempt to have XNA run on project Mono, the .NET for Linux. Castle Wolfenstein Source Code Released Almost nine years ago, I played Return to Castle Wolfenstein, a classic 3D shoot-em-up with Nazis and supernatural horrors and completed it. I also played the multi-player online. Particularly memorable were the flame thrower and the big climactic battle against the resurrected Knight. ID Software has released the source code to the game and the add-on, ie along with Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory, Return to Castle Wolfenstein single player and Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer under the GPL license. These aren't just for Windows, but include Unix and MacOSX code as well. Note these only include the game source code, not the graphics. You need the full games for those. I was going to suggest checking to see if websites like Gog.com had the full game but unfortunately they appear to be out of business. That's very sad. PS, note this is to the FTP download site. Internet Explorer and Firefox can both handle FTP sites.The FTP folder also contains the source code for other ID games such as Quake 1 and 2 and Doom. Link to C Games Code Library Other Blogs You might find Interesting This is a list of Blogs that you might find interesting. C / C++ / C# Ads Holiday Holiday Home Let C# Dotnet The Holiday Images Corfu Resort Holiday Featured Articles Never Programmed Before? Start Here Welcome to the C Area with Articles about C Programming Welcome to the C Sharp Area with Articles about C Sharp Development Learn about Commercial Software Development All about Games Programming Code Library for C, Objective-C, C++ and C#   More from About.com Is it a Cold or the Flu? Knowing whether you have a cold or the flu can help you treat your symptoms more effectively. More> Concerned About Your Drinking? This short quiz can help you identify whether or not you have a drinking problem. More> This newsletter is written by: David Bolton C / C++ / C# Guide Email Me | My Blog | My Forum   Sign up for more free newsletters on your favorite topics You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to the About C / C++ / C# newsletter. If you wish to change your email address or unsubscribe, please click here. About respects your privacy: Our Privacy Policy Contact Information: 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2010 About.com   Must Reads Programming Challenges About C, C++ and C# C++ for Beginners C++ Programming Intro to OOP Advertisement

About C / C++ / C#: The Human Face of the App Store

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C / C++ / C# C / C++ / C# Fundamentals Tips & Tools Going Pro From David Bolton, your Guide to C / C++ / C# Due to being away on a short holiday, I'm typing this on my laptop not my desktop PC so there will be a few days delay before I get Contest 39 marked. Still if you reckon your third or fourth version is faster than your first then please submit it. Good news for anyone wanting to write iPhone Apps in C++ or C#. Apple has clarified the situation and now allows 3rd party development tools so long as they don't download code. You'll find the details below. Have a great week. Mine is proving to be very damp so far; it's definitely not the best weather! The Human Face of the App Store Last week, Apple drew back the curtain and revealed its guidelines (PDF link from Engadget.com) on admissions to the App Store. Plus they also relaxed all restrictions on the development tools used to create IOS Apps just so long as no code is downloaded. There's some humor in the guidelines. "We don't need any more Fart Apps" and they're making the App Store if not kid friendly, at least not kid unfriendly. I see these guidelines as firm but fair and they will may evolve as people try ways to game them and Apple fight back. It's taken over two years so about time. The biggest surprise was the removal of the dev tool restriction.so that any programming language is ok (Cobol?). This means that Flash for instance is ok, but only for Flash apps converted to iPhone in Adobe Flash CS5 and submitted to the App Store. It doesn't mean that Flash web pages will work because they won't; remember that "no downloaded code". And of course it makes Unity 3D, Dragon SDK, Mono Touch etc all legitimate so C++, C# etc are now good iPhone development tools (mostly you still need to be an App developer, own a Mac), though none of them are cheap. Link to Code Library for iPhone SharpMap - Beautiful GIS Aside from the maps provided by Google etc, there is plenty of graphical information data available in a multitude of sources. For instance http://data.gov provides an immense amount of federally collected data that's free to use. Dealing with GIS data, even being able to read it then display or otherwise process it can be a challenging task but one that SharpMap appears up to. Written in C#, it handles 15 types of vector data and over 50 types of raster data. Although the last stable release was 0.9, development continues and it's licensed under GNU LGPL. As the picture shows, it generates attractive looking images. Link to C# Code Library The Future of WPF? This was triggered by reading a piece in the Register. Scott Barnes, a former Silverlight product manager has tweeted about the recent internal split in Microsoft between the advocates of HTML 5, implemented in Internet Explorer 9 and Silverlight which is a plugin that hasn't reached 70% takeup in browsers. Silverlight is like Flash, does video, is programmed in C# and is pretty powerful. HTML 5 is equally a very powerful version of the standard with support for video, local storage but the specification is not currently fully stable. A new version was published last week on September 10th. I feel a bit of sympathy for large organisation like Microsoft who, although they have a say in specifications have to balance how they deal with their own development tools, browsers, MS Office etc all of which are impacted. The wrong decision now could cost millions or billions in the future, What about organizations developing software now? What should they do? Meanwhile WPF is purportedly being left out to dry, ie it's not seen as the future of development as it was 5 years ago and may end up being combined with Silverlight. So what do you reckon, will Silverlight prosper over HTML 5 or be rendered impotent as HTML 5/JavaScript triumphs? Development Projects from Initial Design to Completed Code Each project is a complete application with notes on the requirements, the design, the architecture, code and final project review. With full source code in C, C++ or C#. C / C++ / C# Ads App Store App Downloads Living Social App Human Facebook App Featured Articles Reviews of Software - Tools, Compilers, Editors etc Book Reviews Top Tools, Utilities and Resources Glossary of Programming Terms Welcome to the C++ Area with Articles about C++ Development Other Blogs You might find Interesting   More from About.com Is it a Cold or the Flu? Knowing whether you have a cold or the flu can help you treat your symptoms more effectively. More> Concerned About Your Drinking? This short quiz can help you identify whether or not you have a drinking problem. More> This newsletter is written by: David Bolton C / C++ / C# Guide Email Me | My Blog | My Forum   Sign up for more free newsletters on your favorite topics You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to the About C / C++ / C# newsletter. If you wish to change your email address or unsubscribe, please click here. About respects your privacy: Our Privacy Policy Contact Information: 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2010 About.com   Must Reads Programming Challenges About C, C++ and C# C++ for Beginners C++ Programming Intro to OOP Advertisement