How does it just 'be'?

Throw-catch programming

2011-10-18T09:11:00.001+01:00

Sometimes people say it's not good to encode your programming logic in exception terms. I wonder why not. We should just love and embrace exceptions.

class CounterException : Exception
{
public readonly int Index;
public readonly int Max;
public CounterException(int index, int max)
{
this.Index = index;
this.Max = max;
}
public Exception Next
{
get
{
if (Index == Max)
{
return new FinishedCountingException(Max);
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("Count = " + Index);
return new CounterException(Index + 1, Max);
}
}
}
}
class FinishedCountingException : Exception
{
public readonly int Bound;
public FinishedCountingException(int b)
{
Bound = b;
}
}
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Exception e = new CounterException(0, 10);
mytry:
try
{
throw e;
}
catch (CounterException ex)
{
e = ex.Next;
goto mytry;
}
catch (FinishedCountingException ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("Finished counting to " + ex.Bound);
}
Console.ReadKey();
}
}

How I would like the software to work.

2011-02-14T23:04:00.003Z

As a developer and naturally a user of software, these are the primary general feature points I would like all the software in the world to have.

I realize these things I will ask for are definitely possible and practiced in various platforms with extensive number of technologies, but I want to be able to take them for granted for all the software out there. Whether they'll be implemented in lower level systems like operating systems, or will they just be some commitee standards, I don't care. Just like almost every interactive software nows what keyboard is, I want them to recognize these notions as well.

1. Generic interaction abstraction. With all these new mobile devices and different interaction methods, we need a way to make our applications work on all these. This is not only a cross-platform development tool like Java, or being able to run a piece of code on different hardware. But it's a way to smartly adapt these applications to those devices' interaction capabilities. Some devices have double touchscreen (see here), some devices have a dialer-keypad on them. Developers should make use of a framework with extensive dictionary of interaction technologies available, to make something roughly like this possible:
Step 1: This app is made with Java, so it'll work everywhere with Java runtime.
Step 2: This app preferably uses multi-touch interface with three input points.
Step 3: If the system doesn't have a multi-touch interface with three input points, the app can fallback to a traditional mouse-pointer interaction system, but then it'll put a few buttons on the corner of the screen to make up for the multi-touch capability.
Step 4: If the system doesn't have any pointer input available at all, the app supports all the features by using only arrow keys on the keyboard. Even if the user experience is marginally distressed, features are still available.
Step 5: The app ideally uses a 30-hz 16M-colour screen. But if the screen this system has is only a 0.5-hz e-ink screen, let the app know that so it can adapt the screen-layout in a way that will not require as many screen refreshes.
Step 6: The app ideally uses a 3D surround sound system for sound output. But if it's not available, stereo will do. Also, if a earphone is available, let the app know so it can make use of its auditory illusion tricks to fake 3D sound. If only mono sound is available, just don't run the app because it won't make any sense.

Yes, this should all be available within single development platform, preferably in a declarative way. Instead of porting everywhere, we can just define how our app translates to different devices' interaction ways and the platform (/middleware) will do the rest.

2. Application hibernation. As a user I should be able to hibernate a running service or GUI application with a single click, and it should be saved in a persistent memory like a harddisk. All the visual state and data, everything. Then I should be able to revive it back all with a single command, down to a half-way mouse click event that was about to happen. Again, this is surely possible via various technologies, but still we don't see any applications that can do this. Even firefox reloads every tab when you restart using the option "save tabs". It goes only half the way.

3. Dependency injection in a broader scale. How do we integrate our applications? We use configuration files, environment variables (the PATH god), registry entries. This is all practical but hassly and ridiculous at the end. I want something like unix terminals' nice "pipe" (|) feature or microsoft console's similar (>) sign. But not only for forwarding the standard input/output streams, for all the kinds of multi-part or sophisticated, synchronous or asynchronous inputs and outputs an application can process or present. Something between dependency injection frameworks, activex guids, mime type-related default applications, somewhere over there. Maybe something like this:
Rule 1: Dear firefox, please don't try to save my passwords on yourself, just interface with this awesome little app that can do it for you. Safari, please also do the same. (assuming that little app supports (let's say) IWebPasswordsStore.
Rule 2: Dear system, when that little app says it wants to write to persistent storage, it just wants to use my encrypted online virtual drive associated with my here-registered google [:)] account.
Rule 3: Dear system, give this powerpoint application a secondary monitor so it can present the slides on that monitor. But I don't really have a second monitor, I just want those slides to show up on my remote classrooms projector where I am connected with skype.

Am I just flying too high?

One to one meetings

2010-09-22T22:35:00.004+01:00

This is a brilliant element for software team managers. While I was working for Realtime Worlds, we used to do these with my manager David Lofthouse. These meetings provide a lot of friendliness and comfort between the manager and managees.

Every week (or every other week) at the same time, 15 min-ish. Most of the time, there was not much to talk about, except the occasional "recently I have been having isolated tasks, I would like to work more together with people" and David would assign me tasks accordingly where possible. Read about 1:1 meetings from Michael Lopp:
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2010/09/22/the_update_the_vent_and_the_disaster.html

Snake game with Canvas

2010-09-09T01:03:00.002+01:00

Just made a little snake game using sensational Canvas control intruduced with html5:

http://www.gorkempacaci.name.tr/snake-canvas/

* Thanks to Weeble and Ozgur Akgun for bug reports.

Phyton's range method in C# (or .net)

2010-06-16T12:01:00.002+01:00

I don't frequently write phyton, nor am an expert on it. But I had a crush on Phyton's 'range' function and was looking for a subtitute on C#, especially after all these new functional programming elements.

Apparently, there was one identical implementation: Enumerable.Range! It's come with C# 3.0.

See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1271378/is-there-an-equivalent-of-pythons-range12-in-c

Adobe vs Apple deal

2010-05-15T03:20:00.002+01:00

Reading:
1. Steve Jobs' arguments about why they don't support Flash on iPhone and iPad: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

2. Adobe's passive-agressive response: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/files/AdobeAppleAd.pdf

3. Adobe's CEO answering on the topic: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/04/29/live-blogging-the-journals-interview-with-adobe-ceo/tab/liveblog/

I agree with the CEO guy on that the technological issues are not enough of an issue to ban flash development for iPhone. As far as I know, iPhone doesn't support Java neither:

Jobs: "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain." (source)

It doesn't take a Java fan to say it is very unfair to Java. Java's still serving us very well in many levels. (Altough Java programmers getting paid more IS a sign that it is dieing, Java is not only a programming language (*).)

Apple does have the tendancy to provoke a closed community with a sense of eliteness, and it has so far worked good for them. If they (and with 'they', I mean both customers and producers of iPad and iPhone) are fine with less applications then there is not much to say. Indeed, Jobs' manifest may be targeting only the Apple customers who demand Flash, telling them not having Flash is just another way to separate them from the crowd.

They must be making huge moneys from the app store, and freely available flash applications on the web would not help much. I wonder how many of those applications on the store would be obsolete if only iPhone supported flash?

I also am long disturbed with the Flash monopoly on rich internet applications and hoping to see what people will do with HTML5. But that's another topic.

--

Thinking Adobe had bought Macromedia only a few years ago, and Macromedia's Flash is now Adobe's most discussed product, It surely was a good buy.

Banned Books Week

2009-06-18T22:59:00.002+01:00

Did you even know there was a banned books week?

I think this is a brilliant idea.

It's the last week of every September.

For more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_Books_Week

More on Oracle and MySql

2009-06-12T19:15:00.003+01:00

Good point on that Oracle would improve MySQL towards Sql Server to steal its market share, rather than killing it. Altough I'm not sure implementing an oracle storage engine for the mysql front end would make technical sense.

http://andigutmans.blogspot.com/2009/05/mysql-can-be-great-for-oracle.html

Downfall of Agile Hitler

2009-05-18T10:37:00.002+01:00

Hilarious :D

http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/blog/artem/downfall-agile-hitler

Thanks to Sam from work :]

latest news

2009-04-22T13:37:00.002+01:00

'buys' operator being defined as: $;

sun $ mysql
oracle $ sun

at the moment, in a parallel universe:

apple $ oracle

bum! that specific universe collapses on itself.

but hey, we're safe.

c# enum and IEquatable

2009-04-09T17:30:00.003+01:00

Say you have a generic class like this:

class MyClass<T> where T : IEquatable<T> { }

and an enum:

enum MyEnum { MyOption1, MyOption2, MyOption3 }

would you be able to do this?

MyClass<MyEnum> MyMember;

Nope:

The type 'MyEnum' cannot be used as type parameter 'T' in the generic type or method 'MyClass<T>'. There is no boxing conversion from 'MyEnum' to 'System.IEquatable
What would you do?

Use EqualityComparer<T>.Default. By definition, behaviour is:

The Default property checks whether type T implements the System.IEquatable<T> generic interface and if so returns an EqualityComparer<T> that uses that implementation. Otherwise it returns an EqualityComparer<T> that uses the overrides of Object.Equals and Object.GetHashCode provided by T.

Nice.

My "can't live without" firefox extensions

2009-03-29T13:28:00.002+01:00

Tree Style Tab:
For tab-freaks like me, it doubles up the number of tabs you can concurrently manage. Shows your tabs on the left side of the browser as a tree (each new link having its referrer as parent). Especially if you have a wide screen monitor, you won't care the horizontal space you lose.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890

StumbleUpon:
At the beginning brings random web pages when you hit "Stumble!" button. As you go, you rate these pages with "I like" or "No more like this" buttons and it learns the pages you like. You can easily forward pages to friends with a single-line message.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/138

FlashBlock:
Blocks all the flash content in every page, unless you click on them. Extremely beneficial since flash content sucks up all the cpu you have.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433

DownThemAll:
With a right-click, downloads every link on the page you're on, filtered by extension or a regex. It is also nice to download a single link, because it spawns multiple sockets (4 by default, I think) to download the file.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/201

From the times I was actively doing web development:
Web Developer:
Edits css in-place, browses/modifies HTML DOM, hides/shows images or their places, and a bunch of very nice features for a web developer.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

How far the web has gone

2008-12-27T12:42:00.002Z

Two signs of how far the web has gone. The second is pretty cool, though.

1. Google Native Client, runs native binary code inside the browser, deploying the necessary binaries just in time of browsing the page.
http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/

2. VisualWebGUI, implements Windows.Forms in web context using AJAX, so after replacing System.Windows.Forms references to Gizmox.WebGUI.Forms and moving the source to a new project, your forms work on the web.
http://www.visualwebgui.com/Community/Resources/QuickStarts/tabid/365/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/392/How-to-Migrate-a-WinForms-application-to-the-Web-using-Visual-WebGui.aspx

Earlier than this, we were trying to run web applications on offline machines, mostly using installation packs containing middleware like apache/php/mysql. I guess the basic drive behind this was to make offline machines run the same application. They weren't rare at that moment, but now offline machines are barely considered as proper computers.

We're trying to run web applications locally, and local applications on the web. We're desperate.

Java was right to the spot, and 7 years before .net was there. I don't know, maybe it was too early for the concept, or Sun couldn't make a good job on keeping Java up to date. But I'm sad to see Java is dying. How do I know? Because Java programmers are paid well these days.

What is scrum

2008-11-27T10:06:00.001Z

A simple blog entry, just point at a video that explains 'what is scrum'.

Well, "it's a great method... to develop software..."

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XYsFTGDSY9A

Credits to Kestutis from work.

Teach them assembly first!

2008-11-26T00:21:00.001Z

Alice

I've come across a project, a software that aims to teach object oriented programming through 3D objects in a virtual world.

http://www.alice.org/../what_is_alice

For example, you drag a skater onto the snowy mountains, right click to her and invoke her methods like move, turn, roll or whatever. Then you go to the little code window, and drag her methods into a list to execute them in order. You have some containers like 'loop', 'if', or 'do together' for parallel execution. You drag and move methods around, move them inside containers and put together a program that controls the movement of the skater.

It brings no new teaching approach to programming model. It only removes the hassle of type-written languages and compiler-oriented problems. I wouldn't let any student to spend time on such a tool, but the ones in primary school. Programming world is big enough not to waste time on such toys; and teaching programming is not hard anyway, if you have people who really understands it and knows how to express the knowledge correctly.

Object Oriented Lobotomy

Another terrible failure is teaching an object oriented language like java or c# to a newbie for his first programming experience. Later in their careers, they'll eventually need to learn low-level stuff anyway, and they'll be scared to death. They can't live in that abstract world of managed runtimes forever. On the other hand, these languages are designed to be coded, reused and maintained easily, through the years of experience. They're not designed to be learned easily. Yes, there's a difference between "easy to code" and "easy to learn how to code".

First of all, it's harder to appreciate something, if you don't know the lack of it. The inventors of the assembly language were possibly bored enough of combining numeric instructions together, so they have used mnemonics to represent instructions. That's why we call the Assembly language a 'second generation language'. And in time, because writing assembly code is mostly dull work, and maybe because it's also hard to read and follow, they have decided to write a program which writes assembly through easier expressions, hence came the compilers and 'third generation languages'.

This is exactly why some fresh programmers hate writing getters/setters. They don't know how messy things can get if you don't do this. They don't know why it would take times and times longer to maintain a code that uses some variables which are accessed and manipulated by large numbers of lines.

Teach them assembly first!

Start simple, and teach them how to program assembly. They don't need to go in details. Indeed, basic concept of assembly programming is a lot simpler compared to higher level languages. Just a set of basic instructions will be enough to teach what it is like to program a computer to do what you want. MOV, ADD, INT, CMP, JNZ... None of them asks for more than one line of explanation. Registers are the only variables they have, and they'll naturally learn pointers which are considered as one of the hardest concepts to grasp for beginners.

As they write loops in assembly, the pattern will be obvious, and they'll appreciate why that 'for' statement has three sub statements as initialization, termination and incrementation. Then they'll know what is happening during the compilation of that for statement, and they're free to analyse the machine code.

When they're fluent with a procedural language like C, they'll again notice patterns and drawbacks of it. Some of them will appreciate object oriented, and some of them will develop their own solutions and stick to procedural model until they are pushed to switch to object oriented by a teacher in school or team leader at work.

Roasted broccoli

2008-11-18T22:54:00.001Z

Roasted broccoli
Originally uploaded by Görkem PAÇACI

A new and absolutely delicious way to cook broccoli.

Roast it with some salt, pepper and olive oil. The only important thing is that they need to be completely dry. Roast them until they get brown spots on them.

Take them out, add some more olive oil, lemon juice and parmesan cheese. Stir well so the juice is all over them.

Do you hear them screaming?

Eat us! Eat us!

"Hunkar Begendi" for David

2008-11-18T15:42:00.000Z

He said he would take "requests" for our occasional Wednesday night post-yoga din-dins. So here I go!

Hunkar Begendi is a very typical Turkish dish. It takes time to prepare, so when it's cooked it's almost a special occasion. (at least in my family where every women works)

The name means "The sultan loved it", by chicken translation. Indeed the name comes from "Begendi", which is a mixture of béchamel sauce and aubergine purée. (also served as a "Meze" along strong drinks)

SERVES 4 NON-DAMIAN PEOPLE.

The base

What:
- 4 aubergines
- 3 tbsp flour
- 4 tbsp butter (half a tablet, I guess)
- 2 glasses of milk
- 2 tsp salt

How:
- Roast the aubergines in the oven. You can wrap them with foil. Try not to pierce them, since we don't want to lose the juice. Don't cook very much so they are dry or burnt. And don't cook so little so they still have the sponge touch. They should be very soft and juicy. After cooked, peel the black skin off and smash the aubergines to have aubergine purée.
- In a pan, melt the butter and add the flour. Slowly pour the milk, and the salt after that. After the béchamel is ready, stir the purée in.

The meat sauté

What:
- 1 kg of lamb meat
- 4 garlic cloves, smashed
- 1 tbsp flour
- 1 tbsp tomato purée
- 5 tbsp olive oil
- salt and pepper (amount up to you)

How:
- Cook the meat in olive oil, in low heat
- Add the flour and keep stirring
- Add the smashed garlic cloves and tomato purée
- Add salt and pepper
- Keep stirring until garlic and tomato purée are cooked.

How to serve
First, put the aubergine base onto the plate, and add meat sauté in the middle. You can also serve with rice, but it's mostly eaten with normal-bread in Turkey. Ciabatta or 'cross-cut bread' from tesco will do.

For drink
"Ayran" will go perfect with it. It's basicly shaked yoghurt, cold water and salt. 1 unit yoghurt to 1 units water. Tesco's light yoghurt has the same sour flavour like the yoghurt in turkey.

Enjoy!

Logitech V150

2008-11-02T18:36:00.001Z

Cable length is too short. Today I've bought this mouse but the cable length is around 50/60cm. It's obviously not the appropriate mouse for a desktop. Now I'll need to buy a usb extension as well.

I'm writing this because I couldn't find the cable length of the mouse anywhere on internet, before opening the packaging.

Edit: I've bought this usb hub and it's very pleasing: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000VN3454/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

back to dundee

2008-10-10T15:10:00.000+01:00

Holiday version Izmir Q4 has ended. A family gathering tonight, and flight to istanbul in the morning.

if you worry if I was in that plane crashed:

at 10:30 from izmir to istanbul
at 15:25 from istanbul to paris
at 20:25 from paris to edinburgh

and hopefully train from inverkeithing to dundee.

sunday will be possibly spent in Selcuk&Gokcen's. and in monday I'll be at work. I did miss the work as well :)

whoops! holiday is already out!

2008-10-05T23:01:00.000+01:00

Last week of my holiday, and there's still a lot to do!

This photo is from today's meeting of Flickr Izmir group. Lovely people, lovely day.

Berrd!

2008-09-06T03:28:00.001+01:00

Some more good movies

2008-08-03T05:11:00.001+01:00

The Dark Knight
This movie had deserved to be watched at cinema, at the moment it hit the 1st in IMDB. I wouldn't rate it 1st, but it's absolutely in my first ten. Classic batman theme, plus some brain activity on the meaning of the 'crime' and continuous action. Best spent 5£ of last weeks. (mm, maybe except pub lunches)

Kingdom of Heaven
Worth to watch even only to see Eva Green. She's smashing. Movie has a middle-age western theme, with a bit of eastern Islam salt towards the end. I would say who will get the Jerusalem at the end, but I don't want to spoil it.

A Clockwork Orange
Took two days to watch, since I fell asleep around the middle of the movie the first day. But second day was great enough to make me feel satisfied. Makes you review your thoughts about violence, how much of it is done individually, how much of it comes from the society.

Some good movies

2008-07-30T16:55:00.000+01:00

The man from earth.
This is a great movie reccommended by Hazan. It doesn't let your brain out for two hours. Pretty fun, and a good ending. Very similar to the theme of '12 Angry Man'.

North by Northwest (Hitchcock)
Not impressive as much as Psycho, but still very fun to watch especially considering unique structure of its scenario. spoiler [ many plot-twists ].

Death proof
A must-watch for Tarantino lovers. After watching this movie with friends, Umut went: "Ok now somebody tell me what was the genre of this movie?". It's only Tarantino-genre.

To singleton or not to singleton

2008-07-30T02:02:00.000+01:00

A colleague (Jacques or David L.?) pointed out an article explaining why singletons are evil, and they should be avoided:

http://blogs.msdn.com/scottdensmore/...27.aspx

Although there are some valuable points coming from experience, I can't say that I totally agree with it. This article makes a better representing of my thoughts:

http://www.ddj.com/cpp/184401625

I'll try to come up with my own explanations as objections :)

1. "Singletons are almost like globals, and since globals are bad, singletons are bad."

In my opinion, the first reason why global variables are bad is that you have almost no control over initialization or modification operations over them. There's a global variable in the global scope who knows where it's coming from, who and when initialized it, does it contain valid information... Second, probably the strongest objection to globals is, when you keep writing code depending on globals, those globals sit in the centre of your design with an extremely tightly coupled fashion, Turning your whole code domain into a single 'deadly complex finite state machine'. [Not mentioning about debugging problems of such a code]

But they don't apply for singletons. You know when a singleton is initialized (lazy to death, if you like), and that the class initializes itself. It still only publishes an appropriate interface with read-only members, etc.

2. "Code that depends on a singleton is hard to unit-test."

Well, it's completely right. But it's not the fault of singleton objects, It's weakness of your testing framework. If you really want your objects to be stateless at the beginning, then I'm sorry but you have to well-write those Setup() and TearDown() methods, even it comes with a cost of dynamically loading and unloading many dlls.

3. "Don't use singletons, write a 'factory method'".

Well, this is possibly the most ridiculous one. A factory method, if it doesn't incorporate 'static' concept, can't do what a singleton does. And if it incorporates the static concept, it actually IS a singleton.

4. "Singletons screw polymorphism."

I don't have any objection to this. It's completely true. They do screw polymorphism. But you may have deeper problems with your design if you think an object 'will have only one instance' and there are going to be more than one objects subclassing the previous one. I better seal the singleton with a 'sealed' or 'final' keyword and take a French leave.

My objections don't eliminate the fact that singletons are abused. But I think the answer to this singleton deal is old and classic enough not to make me seem smart: "It depends.". It's always better to pass a reference to your single-instanced-object when you can, for many reasons like clear representation of coupling. But there will always be some cases you'll end up with ridiculously complex solutions just to avoid an innocent sweet singleton. It's a trade-off decision.

C# and beforefieldinit

2008-07-29T15:50:00.000+01:00

C# and beforefieldinit

I didn't know that explicitly defining the static constructor could have an effect on initialization time of implicitly initialized members!

Yet another wishlist for programming languages, part 2: Inverse enumeration

2008-07-25T14:25:00.000+01:00

How do you enumerate an IEnumerable inversely, from the last to first? Sometimes I need it. Maybe there can be a MovePrevious() method in the IEnumerator interface...

Please drop a comment if anyone thinks it's not 'doable' or why it's a bad practice :)

Yet another wishlist for programming languages, part 1: 'local functions' or 'parameterized labels'

2008-07-24T23:04:00.001+01:00

Well, the only languages that I can say I'm confident to talk about are c#, c++, php and vb. It means that I may be surprised to hear some languages do already have the features I wish. But I need to start from somewhere. Here we go!

I want 'local functions'. Or 'embedded functions' if you like. Javascript already has them, thanks to its functional programming basis. The problem is, I want to implement a piece of my algorithm as a function, but I don't want to publish it to other methods in that class. The think I'm looking for is written some like this in javascript:


function mainfunc()
{
    var subfunc = function(args) { .... }
}

I dream about something like this in c#:


public void mainfunc()
{
  bool subfunc(int args) { ... }
}

Or we can extend something we already have, labels, to 'parameterized labels'. It doesn't satisfy the requirement in my mind, because label-goto pairs cause a different impact on the program flow, which may lead to extra complexity of your overall algorithm. Parameterized labels may seem like this, in c#:


public string mainfunc(
{
 if (...some condition...)
     goto returnOne("foo");
 else
     goto returnTwo("zoo", "(two)");
 // do some unrelated stuff
 returnOne(string s):
     return s+"(one)";
 returnTwo(string s, string s2):
     MessageBox.Show(s, s2);
     return s+s2;
}

As you can see, it becomes something else, but it's still useful. It was also possible to do the same with the help of some variables and a couple of if statements, but I think this adds to readability and overall maintainability of the code. Of course it may also lead to that exaggerated old saying about 'spagetti code', but it depends on how careful you use labels and how much you care about overall simplicity of the code.

Generic and efficient paging query for SqlServer and Oracle

2008-07-03T17:18:00.000+01:00

A friend just pointed at an old post of mine in my blog
in Turkish. Basically, it's a parameterized wrapper query
which returns rows in an interval among the results
of a given query.

It's possible to implement this the same way in
both Sql Server 2005 and Oracle 10i. I had tested it quite
well to assure that it's better than alternative methods.
I had implemented this solution for our XSLT-enabled
data and view framework for asp.net 2.0, while I was
working in Netsis.

Assumed that your raw query is:

SELECT * FROM friends;

And you need just last 10 records from a 4million-records
table. (you're very popular)
You need to wrap it this way:

WITH
RawTable as ( SELECT * FROM friends ),
NumberedTable as
(SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER
(ORDER BY @@IDENTITY) AS rownum
FROM RawTable)
SELECT * FROM NumberedTable
WHERE rownum <> 3499990

As far as I can remember, It was quite better than these
alternatives:
- Server-side cursors of ADO.NET on SQL2005
- Embedded subqueries with two seperate SELECT TOP N

And using ROW_NUMBER() over @@IDENTITY keyword
had helped a lot, instead of giving it a name of a column
to order. It was both fast and generic.

Use responsibly :)

How to switch between .H and .CPP files in visual studio.

2008-04-27T18:08:00.001+01:00

I've written a macro for this, since I don't know any existing commands in VS.

Sub SwitchBetweenHeaderAndSource()
Dim oldFile As String
Dim newFile As String
oldFile = DTE.ActiveDocument.FullName
If (oldFile.EndsWith(".cpp")) Then
newFile = oldFile.Replace(".cpp", ".h")
Else
If (oldFile.EndsWith(".h")) Then
newFile = oldFile.Replace(".h", ".cpp")
Else
newFile = oldFile
End If
End If
Dim pi As EnvDTE.ProjectItem
pi = DTE.Solution.FindProjectItem(newFile)
If (Not pi Is Nothing) Then
pi.Open().Activate()
End If
End Sub

You can write this macro in macro explorer, which you can find in Tools->Macros menu.
To assign a keyboard shortcut, you can go to Tools->Customize and click the Keyboard button. On that window you can find the macro and assign it a keyboard shortcut. I'm using Ctrl+"

This summer

2008-04-01T18:52:00.000+01:00

I had applied to Realtime Worlds for a summer placement job. I got a quiz, and an interview today. I've got an email that says I'm accepted for a summer placement, I'm quite glad to hear that :)

I'll finish my coursework earlier and go to turkey for a three-week holiday with family&friends, and from the beginning of the June, I'll be working at RTW for three and a half months. Yee-haw cowboy!

References:
A saying that Raymond Chen has used in this article:
- Yee-haw cowboy: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/.../45481.aspx
A great latin-jazz album from Ayhan Sicimoglu:
- Friends&Family: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Friends-Family-Sicimoglu....

c++ benchmark: list or vector?

2008-03-05T23:28:00.000Z

In games programming, it's likely to have a collection of objects you want to draw to the screen. In some cases, the number of items in such a collection can be quite high.

I wondered if there's an efficient option between using std::list or std::vector, and I did a benchmark to see it myself.

Scenario 1: Insert n items, traverse n times.

when n=100, there isn't a huge difference but list is better. For vector it's between 15ms and 78ms, and for list it's between 15ms and 62ms.
When I calculate the average of rates, I can see that list is ~%11 faster.

when n=300, I can't see a clear winner. For vector it's between 200ms and 310ms, and for list it's between 203ms and 343ms.
According to the average of rates, vector is ~%3 faster.

Here's the source for this benchmark:http://pastebin.com/f41f684cb

Scenario 2: Insert n items, traverse n times and replace %20 of items on every iteration whilst traversing.

when n=100, mostly list wins. For vector it's between 170msms and 250ms, and for list it's between 172ms and 190ms.
List is ~%5 faster on average.

when n=200, list is always the winner. For vector it's between 1360ms and 1531ms, and for list it's between 1297ms and 1422ms.
List is ~%7 faster.

Here's the source for this benchmark:http://pastebin.com/f522f7e6b

Conclusion

If the number of items in your world are around 300 or more, and you don't perform so many insert&remove operations, pick vector. Otherwise, pick list.

I think the reason behind the truth that vector can't deal with continuous insert&remove operations is that it has to relocate remaining elements in the array when you delete one of them. For list, it's far more easy because it's implemented as a linked-list which means it's just about modifying two pointers to remove an element.

On the other hand, I think the reason why the list beats vector for 100 items is about the allocation strategy that vector uses. I don't know exactly how MS implemented this in standard library, but it's generally something like doubling the allocated memory everytime it's completely consumed. If it starts with a number like 5, to reach 100 it must be doubled 5 times, and everytime it looks for a bigger chunk of memory. The memory management has to find a continuous part in the memory for it. And after 100, to reach 300 it hast to be doubled just twice.

Visual studio 2005 culture problem

2008-02-23T22:49:00.000Z

Ok, I admit that it isn't a "problem". While working on our project "geekers", every time we update our project folder from subversion, we get this change to visual studio project file of the visual studio:

Ok, it's a desirable feature to have culture-specific data types in the xml streams. But do we really deserve this situation in this screenshot? I think we don't. :)
It remembers me a great article of Joel Spolsky, on "leaky abstractions."

Microsoft's another investment

2008-02-20T01:05:00.000Z

As you can see on this page, microsoft is giving some of its products (visual studio, xna, windows server) to the students in UK for free. I've learned from Euan from our games project. I've already got those products thanks to MSDN membership of my university in Izmir, and many universities do.

An article I've read on 'Joel on software' claims that microsoft indeed would love to give its development products for free. Because the value of an operating system is dependent on the various software it has on it, and windows (with office) is the flagship product of microsoft. -- not visual studio --

I've never thought about it this way, and it really sounds smart.

Visual Studio SP1: Installation source for this product is not available

2008-02-04T02:16:00.000Z

While trying to install Visual Studio 2005 SP1, I've encountered this error message: "Installation source for this product is not available".

After spending my whole day on this problem, I've found this blog entry:
http://dotnetslackers.com/...is_not_available.aspx

And this MSDN knowledge base entry & patch:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/925336

And it managed to solve my problem. What a sunday!

Sun buys MySQL

2008-01-28T04:17:00.000Z

It is not unreasonable, but it was unexpected; just like Serkan agreed. And in the digg post, the submitter's comment is: "Didn't see that one coming" :)

I can understand it, because the current commercial-opensource hybrid status of java is just like how MySQL is running for years. Probably, sun has foreseen more profit in this kind of work model.

Through a software guy's eye, I can tell that MySQL will strenghten its connections with Java, and it will implement/stabilize features which java used to supply from Oracle. Because of their strong relationship in the industry, this is something important for Oracle, as well.

DirectX Demo Project

2007-12-11T00:45:00.000Z

Here is my DirectX demo project for Games Programming course at Abertay.

It makes use of:
- A point light and a directional light
- Shadows (planar)
- Animated meshes

And it's the url:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI8r653mX4U

Now I'm going to start to study for my Maths exam :)

How to print text in directx

2007-12-09T20:34:00.000Z

First, you need to create a RECT object to set the area on screen, ID3DXFont object, and a D3DCOLOR object:

RECT lineRect;
ID3DXFont * pDefaultFont;
D3DCOLOR defaultFontColor;

This is how to initialise them:

A rectangle which has a height of 50px, on top of screen:
lineRect.left = 0;
lineRect.top = 0;
lineRect.right = 1024;
lineRect.bottom = 50;

How to create a font
D3DXCreateFont(Device, 30/*fontHeight*/,
0, FW_BOLD, 0, FALSE,
DEFAULT_CHARSET, OUT_DEFAULT_PRECIS,
DEFAULT_QUALITY, DEFAULT_PITCH | FF_DONTCARE,
TEXT("Calibri"), &pDefaultFont );

I'm not going to deal with the details of D3DXCreateFont method, but you can find the reference here:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb172773.aspx

How to set the color:
defaultFontColor = D3DCOLOR_ARGB(255, 255, 255, 255);

Now you can write your text:
pDefaultFont->DrawTextA(NULL, "My Text Here", -1, &lineRect, DT_RIGHT, defaultFontColor);

Sometimes I strongly miss the VB6 times:
Print "my text here"
But of course, they're "incomparable" in terms of speed :)

from the 'Scratchware Manifesto'

2007-11-15T07:56:00.000Z

It's a very-must-read for all the game developers, and also a must-read for other developers. So, please read it in its entirety.

What are the characteristics of vampires? Well, they’re immortal. Strangely enough, a corporation can live forever, too. Morgan Bank, Ford Motors, and General Electric - they can go on and on and on. Another characteristic of vampires? They live by sucking blood. You know the feeling you get when you boot up a new game and it crashes five times in the first 15 minutes? That’s your blood being sucked. The corporation exists for one reason only (and don’t let them tell you otherwise) - to make as much money as it possibly can. It’s like we’re cattle, kept alive for the greedy bloodsuckers to get as much profit as they can out of us. (They treat the Earth the same way, too - ever seen a clear-cut forest? Corporate vampires in action!) Vampires are notoriously hard to kill, and so are corporations. Exxon spilled oil all over Alaska - but it’s still going. Union Carbide killed thousands in Bhopal, India, but it’s still trucking. You can try and sue a corporation, but they have millions of dollars and thousands of lawyers to make sure their evil undead masters remain in control. Bridgestone/Firestone made a bunch of shitty tires, which killed a whole bunch of people in their SUVs. They might get in some trouble, but you can be sure that the corporation will go on. (An interesting fact: many of the faulty tires were made in the Decatur Illinois plant, where the regular workers were on strike. The tires were made by ‘replacement workers’, also known as scabs. Vampires and scabs? Some coincidence.) Vampires also have nests; usually the basement of some dusty castle. The vampires who run America have a nest, too, but theirs is called Wall Street. Vampires have a dark charisma; corporations spend billions on advertising.

The upcoming game 'Spore'

2007-11-12T05:01:00.000Z

No doubt, a new hit-title is on the way. Will Wright, the designer of The Sims and Sim City, has been started the development of a new game.

Check out Spore on wiki

Retrieve your windows product key

2007-10-24T23:26:00.000+01:00

I lost the paper that I'd written my product keys on. Maybe it's still somewhere at my room in Izmir, but my mother couldn't find it unsurprisingly.

But an angel appeared for help! This program is what it says in its name:
Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder

"Stupid is who does stupid"
Forrest Gump's mother

Article: "What is software design?"

2007-10-23T20:28:00.000+01:00

This is one of the best articles I've ever read about the function of software engineering, and software design. A recommended reading for all butties around this software thing.

My favourite paragraph:

Also consider how the process of software development is changing. Once upon a time we had the waterfall process. Now we talk of spiral development and rapid prototyping. While such techniques are often justified with terms like "risk abatement" and "shortened product delivery times", they are really just excuses to start coding earlier in the life cycle. This is good. This allows the build/test cycle to start validating and refining the design earlier. It also means that it is more likely that the software designers that developed the top level design are still around to do the detailed design.

Dundee, 2007

2007-10-13T01:31:00.000+01:00

After a couple of months, It's time to give an update to this blog.

The nontrivial things:
- I'm graduated, and titled as a software engineer, at last. Yahoo!
- I've started studying the course MSc Computer Games Technology, at University of Abertay Dundee. With my friends Kaya and Umut. Indeed, Umut is doing Smart Systems.

This means I'll tend to post CGT-related stuff, here.

Just to keep the rituel in the first post, this is my new working desk @The Hub, Dundee, Scotland:

Kimden Other

I just remembered why I'm using blogspot. Because it was ten times faster than wordpress. My other blog, which is in Turkish and is hosted on wordpress, is too damn painy to update. Thanks to those bulky AJAX stuff.

PHP Data Access Layer Generator

2007-04-05T22:12:00.000+01:00

I've written a program that generates php scripts, using given sql queries. A set of data access functions is generated by the program, including connection methods and protection for sql injection.

http://www.gorkempacaci.name.tr/dalg/

Robert Heinlein

2007-03-13T11:22:00.001Z

"a human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. specialization is for insects."

pthread on slackware on vmware on windows xp

2007-01-22T23:26:00.000Z

Yesterday, I had to write a multithreaded application using posix threads on linux, for one of my friends.
We had thought that we could do it by installing slackware linux on a vmware virtual machine running on windows xp. brillant idea, huh?
For early 4 hours, everything was ok. We drawn up state diagrams and wrote trivial code parts to use later.
After that, we set up threading and thread syncronisation using mutexes. Then the nightmare started. Results were inconsistent. Sometimes things went well, and sometimes deadlocks occured.
We could not obviate managing of the conditional variables (pthreads mutexes), and worked different solutions, algorithms for about 4 hours. It was suspicious that Sleep(int) method worked seconds-based, not miliseconds-based as expected on a linux. and bigger values like sleep(1000) did not cause a sleep.
We renounced at late of the evening.
The day after, we requested one of our friends to try the same source on his native linux (pardus).
And a dramatic notice! It had given the expected(correct) results.
-
We think it is vmware. But already so many multithreaded applications work on it. Is it posix threads library version on slackware? We don't know yet.

Conditional("Debug")

2007-01-22T15:12:00.000Z

There's a pretty cool feature in C#(or MSIL compiler?). On a method, you can put a conditional attribute, and calls to that method are only compiled on debug mode. This gives a perfect way to trace how are things going on.

public class Test{
[Conditional("Debug")]
public void Method()
{
// ....
}
}

Today, I've found a bug in my code, associated with this.

[Conditional("DEBUG")]

I had written the string in capital letters. But in runtime or compile-time, there's not an error about it. It simply and silently "doesn't work."

It took an hour to realize this. It would be great if they used an enum, for examle:

[Conditional(ConditionalModes.Debug)]

or different attribute types for each mode:

[DebugConditional]

This is not a big thing of course, but these kind of design decisions are important.
I always prefer compile time errors -where possible- :)

SqlDataReader

2007-01-18T22:44:00.000Z

Just like DbCommand objects, using DataReader objects is a pain.
Everytime the same routine: check value, cast, set.
I've automated this with RTTI, too:

public class DbDataReaderReviver
{
public object ActivateObject(DbDataReader reader, Type typeOfObject)
{
object myObj = System.Activator.CreateInstance(typeOfObject);
FieldInfo[] objFields = typeOfObject.GetFields(BindingFlags.SetField);
string fieldName;
object fieldValue;
foreach (FieldInfo finfo in objFields)
{
fieldName = finfo.Name;
fieldValue = reader[fieldName];
if (fieldValue == null) continue;
finfo.SetValue(myObj, fieldValue);
}
return myObj;
}
}

sqlcommand

2007-01-18T22:31:00.000Z

I'm very tired of adding parameters to sqlcommand (or oracledommand, or -best- dbcommand) objects.

I have written a smart code with RTTI, that fills the parameters of dbcommand objects using an "object instance". First it searches for the member fields of the object, then populates the dbcommand object with these name-value pairs.

I didn't tested this code, but I know this approach works well.

public class DbCommandBuilder
{
/// summary
/// Populates a DbCommand object with the public fields of
/// the given object as parameters.
/// summary
/// param name="command" DbCommand reference to fill
/// param name="obj" Object to get fields of
public void BuildCommand(DbCommand command, object obj)
{
Type type = obj.GetType();
FieldInfo[] finfos = type.GetFields(BindingFlags.Public);
string fieldName;
object fieldValue;
foreach (FieldInfo fin in finfos)
{
fieldName = fin.Name;
fieldValue = fin.GetValue(obj);
command.Parameters.Add(fieldName);
command.Parameters[fieldName].Value = fieldValue;
}
}
}

my desk

2007-01-18T22:22:00.000Z

This is where I work at home.
I love my desk.

fresh start

2007-01-18T21:21:00.000Z

Or better, from now on I will start a seperate blog in English.

In fact, I don't like writing in English so much, writing in Turkish is much more joy for me.

Apologizes to good-english-knowers for my non-perfect English. I hope somebody corrects me when I make mistake.

wordpress

2007-01-18T20:38:00.000Z

Aslına bakarsanız blogspot'ta günlük tutmayı düşünmüştüm. Ama bir hesap açıp biraz kurcaladıktan sonra (yavaşlığını bir yana bırakırsak) wordpress'ten buraya taşınmanın attan inip eşeğe binmek olacağını farkettim.

Export import bile yapmaktan aciz :(

Velhasıl-ı kelam:
http://gorkem.wordpress.com