Quick Links

Home Guides Tutorials Free Articles Computer News Hardware News Openoffice News Developer News What Is OpenOffice Free Computer Hardware Organizer Free Computer Newbie Tutorials Free Downloads Contact Us


ON SALE at Bob Johnson's Computer Stuff. Trusted Bytepowered Partner.
Featured Items at Bob Johnson's Computer Stuff.
bytepowered.org. Working Hard To Save Your Computing Dollars!
Webmaster
"Working Hard To Save Your Computing Dollars" 
| Home | Bytepowered Articles | Guides | About | Privacy Policy | Site Map |
Slashdot: Developers

Devs Finally Finding Success With Xbox Indie Games


McBacon writes with this excerpt from Wired.co.uk: "Often dismissed as a failed venture, the Xbox Indie Games programme has earned successful man-and-his-dog developers tens of thousands of pounds from sales of their homebrew games. Wired explores the success stories of this hidden marketplace. ... now, more than a year since its launch, the Xbox Indie Games are seeing something of a revival. Microsoft has made huge strides to improve the service, games are beginning to be taken more seriously and success stories are becoming more and more common. Especially for [James] Silva, a New York-based developer, who became an impromptu Indie celebrity after his game The Dishwasher won Microsoft's Dream-Build-Play competition. He says he's 'absolutely thrilled' to have seen I Maed a Gam3 w1th Zomb1es!!!1 — his latest game — become a cult hit, for gamers to flock to it in record numbers and to have sold over 200,000 copies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/ZF0RKnLTzRg/Devs-Finally-Finding-Success-With-Xbox-Indie-Games


Next Post


Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C


An anonymous reader writes "Wondering where all that bloat comes from, causing even the classic 'Hello world' to weigh in at 11 KB? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found that gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it. The blog shows how to compile a much simpler 'Hello world,' using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/0BqHlxmfoNk/Simpler-Hello-World-Demonstrated-In-C


Next Post


Good Language Choice For School Programming Test?


An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Informatics Olympiad programming test is being run in a couple of months. I'm an experienced programmer and I'm thinking of volunteering to tutor interested kids at my children's school to get them ready. There will be children of all levels in the group, from those that can't write 'hello world' in any language, to somewhat experienced programmers. For those starting from scratch, I'm wondering what language to teach them to code in. Accepted languages are C, C++, Pascal, Java, PHP, Python and Visual Basic. I'm leaning towards Python, because it is a powerful language with a simple syntax. However, the test has a run-time CPU seconds limit, so using an interpreted language like Python could put the students at a disadvantage compared to using C. Is it better to teach them something in 2 months that they're likely to be able to code in but possibly run foul of the CPU time limit, or struggle to teach them to code in a more complicated syntax like C/C++ which would however give them the best chance of having a fast solution?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/9soXIvVBsuA/Good-Language-Choice-For-School-Programming-Test


Next Post


What Aspects of Open Source Projects Do You Avoid?


paulproteus writes "I'm a Debian developer and a part-time contributor to a few smaller projects. I do a lot of free software-y and open source-y things. Sometimes, though, I don't do them. I figure some other Slashdotters might have similar hang-ups — we contribute to a project, but there are parts that we really dread thinking about. So I wrote a post about having these hang-ups, and I made a place on the web to share how others can help your project. What are the parts that, in your projects, you would be relieved if someone else looked at for you?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/NSH5xWV1wCk/What-Aspects-of-Open-Source-Projects-Do-You-Avoid


Next Post


Google Makes Apps Script Available To All


theodp writes "Formerly only available to Apps Users, Google has made Apps Script available to everyone (sample script), including you Google Docs low-lifers. Apps Script lets you automate actions across spreadsheets, sites, calendars, and other Google services. No spamming, kids!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/VArqMmxAXNA/Google-Makes-Apps-Script-Available-To-All


Next Post


Programming the Commodore 64: the Definitive Guide


Mirk writes "Back in 1985 it was possible to understand the whole computer, from the hardware up through device drivers and the kernel through to the high-level language that came burned into the ROMs (even if it was only Microsoft BASIC). The Reinvigorated Programmer revisits R. C. West's classic and exhaustive book Programming the Commodore 64 and laments the decline of that sort of comprehensive Deep Knowing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/SKLPia33P58/Programming-the-Commodore-64-the-Definitive-Guide


Next Post


Key Web App Standard Approaches Consensus


suraj.sun tips a report up at CNet which begins: "Browser makers, grappling with outmoded technology and a vision to rebuild the Web as a foundation for applications, have begun converging on a seemingly basic but very important element of cloud computing. That ability is called local storage, and the new mechanism is called Indexed DB. Indexed DB, proposed by Oracle and initially called WebSimpleDB, is largely just a prototype at this stage, not something Web programmers can use yet. But already it's won endorsements from Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google, and together, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome account for more than 90 percent of the usage on the Net today. 'Indexed DB is interesting to both Firefox and Microsoft, so if we get to the point where we prototype it and want to ship it, it will have very wide availability,' said Chris Blizzard, director of evangelism for Mozilla. ... Microsoft publicly endorsed Indexed DB on its IE blog: 'Together with Mozilla, we're excited about a new design for local storage called Indexed DB. We think this is a great solution for the Web,' said program manager Adrian Bateman."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/pFQ-D9VKvO0/Key-Web-App-Standard-Approaches-Consensus


Next Post


Toyota Acceleration and Embedded System Bugs


An anonymous reader writes "David Cummings, a programmer who worked on the Mars Pathfinder project, has written an interesting editorial in the L.A. Times encouraging Toyota to drop claims of software infallibility in their recent acceleration problems. He argues that embedded systems developers must program more defensively, and that companies should stop relying on software for safety. Quoting: 'If Toyota has indeed tested its software as thoroughly as it says without finding any bugs, my response is simple: Keep trying. Find new ways to instrument the software, and come up with more creative tests. The odds are that there are still bugs in the code, which may or may not be related to unintended acceleration. Until these bugs are identified, how can you be certain they are not related to sudden acceleration?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/Tuvwxc188fU/Toyota-Acceleration-and-Embedded-System-Bugs


Next Post


Digg Says Yes To NoSQL Cassandra DB, Bye To MySQL


donadony writes "After twitter, now it's Digg who's decided to replace MySQL and most of their infrastructure components and move away from LAMP to another architecture called NoSQL that is based in Cassandra, an open source project that develops a highly scalable second-generation distributed database. Cassandra was open sourced by Facebook in 2008 and is licensed under the Apache License. The reason for this move, as explained by Digg, is the increasing difficulty of building a high-performance, write-intensive application on a data set that is growing quickly, with no end in sight. This growth has forced them into horizontal and vertical partitioning strategies that have eliminated most of the value of a relational database, while still incurring all the overhead."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/8AZr4_t0KXQ/Digg-Says-Yes-To-NoSQL-Cassandra-DB-Bye-To-MySQL


Next Post


SolarPHP 1.0 Released


HvitRavn writes "SolarPHP 1.0 stable was released by Paul M. Jones today. SolarPHP is an application framework and library, and is a serious contender alongside Zend Framework, Symphony, and similar frameworks. SolarPHP has in the recent years been the cause of heated debate in the PHP community due to provocative benchmark results posted on Paul M. Jones' blog."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/APfbKLQDyus/SolarPHP-10-Released


Next Post


Drizzle's Future Moving To Rackspace?


abartels writes "It seems like there's been nothing but bad news and resignations coming from Oracle since it finally managed to close the deal on Sun. Finally, there's good news in that Drizzle seems to have a bright future ahead. It just isn't with Oracle, but with the Rackspace Cloud."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/ZNYmKypIW2g/Drizzles-Future-Moving-To-Rackspace


Next Post


Microsoft Shows Full 3D XNA Games On Windows Phone


suraj.sun writes "Microsoft has shown off XNA games running on Windows Phone; full 3D is a go. From Engadget: 'Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0 9. The two titles are The Harvest, a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks. Microsoft spoke to the ease of its Direct3D development platform, which was built by the same folks responsible for the first-gen Xbox. What we saw of The Harvest was built in "two or three weeks," mostly from scratch, and folks who've already built games for XNA in VisualStudio shouldn't have much trouble with a port from the sound of things: "very, very easy," said Microsoft. Right now developers can do their testing in Windows, but there should be a Windows Phone 7 Series emulator out for devs eventually.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/kRGTMFv4LOo/Microsoft-Shows-Full-3D-XNA-Games-On-Windows-Phone


Next Post


"Mythical Man-Month" Supposedly Busted By MIT Startup


An anonymous reader writes "We all know about the Mythical Man-Month, the argument that adding more programmers to a software project just makes it later and later. A Linux startup out of MIT claims to have busted the myth, using an MIT holiday month to hire 20 college student interns to get all their work done and quadrupling its productivity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/8dtj0zw8Thg/Mythical-Man-Month-Supposedly-Busted-By-MIT-Startup


Next Post


Code Bubbles — Rethinking the IDE's User Interface


kang327 writes "As Java developers we are used to the familiar file-based user interface that is used by all of the major IDEs. A team at Brown University has developed an IDE for Java called Code Bubbles that makes a fairly radical departure from current IDEs — it is based on fragments instead of files. The idea is that you can see many different pieces of code at once. Fragments can form groups, have automatic layout assistance, wrap long lines based on syntax, and exist in a virtual workspace that you can pan. A video shows reading and editing code, opening different kinds of info such as Javadocs, bug reports and notes, annotating and sharing workspaces, and debugging with bubbles. They report on several user studies that show the system increases performance for the tasks studied, and also that professional developers were enthusiastic about using it. There is also a Beta that you can sign up for."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/iAygeULcj84/Code-Bubbles-mdash-Rethinking-the-IDEs-User-Interface


Next Post


The Value of BASIC As a First Programming Language


Mirk writes "Computer-science legend Edsger W. Dijkstra famously wrote: 'It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.' The Reinvigorated Programmer argues that the world is full of excellent programmers who cut their teeth on BASIC, and suggests it could even be because they started out with BASIC."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotDevelopers/~3/fR6b9LhCjMY/The-Value-of-BASIC-As-a-First-Programming-Language


Next Post


 

Content divider image.
Bookmark This Page  AddThis Social Bookmark Button  |  Add RSS  Add Feed Add Feed
|  Bytepowered ltd Who links to this website?
Content divider image.

| Home | Bytepowered Articles | Guides Index |
| Privacy Policy | About | Site Map | Contact US |

| Shopping For Hardware | Shopping Securely | Computer Hardware Online - Compare Retailers | Get The Plan | Choosing Hardware | Motherboards Guide | Computer Cases | CPU Guide | Memory Guide | Video Card Guide | Hard Drives Guide | Hardware Organizer | Download OpenOffice |

Copyright Bytepowered
Contact Us
Copyright © 1997-2010, BytePowered.org

Search for Guides
Articles and Tutorials


Powered By StartLogic
Affordable hosting: Free setup/domain, unlimited emails, PHP, mySQL, CGI, FrontPage. As low as $4.95/month.

Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional