Is a BlackBerry feasible for writing code with?
Additionally: Are there some programming languages which are specially easy or hard to type on it's keyboard?
I don't know BB well, but I'm trying to evaluate it for writing code while commuting. AFAIK, it doesn't have a "full-featured" keybard, and there are other phones with a more complete one. But I'd also like to be able to write text single-handedly, and I believe it's possible on a BB (?).
Note: that's not a question about writing code for a BlackBerry, but rather on one.
(If that's not a good site for such a question, please let me know where could I pose it. I've let myself put it here based on the "matters that are unique to the programming profession" entry in the FAQ.)
No. Consider a netbook if you need something cheap you can write code with on-the-go. I've tried too, but mobile phones (no matter how smart they are) can't be used for writing code (unless you're willing to spend 1 hour to write a "Hello, World!" app).
Related
I have zero iOS programming experience but I'm good with Android and Java programming. I also know my basics in C++. Here's what the app needs to do:
List out all the current running apps in the phone and display how much Ram each is consuming.
Put the ram usage by each app onto the Logger.
That's it.
It's simple enough and I've read up as much as I can about Objective C and Swift (I can use either) and I've found an interesting tool here that does something similar to what I need to do.
If any of you can give me any advice I'd be forever in debt as I really need to get this done well. If you need anything else, let me know. Thanks a bunch.
Edit: to make myself clear, I'm only asking if this is even possible in iOS and what approach I may take and if there are any tools you recommend. I'm not asking anyone to do this for me.
I've created a core mechanic of my game and want to create a level editor for it. my game is not a tile-based one, so my needs are quite specific. Game is written using Swift and Cocos2d-swift, but i dont think i can figure something out with Sprite Builder.
What you can advice me? Can I for example create a level editor with c# and then use it from swift code?
And what data structure is the best?
I mean is it possible to serialize classes on desktop Swift application and then just load them on ios from file or I'll need to use json/xml?
It might be an old question but I ended up with using a .Net powered solution. I choosed as It has all controls that you need for creating a rich user interface and also, it has a lot of built-in and third party solutions for serializing levels in any way you want. And the c# syntax is very similar to the Swift one.
The only problem is that you might run windows to work with it.
My game in development also needed a non-tile level editor. A few months ago I took some time to make my choice.
Since my project still uses cocos2d 2.x, I don't use the whole new 3.x and SB system. After some investigation I found out that it would be too time consuming to adjust my whole project to the new system and adjusting SB to my needs, mainly because my game engine has been in development for quite some time and is close to finished. Further more, I couldn't find the right information to actually make it work for my game (it needed some odd level architecture I guess).
Finally, I didn't find any other good alternative so I decided to create my own level editor. In this way I had full control and I knew exactly how everything worked which was a huge advantage for me.
Right now my level editor has been finished for some time and works like a charm. I still think in my situation I made the right choice. Also because I learned a lot this way, building everything from the ground up. Having said that, for my next game I will probably go with the main stream and use SB from the start. Also for you I advice you to still check out SB and take some time for it before making an alternative choice...
I'll explain how I did mine. Disclaimer: it has some oddity's which only worked in my situation, but hopefully it helps a bit with choosing your own way to go, that's the goal I'm aiming at...
I used:
max/msp
Although it's developed to make music and audio based software, I used max/msp because it's very easy and fast for creating visual and interface based software as well.
More importend: I happened to be very experienced in it, which shortened the development time tremendously.
javascript
Inside the max/msp patch is a javascript file running. This file is like a bridge between the interface and the visual representation of the level being edited, and the database in which the level
is saved in. 70% of the editor development went into this file I think.
sqlite
All the data is written in a sqlite database. Again, this has been mainly the choice because it saved a great amount of development time in my case. I could have used xml files for instance, but my game was already using a sqlite database and because of this I felt comfortable using it, I had no experience in xml. Also all the code was already in place for a big part, which speeded up the whole proces a lot.
I'm very happy with the end result. It does everything I need, it's easy too use and since I made everything myself from the ground up I know exactly how every works.
Good luck with you choices.
I have a service that allows user's (admins) to change the terminology the site uses. My designer wants me to use the format "A Group". The problem is, for some terminology, it should be "An" not "A".
Is there any way to reliably detect which to use? What about localization?
I can brute force it and get 90% of the way by checking the first letter for consonant vs vowel. That won't work for all words though. And that doesn't cover any language except English.
In my opinion you've got only 2 ways:
1- You need to check the first letter and process all the sentence by checking its letters to see if there is any non-English letters.
2- Provide a dictionary of English nouns then you can easily check your word to find if it needs an "a" or "an".
Although the "a versus an" issue is very specific, what you're describing here is a natural language processing issue. Essentially you are being asked to write code that generates a grammatically correct piece of text.
I think you should try to to explain the implications to the designer, especially if you end up localizing in other languages. Your time is probably better spent working on your app's business logic than on language processing.
Most languages allow to 'tweek' to certain extend parts of the syntax (C++,C#) and/or semantics that you will be using in your code (Katahdin, lua). But I have not heard of a language that can just completely define how your code will look like. So isn't there some language which already exists that has such capabilities to override all syntax & define semantics ?
Example of what I want to do is basically from the C# code below:
foreach(Fruit fruit in Fruits)
{
if(fruit is Apple)
{
fruit.Price = fruit.Price/2;
}
}
I want do be able to to write the above code in my perfect language like this:
Check if any fruits are Macintosh apples and discount the price by 50%.
The advantages that come to my mind looking from a coder's perspective in this "imaginary" language are:
It's very clear what is going on (self descriptive) - it's plain English after all even kid would understand my program
Hides all complexities which I have to write in C#. But why should I care to learn that
if statements, arithmetic operators etc since there are already implemented
The disadvantages that I see for a coder who will maintain this program are:
Maybe you would express this program differently from me so you may not get all the
information that I've expressed in my sentence
Programs can be quite verbose and hard to debug but if possible to even proximate this type of syntax above maybe more people would start programming right? That would be amazing I think. I can go to work and just write an essay to draw a square on a winform like this:
Create a form called MyGreetingForm. Draw a square with in the middle of
MyGreetingFormwith a side of 100 points. In the middle of the square write "Hello! Click here to continue" in Arial font.
In the above code the parser must basically guess that I want to use
the unnamed square from the previous sentence, it'd be hard to write such a smart parser I guess, yet it's so simple what I want to do.
If the user clicks on square in the middle of MyGreetingForm show MyMainForm.
In the above code 'basically' the compiler must: 1)generate an event handler 2) check if there is any square in the middle of the form and if there is - 3) hide the form and show another form
It looks very hard to do but it doesn't look impossible IMO to me at least approximate this (I can personally generate a parser to perform the 3 steps above np & it's basically the same that it has to do any way when you add even in c# a.MyEvent=+handler; so I don't see a problem here) so I'm thinking maybe somebody already did something like this ? Or is there some practical burden of complexity to create such a 'essay style' programming language which I can't see ? I mean what's the worse that can happen if the parser is not that good? - your program will crash so you have to re-word it:)
Check out:
The Osmosian Order
of Plain English Programmers
Code Example:
The background is a picture.
A button has a box and a name.
To clear the status:
Clear the status' string.
Show everything.
To create the background:
Draw the screen's box with the white color.
Loop.
Pick a spot anywhere in the screen's box.
Pick a color between the lightest gray color and the white color.
Dab the color on the spot.
If a counter is past 80000, break.
If the counter is evenly divisible by 1000, refresh the screen.
Repeat.
Extract the background given the screen's box. \or Create the background from the screen. Or something.
Some Interactive fiction designers use a language syntax extremely close to the English language. Here's some Inform 7 code, which you can play online:
The foyer is a room.
The apple is in the foyer. It is edible. The description is "This is a ripe,
green granny smith apple."
The apple core is a thing. The description is "This apple core all that is
left of that granny smith apple you just consumed."
After eating the apple:
now the apple core is in the player;
say "You gobble down the apple careful not to eat any of those cyanide-
laced seeds you heard about."
I tutored a course that used Inform 7. One of the tutors had the impression the assignment was to design, not write a game. So he marked the programs by reading them, without realising they were actual programs.
I don't think that this would be an easy task nor do I think it is going to make life easier for debugging
How would you deal with these issues?
spelling mistakes
different dialects in different parts of world
different dialects in the same part of the world
synonyms
which part of sentence do you parse first?
tear (rip) and tear (from eye) both words spellings are the same but mean two different things.
Bring back COBOL or can you remember "Walk West", "Examine Door", "Push Door", "Open Door", "Use key on door" :)
edit - how would you strongly type this?
I have written an extensible English-to-Python compiler called EngScript, which converts structured English into working Python code.
This is an example of EngScript code:
print{create a string from the file called "README.txt"}
print{save the string "Woohoo!" to a file called "ExampleText.txt"}
print{the first 3 letters of "EngScript"}
This is the output that was generated by the EngScript compiler:
print(pythonFunctions.stringFromTextFile("README.txt"))
print(pythonFunctions.writeStringToFile("ExampleText.txt", "Woohoo!"))
print("EngScript"[0:(3 - 1)+1])
LiveCode!
There are a few "natural language", high-level, English-like programming or scripting languages. Probably all of them were inspired by the oldest, COBOL. My personal favorite of these languages is LiveCode. LiveCode is a decendent of MetaCard, a Linux clone of Apple’s now defunct HyperCard that used an English-like scripting language called HyperTalk, which was inspired by SmallTalk, and in turn inspired JavaScript (as well as the entire World-Wide-Web). HyperTalk was the basis for another English-Like scripting language called AppleScript (and later AppleScriptObjC), which still comes with macOS to this very day. LiveCode uses a language called LiveCodeScript, or LCS which, like other HyperCard clones and that have existed over the years (SuperCard, Adobe’s Lingo/Flash ActionScript, Open Xion, Oracle’s Toolbook, etc.), is very similar to HyperTalk at it’s core, often referred to as an X-Talk language. LiveCode has several advantages; it’s very much still in production, it has a dual license (open source and commercial versions), the engine is cross-platform (Mac, Win, Linux, HTML5, iOS, Android, and a server version), and like HyperCard it is also a GUI toolkit and it is extensible. The LiveCode team is currently working on new a lower-level programming language called LiveCode Builder, or LCB. LCB is also an English-like, although LCB is a bit less readable than LCS, it has a goals of having capabilities on par with lower-level languages like C++, Objective C, etc., allowing for extending the LiveCode platform with code libraries and frameworks produced by other programming language libraries, and ultimately allowing for the LiveCode IDE to be written in it’s own language.
Try using the programming language called 'Google' - it has a natural English interface and your code fragment throws back all the answers you are suggesting. Interestingly just six minutes after you asked this question, this very page is #1 for the query:
Check if any fruits are Macintosh
apples and discount the price by 50%
Use the Google API and I think you have the basis of a natural English programming language.
I need to add printing capabilities to an app and I have been looking around for information about printing. Logical/physical sizes, dpi, font scaling, etc, lots to digest since I never programmed printing into any app before.
Are there any sites that would offer a primer on the topics of page sizes, margins and all the other elements required to understand printing on Windows? I've been looking around for a while but what I find is either cryptic or years old...
I've been playing around with TPrinter, but I would like to build solid printing functionalities and understand what I'm doing better.
Using a report solution is not an option, even though I'm sure it would provide better results much sooner.
Two links to get you started:
Printing with TPrinter
Printing via the TPrinter Canvas
I think that you are looking too lowlevel.
Try looking at the build reporting tools (Rave or whatever is in your product).
Personally i am using a product called Report Builder from Digital Metaphors.
But if you want to do the lowlevel stuff lot og good information can be found at efg's computer lab - printing
Well, I have done things a variety of ways in the past, including the "hard way" with TPrinter. In fact, I recently had to do that again to run a special inventory label printer.
On the other hand, sometimes you are better off taking work others have done and using it for your benefit. I agree that ReportSmith isn't so great, and also it's Delphi (and Windows) specific. Using Excel or Word has those limitations, plus the fact that the user has to actually have them installed.
One thing I have done to make printing easy for some simple applications is just to generate an HTML file and call the user's web browser, then they can print it. HTML tables can be created relatively easily for numerical data, and you can include photos, etc. as well. This works well for some applications, and works on every platform where a web browser is installed. The downside, of course, is that HTML isn't the most precise layout language.
The version of Delphi you´re using is important. A number of Delphis came with print engines like ReportSmith (ugh). Another option thinking laterally is to use MS Word as a print engine. I´ve hooked into instances of Word & Excel before & utilised their functionality. As to raw printing using TPrinter or the print method of TForm you´d have to be pretty desperate. I seem to recall the Pacheo / Texeira Delphi books coming with a pretty good overview so you might want to see if you can find a copy of that somewhere.