Quiet in these parts

[Gweg]

Uh….  I hear that, bad week for me this past week.  Lots of homework, and midterms and such

(that Python midterm tore me a new one).  Got a good bit of stuff to do this weekend too.  Hopefully I can

get some done.  Been mostly jamming to tunes and being pretty passive on the boards (here and at the Attic);

hardly touched any games (maybe played Most Wanted for like 20 min today, total).  I hope to get to posting

some stuff in the near future.  I gotta start managing my time now, running out of it; got some big projects in

the works — one for the Attic site (I've done little for it at the moment), and I'm getting ready to work

on my first illustrated book (read: children's book — hell of a lot of dough in that, tho, so no laughing), so

I need to start doing the layouts for that and looking into publishers.  Man, all the Maya work I still gotta

do for class. . .  this is going to be one hell of a quarter all the way to the end.

Colvin, I feel

your pain, but it sucks for me, cuz I'm not getting paid for it.

[tcolvinMI]

Yeah, Im getting paid for it, but I dont see much of it at the moment, so its like Im not getting

paid. 

Allow me to let you in on a little of what Ive been working on.  There are tons of

numbers that have to be calculated.  Its all historical data, so it involves basically starting from the

beginning of time (the earliest record in the database) to now.  The issue is that it can become quite time

consuming in order to calculate these numbers, especially if they have to be calculated several times.  So, not

only am I trying to understand the calculations, but Im also trying to invent a way to make this process as quick as

possible.  Its frustrating to say the very least.

What spawned the idea for the childrens

book?  Nice idea though.  Let me know if I can be of any help.

[Scott]

    Lotts of stuff to do here too.  I passed my preliminary review so I

am allowed to continue grad school.  I have to continue to create a game design document that will be at least

25 to 35 pages.  My character design teacher wants me to make better drawings of my character, the problem is I

cant draw, but were getting into modeling so I can make up for it in that area. 
    There is

also the unreal programming class which is pretty cool but frustrating too.  Our teacher just started learning

unreal scripting two weeks before the course started and the good people at epic are the worst kind of programmers

i.e. they barely put a single comment in all their code.  Another problem with their code is that a lot of it

is considered “native”, which means its part of the engine and you will never be able to get to it with

out an engine license, which we don

[tcolvinMI]

If there's one thing that irritates me more than anything, its programmers who dont comment any of

their code.  Some people think that making your code unreadable maintains your job security.  I personally

think thats stupid.  If I were a project manager and saw code like that, I'd make someone fix it, and not

pay them to do it.  It is common place in development for several people to be working on the same thing over

time.  One person may write the original code, but the chances of that person coming back to it to make changes

are rare, especially on huge projects.  I believe it to be courteous for developers to write comments to not

only help others who come across the code, but also for yourself.  Ive come across code that Ive written

six-eight months ago and went “What the hell was I trying to do here?”  After I figure it out, I

write in a comment.  Commenting seems to be the one concept most developers do not understand.  Comments

are supposed to denote why something is being done.  Ive seen comments that said, this adds two numbers when it

was obvious that two numbers were being added together.  This is a waste of a comment.  Now if you're

doing something thats complex to understand, then you should add a comment explaining whats going on. 

[Scott]

This is a game that they have made with a big part of it being the ability to mod it

and create new content.  Yet they barely put a comment in their code and a lot of the code is native, it

[Gweg]

Been a long weekend, didn't get as much done as I wanted too, so I gotta spend most of today and

tonight working on my Maya project (gotta build and rig a high and low poly character, should be able to have it all

done by the end of the week).  I spent pretty much all Saturday playing Serious Sam with my one room mate that

actually stayed for the weekend.  I don't know, I want to get some stuff posted here, and get back to the

site, but I just don't see that happening anytime soon.  I gotta be able to have time for the project

I'm doing for the Attic also.

Tim, the idea for the book came about during winter break, when I

found an old Native American story/book that I wrote in fifth grade.  I was looking at it and thinking that if

I rewrote it a little, and updated the pictures, I could easily turn it into a possible high selling children's

book (a bit optimistic here, but it would be sweet).  I was thinking if that would happen, I could use the

money for school next year and for parts for the other engine I have (which Kevin tells me is a different year than

I thought it was, which ticks me off a bit, cuz those guys lied to me, and parts for a Series II are a lot more

expensive than a Series I).

Yeah, our Python 2 professor (who is a new guy this quarter), encourages us

to comment on all our code (only on more complex code, and to use comments to dvide up sections, like variables,

main program, and such).  And when we write new functions, he tells us that we have to note, after the defining

the function, what it does, or we lose points.  So, at least a few people in our class should have good

commenting backgrounds.

Edit:  Woo, post #50!!  Half way to 100!!

[tcolvinMI]

Greg, thats a sweet idea for the book.  Let me know how it works out.

Sounds like the

prof knows what he's doing, or at least from the way it sounds.  I dont know about commenting the sections

of code apart, seems like a waste of space to me.  Although, in a language like python, it might be useful,

especially when you're declaring variables.  Another good idea is to keep a section of history for major

updates.  I do this with my SQL code all the time (especially lately).  It comes in handy when you're

trying to track changes to a script that usually doesnt get changed often, but that needs to have a comment here and

there.  Its good to have a history of comments so you know whats been changed and when it was changed. 

Function comments are incredibly useful as well.  Remember that when programming, you're actually writing

for three audiences: the computer (you're writing code that the computer can understand), the user (you're

writing code so that a user can actually use it) and to other programmers (including yourself).  The last one

is incredibly important.  As I mentioned in my last post, keeping comments helps when you come back to a

project after not working on it for a significant amount of time.  I find that a lot of programmers dont

comment their code and if they do, its a one liner that doesnt make any sense.  There's no shame in

writing a couple of well thought out sentences saying what something does.  You dont need to go overboard (I

went to school with someone who went crazy with the comments).  However, you should write enough so its clear

on what is happening in your code.  Also, and I know a lot of people, including myself, do this from time to

time, but comment prior to writing code.  If you're getting ready to write a piece of code, add a comment

saying what it does.  Sometimes, and I did this a lot in college, people will write their code then go back and

add comments when its finished.  But by the time you're finished, you may not remember why you did

something a certain way. 

If you couldnt tell, Im kinda picky about comments.  One other thing

Im kinda picky about is indentation and formatting.  In Python, you're forced to indent, but in other

languages, like HTML and C, you can write one long line of code.  Anyone who's done HTML has see the one

line complex web page that you open in notepad and you see one long line with a tiny scroll bar that goes on for

miles.  This is NOT good.  Going back to the programming for other programmers, it makes it incredibly

hard to maintain code when you cant read it easily.  Sure, I can decipher a one liner program, but what I

usually end up doing is formatting it first so its easier to read before I even attempt to start to understand

it.  This is a waste of time in my opinion and should be avoided.  Either that or force everyone to

program in Python 🙂 

Maybe there's a reason why Walsh wont let me teach programming?  I

picked up on too many of my advisiors habits and I tell you, they pay off.  He was particular but in my

experience, its the only way to be, especially if you want to be a decent programmer.  You have to be attentive

to detail, otherwise, some issues you'll never figure out.  Like the stray semicolon in your C, C++, Java

or PHP code. 

I lost track of my posts, I think this is 48. 

[Scott]

I thought it was pretty funny today I was working on a teleport device in Unreal and

found a large block of code with an actual comment before it.  It said something like “//FIX THIS, this

needs to be fixed badly, the program should not be in a tick function but would be more efficient in a timer

……” and it went on.  I noticed it was still in a tick function so I think it

[tcolvinMI]

Well, I can tell that everyone is busy, including me.  This forum has come to a screetching halt as of

late.  Seems as if no one has anything to post, which is totally cool.  Ive been neglecting pretty much

everything as of late because of work.  Im just taking a minute now from work after contemplating how the hell

Im going to figure out Ending Inventory to post to see what was going on with everyone?  I noticed the attic

forums went through their upgrade and everything is looking mighty fine.  Also saw Jeremy registered. 

Welcome to the forums. 

After this huge push to get the current project Im working on done,

I'd like to start posting to some of the tech sections and maybe even make an update to Mightor Technologies,

but dont hold your breath.  Since we're short a programmer at work, my hours have doubled.  But the

raise that came with it was hellasweet, so Im not complaining too much.

Whats up with everyone?

[Author]

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