Linked by David Adams on Thu 16th Jun 2011 17:46 UTC
Microsoft has released a beta SDK for Windows, allowing Windows developers to officially make use of the XBox Kinect hardware. From their own press release: "The Kinect for Windows SDK, which works with Windows 7, includes drivers, rich APIs for Raw Sensor Streams, natural user interfaces, installer documents and resource materials. The SDK provides Kinect capabilities to developers building applications with C++, C# or Visual Basic using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010."
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Member since:2007-03-26
It's not really that "stupid" of comment to make if you look at the development community in it's entirety rather than just the elite few.
Most developers are lazy and a disappointing few developer are good developers.
I've lost count of the number of times I've seen nasty kludges and even wrong languages chosen because developers couldn't be bothered to or didn't know how to do things properly.
RE[3]: Comment by Kroc
by lucas_maximus on Fri 17th Jun 2011 13:40
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by Kroc"
Member since:2009-08-18
There are lazy people who do half arsed things in all walks of life ... really how does lazy devs have anything to do with this?
I have seen bad code in a multitude of languages ... there will always be rubbish code as long as software engineering processes are misunderstood and there is lazy developers involved who only care about their paycheck.
How exactly is Microsoft release an official SDK for their own product got anything to do with locking new devs Microsoft platforms in or code quality?
As I said, I learnt how to OOP using Java and Eclipse or a good text editor ... and Web Dev with a LAMP stack ... now I use ASP.NET.
When it comes to learning ... understanding principles is what is important ... what you happen to learn them with is largely irrelevant.
Edited 2011-06-17 13:44 UTC
Member since:2005-11-10
RE[3]: Comment by Kroc
by lucas_maximus on Fri 17th Jun 2011 21:09
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by Kroc"
Member since:2009-08-18
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.More News »
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Member since:
2009-08-18
OMG I thought you would have more intelligence than this to say something soo stupid.
A good developer is a good developer in any language.
According to your logic ... I learnt how to program in BBC BASIC, does that mean I am still trapped in only writing programs in BBC BASIC?
Also According to your logic, I learnt how to program OO in Java, does that mean I can only do OO programming in Java?
Good devs will learn the principles rather than the toolkit ... and take those ideas elsewhere.
Whether they learn them using a .NET framework or an alternative open source one is irrelevant.
There is going to be an underlying theory on how these devices work and without that you won't be able to program these well even if you know the SDK inside out.
It just an SDK to make it easier for .NET devs to develop stuff for what is essentially a USB device.
Also if students and hackers learn some knowledge about how to program and how these devices work ... how can this possibly be a bad thing?
Personally I hope some cool things come out of it.