A Software Engineer's confused ramblings

For years I’ve played a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) called Dartmud. As the years have gone by I have used scripts, written scripts, and added onto scripts built for this game. When I say scripts, I really mean a complex series of aliases, triggers, and actual scripts. These scripts are also written in lua.

 As you can imagine, after years of adding code to a system with no rhyme or reason things have gotten a bit convoluted. This isn’t helped by the fact that Mudlet (the telnet client that I use connect to Dartmud) saves all these scripts in an xml file which can only be edited from within the client. This makes sharing and collaborating on scripts somewhat of a pain. Also, there are several new scripts that I’d like to build for Dartmud that would be difficult to do without some core set of scripts already in place to support them.

One thing I wish I took more time to learn about when I was initially learning programming is variable assignments. Different languages handle variables in different ways. So with C take the time to understand how to assign a number to a variable, then a character, then a string. Then how to assign a reference to a variable.

Decided to switch gears for awhile and work on a game idea that’s been floating around in my head. To accomplish this task I’ve been working with a javascript game engine called Phaser. In a sentence, Phaser is a framework that takes care of all the nit-picky things that come with a game, such as loading and animating sprites sheets, or handling object deletion during stage transitions.

This is also the first time I’ve delved this far into Javascript programming beyond some basic learning. So far I’ve managed to break javascript scoping several times and figured out what callback hell is.

Hmm, IOS is a new one for me. I don’t own any IOS devices myself and I’ve not tried out objective c.

As for what to try, I always like learning resources that promote gamification. So try out http://tryobjectivec.codeschool.com/

Can’t guarantee that it’ll work out since I’ve never tried it, but looks promising. Actually, think I’ll give it a try as well.

If I were to go back in time to my younger self I’d point him to a few resources.For some quick hands on learning, I’d go to https://www.codecademy.com/Codeacademy will get your feet wet and teach you some of the very basics of coding.

From there, I’d go to http://www.nand2tetris.org/

nand2tetris will have you build everything that goes into a computer starting from a nand gate. As a programmer, understanding how you code interacts with the computer is important. It will also strongly reinforce the quick learning you did at codecademy.

After those two you should have a solid base knowledge from which to branch out from. After those two resources, I’d recommend learning some Data Structures and Algorithms that pertain to Software Engineering. For that try, http://dotnetslackers.com/projects/Data-Structures-And-Algorithms/

Then head over to https://projecteuler.net/ and apply the data structures/algorithms you just learned. 

I’ve started working on a new character generator in Java and decided to try to piece it together using this Model View Controller design pattern I’ve heard so much about.

For those that don’t know, and for those that do know please correct me if I’m wrong. First off we have the view which the user interacts with. The view triggers actions in the controller. The controller then changes the model. The model then dispatches and event so that the view can update to show the changes to the model.

This is a very simplified description of what MVC is and I may be wrong on this, I’ve seen some very conflicting descriptions and diagrams claiming what MVC is. But I digress, onto my confusion.

As mentioned earlier I’m trying to make a character Generator in Java using this pattern and... I’m not quite sure how this is supposed to work out. Is there some glue code that passes the objects around? Does the view hold a copy of the control, or does the control have a copy of the view?

Decided to work on the challenges in Codingame again. So far I’ve only worked on they easy challenges and they are living up to the name so far. They have been easy, except in the cases where I add an extra spin to the challenge.

As you all saw in my If statements post not too long ago, I’ve been trying to avoid using if statements except where they are absolutely necessary. Which has been a pretty fun challenge for a sign like Codingame. 

The challenges (at least the ones I’ve done) in the easy section seem to be understandably geared towards the inexperienced developer and expects a solution using if statements.

Now, onto my current problem. I’ve come across another problem where I’m stuck with an if-else ladder.

In this problem we are on a stretch of road moving at a random speed from the start. Ahead there is a large hole in the road that we want to jump over. After the jump the road ends in a cliff. Also at each iteration of the loop we have a choice of speeding up, slowing down, jumping, or to wait till the next iteration. Our goal is to get enough speed to jump the gap, then slow down so that we don’t go over the cliff.

Below is my current solution. I have an if-else tree to handle what choices should be made when.

#include #include #include int main() { int R; // the length of the road before the gap. scanf("%d", &R); int G; // the length of the gap. scanf("%d", &G); int L; // the length of the landing platform. scanf("%d", &L); int option = 0; char *options[] = {"SPEED", "SLOW", "JUMP", "WAIT"}; // game loop while (1) { int S; // the motorbike's speed. scanf("%d", &S); int X; // the position on the road of the motorbike. scanf("%d", &X); option = selectOption(X, G, S, R, L); printf("%s\n",options[option]); } } //returns an int value. 0-3 int selectOption(int curPos, int lengthOfGap, int speed, int posOfGap, int lengthOfStop){ int returnValue = 3; if(curPos == (posOfGap-1)) returnValue = 2; else if (curPos > posOfGap) returnValue = 1; else if (speed < (lengthOfGap+1) && speed < lengthOfStop) returnValue = 0; else if (speed > (lengthOfGap+1)) returnValue = 1; return returnValue; }

To fix this I’m thinking of altering the options array into a 2D array instead. My mind is a bit fizzed out right now, and I don’t want to give away all of my thoughts just yet. I’ll work on this more tomorrow and we’ll see what comes out of it.

I’m a long time follower of tinyjavacode and I’ve watched them turn out a daily snippet of code solving each of the reddit programming challenges. So, figure I’d give it a shot. Today’s challenge was to create a substitution cypher. Tinyjavacode did this already in java so I did it in c. 

Check under the break to see the code and for a breakdown of it.

Took me longer to complete this project than it should have. So, with the use of a formula I was able to get rid of that huge ugly if-else tree and turn it into a single function that I could call. 

Check out the read more to see the code and to see the silly reason for the hours upon hours I spent on this code.

For the longest time I’ve been told to avoid if statements where I can. Instead I should use polymorphic behavior to replace if statements. Replacing said if statements with polymorphism ends with code that is easier to maintain.

This idea is one I have been told and have known for quite some time but I’ve not really applied it or thought about it beyond what I just said above.

I bring them up now though because I recently joined a fun little website called codingame. The premise is that you program your way through games in order to practice your coding skills and to have fun at the same time.

I got to the second challenge which was simple enough. I’m dropped into a random position on a map 40x18 map and have to get to a random position on that map by moving in one of 8 directions. Northwest, North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, and West.