If life were a game...

This is going to be too much to fit in one post. So lets start with the most provocative. I'm over Constructors and Deconstructors It's such a staple of OOP and yet I could seriously do without them now. If you're like me you learned these are great places to create/delete required objects, open/close files and all that stuff. But it just causes trouble. Here's a typical example: MyObject() { anotherObject = new AnotherObject(); fileHandle = open("configfile.xml"); } ~MyObject() { close(fileHandle); delete anotherObject; } Great! What could be wrong with that? We'll there's two things. 1. You want to customise things in a child class Ideally you shouldn't need to mess with the parent. Maybe due to some rules on shared code you can't change the parent (easily). But if you want anotherObject to be CustomObject and use a different filename you end up with this crap: MyObjectChild() : MyObject() { delete anotherObject; anotherObject = new CustomOb...

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/government-goes-to-war-with-google-over-net-censorship-20100330-r9bp.html

Blah blah Han shot first blah blah. This was brought to my attention yesterday! http://kotaku.com/5485075/valve-updates-portal-again-now-with-new-ending Like WTF!? The ending was pretty vague anyway. You get to the surface with things blowing up. Cut to music. Why is there even a need to change to and re-capture? Why is there this growing trend of writers going back and reworking their story? It's not like there's a Homer's Odyssey (revised edition). I'm sick of it. Let it sit. Write a NEW story.

Ok so I mentioned how I've been getting my head around TDD and Agile recently. I'm kinda late to the game since I only discovered it 2 years ago with a presentation by Uncle Bob in Chicago. So it's taken a lot of reading and talking to get to the point where I am now. But I'm also carefully watching trials others are doing and making notes about those who succeed and those who fail. So time to talk about the interesting one. The failures. Let's break them down to some common archetypes. I'll keep coding the same way and make some token effort with planning cards. Yeah you suck. You've got to change your ways! The order you do things isn't going to be the order you always did it. You've got to talk to the customer/designer/whatever and let them talk about what's most important. That's your new order! Don't spend for ever building some backend database bullshit. You may not even need it by the end. The whole design may change and become so...

Now keep in mind I don't think games are addictive like drugs are. That's a rant for another time perhaps. But they are designed to keep you playing and playing and playing . Now for most people this is not a problem. You choose when to play and when not too. It's something you enjoy in moderation. But some weak minded fools will ignore their significant other , stop showing up to work ( or whatever ) and allow personal hygiene to lapse. Now you have never done that. I have never done that. But perhaps like me you've played a game just a little bit more. Just one more level. Just one more fight. Just let me hand in this gopher. Next thing you know the morning sun is streaming in the window. What happened? You just had a damn good time! That's what happened. Stop freaking out. We've done it with that extended edition of Lord of the Rings. We've done it with a good novel and short chapters (just one more!) And we've done it drinking too much with friends....

That statement is probably getting two types of reactions. a) Who is Stephen Conroy ? Well if you live in Australia then all your internets belong to him. But otherwise you may as well stop reading. b) He is too ! Okay you're the ones I want to talk to. You're wrong and you're wasting your time getting upset about Internet censorship. Let me lay out the facts as I see them (read: opinion and opinion cannot be wrong no matter how much you disagree). He's not evil he's just stupid There's nothing really wrong with that. Lots of politicians are stupid. Some of the best have been morons! I'm very fond of the saying "Never assume malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" so I'm applying it here. He thinks he's doing a great service to Australia. Finally we'll be protected from all that nasty stuff that we were not supposed to be seeing anyway. Finally the internet has reached maturity where such things are possible. Or at ...

And then I'll get into my first rant. I'm some guy who thinks about stuff. Stuff you probably don't care about but I'm going to tell you anyway! Now I don't think I'm going to cure cancer or create world peace but it'd be nice if I could make the world a little better. Stuff I'd like to talk about will focus on: Games I've always been a game player and am fascinated in how one designs a game. Yes it's mostly computer games these days and even then it's mostly consumed by World of Warcraft . Shut-up you in the back! We all have our vices and I'll avoid sniggering at your hentai collection if you leave my level 80 mage alone. Programming Only 2 years ago I was introduced to this weird concept of Test Driven Developmen t and the broader concept of Agile . Programming has been part of my life since I was eight. When I haven't been doing it professionally I've found myself doing it more in my free time. So it's nice that after 20+...