December

GDC 2006: C++ on Next-Gen Consoles: Effective Code for New Architectures

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 8:52pm, Friday, 2005-12-23
This lecture on the Programming Track for GDC 2006 will be given by Pete Isensee. I haven't been doing enough C++ lately - it's been crowded out of my schedule by so much other technology - Web 2.0 experiments, SVG and W3C reading and ... well, surfing. I really enjoyed the talk a few years back on how they ported DirectX to the original Xbox and I also got a kick out of a GDC talk on advanced compiler optimizations for C++. I think this one could be right up my alley. Of course I like to be an informed attendee, so I'm going to do some research on the issue raised here and get some background. That should get me ready to get the most out of this lecture - if I get it into my schedule. The list of sessions I'm building up here goes along with Jeff's post on Scrum yesterday and mine on TDD the other day. It sounds like the issues they're talking about revolve around optimizations for a few deep instruction pipelines in processor versus multiple processing units with shallow pipelines. The differences here are in parallel code execution and costs of branches.

GDC 2006: Test Driven Development from High Moon Studios

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 9:08pm, Tuesday, 2005-12-20
I just got an email from GDC with a reference to their Programming Track Highlights. There was a session in there that I had meant to get back to - something on Test Driven Development. I'm not one to chase after every new programming methodology that someone thinks up, but I like to hear about the problems people are trying to solve through changes to their programming methodologies. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they're very unrealistic. So the session at GDC is called "Backwards Is Forward: Making Better Games with Test-Driven Development" and it's put on by some people from High Moon Studios. I've already read the blurb at the GDC site, but I'd like to know more. First I'll dig in to find out more about TDD, then I'll see what I can find out about the speakers.

ramblin’ man

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 5:39pm, Wednesday, 2005-12-07
I guess I have travelled quite a bit this year. I think it was in January that I went up to Toronto to see my sister and attend a lunch with Joel Spolsky. In March it was down to San Francisco for the GDC with Jeff. That's where my current header picture comes from (a view of Moscone West from the bridge over the street). We took a side trip to San Jose to check out Scott's new digs and the three of us also went for a hike in Muir Wood. In May it was off to Los Angeles with Candace for E3 2005. Afterward we got to spend the weekend around the beaches of LA. In July we took the kids up to Wasaga Beach, I wrote a whole lot about that and put our pictures on line too. My last trip was up to Chicago with my daughter. We spent the weekend visiting with Jeff & his family. Now I'm off in a couple hours to Germany. I never expected it, but I've become quite the ramblin' man.

Podcast on Pre-empting the Abuse of SVG

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 4:20am, Monday, 2005-12-05
I start out talking about how SVG can one day be abused the way html is today. Abused in the sense that new technology is first adopted by people who want it to work, later it's used just as a means to an end. That end sometimes is achieved at the cost of loss of the intended use of a service. In short, new technology means new kinds of spam. How do we allow user-created SVG to be published in communities like forums, wikis, blog comments and anwhere else - but without risking user security or letting in new kinds of junk? I end up with an idea for the Javascript problem that I called bbscript. (Why is it that podcasting makes me get ideas?) I bet that's already used. The inspiration here was just the idea that we should be careful not to repeat all the problems built in to the Internet technology we're building on top of. Anyhow, have a listen and if you're inspired then go build something. Links to stuff I mentioned: