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Google AI Challenge Redux

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:29:53 +0000

This is about the programming Challenge running during February that I mentioned on Friday. If you're undecided about entering the challenge, take a look at this video on Youtube showing two of the best bots in action.

Talking about a challenge is one thing but seeing it in action is another and it's quite fascinating watching the blue on red action. I must start videoing some of the monthly challenges!

Google AI Challenge Redux originally appeared on About.com C / C++ / C# on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 17:29:53.

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Embedded Programs Everywhere

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:09:24 +0000

I worked in the avionics industry for a couple of years in 1990 when Ada was the only allowed language for defense projects in the US and UK. Nowadays military aircraft still have millions of lines of code inside them but surprisingly so do many automobiles.

Ironically while typical combat and the latest commercial aircraft have between 2 and 6 million lines of code, a top end automobile will have 100 million lines of code across the various components. Not all components are life threatening if they fail - e.g. the alarm, satnav, tire pressure monitoring or the climate control would be a nuisance if they crash but if the antilock brakes or the engine management system fails it could be a lot more dangerous. It's no longer a piece of cable that opens up the carburetor when you hit the gas but a blackbox that transmits signals to increase fuel flow, change the timing etc. Fixing things is a lot harder and usually it's an expensive replacement.

My guess is that this software is mostly embedded C or C++ but if anyone can confirm or deny I'd be interested. It's expensive to develop and debug these systems and a large portion of the cost of a car (35% to 40% is one figure I saw quoted) is now software and electronics.

Embedded Programs Everywhere originally appeared on About.com C / C++ / C# on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 17:09:24.

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iPhone Development in C++ on Windows

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:11:14 +0000

Thanks to Lennie for the tip off. This looks interesting. The DragonFireSDK will let you create iPhone Apps in Windows in C++. You can run them on a provided simulator, debug using Visual Studio (not sure if it's full or Express versions) and install it on a (shush) jailbroken iPhone.

However where it gets interesting is that you can use it to put apps in to the App Store and get paid. You can do this is in the traditional way as a registered developer(and pay $49.95 to Zimusoft for their Windows sdk) or do it for free through Zimusoft who distribute it as part of their brand but pay you all (they take nothing) of the royalties through Paypal.

There are samples and you can download it and take a look at it now.

iPhone Development in C++ on Windows originally appeared on About.com C / C++ / C# on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at 14:11:14.

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Google AI Challenge - Play Tron

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:25:19 +0000

Tron was a so so film from the early 80s when Computer Generated Images were a lot cruder than today and I believe a sequel is on its way. For the time it had a few Wow moments and it spawned a computer racing game where you and your opponents have bikes that leave a wall behind as you zoom through an entry. You bot must outlast your opponent and not crash because it ran out of space.

That game is the subject of an AI challenge at the University of Waterloo in Canada and is sponsored by Google. C++ and C# are among the allowed languages for entries and you can compile the C++ starter package with Visual C++ Express Edition or GCC. The interface is very very simple so even beginners should be able to write code for this. There are a variety of test courses provided in text files and bots (in Java). A C# starter pack will be provided shortly. About the only rule is don't take longer than a second to decide your move.

The Challenge runs through most of February and started on February 4th so you can start now. There are already 166 entries so don't expect it to be easy!

Link to Top Ten Programming Contests

Google AI Challenge - Play Tron originally appeared on About.com C / C++ / C# on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 16:25:19.

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Facebook Website is now largely running C++

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:31:55 +0000

The difference in processing speed between an optimized scripting language and a statically compiled language is not that much these days. PHP is probably the most popular scripting language and one of the fastest. But if somehow you could automatically transform PHP into C++ and then compile it you would notice a speed difference, due I think mainly to the extra overhead of compiling the PHP code and running it. Also C++ compilers tend to be very good at optimizing.

That's what Facebook has done with a translator called HipHop which reads PHP scripts and then generates a C++ project and compiles it with GCC. Now something like 90% of their servers are running compiled C++ versions of PHP scripts. Not everything in PHP could be translated, particularly dynamic generation of PHP scripts but they reckon that the compiled code runs twice as fast as the PHP and given the number of servers they run (30,000 back in October last year) that is a real gain for them. HipHop is shortly to be open sourced by Facebook and they will do a version for Apache server as they also use their own web server. There's no mention if they'll open source their web server.

Mind you if compiling PHP is your desire and you can't wait for HipHop, try Roadsend PHP instead. it's cross platform but currently at Beta and there's a C++ version (raven - rphp).

Link to Linux C++ Code Library

Facebook Website is now largely running C++ originally appeared on About.com C / C++ / C# on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 17:31:55.

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New C++ Tutorial Published

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:16:43 +0000

Text files, love em or leave them are a vital part of computing. An XML file is just a text file holding xml data. I regard them as a necessary evil. So this tutorial, with 8 examples shows you how to read and manipulate text files.

The last two examples are longer and show how to read a config file into memory and then access it. One version uses pointers, the other vectors. Rather than have 8 different downloads, all source files are bundled up in one zip file. Enjoy!

Link to C++ Tutorials

New C++ Tutorial Published originally appeared on About.com C / C++ / C# on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 16:16:43.

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How Open Source Spreads out

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:50:35 +0000

An open source project starts for one platform, most likely Linux and a few developers are attracted to it and it gets released. However one or two developers also use Windows so they build binaries for Windows and maybe Mac, Solaris etc. The project expands and then the organizers decide to make it cross-platform using Qt or WxWidgets etc.

An example- DigiKam. This also fulfills Bolton's 18th law of Computing- If a project name has a K in it, it probably was originally developed for KDE.

This powerful software, written in C++ is for managing a photo collection, from reading the raw images from something like 1,000 different digital cameras, storing the photos with all the EXIF data, tracking and tagging photos and then displaying them. DigiKam uses Qt 4 for cross-platform, as since Qt 4 was GPL'd KDE software (using Qt 4) can be distributed to Windows and Mac.

Link to Linux C++ Code Library

How Open Source Spreads out originally appeared on About.com C / C++ / C# on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 17:50:35.

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Challenge 31 Results and StarCraft AI Contest

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:14:05 +0000

Congratulations to Adrian Grigo of Australia for a 57.8 nanosecond speed entry, that's the fastest ever in any programming Challenge. Thanks to both Adrian and Gabriel Dubois for their entries.

StarCraft AI Competition

There haven't been many commercial computer games that actually made it into space but the 12 year old StarCraft is one having been taken up on one of the Space Shuttles. Being a commercial game you wouldn't expect to be able to access and change the game's AI but the BWAPI project has managed to do this for the Broodwar expansion which is being used in the StarCraft AI Competition.

The Brood War Application Programming Interface (BWAPI) is a free and open source C++ framework for creating AI modules for Starcraft: Broodwar.

Using BWAPI, programmers can retrieve information on players and individual units in StarCraft as well as issue a wide variety of commands to units, opening the doors for custom AIs with new micro and macro algorithms. There has been some very clever reverse engineering to do this. To simplify using BWAPI you can also use the Brood War Standard Add-on Library (BWSAL) that provides several robust components which execute basic tasks, such as constructing buildings, training units, gathering resources, and build-order management.

You can buy StarCraft plus the expansion as a download for $15 from Blizzard's online store. Blizzard have signaled their approval of the Competition. This is good as some companies can get a bit funny about their software being used in ways they didn't intend it.

However C++ is not the only language you can control this with. There is support for several languages and a bridge to allow .NET coded AI. The competition starts in September so you can register between now and the start of September with the competition running through to the middle of October. Entry is free and already over 50 teams have entered.

Link to Programming Challenge Thirty One Flip Coins
Link to Programming Challenge Thirty Two Looping Loops

Challenge 31 Results and StarCraft AI Contest originally appeared on About.com C / C++ / C# on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 18:14:05.

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Iterating through your Own List with C# foreach

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 06:14:50 +0000

Collection classes support IEnumerable so you can easily iterate through them using foreach. But what if you've created your own list management object and wish to do this? Internally it might use a collections (say List) but that should be private and you don't want to make it public just to write bad code like


foreach (myobject m in mylist.list)

Where mylist is class that has a List list. You just want to write better code like this:


foreach (myobject m in mylist)

Well you can but you need to (in C# versions before 2.0) implement the IEnumerable interface or much easier in >= 2.0, by just adding a three line function. For details on how to write this function, see this new quick tip with example source code. You can see more C# tips at the link below. if you have any programming tips that the world should see, let me know by an email to cplus.guide@about.com?subject=programming tips

Link to C# Programming Quick Tips

Iterating through your Own List with C# foreach originally appeared on About.com C / C++ / C# on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 06:14:50.

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Who is the Target Audience for an iPad?

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:24:20 +0000

I've heard and read a fair bit of negative stuff about the iPad. Partly this is because of the expectation, which Apple had quite some input through controlled and unattributable leaks to the press. If we hadn't got iPhones already this would have been truly revolutionary. I think people expected it to be larger capacity and a more powerful beast but the Wii has proved that less can compete and outsell more powerful games consoles.

I see the audience for the iPad as being the same as that who buy a PC with Google's Chrome OS on. Web browsers, i.e. people not software, No booting up a computer and logging on the net, just switch it on and instant browsing and instant on games. Don't forget all your current iPhone apps will also sync and be usable. I think there will be a lot of new games, those written in Objective-C and existing Flash games once Flash CS5 comes out with the new "export to an Xcode project" feature. Casual games are a big business and will continue to grow with the iPad fueling much of that growth.

I'm already working on the first iPhone App tutorial and iPad development comes as free with that. I can't wait to get an iPad...

Link to Objective-C Code Library

Who is the Target Audience for an iPad? originally appeared on About.com C / C++ / C# on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 00:24:20.

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