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Top 10 Reasons #SocialGames Still Suck

1) Background music on the web = fail.

2) Whether I’m playing Zombie Zone or Furry Faire it’s the exact same mechanics.

3) Daily deals and bonuses that would make an infomercial barker blush.

4) Your stupid game falls below the fold (probably okay, just missing more “invite friends” tabs).

5) Getting cross-sold while I’m actually trying to play THIS game.

6) Fekking tabs.

7) I don’t play the game *with* my friends, I play it … *at* my friends?

8) Using Flash always makes me feel like I’m playing with a $20 plastic toy.

9) So linear my ruler is starting to look squiggly by comparison.

10) Games are about interesting choices, social games are about exploiting the human psyche.

Const: The Final Chapter

I was more or less weaned on C/C++, and one of the many *-isms I developed from that weaning (like ++pre-incrementing variables in for-loops for efficiency’s sake) was placing constants on the left side of comparisons to avoid accidental assignments (e.g. NULL == x). This practice has carried over to my Java code, serving no purpose other than to make people not used to writing code this way go cross-eyed when they read mine. Sorry, co-workers.

I also went through a “const correct” C++ phase where everything in my code was decorated with const. I even learned how to speak const-ese, and parse a “const pointer to a const pointer to const” and all its perverted little cousins. With Java’s weaker “final” concept, I never really went on a similar jag, although the temptation did occur occasionally.

Looking at some Java code recently, I noticed a combo of my constant == x idiom and my simultaneous urge to make x (a function parameter) final. Kind of like a couple being on the pill and using condoms at the same time. Then I had a thought: why aren’t all function parameters implicitly final/const/([insert language]’s concept of immutable)? It seems like it would automatically ratchet up the safety (and potentially performance) without all the syntactic bloat of variable decoration. What is the use case for actually wanting to alter function parameters? What do other non-Java/C languages have to say about this? I’m sure there are insurmountable legacy code issues, but is there any reason this is not a good idea in theory?

via flylighter @ selectbutton

iloveimages:

Link Dump - Thursday July 29th, 2010

Adventures in fashion, food, photography, art and street style in Seattle and beyond.

Awesome palette cycling demo with HTML5 canvas. Suddenly it’s 1988 again.

Startup Lessons Learned at Dropbox.

For posterity’s sake

I added some really old code to github tonight, I guess just to semi-immortalize this stuff that I sunk untold hours into for no apparent reason.

http://github.com/newobj/taz - a general purpose game/simulation engine. (ca. 2000-2004)

http://github.com/newobj/ffwd - audio/video code, VSTs, standalone apps. (ca. 2002)