http://op.closedformodification.com A practical view on programming, software development in general, and anything that is related in sometimes surprising ways Thu, 17 May 2007 16:57:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I have made an observation the other day about a curious correlation between [Test Driven Development](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development) (TDD) and what is nowadays called the ["Law of Attraction"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Attraction). This law roughly states that you will attract into your life whatever things or circumstances you repeatedly think about and desire. While I don't ... http://op.closedformodification.com/2007/05/17/the-law-of-code-attraction/ Yesterday I listened to 'Burning Down the House: Game Developers Rant', available [here](http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/gdcradio-net/GDCR/gdcr_010.mp3). It is the recording of a panel that was held last year at the Game Developers Conference and it became very popular, because big game industry names were cursing our industry, and they also used ... http://op.closedformodification.com/2006/09/21/game-developer-rant/ I recently implemented "picking" in the publicly available parts of the Doom 3 engine. Picking in 3D games (or applications) means that the mouse cursor position is mapped to the 3D world in such a way that the mouse can be used to "pick" up objects in 3D space. In this ... http://op.closedformodification.com/2006/08/14/from-manual-to-automatic-testing-a-case-study/ Allow me to gleefully report that I have integrated my unit testing framework into the [Doom 3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_3) engine. I have previously used this framework to run unit tests via a simple text interface. Tests are easily defined using a simple set of macros and automatically enumerated. Now, whenever my ... http://op.closedformodification.com/2006/07/03/unit-testing-within-doom-3/ When looking for X-Macros on Google, the only reference I came across was [this one (ddj.com)](http://www.ddj.com/dept/cpp/184401387), which is also the place where I happened across X-Macros by accident (in the printed version of the magazine). I have since put them to great use in production code. What are X-Macros? They are ... http://op.closedformodification.com/2006/06/18/x-macros/ In a recent chat with two of my now ex-colleagues (our employer having been brutally, swiftly and completely obliterated about 3 weeks ago), we talked about schedules, project management and milestones, and why they don't work. I said it is because people don't like to feel insecure. And they have ... http://op.closedformodification.com/2006/06/08/your-insecurity-does-not-matter/ I find it very helpful to jot down a few squares and arrows when thinking about a new system or a new layer of a system that I am building. These squares and arrows will look very much like UML, but probably not be 100% compliant. The point is, they ... http://op.closedformodification.com/2006/04/13/doodle-up-front/ I can not begin to tell how much I love a little book called ["bird by bird - Some Instructions on Writing and Life"](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385480016/sr=8-1/qid=1143403118/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-3961450-8471104?%5Fencoding=UTF8) by Anne Lamotte. It has influenced my life and my work in more ways than I can list here, and this is also not the subject ... http://op.closedformodification.com/2006/03/26/test-by-test-some-instructions-on-programming-and-life/ I used to have the habit of coming into work, and as the first thing make some coffee and grab something to eat in the kitchen. I would hang out there, chatting with whoever was available, for a varying amount of time. I started noticing that, when doing this, it ... http://op.closedformodification.com/2006/03/15/30-minutes-first-thing-in-the-morning/ Imagine the situation: You have a third party system, and you would like to query it for some information. You are not sure yet how this information will look like, and it will also change over the course of exploring and discovering said system in your test. Let's also ... http://op.closedformodification.com/2006/03/07/testing-practice-use-your-eyes-when-necessary/