Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Rolan7]

I'd argue that everyone is using the terms wrong nowadays, darn kids, but there's literally only one case where I'm a prescriptivist about language

[methylatedspirit]

I suppose you could talk about the maturity of software by talking about its stability. Like, DF is a self-professed alpha, but it's stable enough that it won't always corrupt your savefiles or your filesystem (no guarantees). Some "alpha" games are so buggy that they're more-or-less unplayable (though most would call it "pre-alpha" or "early alpha" nowadays).

There's sorta a sliding scale of what's meant by "alpha". It seems to run the gamut from "we're not at all sure if it's even gonna work at all on your machine" to "decently stable, missing features". DF is clearly on the stable end of that scale. I'd prefer if people didn't use "alpha" or "beta", and instead stated how stable they believe their software is. But then you get into definitional arguments over what's "stable" and what's "unstable". Like, if it crashes once every week, is it stable?

[EuchreJack]

In truth, the terms Alpha and Beta related to whom was able to view the game.  Alphas were always internal until Toady One released DF with the alpha label.
Beta was traditionally the first version that would be shown to playtesters.

So it's all Toady's fault, of course! 

...also, the problem with discussions of stability is that what is super-stable on my system might crash your system, and visa versa.  Stability is subjective.

[MrRoboto75]

I've always seen Alpha as the "proof of concept" stage, you have the bare bones game features and the core gameplay loop, the game might be "completable" but not always.  Whereas Beta is expanding and refining on that, such as the rest of the levels, streamlining or QoL for the game loop, or more features.

...but ultimately it's up to the dev to call it whatever.  Even calling a game "done" could be relatively meaningless as games can often get free patches that add whole content post full release.

[Frumple]

In truth, the terms Alpha and Beta related to whom was able to view the game.  Alphas were always internal until Toady One released DF with the alpha label.
Beta was traditionally the first version that would be shown to playtesters.

There were totally public alphas prior to DF, though? It's only been public since '06. Don't ask me to recall titles 'cause we're talking like fifteen years ago, but I'm quite sure I got involved with some well before DF released.

I think there used to be a point I thought the terms alpha or beta actually meant anything in terms of game development, but after a good twenty years and change mucking about with indie games and whatnot, I've been disabused of the notion. They're functionally nonsense words with no consistent meaning, used haphazardly by dilettantes and professionals alike. Treat them as such

[None]

Furthest back I can recall would be playing a LAN test build for a space dogfighting game made by university students called Parsec back from those old MacAddict CDs they'd distribute with shareware, back in the 90s. 'Course, that didn't exactly say 'alpha' or 'beta' on it, but it did say 'test build!'

[methylatedspirit]

I've seen some videos about upgrading from Windows 1.0 to 10. Can such a thing be done for a Linux distro, like upgrading from Slackware 1.0 (1993) all the way to Slackware 14.2 (2016), step-by-step? Has such a thing been done on a VM?

[Rolan7]

Since upgrading from Windows 98 (much less 1.0) to 10 involves changing from FAT to NTFS (or to whatever the new thing is)...

Hm.
I don't know slackware, but it's pretty core to Ubuntu/Redhat that you can upgrade your way up, step by step, all the way.
I would say that it's possible and officially supported.

Also, good luck.

[RoguelikeRazuka]

Small random question: who came up with the idea of giving these major threads funny nonsensical subtitles (the "[WAAAAAAAAAAluigi]" part in the case of this one)?

[dragdeler]

-

[Rolan7]

I would guess that Gunner-Chan originally inspired it with her Happy Thread hijinks.  Mechanically, it's the OP of each thread editing the "Subject" of the first post, which changes the default subject line for all replies.  Of course, anyone replying can also change the subject line, but it only applies to that one post.

[methylatedspirit]

Mechanically, it's the OP of each thread editing the "Subject" of the first post, which changes the default subject line for all replies.

Which means that this thread's title will never be changed barring some action from The Toad, since the original account associated with this thread was erased on request. That made a whole new mess in the form of the Great Disorder (a name I chose as an ad hoc thing; I'd imagine there's other names), which messes with quote links in the threads that they were active in, but I think that's a story for another time.

I know that there's at least one other active thread whose title is very unlikely to change: the word association thread. This wouldn't normally be an issue, but considering that its title has "2^15.57" in it, which ≈ 48640, that's kinda outdated now that the thread has 64154 (≈ 2^15.97) posts as of this writing. I don't know Skyrunner at all, I came here long after their time, but I assume they just left at some point.

[methylatedspirit]

How does C's (and related) lack of memory protection make it "fast"? What kind of performance-enhancing stuff can you pull in C that wouldn't work in a more-protected language?

[wierd]

Checking a memory location costs an execution slice (or two, or three).  For some computing applications, having repeated checks of that nature can cause significant slowdown.

If your code is well written, you dont need the safetynet. (the problem is that EVERYONE--- THINKS--- They have well written code, when they really do not.)


Given the biggest issue is usually null pointer, or worse, uninitialized pointer-- "well written" again, comes to the fore.

There are legit uses for null pointer, but uninitialized pointer is just always dumb.  Usually, null pointer happens because the program has not populated a list, or because some initial condition that is expected upstream failed to happen. (Such as from a mutex)


Again, "Well Written".

See also Halting Problem. (for added laughs about the concept of Well Written)

[methylatedspirit]

Is it a good idea to write code by the seat of your pants? Whenever I need to automate some tedious task in a Python script, I just write out the commands needed, write the code-ified versions (+ variables), and only then do I actually decide on the structure of how to use the script. I do have an idea of what I need to do, but it's not fully defined at the start of the writing process.