Over at Bill Sander’s blog AS3 Design Patterns, he talks about his journey into design patterns and that his New Year resolution is “Improve nailing down relationships between classes in design patterns.” This year I have expanded my knowledge of design patterns in areas that I do not normally require in my everyday work, but just learning their existence has given me the enlightenment of not just how the design pattern works but ‘why’ it exists and what would happen to a system built without it.

My personal development New Year’s resolution is: “Learning to prototype quickly while keeping modular using loose coupling.” Being able to produce a skeleton of a system quickly helps to a keep the momentum of a project going and to isolate design flaws. However, rapid development can cause a system to be become stagnate and locked into a certain implementation. However, wise programming decisions like using the acquaintance relationship between classes and employing design patterns like strategy or template will make my prototypes open enough to evolve into the final product without infrastructure rewrites.

Update: While technically the new decade starts in 2011, I find the debate mute as people will refer to this era as the “2010’s“.

Image (c) to mattthesamurai.deviantart.com

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Unity3D, a primarily web based 3D accelerated language, has announced their “indie” version of their engine as a free no-strings-attached package. This was a wise choice for the company as Google’s free O3D alternative has been gaining support and Adobe’s Flash is rumored to get 3D acceleration soon.

In just a week later, Epic Games released the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a desktop commercial gaming engine, free of change for non-profit usage. UDK, however, does not compete with Unity3D. UDK has an incredible desktop graphics engine that Unity3D would not be able to compare to. However, Unity3D can run over the browser, has a super small file size for compiled games, and is much easier to learn than UDK. It is also worth mentioning that Unity3D is not a direct competitor to Flash either as its tools for 2D development are poor at best and Flash is installed on almost 97% of all computers (while Unity3D is around 6% I think). There has been little news on the haXe side of things in the past month which is a little disappointing considering the potential of the language.

Finally, Google unveiled Go programming language which is tailored towards system and server development and takes advantage of concepts like multi-threading and server clustering of tasks. While this is not terribly exciting for some, this language may reduce much of the massive complexity employed for enterprise systems and servers today.

One of the underlying themes we are seeing here today is that the user community around a platform is king. A developed language may be perfect and boast all kinds of features, but without users, it inevitably fails. As a developer, this is a fantastic change in the industry as it means cheaper or free entry into powerful languages and more help and support being offered to the community from the creators.

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Adobe announced that this years MAX event will be one of the most significant ones in the history of the event. There are lots of rumors floating around on what might be unveiled during the event. We know from enough sources that Adobe plans to showcase Flash Player 10 running on almost all major mobile devices (excluding Apple since they hate the idea of application framework competition). In addition, there has been some rumors from Adobe twitter accounts that a new improved desktop Flash Player 10 version will be released (perhaps faster??). Lastly, here is a guess of my own, Nintendo Wii may also get FP10 because they have shown that they are working with Opera and Adobe to port over the player- as last month Flash Lite 3.1 was released in an update. So remember to set your calendars for October 4th to the 7th as it might a historic day for the Flash platform as a whole. It’s very exciting to imagine having full Flash Player 10 Flex applications running on my Android G1!

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• PROs
  • Faster than AS3 10% to 200% depending on use
  • Single language to also write the server platform
  • Flash Player 10 has a huge penetration rate (87% roughly)
• CONs
  • Still rather slow

• PROs
  • Faster than Flash by at least 400% in math and drawing APIs
  • Growing community (10,000+ users)
• CONs
  • Costly
  • Focused around primarily 3D development
  • Small penetration rate for its player (maybe 5% or less)

O3D by Google Labs

• PROs
  • Comparable to Unity3D
  • Bleeding edge technology
  • Google’s supported platform
• CONs
  • Buggy and very new
  • Lacks industrial strength demos
  • Extremely small player install base (< 1%)

Super Fast Media Library

• PROs
  • Super fast 2D library (several times faster than the above APIs)
  • Uses C++ and would allow higher customization and flexibility
• CONs
  • Desktop installation / is not loaded by the browser (user barrier)
  • Only meant for 2D

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Haxe information and download

Update: Nicolas Cannasse has a simple example of a C++ compile on his blog.

Changes 2009-07-26: 2.04

• flash9 : fixed get_full_path error with -D fdb
• js : fixed Array.remove on IE
• flash8 : removed extra empty AS3 tag (causing some issue with F8 loadMovie)
• improved speed of Bytes unserializing (no need for BytesBuffer)
• flash9 : bugfix, Null<Typedef> was generating dynamic code
• flash9 : added error message in flash.Vector if used without flash 10
• flash9 : fixed some “never” property access issues
• all : added “never” property access support for all platforms
• js : small syntax fix with value-blocks
• js : fixed Type.enumEq with null values
• js/flash8 : use &0xFF in haxe.io.Bytes.set
• flash9 : fixed switch on Null<Int> verify error
• flash9 : fixes related to UInt type + error when using Int/UInt comparison
• as3 : improved Vector support, inline flash.Lib.as
• as3 : bugfix with skip_constructor
• as3 : added Enum.__constructs__ (allow Type.getEnumConstructs)
• as3 : make all constructor parameters optional (allow Type.createEmptyInstance)
• as3 : bugfix with property access inside setter (stack overflow)
• all : Enum is now Enum<T>
• all : added Type.createEnumIndex
• all : forbid same name for static+instance field (not supported on several platforms)
• all : renamed haxe.Http.request to “requestUrl”
• all : renamed neko.zip.Compress/Uncompress.run to “execute”
• spod : fix very rare issue with relations and transactions
• compiler : added TClosure – optimize closure creation and ease code generation
• cpp : added CPP platform
• all : added ‘using’ syntax
• neko : added ‘domains’ optional param to ThreadRemotingServer to answer policy-file-request
• php : fixed php.db.Mysql so that getResult is consistent with Neko behavior
• php : fixed __toString for anonymouse objects
• php : fixed bug in overridden dynamic functions
• php : fixed round to be consistent with other platforms
• php : fixed bug concatenating two dynamic variables
• php : php.Lib.rethrow now works as expected
• flash9 : fixed bug with SWC output and recursive types
• flash8 : fixed inversed arguments in __new__
• neko : added neko.net.Socket.setFastSend
• php: fixed String.charCodeAt
• php: minor optimization (removed foreach from std code)
• php: implemented haxe.Stack
• php: changed exception handler to use haXe call stack
• php: changed special vars to use the » prefix instead of __
• php: fixed use of reserved keywords for var names
• php: List iterator is now class based (faster)
• php: fixed behavior of class variables having assigned functions
• php: fixed php.db.Manager (was uncorrectly removing superclass fields)
• php: added support for native Iterator and IteratorAggregate interfaces
• all : added –display classes and –display keywords
• all : fixed issue with optional parameters in inline functions
• all : allow implementing interfaces with inline methods
• all : enable inlining for getter/setter/iterator/resolve/using

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However, from my observations, the physical engineering world seems to completely lack such concepts as a whole. Almost every device you can buy has parts that are completely non-interchangeable with one-another. About the only thing that is standard is the screw type that the product gets put together with. Why can’t products be made with interchangeable plug-n-play modules? If the radio brakes in one stereo, why can’t I just pull out the ‘radio receiver module’ and replace it with another?

You can sorta do that by un-soldering several circuit board parts, look at the model numbers (if they have one), and hope that some foreign warehouse has them for sale for consumers. It makes it even more difficult because there are hundreds of thousands variations on parts and warehouses can’t inventory that many effectively… as opposed to carrying components that encapsulate functionality that devices share in common. This is just one example of engineering evolving.

What would Engineering 2.0 look like? Perhaps, if someone had an idea to build their own radio, they could:

• Create a blueprint of the radio case using a web application
• Upload the blueprint to a company that can cost-effectively make custom cases
• Order a radio and power ‘module’
• Order device buttons that are easily mountable to custom cases
• Radio module has a ‘USB’-esk port for the button interface to plug into

In a weekend, someone who knows little about the engineering world could literally build their own home device that fits their exact needs. Maybe this is all far-fetched, but I am convinced that traditional everyday engineering as we know it will change based on the need for a new level of global standardization and maintenance tasks that are client friendly.

Newsweek offers an interesting article that touches on the issue as well:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/55776

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Ever had one of those times where you had quickly dismissed a piece of software only to find how essential it was after giving it a try later on? This happen to me roughly last week when I had issues with quick launch icons and desktop shortcuts. I had so many shortcuts that I had to organize icons in folders… and even the folders started to litter the desktop. While the Windows Vista’s start search bar is helpful, it does not allow (with the exception of some hacks) the use of custom commands and doesn’t supply any configuration options for its search index.
I needed a better solution for quick access to directory folders and applications…

I then remembered a program called Launchy that was a more customizable search bar. After I got it setup, I suddenly realized how vastly superior it was to my horde of desktop and quick-launch icons. Ultimately, I ended up switching from Launchy to Executor as it better support for custom commands. These commands can perform what would be several manual steps in just one keyword which is rather handy. Humanize Enso (the desktop grandfather project of Ubiquity) looks to help bring friendlier human language syntax than either both previous applications, but personally I find Executor able to do everything I need it to do.

After playing around with these applications, I remembered that Firefox had a similar plugin called Ubiquity that did something like this except for website related content. Between Ubiquity and Executor, I can execute almost any function of my computer within a few key taps. This means I have really no need for desktop icons or a quick-launch bar which removes a ton of visual clutter while still being efficient at accessing my commonly used applications.

While I think language interfaces are a fantastic way to eliminate clutter and improve efficiency, I don’t think they are a replacement for GUI interfaces as most current implementations have done (like Bash, Ubiquity, Launchy, etc). It would be a neat concept to try to merge the two methodologies into one interface… perhaps starting with a language interface and switching into GUI modes when the user needs finer control for complex input.

It will be really interesting how well into the future projects like Ubiquity and Firefox Awesome Bar are accepted into the general public. My main concern is if beginner to novice computer users are able to unlearn GUI control in exchange with keyboard hot-keys and human language syntax.

Here are two interesting articles on the subject that are worth mentioning:
Why Language Interfaces?
Problems with Language Interfaces?

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The misconception is that people associate video playback as a major reason to be using Flash since it is a common use for websites. Even in the video playback category, Flash player will still live on. Features like secure streaming, dynamic buffering, and rich video controls will keep professional from switching technologies. It seems like the people who are hyping HTML 5 the most are HTML developers who are daunted by or have a disliking towards Flash. I do not blame them as it is a hassle to create a Flash video player for just showing a simple video on a web page. However, the notion that HTML5 can kill off Flash, Silverlight, Unity3d, O3D, or any other rich multimedia plugin ignores the facts that these tools were created for large scale Application, game development, and even 3D multimedia development. You could argue that someone could write a 3D engine that uses the Canvas, but it wouldn’t have the speed as a plugin that has access to low level processing and video card integration.

What I am trying to say is, use the right tools for the job. Silverlight is a multimedia tool meant for .NET developers. Flash is a multimedia tool meant for non-programmers and Java-style developers. HTML is a great tool for web page markup and some presentation content. Trying to bend a tool beyond their intended use is only abusing the platform. Picking the right tools for the job is the most important project decision you can make.

Soapbox ranting aside, I will be working on uploading more advanced examples for FlashMVC as soon as I have some more spare time.

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Some suggest Java as a game platform as the language is respectable. However, graphics rendering speed and the Java gaming community is poor at best in my humble opinion. I did enjoy using BlitzMax back in the day, but the engine is simply not powerful enough to create something near commercial quality. Also, the popularity of the language is low, and I would have little professional use for learning more of the language. Flash AS3 is my primary profession; however, its performance leaves much to be desired at times. On the other side, Silverlight 3 is looking rather nifty, but the API still looks funky and doesn’t seem like the engine is really mature enough to do any major development in. Perhaps, if Silverlight 4 has near XNA speeds, better shaders and bitmap drawing, and the XAML to C# connection has less oddities in the API… it would be a contender for my list. Aside from the web platform, I could also go for a super high-end engine like Unreal Engine 3 or Source, but I couldn’t ever hope to produce something commercial with it because of the insanely expensive licensing (hundreds of thousands we are talking about!). Of course this is also Torque, but I have not been impressed with any of the games made on the platform, and there is a moderate cost to get started with it.

So I eventually evaluated my choices to XNA, haXe, and Unity3D:

Pros:

• Very fast (Fastest of the choices)
• Great shader support
• C# is a nice language with advanced OOP support
• Xbox and Windows deployment
• Free for indie users

Cons:

• Meant really for just the xbox… there is little support for Windows only deployment and DRM concerns. Also, no luck for Macs.
• Unlike the other two, XNA cannot steam which means a smaller audience because of the hassle of downloading
• Super new so the community is not that large in general

Pros:

• Compiles out to Flash which 98% of users have already installed
• Real-world benchmarks show 2x the speed of Flash 9 using code performance optimizations unique to haXe
• From working with haXe, I will use that same knowledge to build javascript and neko scripts in the future if I wanted
• I can use my existing knowledge of Flash to accelerate my development
• Totally free

Cons:

• No Flash IDE
• Also super new with a small community and little to speak of tutorials
• Still slower than unity3D and XNA
• Currently does not support importing Flash libraries which reduces the amount of existing libraries I can bring over versus just using Flash AS3.

Pros:

• Fastest of the web 3D engine… also nice looking
• Supports developed on Macs and now Windows
• Uses Python for scripting
• Supports large number of users for networking and shaders

Cons:

• No free version to try things out (only 30 day trial)
• Costly software (the indie license has a terrible roster of features making the Pro version the ideal choice)
• Little resources and support for making 2D games… everything is geared for 3D development. This can be a negative thing for me as I like to develop quick 2D testing scenarios for AI scripts. From what I can see, there are few tools for doing advanced bitmap drawing.

Final thoughts:

In truth, I have not made up my mind yet. The pros and cons of all the solutions seem to make every choice the same weight in how it appeals to me. I could forsake all the above options and just go with C++ with Allegro or SDL, but they too have their ups and downs. Allergro is really slow without full DirectX/OpenGL support and SDL seems to have an aged API with little in the future for it. Also, neither of those libraries natively support shaders. XNA would give me all the speed I would need for what I am trying to accomplish, but using a language that streams over the internet would give me a much wider audience.

Well, what do you say readers? Are there other languages I should be looking at? For my next post on the subject, I will try to make some benchmarks in all of the three languages to test their true strengths.

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Design Pattern Definition
In software engineering, a design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations. Object-oriented design patterns typically show relationships and interactions between classes or objects, without specifying the final application classes or objects that are involved.
- read more at WikiPedia

MVC Definition (the most common principle of Design Patterns)

“Model–View–Controller (MVC) is an architectural pattern used in software engineering. Successful use of the pattern isolates business logic from user interface considerations, resulting in an application where it is easier to modify either the visual appearance of the application or the underlying business rules without affecting the other. In MVC, the model represents the information (the data) of the application; the view corresponds to elements of the user interface such as text, checkbox items, and so forth; and the controller manages the communication of data and the business rules used to manipulate the data to and from the model.”
- read more at WikiPedia

Books:

• Gang of Four’s original Design Patterns
• Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns (highly recommended)
• ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns: Object Oriented Programming Techniques

AS3 Design Pattern Informational Websites:

• www.as3dp.com – ActionScript 3 Design Pattern Blog (Principles Category)
• ntt.cc posts on of porting GoF design patterns to AS3

Flash Design Pattern Frameworks:
(for now, it’s best to avoid these until you understand the fundamentals of MVC)

• FlashMVC
• PureMVC
• Cairngorm

Good Design Priniciples:

• ALWAYS type your variables (not really design principle but I too often see people doing this still)
• An object/MovieClip should contain the actions that it performs (as oppose to objects outside the class forcing it to perform actions)
• A class should never be able to “break” if the user sets a property or calls a function on it when they are not suppose to. Keep preventive logic in the class that’s doing the work.
• A good chosen design pattern for a problem will not take any longer to implement than not using it with spaghetti code.

Feel free to leave comments or email me about any further questions you have about Design Patterns or where to find additional materials on it. Have a great weekend everyone!

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1. Its operation can be completely explained by a simple graphical illustration.
2. It can be completely explained in a few sentences of human language.
3. It can be implemented in a computer language using just a few lines of code.
4. The number of its possible variations is small enough so that all of them can be computed.

He explains complicated encryption, data compression, image recognition, turing machines, sociology and biology concepts, and other things with the use of simple programs that build complexity based on rules. These rules are applied to a pattern or the generation of a pattern based on each iteration step in its construction and its surrounding environment of steps. This is not something to dismiss lightly as it takes a clever mind to brake apart these systems into patters that can be logically broken down into a set of interlocking rules. Chaos Theory is similar to this concept except that Chaos Theory states that the end result of a pattern must be derived or seeded by its environment. However, many of the pattern generation methods used by Stephen Wolfram ignore the initial condition of its environment when building its matrix.

On the other hand, if I had to play devil’s advocate, I do not see how some problems can be researched and developed using simple program patterns. I say this as these patterns are usually derived once one has observed a complex system and found its atomic pieces from understanding the whole structure. It would be like telling a group of people about a store that they have no idea how to get to and asking them to find it since they’ve been told what the store is like. They might be able to reach it by taking random directions, but it would not nearly be as efficient as having a detailed map with the location marked. Same thing applies here, how do you really hope to build a complex system with a simplistic set of rules when you lack the understanding of the complexity as a whole? On the other hand, perhaps the point that the author was trying to make is not how to understand the complex by solely its atomic parts, but how to simulate the complex once it has been fully understood using a simplistic set of instructions.

My personal interest in this subject ranges from several projects I am working on; however, I have been developing a neural network replacement mechanism for use in game simulations that would reduce processing overhead and generate a higher range of dynamic actions versus a simple AI weighted conditional system.

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What I am trying to say is CardSpace was an amazing concept, but it has failed to appeal to both the larger developer community and end users.  I see single Firefox plugins that fill in forms having much more popularity and community buzz. They require nothing of the developer of the site, easy startup for the end user, doesn’t require the OS to support certain features, requires no installation (other than the browser plugin), and the concept is very logical to follow.

The only other idea that could have a higher adoption than these generic browser plugins would be a global informtion site that your personal form information could be tethered from. However, this would require a big name behind the project as people would not trust a service with all their personal information that they didn’t already have some form of trust with beforehand. Who could it be? Google perhaps?
On a side note, an excellent Firefox plugin for filling out forms is Sxipper .

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