Little Miss Information or Alotta?

I’m facinated by how information and mis-information spread on the internet.  Certain types of information (e.g., specific programming techniques) tend to be highly reliable, while others (e.g., word origins and “urban legends”) tend to be highly un-reliable.

It’s not just that some information is generally reliable and other information is a little less so–it runs to extremes.  If you find programming API (Application Programming Interface) documentation, it’s probably about 99% accurate.  However, if you receive a random email about the etymology (origin/history) of a word, it’s probably got a 90% (or more) chance of being in-accurate.

I think it’s partially a case of how simple it is to verify the information. 

For example, if you’re programming Windows and you read a website that says to call a particular API function to perform a task, you can add the function call to your code and it either works or it doesn’t.  You get immediate feedback.

But, something like etymology is a bit more difficult to verify (but not if you know where to look).  And the same holds for urban legends.  However, when you find a site, how can you verify that they really know what they’re talking about?

You can’t (at least not by any simple means).  You’re left on your own to figure that out.  Still, you can sometimes make progress by eliminating unreliable sites, and hopefully word will spread about the really good ones (like snopes urban legends mentioned above).

I find it a bit unnerving to think about the sheer amount of untrue information circulating out there which is believed by millions.  It may seem insignificant–just silly urban legends, who cares if we believe ones that aren’t true?

But I think that view is short-sighted.  The problem is that, even with trivial things like urban legends, we are being conditioned to accept information without being critical of it.  And, it seems likely that this will lead to being less critical of non-trivial information.

And that could be dangerous, especially when you consider that the information circulated in certain urban legends (corporate slander or incorrect virus removal instructions) can already be considered non-trivial.

Fortunately, things seem to be changing.  Many of us are turned on to urban legends sites, and even if we don’t look up every tidbit, at least we can remember to take each broadcast email with a giant grain of salt.

Let’s hope that trend continues.

Code refactoring

About two years ago, I read Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Fowler et al.

At first, refactoring does not seem to be relevant to new designs. However, after reading the book, I began to rethink code development, to see it more as a process of designing, building, and most importantly, re-designing (by refactoring or other means).

This is in contrast to the popular object-oriented programming/design (OOP/OOD) books, which concentrate on creating a perfect design which is then neatly translated into code. The implication is that the code will never need to be touched again (except for minor maintenance).

In practice, this is usually impossible. A first design is unlikely to be perfect, so there really is no point in looking at it that way.

In fairness, OOP/OOD books do actually talk about iteration and maintenance. However, it is not clear how to go about restructuring code. You feel that, if you don't find the perfect design the first time, you'll be stuck with a broken system that has little chance of ever being corrected.

Refactoring gives you tools to restructure code without breaking it, which makes the whole re-design process seem less hopeless. Once you see that your code can be refactored to improve the design, there is less concern about perfecting the first iteration. And that, in turn, allows you to be more productive, coding instead of over-designing your systems.

Procedural world generation

Here is a nice series of gamasutra articles that details the creation of a procedurally generated universe, including terrain and textures.  Procedural world-creation is an interesting topic I’d like to explore further at some point.  These articles are a good starting point.

A Real-Time Procedural Universe, Part One: Generating Planetary Bodies  

A Real-Time Procedural Universe, Part Two: Rendering Planetary Bodies

A Real-Time Procedural Universe, Part Three: Matters of Scale

A Real-Time Procedural Universe, Part Four: Dynamic Ground Textures and Objects

Casual games market

A friend of mine sent me this article about casual games development, which tends to get glossed over by the mainstream game industry.  That’s unfortunate; small scale production seems a perfect playground for trying out new and innovative game designs.

In particular, the second page of the article has a lot of good links to developer information.

Tom’s Hardware Windoze enhancements

[Previously posted to my Blogger blog]

Found a nice Tom’s Hardware article ”Pepping Up Windows” which recommends several free/open source utilities for improving your Windoze work environment.  My favorite utility is Ditto, which maintains a database of all items that you copy to the clipboard. 

Ernest Adams, “The End Of Copyright”

[Previously posted to my Blogger blog]

Here is a great “Designer’s Notebook” article by Ernest Adams which appeared on gamasutra recently.

Gamasutra – Designer’s Notebook – “The End Of Copyright”

I agree with almost the entire article. However, I don’t think Copyright will completely die. A few aspects of it will survive, e.g. protection against plagiarism.

I wrote a short email to Ernest about the plagiarism aspects of Copyright. I don’t really expect to get a reply, but you never know…

Decided to move my blog here.

After using Blogger for a while, I’ve decided to move on.  I really need to have categories support.  Since I was planning to use WordPress anyway, I thought I would give WordPress.com a try, so, here goes…