IT Hare on Soft.ware

Disclosure: On this site you won’t find specific advice on “how to call function xyz()”. Interpreting C++ ARM and #pragma dwim is also out of scope.

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We’re treating our readers as intelligent beings who can use Google and/or StackOverflow, where all such specific questions were answered more than once.

What you will find is opinions, more opinions, and even more opinions on all the aspects of software development - and with a large chunk of them based on real-world experience too.

Your mileage may vary. Batteries not included.

 

Distributed Databases 101: CAP, BASE, and Replication

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Quote: “The worst case of inconsistency happens when row X in database A is modified (by a Client connected to datacenter A), and the same row X in database B is independently modified too (by a Client connected to datacenter B).”
Another Quote: “One way to avoid reports affecting operational DB, is via creating a read-only replica of our main operational DB – and running our reports off that replica.”
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Databases 101: ACID, MVCC vs Locks, Transaction Isolation Levels, and Concurrency

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Quote: “for larger-scale MOGs, functionality-wise it is common to have 4 different types of databases: transactional processing (OLTP) DBs, real-time reporting DBs, archive DBs, and analytical DBs (OLAP)”
Another Quote: “both MVCC-based and Lock-based DBMS issue locks (and therefore, both can cause all kinds of trouble such as deadlocks etc.); however, the difference lies with the number of locks issued by them.”
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Game Graphics 101: Rendering Pipeline & Shaders

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Quote: “each of the stages of the rendering pipeline is operating on a large set of items (vertices or fragments/pixels)”
Another Quote: “These days, even if the program uses fixed-pipeline, that fixed-pipeline is simulated over shaders anyway 😉”
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Game Graphics 101: Lights!.. Camera!.. Frustum?

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Quote: “In games, more often than not, we’ll be dealing with so-called Phong reflection model.”
Another Quote: “with orthographic projection, the lines which project points from our 3D world onto our 2D screen, are no longer converging to one single point; instead, they go parallel to each other.”
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Game Graphics 101: Textures, UV Mapping, and Texture Filtering

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Quote: “Size-wise, textures are HUGE. Actually, in a typical 3D game, 90%+ of the space on disk (and of GPU bandwidth/RAM) are used by textures.”
Another Quote: “3D anti-aliasing algorithms can be divided into two large groups: ‘proper’ anti-aliasing (the one which tries to avoid anti-aliasing in the first place), and ‘post-processing’ anti-aliasing (the one which creates an aliased image – and then post-processes it to make it look better).”
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Infographics: Operation Costs in CPU Clock Cycles

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Quote: “Back in 80s, it was possible to calculate the speed of the program just by looking at assembly.”
Another Quote: “keep in mind that these days compilers tend to ignore inline specifications more often than not”
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MOG Graphics 101: 3D Maths Basics, Meshes, Client- and Server-Side Polygon Counts

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Quote: “for the purposes of the MOG network communications, I usually suggest using Euler angles to represent rotations/orientations”
Another Quote: “One thing which persistently haunts 3D developers, is polygon count.”
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