Comments for SyndicateX.com

Comment on Binary Serialization in C# by jjohnson

jjohnson — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:23:27 +0000

Oh, one other thing: in many cases I have objects that may be built up from several different calls and/or operations. For example, I may have pulled down brand data for a product, stripped HTML from it and attached it to the product. Binary serialization preserves the advanced state of the object and the relationship.

Comment on Binary Serialization in C# by jjohnson

jjohnson — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:18:00 +0000

My objects are created from JSON in the first place so I thought about just caching the JSON before deserializing. But let’s say I did that – to deserialize the cache on application start I’d have to read from disk, decompress, parse the json/xml strings and use reflection to create objects from the parsed attribute/value pairs. And repeat in reverse to save the cache back down after changes. The binary data is very small and the only penalty is the disk read. Once you read it off disk, it pretty much just IS the data it’s supposed to be.

I didn’t test it scientifically but it *appeared* that I was deserializing the entire cache from binary data faster (including the read) than I could deserialize a moderately sized chunk of JSON that was already in memory.

Anyway, I did consider it but I like the automatic savings you get with binary. It is more difficult to debug and you have to be careful with auto-properties but…it was worth it to learn and understand more about it. If I had more time I’d test the speed differences because it would be interesting to see hard numbers. Like you said… YMMV

Comment on Binary Serialization in C# by Joel Martinez

Joel Martinez — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:55:06 +0000

Another approach you could take is to continue using the serialization you know and love (json, etc.), but then compress the output before saving it to disk. That gives you the reliability of the serializers that you’re familiar with, and the disk savings. *disclaimer*, I’d assume this will be slightly slower than raw binary serialization, so YMMV

Comment on FAQs by Adam

Adam — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:47:08 +0000

What are your favorite Beach Boys lyrics?

Comment on Construct 2: Kicking the Tires by jjohnson

jjohnson — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:58:47 +0000

Thanks. The art is mine, I did it for a different project but it worked nicely for this quick test.

The game is far from robust but it’s nice for how few hours it took. Also, I probably wouldn’t actually use physics in a space game (overkill) but I wanted to see how hard it was to implement (answer: easy!)

Anyway, thanks for your comment. Let me know if you have questions about how I did anything.

Comment on Construct 2: Kicking the Tires by Jsaez

Jsaez — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:44:34 +0000

Hey, that’s nice!

Did you make the art yourself?

Comment on Digital Economics 101 by jjohnson

jjohnson — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:01:51 +0000

Commoditization occurs when a product becomes fungibile, or considered equivalent across the market. Wheat is considered a commodity because modern agriculture produces a product so consistent that its origins can’t be easily determined and therefore it is equal. The main consideration in the wheat market is the global supply, which determines the value.

To use music as an example: It becomes widely produced and so easily available that the consumer stops distinguishing between songs for their individual value. The markets stop focusing on the fact that they have “Song X” and instead value their product by quantity available and lowest price. At that point, isn’t it a commodity market?

You said that commodities are different from higher value goods but the defining factor of a high value good is differentiation. While apps, music, etc may not be there yet I think that commoditization of digital media is happening.

At the end of the day, even commodities aren’t completely fungible. You can brand wheat as organic, or a resource gathering process as sustainable and inflate the perceived value by creating differentiation in something previously fungible. So the fact that media isn’t completely fungible doesn’t change the fact that it’s being commoditized.

So the point of the article is, if the content you’re creating is no longer viewed as a higher value product, but instead as a commodity…how does that change your business model?

I may be way off base here as my economics knowledge is very basic. I’d love a response explaining your stance more!

Comment on Digital Economics 101 by JG

JG — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:56:11 +0000

The entire metaphor of “raw materials” presumes software is a commodity. This is a silly and simply incorrect assumption. The analog/metaphor will take you to the wrong conclusions if you aren’t careful. Commodities are different animals economically, sociologically and technologically from higher value goods.

Comment on Load Remote Content in FlatRedBall by Joel Martinez (@joelmartinez)

Joel Martinez (@joelmartinez) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:24:11 +0000

for the homework, check out the HttpManager class in FRB … it takes care of download http resources on a separate thread and lets you process the result on the background thread

Comment on Best Practice: Passing Types to Methods by Joel Martinez (@joelmartinez)

Joel Martinez (@joelmartinez) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 21:04:30 +0000

Do both If I just need the Type, I always have a generic overload. I prefer calling the generic method, but there are instances where passing a type without involving generics can be really useful. The overload makes it easy to support both use cases.