andystanton's comments

andystanton | 1 year ago | on: Show HN: Atlas of Space

Love it, thank you for sharing. Can't wait to show my kids later!

Are the background stars randomly generated or do they correspond to the actual galaxy? Distant points of reference would be interesting to see.

andystanton | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: PlantUML based collaborative UML editor is now open source

We make extensive use of sequence diagrams using PlantUML at my work. We don't rigorously adhere to the correct UML arrow types and so on, instead preferring it as a fast way to clearly communicate data flow over time. The fact that it's in a text format means it can be conveniently edited and stored in source control.

I've had less success with component diagrams to represent our systems because the layout engine in PlantUML is (or used to be) quite limited. This resulted in diagrams that didn't communicate the system as well as if I manually drew boxes and lines.

There is a fantastic plugin for Jetbrains IDEs that generates the diagrams in real time which is great for fast feedback, and can be used for driving out diagrams while presenting video calls.

Overall, my conclusion is that you can pick the parts that are useful to you and the people you communicate ideas with.

andystanton | 3 years ago | on: ‘Blade Runner’ at 40

The album Sanctuary by Infinity Shred evokes similar feelings to the Blade Runner score for me.

The track Jasmine (demo) by Jai Paul has a completely different vibe but a gorgeous Vangelis-like synth tone in the chorus. reply

Great question - lots of good recommendations to look into.

andystanton | 4 years ago | on: Quake 1 gets its first major co-op content update in 25 years

I'm curious about the target demographic for this and other re-releases (Doom for example). I played first time round and am more than happy to play this for the nostalgia, but are there also new players? What would make someone growing up now pick this up over Fortnite or Call of Duty? Is there demand, or is it just that making content for older games is less expensive than creating a new AAA title?

andystanton | 7 years ago | on: Essential C (2003) [pdf]

Question for C experts, the article states:

C takes the middle road -- variables may be declared within the body of a function, but they must follow a '{'. More modern languages like Java and C++ allow you to declare variables on any line, which is handy.

I know this is not the case in C11 for example, but is there a compile-time speed-up when declaring variables in this way, or any other benefit?

andystanton | 7 years ago | on: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

> I was listening to a friend's music podcast tonight and they were talking about how industry will seize on any shred of creativity so that they can use it to sell cars, and this contributes to people getting defensive about the things they like becoming popular. There is a latent fear that just over the horizon, some marketing asshole is waiting to get their hands on something that is meaningful to you, in order to abuse that connection so they can buy themselves a boat.

What was the podcast out of interest?

andystanton | 8 years ago | on: Who moved my cheese, 1Password?

I meant powerful in terms of the features it offers - for example strong password generation, keyboard shortcut driven UI, browser extensions, fingerprint scanner integration, different storage engines, categories for secure non-password stuff like credit cards, OTP support, shared vaults (over third party storage providers) and even stuff like the icons for each service are useful.

1Password has so many useful features, but the push towards the subscription model feels like Agilebits might phase out all other storage engines eventually, regardless of what the official line is right now. At least maybe they'll branch into Linux support if the subscription model brings in more revenue.

andystanton | 10 years ago | on: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

Adding in a third option to the mix - JetBrains recently added a C++ editor to their catalogue called CLion[1]. While VS and XCode have quite a headstart over it, CLion is cross platform and comes with native support for CMake projects. JetBrains also make the (de-facto from my experience) Java IDE - IntelliJ which shares a core engine with CLion.

A bugbear of mine for XCode is the absence of C++ refactoring tools, which CLion certainly has.

[1]: https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/

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