Game Developer Kit by Microsoft

It's been a while since I've posted but had to record this:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/games/blog/meet-the-microsoft-game-developer-kit-gdk/

This could possibly be a game changer in the Gaming industry. Let's see!

Hopefully I will get some time to at least test a demo of this kit.

Microsoft's Visual Studio uses GitHub user accounts now

 Once again, Microsoft is making good progress. In this post, it's regarding the sync'ing of user accounts across platforms. In this case, Visual Studio (development platform) and GitHub (code management platform).

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/github-accounts-are-now-integrated-into-visual-studio-2019/

Microsoft's Game Development with .NET (and Unity)

This is very attractive to me. I need to try this out and see what the offerings are. 

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/game-development-with-net/

This particularly caught my attention:

".NET does not just cover building your game. You can also use it to build your game’s website with ASP.NET, your mobile app using Xamarin, and even do remote rendering with Microsoft Azure. Your skills will transfer across the entire game development pipeline."

References

• https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/games
• https://dotnet.microsoft.com/learn/games/unity-tutorial/intro 

Good Coding Tip: NEVER USE ELSE Statement

This author has a really good point (to NEVER USE ELSE statements) that I've never spent much time meditating on.

"We can see that without the if statement, we can't determine what this [else] is meant to be doing. Why would it return an empty string? Is this an error, or the ‘normal' behaviour? This code instead relies on us remembering, and having read, the earlier context. This doesn't matter much when the statements are small, but if there's complicated logic within the

if { … }

block or we are scanning quickly, then the separation of context from code can hurt readability massively. It hurts even more when if/else statements are nested, or there are multiple of them in one function (which if statement is this else for?)."

Read the full article here:

https://dev.to/dglsparsons/write-better-code-and-be-a-better-programmer-by-never-using-else-statements-4dbl

Improving Your Debugging Strategies by Chelsea Troy

 I really like this article by Chelsea Troy in Functionize.

https://www.functionize.com/blog/improve-your-debugging-strategies/

Most developers know the standard strategy of debugging that she highlights. I would paraphrase her standard strategy term as "speeding through debugging with random breakpoints based on what developer believe is causing the issue." Like the author points out, this strategy is usually not the best unless you already know the the entire code base of the application or system. With the vast inter-communication among multiple apps, I doubt most developers today have this capacity to store an entire code base in human memory.

She defines another term called the investigation strategy. This strategy uses an existing algorithm to find the root cause of the issue like a binary search. The point isn't to list all the approaches to debugging but to understand that a better strategy is needed to improve your debugging skills. And, it should be language-agnostic as well as independent of any debugging tools (although it's helpful).

Thanks, Chelsea.

Kite - Free AI Coding Assistance

Read a quick article on this and visit website to learn about it. No time to explore, but thought I would at least post and share.

Kite - Free AI Coding Assistance

https://www.kite.com/

The 4 Stages of Distributed Computing - DevOps

 I like this. That's all.

https://devops.com/the-4-stages-of-distributed-computing/