Assault clips

Posted by Tasm on Oct. 13, 2014, 11:36 a.m.

My last post ended with my recent gun purchase. Well, boys and girls, I am proud to tell you all that I have made yet another purchase! Yes, it's true what they say - Once you pop, you can't stop. This brings my handgun total to three. This means that in the event of a home invasion, I can effectively dual wield and still have a gun to give my girlfriend so she can provide cover fire to the rear. And really, what more could a guy ask for?

Holds five baby-seeking bullets.

Naturally, I opted for the model chambered in 357 magnum so I can simultaneously scare the shit out of fellow range goers and sprain my wrist when I fire.

I've got a speech coming up for school in which I will be informing my class of the shitty administrative practices of the Department of Veterans Affairs. For those of you who don't know/care, the VA is a government run veterans' benefit organization that is supposed to look out for the welfare of military veterans (and, to some extent, their families). They are currently paying for my tuition and rent, so I've got no complaints there. However, the one thing that they seem to fuck up like there's no tomorrow is their health care. Over the past few years there have been scandals, delays, and flat out lies, and no one in a position of power seems to give much of a fuck about any of it. Some vets had been waiting for care for so long that they fucking killed themselves because they couldn't deal with the bullshit anymore.

Personally, I've got some shoulder pain as a result of some less-than-safe training exercises. I filed a claim back in April 2013 and didn't actually get a response until one year later. The real kicker was that the clinic I was supposed to go to was over 100 miles away, and with work and school there was no way I was going to make it. I called to reschedule but was basically told that my excuse wasn't good enough. So here I am with slowly worsening shoulder pain and no one who gives a fuck about it. Thanks, Obama!

Now for a question that I'm sure someone here can help me with. I've been teaching myself Java for a bit now because I want to get into mobile app development. But is Java really as bad as people say it is? Is there another language I should look at that would be less of a waste of time?

Comments

Alert Games 9 years, 5 months ago

You could also go with the US hospital option, which will try to over-treat you and try to overcharge you ten fold.

As for the mobile app development, the two languages you would need to know would be swift (objective c), and java. Java has its uses, but personally I dislike it in favor of C#. But it really depends on what you are trying to accomplish, or else there wouldn't even be a choice in the first place.

I recommend going through the basics of the programming structure and best practices for Java (inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation, etc) to get a feel for it, because it is a little different from C#. Then I would make a stupid app that does some basic things with data and at least basic security.

There are a lot of jobs out there for different languages and types of development, so its good to have a few different types of development experience. Personally, I think its a bit hard to sit on your ass all day but it can still be pretty rewarding if you get used to the development process and figure out the best way to do things.

Quietus 9 years, 5 months ago

Quote:
This means that in the event of a home invasion, I can effectively dual wield and still have a gun to give my girlfriend so she can provide cover fire to the rear. And really, what more could a guy ask for?

I lol'd.

My mom is stuck waiting for her disability before she can go to the doctor, so yeah, our health care system is pretty fucked. :/

I have very little coding experience outside GM, so take my advice with a grain of salt. But everything I keep reading points to Lua being a very good, flexible alternative to GM, Java and the rest. aeron uses it to make pretty cool stuff already.

colseed 9 years, 5 months ago

i keep hearing people hate on java when it's perfectly capable of being just as efficient as other languages ;-;

Like Alert said though - for native stuff, Java's good because it's what the Android SDK uses, and Objective-C/Swift are good because iShizzles. There's plenty of other options around though. C/C++ code can be compiled for Android with NDK, game engines like LibGDX (Java, I think) and Unity (C# and a couple other languages I refuse to acknowledge the existence of) can compile to a slew of things, and then there's cross-compilation via i.e. Haxe. Lua's technically a scripting language, but gets implemented for interfacing with things so often that there's probably at least a few mobile engines that use it in some capacity*.

* a quick google search tells me this is true, anyway.

Tasm 9 years, 5 months ago

Quote:
I recommend going through the basics of the programming structure and best practices for Java (inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation, etc) to get a feel for it, because it is a little different from C#. Then I would make a stupid app that does some basic things with data and at least basic security.

Any good books/resources you can recommend?

Alert Games 9 years, 5 months ago

I feel like java is used more in scientific applications and C# is used more in business applications. Which would make complete sense looking at the "owners" of each language.

Alert Games 9 years, 5 months ago

@Tasm: I do have a couple at my house I can go get the names of later, if it'll help

Acid 9 years, 5 months ago

Java is a really easy to use language that is amazingly modular and works on almost any hardware/software setup you can imagine.

I'd recommend the NetBeans IDE and the tutorials here… but I also LEARNED in NetBeans, so I would say use what is easier for you. Visual Studio is great, if you have it.

Nopykon 9 years, 5 months ago

It's easy and a very productive environment. Eclipse is slow and annoying on my computer (which is pretty old). Netbeans is probably better.

A problem I have with Java is how people rely too much on the GC. Do not call "new Vector2(x,y)" millions of times every single frame plz. After a little while (when the tiny mario clone has allocated 400~1000MB), GC starts working and framerate gets terrible. Easiest way around this is to use globals, which defies the whole OO-idea. It can get ugly.

Tasm 9 years, 5 months ago

@Alert Games: if you don't mind, yes that would be great.

Quote:
Visual Studio is great

Please tell me you didn't say that with a straight face. I've had nothing but pain trying to deal with VS for my classes that it honestly makes me wonder how many people actually use it.

I've been using Eclipse and it seems okay, but I'm very much a novice and couldn't tell you what to look for in an IDE anyway.

nap 9 years, 5 months ago

Weird, Eclipse made me want to shoot my dick off, Visual Studio on the other hand is great.