Why reinventing the wheel again? Why popular serializers are useless to my project - Entity Tracker?

This is Serializing Java - emerging series about writing your own serializer in case you didn’t like other serializers.

In previous week I had to resign from using Kotlin in one of my game projects. By porting the code manually I can point out what I didn’t like about Kotlin. Let’s see few differences between Kotlin and Java.

All your Java fields belong to us. Reflection is powerful but you have to remember a few rules before dealing with class fields.

This is Serializing Java - emerging series about writing your own serializer in case you didn’t like other serializers.

Nullable type is a good thing. Until you prevent memory allocation to fight Garbage Collection pauses. I want to nullify lateinit variable - I can’t. Or can I?

Let me introduce you Artemis Entity Tracker - a tool to be used for game development in conjuction with artemis-odb (which covers architecture called Entity Component Systems).

Forget about Object-Oriented Programming. Look at this flat world built of small data chunks and separated logic. A world easy to refactor. Meet Entity Component Systems.

Need an inspiration for Get Noticed 2017? In my humbly-technical opinion there were few interesting projects in the previous edition of Get Noticed. In 2016 there were 296 projects registered, 70 of them were supposed to be finished but only few of them surprised me.

In January 20-22 I decided to attend Global Game Jam 2017. Among few other cities I choosed Kraków. The local event was named KrakJam 2017.

7th edition but my first attendance. Looks like I know how to pick events because this was another great one. I’ll cover the project, theme and my feelings around me being there, people and organization.

The weekend on 10-11 December this year was a blast. 30+ hours of no sleep, including 24 hours spent on project implementation. Had 3 teammates and lots of fun inbetween. Let’s dive in to my short post mortem about the first edition (hopefully, not last) of Rzethon!

Some people are fascinated about spreadsheets. This lovely type of software was offered in Apple II computer back in 1979. Every cell could contain either data (text, numbers) or formula. What’s so special about it? Formulas are reactive. And that introduces the idea of reactivity.

Let’s have a look at few examples in some experimental technologies touching this idea.

Programistok was a small and short but very pleasure-providing conference. Giving a few words about it and some pictures taken.

So what happened on 01/10/2016 in Białystok?

Co robicie? Bo my knujemy w naszej piwniCZy! ;) pic.twitter.com/QOd6jxh86A

— Programistok (@programistok) August 20, 2016

Kraków. There was a conference on 15-16 September - DevDay 2016. And I was there!

So (positively) tired of talking to people. Now I shut up for two days. Thanks! #abbdevday

— Namek (@NamekDev) September 16, 2016

I sum up few thoughts from totally personal perspective. Feel welcomed, Explorer.

Once upon a time one usually desires to add Bootstrap into one’s project. Adding support for Bootstrap might seem a little hard without understanding Webpack or even despite the understanding. I started working with Vue.js (by the way, it’s great!) using the official webpack template and indeed - I struggled for a few hours.

Thus, I describe foreseen steps for the weary travelers who want Bootstrap-ify their Vue.js project.

EDIT: Look down into comments for current solutions.

For my acceptance tests configured in Jenkins I wanted to omit installing of any kind of X Window System. That’s pretty obvious when there is not enough RAM or we have to pay for every megs of it. But how a real browser like Firefox or Chrome would run without X servers? The answer is: X virtual buffer.

Let’s configure Selenium Server on top of xvfb on Ubuntu.

The “Daj Się Poznać 2016” (in polish: Get Noticed 2016) competition have finally come to an end. Multiple finalists shared their summaries before The Final Gala. I decided to do this after the event. This post summarises whole event in a short manner.

O The Console Kamil Dąbrowski #dajsiepoznac pic.twitter.com/ZfdKYjJpf5

— Maciej Aniserowicz💻 (@maniserowicz) June 18, 2016

In previous blogposts I discussed scripting custom REPLs for The Console. This time the custom will be just a good ol’ Unix shell called bash.

As I stated some time ago, I desired to have a scriptable Read-Eval-Print Loop in The Console. Now, as I made it, I’m going to briefly describe how to use it.

As nature of a programmer calls I need to express myself about Xtend. During development of The Console I have almost smashed my face a few times by gesture flying straight from internal cent****re of disbeliefs.

Argument completion should improve developer’s everyday life. Everywhere. That’s why I decided to have argument completion in The Console. To have the best thing - I want scriptable argument completion with already built-in filesystem paths completion.

Giving a few words about the process between hitting a TAB key and performing the magic.

The Console is an app which typical usecase fits within running a single instance. That’s by design. However, we sometimes forget to check whether some the app is waiting for us in the background and try to launch them. That’s when disaster happens. Two consoles placed on top of window and reacting to same hotkey? Cannot be!

Here’s a short story about preventing from having multiple instances of same app made in Java. There’s a note about communication, too.