Announcement: The start of my development project...

maw said:
well, it certainly looks better than the first attempt. I know you're new to a lot of stuff, including web design, so I can understand why you would use Publisher to design the site. When you get more experience you'll understand why tools like Publisher are NOT what you want to be using to design websites. One peek at all that bloated code made my spine shiver. :eek:
Click to expand...
When I first read this, I was like "how in the hell did you know that??", but then looked at the code, and even though I haven't touched HTML in a while, THAT *IS* atrocious! :eek:

I still have a few things I'm gonna work on tonight, perhaps a new layout. I just might get the forums in gear, and I also want to begin promoting to get some material up there.
 
A good reason not to use Frontpage is it generated over 12,000 lines of code to display that very simple website.
 
inotocracy said:
A good reason not to use Frontpage is it generated over 12000 lines of code to display that very simple website.
Click to expand...
In some worlds, its called "spaghetti code" IIRC. I think all that can be compressed down real easy. Perhaps that will be another task of mine. For now, I am going to run with this until I can look at the code and turn it into something more manageable.
 
12,283 lines if you count the linked XML file, which is only 30 lines.

Holy. Freakin. Crap. :(
 
lomn75 said:
Not really "spaghetti" code, as it's 90+% comments. It's intended for desktop use, not web viewing. MS has a "save for web" option to "optimize", but "optimize" is still a loose term.

Here's the breakdown: That file is 470KB before any images, etc, come into consideration. For text. That's ridiculous.
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http%3A//projectvampyregames.slackerserver.com/index.htm
Click to expand...
Hm, yeah, looks like I got a bit of work to do with that :eek:
 
"Spaghetti code" refers to the logic flow of a program. I took a course on programming logic and design.
 
versello said:
"Spaghetti code" refers to the logic flow of a program. I took a course on programming logic and design.
Click to expand...
Hm, I thought there was some term that related to very crappy code (as I was presented with). Oh well, I know I got some work to do. I have been updating like a madman, as well as trying to get a way to compress things a bit using Iomn's review tool.
 
JSClark said:
Hm, I thought there was some term that related to very crappy code (as I was presented with). Oh well, I know I got some work to do. I have been updating like a madman, as well as trying to get a way to compress things a bit using Iomn's review tool.
Click to expand...

the term most often associated with the crappy, proprietary code generated by MS editors is "Bloat". As in, 12,000+ lines of code and 470kb file size for something that should at most take a couple hundred lines and be less than 30k in size (including images).

spagetti code is a completely different concept, in it's most basic sense it refers to code that is difficult to follow because the logical elements are not in any consistent order. A good example is a lot of ASP pages where the ASP scripts are weaved in with HTML, forcing you to search all over the application to find where, say a variable was first initiated, then somewhere else to see where a function was declared (and then following all the functions it calls), then somewhere else to see how some variable got it's value assigned to it. etc.
 
maw said:
spagetti code is a completely different concept, in it's most basic sense it refers to code that is difficult to follow because the logical elements are not in any consistent order.
Click to expand...
My example is a fax driver I rewrote several years ago. The original author commented nothing and passed all parameters as a single pointer to an (again, undocumented) struct containing... pointers.

Spaghetti code is always, always, always the fault of the programmer, and it's just as always avoidable. I'm not sure exactly why I'm on this rant, but hey -- too late now. *submit*
 
maw said:
the term most often associated with the crappy, proprietary code generated by MS editors is "Bloat". As in, 12,000+ lines of code and 470kb file size for something that should at most take a couple hundred lines and be less than 30k in size (including images).

spagetti code is a completely different concept, in it's most basic sense it refers to code that is difficult to follow because the logical elements are not in any consistent order. A good example is a lot of ASP pages where the ASP scripts are weaved in with HTML, forcing you to search all over the application to find where, say a variable was first initiated, then somewhere else to see where a function was declared (and then following all the functions it calls), then somewhere else to see how some variable got it's value assigned to it. etc.
Click to expand...
OK, that sounds alot more clearer. Thanks for the tutorial :D
Hopefully soon enough I can begin tackling the code and making this page into something even better formatted than what it is now. Of course, you all will be seeing my updates. For now, I'm also beginning to get the forums together, and still doing small things here and there. Although, I will be very busy in the next few days, with school and all (exam on wednesday!), so I'm hoping to work on this as much as I can.
 
lomn75 said:
My example is a fax driver I rewrote several years ago. The original author commented nothing and passed all parameters as a single pointer to an (again, undocumented) struct containing... pointers.

Spaghetti code is always, always, always the fault of the programmer, and it's just as always avoidable. I'm not sure exactly why I'm on this rant, but hey -- too late now. *submit*
Click to expand...
LOL, I'm no advanced programmer, but it sounds as though this person had no clue as to what he was doing. But yeah, if it weren't for ranting, I think alot of us programmers would be going postal at any given moment :D
 
JSClark said:
LOL, I'm no advanced programmer, but it sounds as though this person had no clue as to what he was doing.
Click to expand...
Well, it worked... but it wasn't Y2K-safe and I nearly yanked my hair out determining how it worked.

There's a fine line to walk to get elegant, well-commented code. For comments, it's easy to under-use (see earlier example) or over-/poorly-use:
Code: 
if (x == 0) {
// if x is 0
That's obviously useless.

My preference tends toward:
Commenting files / functions / classes. I'm trying to use auto-documenters more frequently. They're no substitute for an intentionally written piece of documentation, but they're a good starting point.
Commenting the obscure (such as ternary operators, regular expressions, and anything else that doesn't lend itself to a quick read)
Commenting the end of long code blocks:
Code: 
 } // ends (x==0) check
The last is particularly valuable when you've got several blocks closing back-to-back:
Code: 
        } // end switch
      } // end while
      someFunc();
    } // end if
    anotherFunc();
  } // end for
} // end function
 
as lomn said, it is avoidable, provided you are competent, plan ahead, and have all the business logic finalized ahead of time.

But often in my experience (in developing web apps), the main culprit for spaghetti code is ever changing requirements. you start building the app with all the initial requirements in place, then some change request comes in that completely messes with the previous program logic, so you're forced to kludge, hack or squeeze something else in there that wasn't originally part of the requirement (while still having the same deadline!), then comes the other change requests. Before you know it, your beautifully designed logic just all went down the toilet with little or no time to fix it all.
 
Since this is my own thing, on my own timeline, I plan to be as careful as possible. I have already done some programming a while back (in C), and am in school for programming / networking, so thats a help right there.

Thanks for the advice so far though... I'm gonna need to get a book or 3 and totally clean up that code! ;)
 
Read the first post checked the website and then read a few more of the first page posts. And I still have no idea what your doing...
 
Just bumping to say that small updates are being done here and there as I have time, and that a new front page will hopefully be done soon (smaller file size, more graphical display).

I also added more forums, one that also tells of which updates happened and when, and also has feedback / suggestion forums. Registration should be open...
 
If you want good examples of good web design, check out www.csszengarden. Look at the size of the html, and the css, and you'd be amazed what they accomplish in their css code.
 
Sure thing. I actually have a friend who is hooking me up to help the page along as well, so I have alot of tools at my disposal at the moment. That site should give me an idea as to what I want to do.
 
apHytHiaTe said:
I can help with hosting as i said on your forums.
Click to expand...
yeap, I got your message over there. Let me get through the redesign, because I just brainstormed some more ideas for the site, as well as beginning to pool up some content to put up there. I'll shoot you a PM when everything is set, and we can talk.

I'll most likely be putting a poll up because I have quite a few idas as to where I can go wtih this.
 
Just a small update: I'm still working on a redesign, I currently am toying around with Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash as a possible solution to the redesign. I will post up a poll (if I can) for you guys to choose which site would suit best.

I am also now available on several chat clients, as what is listed in my sig. You can catch me here when I am actually focusing on the project.

Also, if you guys know of any content I could put up on the website, you can e-mail them to the address found on my sig.

Thanks! :)
 
How's the redesign coming? I haven't seen an update in a while.
 
dude seems like you need some project management skills. if you need help getting this thing really going PM me and we can talk. you need a kickass team leader who wont take bs from anyone and get shit done. also you need to get that website up. sounds cool

Cheers
 
Hollow4 said:
dude seems like you need some project management skills. if you need help getting this thing really going PM me and we can talk. you need a kickass team leader who wont take bs from anyone and get shit done. also you need to get that website up. sounds cool

Cheers
Click to expand...

Agreed. JSClark, not to discourage you or anything but you seriously need to take a step back and re-evaluate your project. The project is a game development project and yet, all that you've been working on for the past 4 months is a website!

There are a lot of experienced and knowledgable developers in the [H] programming community and I'm sure they'd be happy to help give constructive criticism on any business plans that you may have laid out. In order for this to be possible though, you'd need to have something laid out. A schedule with realistic milestones for the project and miles stones that relate with the completion of the project's goal.

Checkout some of the articles on GameDev.net as they can be pretty good guidelines on what you'd need to do.

Stop panhandling for someone to do the work for you and go out and lead by example!

Good Luck
--KK
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top