First of all, I want to appreciate the work for the SCIDvsPC Project. I know that the basic SCID one has been discontinued many years back and the developer have done a great job with expanding it and doing his share for the Chess Field. We have a Minor Project to do in this 6th semester of our college. We've decided to start a project on a Chess Next Move Analyzer that is based on variety of filters and implements Self Learning and Machine Learning.
I've been researching over the project idea for the last 2 months. Actually we need to import several games defined on some filters and read and analyze from the PGN file generated. For example, if the user chooses to get the next best move predicted according to the rating range of 2000-2500, our program should only export and analyze the PGN files that have both the opponents from this range only. I know the project can do all this but I'm confused over how to automate this. I mean I have to manually enter the moves and then click on 'Generate PGN' but how to make my program do this ie take input from the user (like first 3 moves), make the project run these moves (what I had to manually) and then generate the PGN file and keep it in a folder.
I've surfed the net about interacting with GUI elements in Windows (we have no problem in working with Linux either) and came to know about Microsoft UI Automation, Python, Java and C# softwares and something like COM. Do the software support COM or any one of these or have you already developed some functionality like this? Please can you guide me over this?
If asked to Generalize this what I want to do is to interact with GUI Elements, be it any application. Take Notepad as an example. Suppose I want to open a file on it, find and replace a particular word. Now, I know how to do this manually but when I have over thousands of file I need some kind of program to do this for me. Do some specific programs like SCID in my case has some feature (read bit about COM) pre-built to handle this? In which programming language domain does this come into? Is using Linux help me more?
Take Notepad as an example. Suppose I want to open a file on it, find
and replace a particular word. Now, I know how to do this manually but
when I have over thousands of file I need some kind of program to do
this for me. Do some specific programs like SCID in my case has some
feature (read bit about COM) pre-built to handle this?
Your situation sounds to be quite specific so I doubt whether you will be able to find a pre-existing program to do this for you. Meaning: you'll have to code it yourself.
In which programming language domain does this come into?
Well, this could probably be done in many, many different programming languages. A simple shell script would be able to achieve the Notepad example you gave.
Is using Linux help me more?
No, your goals seem to be pretty achievable by a simple shell script, whether you write it in a Windows, macOS or a Linux distro.
#SB87 gave you some useful hints, I'd like to expand his answers.
Sorry, I don't think you know what you're talking about. Reinforcement learning (better term than self-learning) and machine learning are not something suitable for a college project. It's at the PhD or research level, consider getting yourself into university before even thinking about anything like that.
UI automation is possible, but error prone and slow. If you want to do it, you'd write a console program. You mentioned something about user inputs, do you mean you want to apply machine learning on user mouse-keyboard inputs? It's not going to work. Machine learning for chess requires hundreds and thousands of training set.
I think you should downplay the project and focus on something you can achieve.
( Hi, everyone. I'm very new to Windows programming, so I apologize in advance if this has already been asked and I just didn't know what to search for, but this problem has been driving me crazy and I know someone could probably answer this really easily. )
My company has an application that runs as a service in Windows 7. I have been tasked with writing code to change display settings, but I apparently cannot do this from a system service. I created a small executable that changes the color depth to 8bpp in about 5-10 lines of code, but when I place this code in my application, it returns success yet does not actually succeed (nothing changes).
Without a commanding knowledge of how Windows programming works, I have managed to try a MILLION different things to get it to work but with no avail. Can somebody PLEASE help me find what I need to do to make this code function?
On Vista and upwards services run in a different session (session 0) and are isolated from the interactive desktop(s). This means that code that you run from the service is simply unable to make the changes you want. The obvious conclusion is that you need to run code in the interactive desktop.
Now you can do this, but it's not exactly easy to achieve. What you will need to do is arrange for your service to launch an process that runs on the interactive desktop: Launching an interactive process from Windows Service in Windows Vista and later. That process, rather than the service, is what will have to make the changes.
Whilst it is possible to achieve what you want, I think you should regard the difficulties involved as a signal to review whether or not your proposed approach is the best solution to whatever your underlying problem is.
I am a newbie and not familiar with the setup environments and stuck at some point. I am developing a very simple database application using visual studio 2010. I want to release a demo program and want the demo setup to be executed just one time for a specific computer hardware. For example when one user downloads the demo and installs the setup, the demo setup content, a simple configuration file embedded in the setup or "what so ever I do not know" should be changed, so that setup (when coppied to another computer) could not be used in other computer hardwares.
The sollutions or design ideas for this specific problem should not include any online services checking that the user executes that install or not. All the problem should be solved locally if possible :) and be as generic as possible.
Any design ideas or a starting point
will be very appreciated.
Thanks in advance
This is not possible of course. Whatever breadcrumb you leave to record that the program was ran has to be left on the same machine. Leaving any user with sufficient skills or good enough tools (like SysInternals' ProcMon) to find out where you dropped it and remove it again. Assuming they care enough about making the effort.
The simple solution is to intentionally cripple your demo so that an important feature is missing that would make it useful. Like File + Save. Not just disabled, completely missing in the code as well so hacking the demo program doesn't work either. Easy to do with an #if directive in your source code.
I did a numeric method as my diploma thesis and coded it in java. It needs a lot of computational time when adequately executed. So I looked for an alternative and found BOINC. Unfortunately I didn't have time for doing my method in BOINC, because I'm an Aerospace student and not a programmer and I decided to keep my priority on my java program. Now it's finished an I still would like to port this to BOINC environment.
Unfortunately I'm learning in re-doing examples and I couldn't find any, neither on the official site http://boinc.berkeley.edu nor in the internet.
So do you know a good and easy example or do you have any experience in BOINC and would like to start a new platform for such a boinc project?
I'm realistic about my method, that it wouldn't run 24/7, because there aren't as many work units as for seti or folding projects. So I would like to have a platform for more than just my project so that another platform project can be worked on, when one part of the project does not have any work units at that moment.
But to start this, I would keep it simple and just want to know how to code it and use it in the client and server system. It doesn't matter what the example projects will work on, as long as it is simple enough, that I can understand it and extending it for my method.
Thank you in advance, Andreas! :)
PS: I know that BOINC supports JAVA as a programming language, and my method is coded in JAVA.
As far as I know, JavaApps is just an idea; I don't know if anyone actually tried it in a real BOINC project. And it's Windows-only. And it seems to be a bit of a pain to redistribute the entire JRE as part of the BOINC application (both technically and legally).
Also, I generally dislike using that kind of “wrapper” where the science app (using the BOINC API) starts another process that then does the real computation. It's usually unreliable. There are lots of things that could go wrong with the wrapper, especially related to controlling the child process (eg. if something kills the wrapper, the child process has to quit too).
However, I just found something pretty interesting that may let me do a better Java wrapper for BOINC... Stay tuned! (but don't hold your breath either; it's the holidays!)
Meanwhile, I suggest you start by reading BOINC wiki and setting up a server with a “hello world” application; and if you have any trouble, ask a specific question about your trouble either here or in the boinc_projects mailing list.
(Of course, payin’ me to install the server for you is also an option ;) but I can't guarantee anything; not even my mere availability at this time of the year)
By 'challenging development environment' I don't mean you're on a small boat that's rocking up and down and someone is holding a gun to your head. I mean, are the tools at your disposal making the problem difficult?
Development is typically a cycle of code, run, observe the result, repeat. In some environments this is a very quick and painless process, but in others it's very difficult. We end up using little tricks to help us observe the result and run the code faster.
I was thinking of this because I just started using SSIS (an ETL tool included with SQL Server 2005/8). It's been quite challenging for me to make progress, mainly because there's no guidance on what all the dialogs mean and also because the errors are very cryptic and most of the time don't really tell you what the problem is.
I think the easiest environment I've had to work in was VB6 because there you can edit code while the application is running and it will continue running with your new code! You don't even have to run it again. This can save you a lot of time. Surprisingly, in Netbeans with Java code, you can do the same. It steps out of the method and re-runs the method with the new code.
In SQL Server 2000 when there is an error in a trigger you get no stack trace, which can make it really tricky to locate where the problem occurred since an insert can have a cascading effect and trigger many triggers. In Oracle you get a very nice little stack trace with line numbers so resolving the problem is very easy.
Some of the things that I see really help in locating problems:
Good error messages when things go wrong.
Providing a stack trace when a problem occurs.
Debug environment where you can pause, then output the value of variables and step to follow the execution path.
A graphical debug environment that shows the code as it's running.
A screen that can show the current values of variables so you can print to them.
Ability to turn on debug logging on a production system.
What is the worst you've seen and what can be done to get around these limitations?
EDIT
I really didn't intend for this to be flame bait. I'm really just looking for ideas to improve systems so that if I'm creating something I'll think about these things and not contribute to people's problems. I'm also looking for creative ways around these limitations that I can use if I find myself in this position.
I was working on making modifications to Magento for a client. There is very little information on how the Magento system is organized. There are hundreds of folders and files, and there are at least a thousand view files. There was little support available from Magento forums, and I suspect the main reason for this lack of information is because the creators of Magento want you to pay them to become a certified Magento developer. Also, at that time last year there was no StackOverflow :)
My first task was to figure out how the database schema worked and which table stored some attributes I was looking for. There are over 300 tables in Magento, and I couldn't find out how the SQL queries were being done. So I had just one option...
I exported the entire database (300+ tables, and at least 20,000 lines of SQL code) into a .sql file using PhpMyAdmin, and I 'committed' this file into the subversion repositry. Then, I made some changes to the database using the Magento administration panel, and redownloaded the .sql file. Then, I ran a DIFF using TortioseSvn, and scrolled through the 20k+ lines file to find which lines had changed, LOL. As crazy as it sounds, it did work, and I was able to figure out which tables I needed to access.
My 2nd problem was, because of the crazy directory structure, I had to ftp to about 3 folders at the same time for trivial changes. So I had to keep 3 windows of my ftp program open, switch between them and ftp each time.
The 3rd problem was figuring out how the url mapping worked and where some of the code I wanted was being stored. Here, by sheer luck, I managed to find the Model class I was looking for.
Mostly by sheer luck and other similar crazy adventures I managed to work my way through and complete the project. Since then, StackOverflow was started and by a helpful answer to this bounty question I was able to finally get enough information about Magento that I can do future projects in a less crazy manner (hopefully).
Try keypunching your card deck in Fortran, complete with IBM JCL (Job Control Language), handing it in at the data center window, coming back the next morning and getting an inch-thick stack of printer paper with the hex dump of your crash, and a list of the charges to your account.
Grows hair on your fingernails.
I guess that was an improvement on the prior method of sitting at the console, toggling switches and reading the lights.
Occam on a 400x transputer network. As there was only one transputer that could output to console debugging was a nightmare. Had to build a test harness on a Sun network.
I took a class once, that was loosely based on SICP, except it was taught in Dylan rather than Scheme. Actually, it was in the old Dylan syntax, the prefix one that was based on Scheme. But because there were no interpreters for that old version of Dylan, the professor wrote one. In Java. As an applet. Which meant that it had no access to the filesystem; you had to write all of your code in a separate text editor, and then paste it into the Dylan interpreter. Oh, and it had no debugging facilities, of course. And being a Dylan interpreter written in Java, and this was back in 2000, it was ungodly slow.
Print statement debugging, lots of copying and pasting, and an awful lot of cursing at the interpreter were involved.
Back in the 90's, I was developing applications in Clipper, a compilable dBase-like language. I don't remember if it came with a debugger, we often used a 3rd-party debugger called 'Mr Debug' (really!). Although Clipper was fast, some of our more intensive routines were written in C. If you prayed to the correct gods and uttered the necessary incantations, you could use Microsoft's CodeView debugger to debug the C code. But usually not for more than a few minutes, as the program usually didn't like to spend much time running with CodeView (usually memory problems).
I had a series of makefile switches that I used to stub out the sections of code that I didn't need to debug at the time. My debugging environment was very sparse so there was as much free memory as possible for the program. I also think I drank a lot more back then...
Some years ago I reverse engineered game copy protections. Because the protections was written in C or C++ they were fairly easy to disassemble and understand what was going on. But in some cases it got hairy when the copy protection took a detour into the kernel to obfuscate what was happening. A few of them also started to use of custom made virtual machines to make the problem less understandable. I spent hours writing hooks and debuggers to be able to trace into them. The environment really offered a competetive and innovative mind. I had everything at my disposal save time. Misstakes caused reboots and very little feedback what went wrong. I realized thinking before acting is often a better solution.
Today I dispise debuggers. If the problem is in code visible to me I find it easiest to use verbose logging. (Sometimes the error is not understanding the interface/environment then debuggers are good.) I have also realized time is of an essance. You need to have a good working environment with possibility to test your code instantly. If you compiler takes 15 sec, your environment takes 20 sec to update or your caches takes 5 minutes to clear find another way to test your code. Progress keeps me motivated and without a good working environment I get bored, angry and frustrated.
The last job I had I was a Sitecore Developer. Bugfixing can be very painful if the bug only occurs on the client's system, and they do not have Visual Studio installed on the system, with the remote debugging off, and the problem only happens on the production server (not the staging server).
The worst in recent memory was developing SSRS reports using Dundas controls. We were doing quite a bit with the grids which required coding. The pain was the bugginess of the controls, and the lack of debugging support.
I never got around the limitations, but just worked through them.