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YouTubeThis tutorial is for an extremely specific and possibly unusual set of circumstances, but I’m hoping that it will prove useful to someone. For one of my courses this term, we’re building OpenGL apps using Nokia’s open source Qt framework. Qt provides some very nice scaffolding, and the Qt Creator IDE is among the best I’ve used, although I imagine it lacks flexibility for general-purpose applications—that is, you probably wouldn’t use it to build non-Qt applications. Qt also allows one to easily write cross-platform C++ GUI applications. That said, linking procedures can be a bit different on different platforms, and as a beginner it’s not always immediately obvious how instructions for Windows development translate into other environments.
Archive for the ‘Coding’ Category
How to link GLUT in Qt Creator on OS X
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011What are lambdas good for, anyway?
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011I had a discussion today about what lambda functions are used for, how they differ from regular functions, and why they’re important. I thought I’d reproduce it here, as it seems that lambdas are often thought of as confusing and obscure. The truth is that they’re very simple, and also quite powerful. While they can reduce readability if used incorrectly, they do serve an important purpose, and those who understand them should have nothing to fear from them. This discussion pertains specifically to lambda functions as they’re implemented in Python, but they’re very similar in other languages where they’re available. (more…)
Android NDK Stack Trace Script
Saturday, April 9th, 2011I’ve finally started doing some Android development in earnest, and because I have a stubborn dislike of Java, I’ve decided to use the Native Development Kit. The native development kit allows you to write “performance-critical” parts of your application in C or C++ code, which is then compiled to platform-native ARM or MIPS instructions. The NDK is something of an unfriendly beast; it makes interaction with most regular Android libraries very difficult, and debugging native code on Android is none too easy. Although Google provides a script which can attach gdb to your native code, I’ve not yet figured out how to use it properly; every time I execute it, gdb complains about missing debugging symbols and libraries and seems to be unable to do anything useful. (I don’t imagine it’s too difficult, but I haven’t spent much time on it—I’ve not needed to do much debugging yet.) (more…)
Android Development Device Setup in Ubuntu 10.04
Sunday, September 12th, 2010I spent part of last night setting up my HTC Desire as a development device on my Ubuntu laptop. This was a somewhat frustrating process, because a lot of the information I came across seem to be outdated and didn’t work for me. Even the official documentation refers to a version of Ubuntu which is more than two years old. I did eventually piece together the correct process for Ubuntu 10.04, so I’m documenting that process here in the hope that it will help out other developers in the future. This guide assumes that you’ve already installed and configured the Android SDK. (more…)
Where are all the Computer Scientists?
Friday, August 27th, 2010It’s common knowledge that enrollment in computer science programs has declined significantly over the past decade. Although the trend seems to be reversing itself with enrollment increasing over the past few years, computer science educators shouldn’t get complacent just yet. There’s still much work to be done in order to ensure that computer science departments continue to grow and are able to meet the increasing demand for technically skilled graduates. (more…)