After looking at the first two Golden Lunch Bucket Contests, making this a wider event seemed like a good idea. So, I tallied up the different winners and their countries, and came up with a table reflecting winning entries. Each Grand Prize got four points, first place got three points, second place got two points and third place got one point. Then I put them in a table and thought that looked like fun. Currently, Finland is in first, the UK and Brazil are tied for second, and the US is in third as you can see in Table 1. We’d further like to encourage more participation; so Golden Lunch Bucket Contest #3 is pretty simple—requiring only a useful example of the Mediator. As we run more Golden Lunch Bucket Contests between now and next July (2010), more people can participate. Also, by adding .5 points toward their country’s World Cup total for Honorable Mention entries (those who entered a contest but were not in any of the four winning categories), we hope to encourage more entries.
Continue reading ‘The World Cup Golden Lunch Bucket!’
Monthly Archive for July, 2009
In order to get more ActionScript 3.0 developers involved in the Golden Lunch Bucket Contests, we’re going to make this one pretty simple. Begin with a Mediator Design Pattern (you can use the Mediator on this blog or elsewhere as a starting point) and create a program that does something beyond the minimalist abstract example. Essentially, you just provide some kind of use for the Mediator that you may possibly employ in a project at work. It can be anything that may be of use to someone. The Gang of Four defines its intent as:
Define an object that encapsulates how a set of objects interact. Mediator promotes loose coupling by keeping object from referring to each other explicitly, and it lets you vary their interaction independently. pg. 273
That should give you plenty of ideas.
Continue reading ‘The Mediator at Work: Golden Lunch Bucket Contest #3!’
I’ve been working on documentation, and I began thinking about the concepts of design patterns/OOP/principles and algorithms as the forest and trees, respectively. The documentation involves Server Side ActionScript (SSAS, which is ActionScript 1.0) and good old ActionScript 3.0 on the client side. (In this context, client refers to the client making requests from the server, and not Client as a class that makes requests from other classes in a design pattern.)
In previous posts I’ve admitted to being an algorithm junkie, and for the last several days that’s exactly the habit I’ve been feeding. Since I was documenting SSAS—ActionScript 1.0— which has no user classes or typed data, I can say with a straight face that I really didn’t have a lot of choice. However, the client side work with AS 3.0 could have been more OOP-like and maybe a little Strategy pattern could have been used just to get everyone off on the right foot.
Continue reading ‘ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns/OOP/Principles and Algorithms: The Forest and Trees of Programming’
Although it may be a small conceptual leap for someone who has experience with the single-core version of PureMVC to visualize how multicore works, it can be a little daunting for a novice. This post describes the design and development of a simple game concept to exemplify the utility of PureMVC multicore. This is a pure AS3 app that doesn’t use the Flex framework. You can download the source and build the app in Flex/Flash Builder (as an AS3 project) or Flash CS3/4.
The basic difference between single-core ( now known as the standard version ) and multicore is that multicore allows multiple MVC triads (multiple cores in PureMVC parlance) to be embedded inside a single application. The general recommendation is to use PureMVC multicore for all projects as it affords a lot more power in terms of developing modular applications and unit testing. However, developers who are new to PureMVC should first develop a simple single-core application first to get familiar with the framework. My previous PureMVC post describing a minimalist example will get you started with the basics. From here onwards, I’m assuming that you have a basic understanding of how the standard version of PureMVC works.
Continue reading ‘Move the Cheese: A non-Flex Actionscript example of a PureMVC Multicore Application’
This time around we had fewer entries, but the quality was sky high! So instead of four prizes, we only have the Grand Prize and First Prize. Also, we decided to put all winning entries together with previous contests so that you will have a full selection. Download winning entries. In addition to photographs, we also included national flags.
Timo Hannelin, FinlandTimo was the 2nd Place winner in our last contest, and this time he moved up to the Grand Prize—and a well-deserved win! Using a MVC framework, Timo created a Hello World message in a wide variety of languages including Czech, Yoruba, Tagalog, Bemba and others! I believe you will find Timo’s entry instructive in how to create an international greetings in such a way to make it very easy to add more language classes. Anyway, congratulations to Timo again, and as they say in Basque—Kaixo Mundua!
Stéphane Pajon, Birmingham, England
Stéphane used the Factory Method Design Pattern to create a rich combination of expressing Hello World! Included in Stéphane’s mix is Arabic, along with Arabic script, all tucked into a Product subclass. ( رحبا العالم ) Even though your system may require Arabic, take a look at it anyway—along with the other languages Stéphane included.
Bill Sanders
Recent Comments