Compile C and C++ (and Python) code for the Flash platform

Just discovered Adobe Alchemy, which allows C and C++ code to be compiled for the Adobe Flash platform. For me anyway, this shines new light on the Flash platform, as this allows apps to be developed for Flash in widely used general purpose programming languages, which in turn allow the re-use of existing libraries [...]

Project Fangorn postmortem

Now that Project Fangorn is wrapped up and on ice, its time for the postmortem.
What went wrong:

Didn’t feel like I was productive enough.
Went off on a tangent developing a prototype space based architectural abstraction over Google AppEngine’s datastore and refactored prototype code to use it.

What went right:

Produced space based architectural abstraction over Google AppEngine’s datastore [...]

Space-Based Architecture for AppEngine

Several posts ago I mentioned that I was waiting to see which cloud provider would be up to hosting Project Fangorn first.  In my last two posts (one, two) I talked about some of the issues with testing web apps on the GAE platform, but I didn’t mention what it was I was actually testing.
At [...]

Grey box testing web applications deployed to Google App Engine

Last post I stated:
Due GAE’s limitations on CPU time/cycles and an overall maximum limit of 10 seconds to fulfill a request a non-trivial set of unit tests will exceed the quotas if they are all run at the same time, so its necessary to run them in separate requests.
But in the two tests I’ve [...]

Unit testing web applications deployed to Google AppEngine

While the GAE SDK does provide the ability to run your web application locally, I’ve found that that the SDK’s local datastore doesn’t work precisely the same as the real one. Specially I’ve found that the local one is more permissive then the real one so its possible to get your app working locally [...]

Waiting to see if App Engine or an alternative gets there first

After tracking down numerous alternatives to Google App Engine after hitting a wall on Project Fangorn, I looked at the most promising alternatives in more depth. Here is what I found.
GigaSpaces

Using GigaSpaces XAP would mean–at a minimum–creating Python bindings to their C++ API and re-writing my data model. Actually running on their EC2 [...]

Light Web Strategy Game data model smacks into GAE limitations

As I mentioned in my last post, I had previously known that GAE could only operate on entities from one group in a transaction and had designed my data model to account for this, but recently came across information that Google App Engine locks an entire entity group while processing a transaction. As my [...]

Easy optimizations resulted in 39% shorter runtime

The partial caching of the calculations of the technical indicator resulted in 35% less runtime and experimentation with the various complier and linker optimizations switches resulted in a little be more of a speed up for in runtime being an overall of 39% shorter.
The analysis code likely has some spots that will benefit from optimization; [...]

NinjaTrader Strategy Backtesting and Optimization

NinjaTrader’s support for strategies is definitely superior to that of StrategyDesk. NinjaTrader allows strategies to control the number of shares bought and sold, so it can be setup to roll profits into the next trade for backtesting (you could do taxes as well, but I haven’t bothered with that yet). The optimizer is [...]

Debugging – Komodo IDE vs WingIDE vs PyScripter

I just added the following update to the section titled “Komodo vs PyScripter vs WingIDE – Running and Debugging” of my recent post titled “Komodo Edit vs Komodo IDE vs WingIDE vs PyScripter”:
While debugging Komodo IDE does not show you the current value of any variable if you mouse hover over it. Both PyScripter and [...]