The BIG development concepts

[techbear]

I'm switching to VC++ 2008 express, 'cause it's time I moved on from VC++ 6.0, and 'cause I want to learn to write shaders in DX9.

Of course, I'm confused about lots of new (to me) things, like DX9's Font class, the lack of a visual MFC designer in the Express version, and other things. But that's not the point of this post.

As part of re-writing my engine for DX9, I've made a list of things I need, like bitmap, mesh object, and sound classes. And I find that I've got all that, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm missing some big new ideas, or programming paradigms, that have shown up in the last 10 years.

I love IMGUIs, been making them for 2 years now.

I need to learn to make shaders, and write in the shader language.

As a lone-wolf developer, I don't need or follow the concepts of Extreme Programming.

What other BIG programming concepts should I be studying? What major, paradigm-shifting techniques or concepts can you share?

[zoombapup]

Design patterns, component/aspect oriented programming, signals/slots, metaprogramming, rapid prototyping languages/environments. There are so many innovations happening in graphics and other tech (for instance behavior tree's in AI, screen space ambient occlusion in graphics).

Have a trawl over GDC's things from this year and see if any of those sound useful to you.

You might want to check out .net and C# too (rapid tool creation).

Nothing is really "new", but theyre certainly worth learning from.

[Sectarian]

I'm switching to VC++ 2008 express, 'cause it's time I moved on from VC++ 6.0, and 'cause I want to learn to write shaders in DX9.

Of course, I'm confused about lots of new (to me) things, like DX9's Font class, the lack of a visual MFC designer in the Express version, and other things. But that's not the point of this post.

As part of re-writing my engine for DX9, I've made a list of things I need, like bitmap, mesh object, and sound classes. And I find that I've got all that, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm missing some big new ideas, or programming paradigms, that have shown up in the last 10 years.

I love IMGUIs, been making them for 2 years now.

I need to learn to make shaders, and write in the shader language.

As a lone-wolf developer, I don't need or follow the concepts of Extreme Programming.

What other BIG programming concepts should I be studying? What major, paradigm-shifting techniques or concepts can you share?

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[techbear]

Thanks, zoombapup! That list was enough to keep me reading and researching for the last 3 days.

I've got "Design Patterns" from Gamma et all coming from Amazon.

Signals and Slots seems very cool, but it's an answer to the crappy complexity of most GUI systems, and I feel IMGUIs are a better answer. But that's just me, and Signals and Slots sure seems neat.

AOP seems like a weird Java trick that doesn't have anything to do with me, but I'm probably missing something.

Screen space ambient occlusion seems like another cutting edge shader trick, but it also seems like no one but Crytek knows exactly how to do it right.

Thanks again!

[Reactor]

Josh at Leadwerks seems to have it working nicely for him.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/...hp?topic=77191