#the rules can be especially obtuse to a beginner

[13lizardsinatrenchcoat]

So torn about season 3 of Netflix's Sex Education. On the one hand, really great nonbinary representation. On the other hand, really bad dog agility representation.

[listoriented]

“B”een There

done that.

So here ends my time playing games that start with the letter B. Thanks for reading! It's been three years plus change. Back in early 2016 when I pondered how the world might look when I finished another letter, I never imagined, even from that unsteady ground, just quite how different things would become (in terms of global political-psychological landscape) - though really all the top-down drama happened that year, and everything since then has just felt like the normalisation and ratification of it, this splintered-systemic madness, the post-parody, post-fake fake-real. Or whatever you want to call it.

Nor did I imagine that it would take me so long. But, life. I went overseas, moved houses, moved cities, went through a breakup, started a PhD, rode a bike, read some books, faffed around. I anxiously played hundreds of hours of Rocket League; I ticked off every achievement in Mini Metro; I spent too long trying to remember what I was doing in Stardew Valley. I reviewed some games over at Gamecloud, which wrapped up earlier this year.  Time accumulated in a predictable but upsetting way.

Beloved demigod of gaming blogs RPS went through a full staff turnover, pretty much. It's weird, man. VR happened but remains a bit beyond my periphery, even if it gets brought up from time to time in the groupchat. Battle Royale games weren't a thing a few years ago, then they became everything, now they are still a big deal, the biggest deal, or maybe a large-medium deal, or just a large part of the background - I honestly don’t know how to quantify this. Steam's ubiquity has slipped markedly, through a mixture of managed negligence and increasingly aggressive competition. The inherent limitations of being bound to one commercial distribution system on one hardware platform have always been at the back of my mind, but I do increasingly wonder if my time would be better spent on a project that dug through other veins. The answer is, for now, that sometimes you've gotten keep doing the thing you said you were gonna do, if no other reason than because. 

Tumblr, our home since 2016, has gone through its own shifts and controversies in this time too. They no longer seem to allow unencoded links (so no-one ever knows what they’re clicking on), it became less friendly to adult content, and as of today apparently Tumblr has been sold on to wordpress. I don’t really know the implications of this last thing.

Some Maths

I played fifty one games beginning with B. Of the forty-eight that I'd deem to have some notional metric of completability, twenty-four of those I (often in the most flexible sense possible), "completed". 50%: Not as bad as I'd expected, TBH, especially as that includes a couple of painful six/seven game streaks where I didn't finish anything.

Ceremonious Award Giving for Games Starting with ‘B’

It is always hard to pick favourites, and from any given vantage point they tend to change. Nevertheless, an act of self-canonisation is in order, as is tradition. Given the nature of this project, I do put a lot of value in titles that surprise me in one way or another. Batman: Arkham Asylum and Bulletstorm were equal Best Goofy Action surprises (it pays having low expectations, sometimes), with an honourable mention to Brigador. The Banner Saga was the most surprisingly thought provoking. Davey Wreden’s autoficitive The Beginners Guide gets the Anodyne Prize for Most Enjoyably Difficult To Put In A Box. 

Botanicula was probably my Favourite (total) Revisit, or the best non-surprise. 

B was a letter characterised by a few high-budget action series (of which my favourite part was Bioshock 2 (Minerva's Den)), held up by substrate of modest indie things of varying impact. My attention span was all over the place, too. We had a lot of short forays with little to say, but there was there were also more than a few wordier attempts at thought. I'm bad at judging what makes "good" writing, particularly of my own, which I oscillate between accepting and loathing, but I can tell you which games/posts took the cake for length and effort: Baldur's Gate for longest playtime; Burnout: Paradise for highest word-count (and longest gestation period); Battleblock Theater for the most time-consuming method of putting a post together; The Beginners Guide for the most times played through a game in order to try and parse it; Braid for the most external reading and referencing.  

I think the most absurdly Expensive-at-purchase game here was Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which also gets the newly thought of I Can’t Believe It Still Has Functioning Online Multiplayer prize. I'm handing the Most Disappointing badge to Broken Age, despite (or because of) already having played it a bunch before attempting it for the list, though Before the Echo (fka Sequence) takes the Aquanox Award for game I inexplicably sunk the most time on trying to finish despite not really enjoying. I hold the Most Contempt for Breach & Clear. Black Mirror had the Worst Voice Acting, and it was also the Oldest Game here (2003), at least in terms of no-significant-alterations though depending on how you want to factor in remasters and remakes, you might alternatively give that prize to Broken Sword (1996) or Bionic Commando Rearmed (1988). Blueberry Garden was Purchased Most Long Ago, in 2009, though the Aquaria Trophy for Longest Unplayed Incumbent goes to Bob Came in Pieces, which I'd bought in 2010 then never installed (it's pretty good, it turns out!). However, the special Emotional Closure Award goes to Baldur's Gate, with which I already had nearly two decades of fond, scattered memories, before finally finishing for the first time during this project.

More Maths

When I started this letter I had 438 games in my steam library. Right now I have 1049 games, which is almost exactly three times the amount I had when I started this blog in October 2015 (~350). I've played 70 games total. A further 57 entered the list behind the marker, into the exempt scorched land of the already visited alphabet, which means we're at 127/1049 = 12.11% of the way through the list, which is a +7% increase on where we were at three years ago. That's not nothing. But at 2.5% per year, it's not a lot. Globally, the average human lifespan is 68 years.

Terrifying Implications For the Future

The maths says that the current terms aren't working, that I'm drowning in a heady mixture of my own relentless consumerism, hesitation, and procrastination from this task which is itself an avenue of procrastination - that at this rate I will probably die (or certainly give up) before even getting to the halfway point, and that we can't continue like this in good faith. 

So I'm going to get a bit reckless, even change the rules slightly, in order to try and breathe new life into this thing. All games must still be played for at least an hour - yes, that one stands. But. BUT. I'm setting a hard time limit of one week, from one game to the next, post to post. For now at least. No more lofty words about striving to "finish" games as a rule rather than exception. It's quantity over quality (pretending for a second that quality was ever a concern) from here on out, business over pleasure, irreverence over lengthy considerations, scrapbooking over essays.

On the bright side, this means I can have a weekly posting schedule. Let's say Tuesdays? Tuesdays seem like a good day for posting.

A couple of other things: 

List Oriented now has a ko-fi tip jar, just in case you, dear reader, enjoy this blog - or did before it went completely silent for the first half of this year - and feel like helping to pay for my caffeine addiction and/or encouraging me to keep going with this task. 

Another thing I want to do is compile a list of links to good places for games-writing and other things that I like, because a) I feel like such a page would be helpful for me to keep a record, even if for nobody else; b) my conception of the internet is permanently stuck in 2008 but also; c) it's hard to remember where to look for good things on the internet, sometimes, these days, given our habitual over-reliance on various platforms to direct us to CONTENT. But one thing I want to include is a list of other places where people are doing this kind of list-oriented project thing. I remember a bunch of them sprung up a couple of years back when we gained a brief and relative flash of notoriety, though I’m not sure how many stuck at it. If you yourself are doing one, or you’re aware of any others who are, Let Me Know! 

Anyway, looking ahead. C. An obtuse but interesting letter. Not so many of the big-hitters. A buuuuunch of city builders and management games, a few influential and/or janky platformers, more than a handful of puzzlers, some famed RTS series, a heap of question marks, a coupla interesting art things and a few uh *squints* Shooting Game. Happily for me, a lot of titles that I've not yet gotten round to giving a go, so this will be all...fresh.

I have a vague memory from when I got through A, of looking ahead to C and thinking at least it was a much more compact section than B, at the time, some light on the other side of what I'd already known would be a slog. But here we are three years later, and now there's fifty seven such games beginning with C, so there goes that thought. You'd think, having identified the consumerist-excess problem that catalysed this stupid thing, I would have stopped buying game bundles at some point, made this ridiculous project a bit easier for myself, a little more plausible for everyone else. 

But, we must continue. It's a new day. A new letter. A new schedule.

The way is long and it is littered with videogames.

above: “celebrating” my “achievements” with a ‘b’eer

[hasnainamjad]

Both Python and Java frequently top lists of the most in-demand programming languages among employers. These are powerful, flexible, and object-oriented languages that are commonly used across organizations and in a wide variety of other settings.

This may lead you to ask the inevitable question: which is better? Or at least, which one should you learn?

Also read: I want to develop Android apps: what languages should I learn?

This is a complicated question, seeing as the two languages are actually quite different (it’s never that simple!). So read on, and we’ll unravel the question of Python vs Java to see which is best for you.

Python vs Java: structure and design

First, let’s take a look at how Python and Java are written and how this affects the experience of programming.

Object-Oriented

Python and Java are both considered to be “object-oriented” programming languages. This means they allow developers to create data objects through classes. While this is a complex concept for a beginner to get their head around, it effectively allows for very efficient and well-designed code. Classes are modular by nature and allow for very scalable programs that can do a lot with less code.

But if you’re still scratching your head asking how data can be an “object,” then you have run into the first problem with object-oriented programming: it’s confusing for beginners!

That’s why many people love the fact that Python also “supports multiple paradigms.” This means that you can create functional/imperative code that is read from top to bottom, making it much easier to get to grips with. It also makes Python very quick for developers that just want to make a quick app in a couple of lines to perform a useful job.

(Of course, it’s technically possible to write functional/imperative code in Java, but Python lends itself better to this type of code.)

Readability and White Space

This lack of forced-paradigm makes Python more beginner-friendly and flexible, but so too do many of the syntax decisions.

For example, Python encourages the use of lots of whitespace, doesn’t require semi-colons at the end of every statement. As a rule, Python also requires less boilerplate code as compared with Java (meaning that you can do more with fewer lines).

The semi-colon thing is big. In Java, you can write a beautiful program that is millions of lines long and have it not run because you forgot to include a semi-colon! No matter how experienced you are, this will always happen.

That said, while it might seem like a nuisance, restrictions like this do force you to write well-organized code and can avoid confusion down-the-line.

What’s more, is that other programming languages are similarly strict in terms of their grammar and structure. That means that Java will generally be better at preparing developers to work with other languages, such as the very-similar C#.

Also read: An introduction to C# for Android for beginners

Other differences are largely cosmetic: Python prefers snake_case for functions and variables (because snakes), whereas Java uses camelCase.

On the whole, a page of Python is much less daunting and reads a bit more like English. Java can be denser to wrap your head around, especially if you’re new to programming. But there is (usually) a method to the madness. (Sometimes literally.)

Static vs Dynamic

A key factor in the competition between Python vs Java, is that java is statically typed and Python is dynamically typed.

This means that when you declare a variable in Java – which is a word that represents a piece of data – you need to describe what kind of variable that is. It might be a “string” (a word or sentence), an integer (a whole number), or a float (a number with decimal places).

In Python, you don’t need to decide what type of variable you are using right away.

Likewise, function arguments can pass in any object. All this “Duck typing” makes Python very convenient and easy to use. However, this can occasionally make code a little more obtuse to the casual observer and may lead to errors, unless it has been properly commented.

Also read: How to comment in Python: Tips and best practices

Compiled vs Interpreted

Python is an “interpreted language.” That means you’ll install an interpreter on your machine that will read and understand Python code. It also means that for anyone else to use your code, they will likewise need an interpreter installed. You can’t easily build an executable file and then send it to your friends/buyers.

This is both a strength and a weakness of Python. It means that in order to build anything for commercial use, you will need to rely on external tools and fiddly processes.

However, it also means that Python is ideal for putting something together quickly for your own personal use. You can add Python to PATH or run Python apps straight from CMD/terminal without having to go through a lengthy compilation stage.

Java meanwhile is technically both interpreted and compiled. Java will be compiled first, but the target machine will need the JVM in order to run the code.

As such, Java code is typically more portable, but you may still need to go through a few steps to get it in a usable fashion. As is the case when building Android apps!

Also read: A guide to Android app development for complete beginners in 5 easy steps

What this does also mean though, is that Java code has the potential to run much faster, making it a better choice for more intensive operations.

Which is easier for beginners?

If the above didn’t make it clear, Python is generally much easier for beginners. Python is logical even for someone who doesn’t know what a “Class” is, and it has a clean and simple layout that gives you plenty of room to breathe.

Python is commonly used as a first programming language for teaching programming concepts, so it’s handy that it is also flexible enough to be useful outside of the classroom! In many ways, Python is the new BASIC. In terms of simplicity, Python vs Java is a no-brainer.

That said, the restrictions and complexities of Java aren’t just for fun. They can be useful for getting into good habits early on, and they may prepare a developer for the rest of their career.

At the end of the day, if you’re interest is in learning for learning’s sake, Python is the better place to start. But it’s going to depend on your end goal.

What are they used for?

Speaking of which, what might your end goal be when learning either of these languages?

As mentioned, Python’s “interpreted” nature means that it can’t easily be used to write commercial programs that you share and sell. It is slower than compiled languages, and it isn’t easily exported.

This means that Python generally isn’t used for mobile app development, game development, building desktop software, etc.

However, what Python is great for, is writing quick code that performs useful functions. This makes it a popular in-house tool among many security firms, data analytics companies, and the like.

The other common use for Python, is building web apps. Here, the Python code actually runs “server-side.” That means that it runs on the server that houses the files that comprise a website. Because Python is installed on the server, the user doesn’t need to worry about whether or not they have Python installed on their machine: they just see the output.

Therefore, Python powers many of the biggest brands on the web. These include: Instagram, Google, Spotify, Netflix, Dropbox, and many others.

Java meanwhile is used to develop a number of desktop and mobile applications. Java used to be the primary language used for Android development, until Google announced that Kotlin would be its top choice going forward. However, Java is still officially supported, and is still used by a large number of organizations.

Java is popular among big organizations in general, seeing as it is supported by a wide number of frameworks and libraries, is very fast, is very secure, and works across platforms. Java also has the advantage of having been around for a very long time – and big companies don’t like change!

Also read: Kotlin tutorial for Android for beginners: Build a simple quiz

Java is less commonly used for games. Other combinations such as C# with Unity, or C++ with Unreal Engine are more powerful and flexible in this scenario.

Python vs Java: Which is right for you?

So with that said, should you choose Python or Java to start coding?

If you’re looking to become a software developer working for a big company, if you want to make Android apps, or if you’re interested in learning more programming languages such as C#, then Java is a great choice. Be prepared for a steep learning curve though!

If you just want to learn about programming with a beginner-friendly language, then Python is ideal. Python is also a great choice if you’re interested in building web apps, working with tech start-ups, or have an interest in data science.

Want to give Python a try? Then why not check out our list of the best online Python courses. These will provide a complete education, and Android Authority readers will also get huge discounts!

source https://www.androidauthority.com/python-vs-java-1145042/

[arman038]

The Wonderful World Of Forex Currency Trading

The Wonderful World Of Forex Currency Trading

Jumping into the Forex market without proper training, is like jumping into a pool when you have never learned how to swim. You could get lucky and be a natural born swimmer and take to it like it's nothing. On the flipside, you could jump in and sink straight to the bottom. Learn these tips for navigating the market and improving your odds of success.

When trading with Forex, you are going to lose some trades from time to time. There is just no way around this. The worst thing you can do is to become discouraged about a losing streak. Stick with solid strategies, evolve to the market's sway, and stay on a logical path to trading. Smart traders ride out the bad weather and end up richer.

Despite its complexity, the forex market subscribes to the KISS principle. (i.e., Keep It Simple, Stupid) There is little benefit to employing obtuse and over-analytical forex strategies if the trader using them does not understand how they work. Simple principles that the trader grasps thoroughly are always preferable to complex tactics that are inexplicable to their users.

When you start forex trading, there is no substitute for a thorough understanding of the basics of trading. Many people try to just jump into forex trading and those people, generally, lose their shirt. It is better to take it slow and learn the ropes before investing significant amounts of capital.

If you are a beginner in the Forex trading business, it is important that you find a broker that suits you just right. If you do not find a broker that has goals in line with what your goals are, your time that you spend in the market will be difficult.

Learn how to do your own analysis of the market. Analysis of the forex market is very subjective. Analysis is very much tied into your trading strategy so what works for your neighbor may not work for your method. Use other's analysis as a starting off point but learn how to read the market yourself.

Right now, you can use a tool such as a forex robot, or wonder methods. This will allow you to do basically nothing. Your trades will all be chosen for you, and you will just have to sit back and watch your money grow. Get comfortable and make some money easily!

Do not let your losses run. It is tempting to allow a loss to run hoping that the market will turn around. This rarely happens and it is better to take a small loss than a large loss so take the loss and make another trade. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

You should never use forex trading just to feed your own desire for excitement. Being successful with forex trading requires discipline. You can't just make a trade for fun and expect to be successful. You can not be foolish when making these type of decisions, especially if you have lots of money on the line.

To predict in advance, a trend, you can look at old exchange rates. You might notice a cyclical trend. Many countries import or export more at certain times of the year, for instance, after harvest season or just before Christmas. Establish a schedule of expected variations, for the currency that you are trading in.

Use stop-loss orders to protect yourself. A stop-loss order can save you money by making sure that you never reach the lowest point of a position. However, make sure you don't put the stop-loss in such a narrow range that you can't make a profit, either, because you've played your hand too cautiously.

Do your homework. Before starting forex trading, take the time to educate yourself. There is a lot of information available on the Internet, such as e-books, online courses, online videos and forex blogs. You need to learn the fundamentals of the trading process in order to be a successful forex trader.

The golden rule about any kind of financial investment is that high profits are linked to high risks. It is up to you to find the right balance between the kind of risks you can manage and understand, and the range of profit you are after. Remember that taking risks is time consuming and stressful. You have to ask yourself if the money you are making is really worth it.

When trading with a rather high leverage, you can still control the risks you are taking thanks to stop-loss and time-price limits. This will set boundaries beyond which you should retract your funds from the investments before you lose more money. Establish these limits very carefully before you make a transaction.

Learning about the market before you start is key to being able to swim instead of sink. Just like you would not risk your life trying to swim without instruction, you don't risk your money without learning the best ways to navigate Forex trading. Taking the time to get a handle on the do's and don'ts, will pay off during your first swim in the Forex waters.