Speeding up software prototype development with code re-use

One of the most common software development tasks for me is the creation of a prototype. Prototypes can be seen as a kind of discardable software, the kind with short life cycle and a heavily restricted set of design goals.

I tend to create a prototype whenever I’ve recognized some part of the software as mission-critical and I’m unsure whether or not I’m able to implement it. Sometimes a prototype is needed as a proof-of-concept to ensure someone else. In any case, prototypes are used as tools to answer a research question.

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Sketches for a level in an anonymous online multiplayer game

Sketchup sketches for an online multiplayer role-playing game. This graphic was not going to be used in the game, but rather to illustrate the game level layout. The sketches showed a small, ancient city set in a fantasy world. Continue reading “Sketches for a level in an anonymous online multiplayer game”

Testing out procedural city 3d-model generation

3D modeling of cities and maps are my old passion, a really inspiring subject. Seeing a nice city scene first hand, I’d like to sit down, model the same view in 3d and render stylishly.

I made the most recent sketches for city modeling 2016-2017. At that time, I sketched some generic city in Crete, Greece, and also the something in the style of the city center of Prague. The goal was not to replicate anything existing exactly but rather finding the templates and parameters for a partially automated model generation.
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Meeting the business needs of software with Requirements Engineering

Long ago I worked for a software company which developed material and workflow analysis software for large cleaning and maintenance companies. One of their customers was a company responsible for cleaning and re-supplying aircraft between the flights at some busy airports. They needed software to enable supervisors to browse the task lists in real time, allowing operators to enter job assignments and track work progress.

When I got to the work, the client was already using the software created by the company I worked for. I took the initiative to talk with our client’s staff and raised their interest in further software development. We sketched out various functionalities the software might be developed to have in the future. Their interest towards the development matured and we agreed on a development project.

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Machine Learning predicts the likelihood of debt repayment

In 2014, the Data Analysis and Machine Learning Contest organizer Kaggle announced a contest to predict a loan applicant’s repayment based on their background information. Imperial College London hosted the competition and offered a large chart of anonymized financial data about the loan applications, applicants and their loan installments.

The aim of the competition was to create a program that would be best able to predict the applicant’s loan repayment based on his background information. A table of anonymized, unlabeled background information was made available to list details of all the repayments. In addition to the anonymization, data titles were omitted, so each column in the table listed information about some unstated variable of unknown purpose.

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Site development plan started

The site administration has decided to put some effort towards publishing valuable content. To that end, we’ve created drafts for possible articles, including preliminary plans for research & coding projects which might be required in order to produce those articles. A small group of reviewers will be given access to these plans, the plans are evaluated and the most promising projects are given a priority.

Site development project of July 2018 (password required)