Re: [linux-audio-dev] lad design patterns

On Sat, Jan 29, 2005 at 10:53:14AM -0600, Levi D. Burton wrote: There is a lot of common sense involved, and usually a whole collection of different types of voodoo: - signal processing - designing for real time - multithreading - system interfaces - event driven systems - ... and of course this leads to some recurring patterns in all but the most trivial applications. It's a good thing to have some framework that is designed to be compatible with all these aspects. Given this, it doesn't matter so much how a particular pattern is implemented, but consistency and making simple things fit and work together help a lot. For example, a recurring theme in more complex audio apps is the 'lock_free ring buffer' that is normally used to pass audio samples between two threads without ever blocking one of them. The JACK code provides an implementation of this, and many people use it. I don't, not because there is anything wrong with the code, but because if I use the ITC features of my threads lib in the correct way, I get the same effect without any extra code. The two implementations couldn't be more different, but it's still the same pattern. Because audio (and signal processing in general) programming involves this mix of disciplines, combining high (abstraction) and low (down to the hardware) level features and elements from audio engineering and DSP, many of the things you may learn on the way to a degree in IT could actually more of a hindrance than a asset, unless you are capable of taking some distance from them. Forget 'extreme programming', and all the other 'hype of the day' that thrives in information engineering circles, and embrace common sense. (just my 2 eurocents of course) -- FA