Ask Justin Frankel

justin = { main feed , music , code , askjf , pubkey };

Ask Justin Frankel
No reasonable question unanswered since 2009!

Suggested topics: programming, music, sleep, coffee, etc.

Note: please do not ask questions about REAPER features, bugs or scheduling, use the forums instead.

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Question: Do you do some kind of sport except of biking? gym or anything else?
Asked by asafonov (109.172.96.x) on April 24 2013, 7:16pm
Reply on April 24 2013, 10:21pm:

I've been very much enjoying running, too. Did a half marathon, which was fun, but what I really like is the being out and about on your own power (like with biking). Also to round things out, been doing push/pull ups occasionally. Comment...

Question: Any thoughts on nginx? Were you involved with scaling winamp.com or did Tom handle all of that for you as popularity grew?
Asked by Will (24.234.85.x) on April 24 2013, 5:44pm
Reply on April 24 2013, 10:23pm:

No experiences with nginx, though it has a good reputation. I don't think winamp.com was ever really THAT crazy in traffic, but Tom handled all of that. I remember at one point he upgraded our RS/6000 server to something amazing like 128MB RAM. Hah. Comment...

Question: What you think about Bitcoin?
Asked by maurice (130.204.8.x) on April 23 2013, 8:00pm
Reply on April 24 2013, 3:59pm:

I think it's awesome that there's this infrastructure of enforced communal trust, but feel it's a shame that so many computational (and thus physical) resources get devoted to it. Great thing to have, but too bad it couldn't be done without contributing to environmental damage etc... Comment...

Question: I went to VVS ('01) a few years after you and heard a few stories about you from Thom. Anyhow, I have a background in linguistics and want to learn how to program so I might be able to chase after some of these jobs in computational linguistics. Half of them seem to want people to know Java and the other have both C++ and Python. Which language would you sta
Asked by Chandler (108.194.46.x) on April 23 2013, 5:06pm
Reply on April 24 2013, 4:21pm (edited at April 24 2013, 4:22pm):

Right on, hopefully Thom didn't admit to too much complicity! I don't know much about linguistics (though am fascinated by language), so I can't really say too much about what language would be good relating to it. For someone who wanted to learn the core of CS -- which IMO a big part of which is being able to run code as a processor would, in your head -- I'd suggest learning C (or a minimal subset of C++). For your needs, though, something higher level might be better. I'm not much of a fan of Java, as it is sort of ruined by the way its owners treat it. Comment...

Question: So then, how long after Christophe came on board before Cockos was incorporated? Did he start out as a paid employee or just a couple of friends working on a project?
Asked by Mark (69.15.110.x) on April 23 2013, 10:34am
Reply on April 23 2013, 3:16pm:

Actually Cockos existed for quite some time before REAPER. Comment...

Question: When will it will be possible to snap to frames in reaper?
Asked by lolo (181.28.176.x) on April 22 2013, 3:20pm
Reply on April 23 2013, 3:16pm:

Comment...

Question: Are all the modern C++ idioms (etc: smart pointers, no new/delete, excessive use of STL/Boost) as good as advertised?
Asked by gio (94.66.86.x) on April 21 2013, 11:34am
Reply on April 21 2013, 3:43pm (edited at April 21 2013, 3:44pm):

I wouldn't know, I still avoid them... I do quite like C with classes and single inheritance and templates... Comment...

Question: Did you implement some routine or algorithm that you feel specially proud about, even when look at it after months or years?
Asked by Rodrigo (187.112.68.x) on April 21 2013, 2:55am
Reply on April 21 2013, 3:19am:

Off the top of my head, WDL_Resampler's sinc modes are pretty nice. Also shm_connection/shm_msgreply are quite useful. Both are used heavily by REAPER. Oh and the latest updates to EEL2, with it doing some optimization... Comment...

Question: Please help a noobie :) I have a fader created like this: pastebin.com/GpZRg3P2. Using spy++ on "Item properties" in REAPER I noticed I can use SendMessage (baseFader, WM_USER+9999, 0, 1) to disable AND change it's opacity. Is it safe to use that in extension or would you recommend another way? Thanks!
Asked by Martin (78.0.246.x) on April 20 2013, 3:48pm
Reply on April 20 2013, 9:47pm (edited at April 20 2013, 10:13pm):

Yeah I don't anticipate us changing that, should be safe... Comment...

Question: How long was Reaper a solo project before Christophe came on board?
Asked by Mark (69.15.110.x) on April 19 2013, 5:29pm
Reply on April 20 2013, 12:15am:

Not very long, a couple of months (and for most of that it wasn't called REAPER, and wasn't clearly going to become anything). Comment...

Question: What was your motivation for developing Reaper, and do you see its primary focus as an audio engineering tool, or as a tool for music composition?
Asked by pbognar (198.36.94.x) on April 18 2013, 6:53pm
Reply on April 18 2013, 9:33pm:

I started REAPER because I was recording music and didn't much care for the options that were out there. I see it used for both engineering and composition, and generally hardcore-geek optimized but also relatively palatable for everybody else. Comment...

Question: does Reaper's API allow bi-directional editing for implementing Notation?
Asked by Hello (75.134.148.x) on April 16 2013, 5:10pm
Reply on April 17 2013, 5:18pm:

Not directly, I suppose we should add some APIs to do batch updates of MIDI items. Comment...

Question: Do you know any of the Bitwig developers?
Asked by Mark (69.15.110.x) on April 16 2013, 2:19pm
Reply on April 16 2013, 3:14pm:

Nope. Comment...

Question: Nitpicker: I had this problem when using vc11 only. I was getting weird leaks. The code in question was pastebin.com/P1a56bda in case of test being in the global scope (PROG==1) nitpicker indicated a leak in all other cases everything fine. I got into thinking and I end up building a fresh nitpicker.lib and everything works as expected. :/
Asked by gio (94.66.75.x) on April 16 2013, 2:46am
Reply on April 16 2013, 3:16pm:

Ah, you got it working in VC11? Cool. I did recently get it going in vc2005/x64, but it was a bit of work. To answer your question, on globally owned objects, yeah, it's possible/likely that the atexit() handler installed would execute before global destructors. That sort of leak is usually harmless, though, provided you don't have extensive datastructures freed that way... Comment...

Question: very curious: can nitpicker detect the freeing of memory using destructors for objects that are in the global scope? i get indications for some weird leaks; it gives me the sense that those objects are not properly detected or i might be wrong. love experimental software ;)
Asked by gio (94.66.75.x) on April 16 2013, 12:07am
Reply on April 16 2013, 1:46am:

Can you give me an example of what you mean? FWIW nitpicker isn't really designed for detecting leaks, more for detecting out-of-bounds, access-after-free, etc. Comment...

Question: Do JS improvements of the upcoming REAPER release coming to WDL's EEL2? the repo has been "up-to-date" for a long time... :p
Asked by gio (94.66.75.x) on April 15 2013, 10:08pm
Reply on April 15 2013, 11:10pm (edited at April 17 2013, 2:02am):

Yeah, I'll update the public repository soon (after 4.33 releases). Update: updated, at least some. Comment...

Question: Roughly how many lines of code in the R and relatively speaking, how much code commenting? We're preparing for it going open source in 2030.
Asked by Daffy (76.226.152.x) on April 12 2013, 7:29pm
Reply on April 15 2013, 11:10pm:

Hah, a decent amount of code but not a crazy amount in reaper.exe at least. Not too many comments, mostly just little notes here and there. Comment...

Question: would you ever work for someone else again if the price was right, or does money not matter to you anymore?
Asked by will (70.173.150.x) on April 12 2013, 8:29am
Reply on April 12 2013, 5:09pm:

I'd consider it if the project, team and environment were interesting enough.. as far as getting paid, less important. Comment...

Question: Can you explain byte alignment in data structures and why one needs to be cognizant of it (i.e. what does the compiler not do for you)?
Asked by Will (24.234.85.x) on April 11 2013, 10:21pm
Reply on April 12 2013, 12:50am:


struct foo {
  int a;
  double b;
};

Comment...

Question: let's say that i have an array int x[10] and i want to qsort 1st, 4th, 6th element only. how i do it without copying?
Asked by gio (79.131.32.x) on April 11 2013, 4:49am
Reply on April 11 2013, 8:58pm:

For 3 items just do a few if()s? :) Comment...

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