Hangout for experimental confirmation and demonstration of software, computing, and networking. The exercises don't always work out. The professor is a bumbler and the laboratory assistant is a skanky dufus.

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VC++ Novice: Is Native C++ a Dead Language?

This week, James Waletzky posted a valuable observation about the ongoing usability of C++: Motley says "Native C++ code development is obsolete."  I recommend the entire post, the comments, and all of the other Progressive Development posts (with my cataloging here for an overview).

Here, I think is the key take-away and the main reason I am so keen to support VC++ novices:

Maven: ... I would argue that you are a better developer now because you had a C++ background. You understand what a pointer is don't you?

Motley: Don't insult me.

Maven: Do you ignore the concept of a pointer in managed code?

Motley: Absolutely not. There are times to pass objects by reference. There are times when using COM Interop that I have to worry about AddRef and Release. There are times when I do server-side development that I have to explore heap fragmentation issues (and in rare circumstances heap corruptions). Understanding a pointer is a necessity.

It's not just about pointers but storage structures, data representations, efficient economical use of resources, and encoding abstraction-manifestation techniques generally.  It's also about having the choice of a tool that is fit for the job. (and These days, one can mix tools and interoperate with libraries built from between the different program codes, when it is worth the effort and maintenance complication.  Learning to confine such complexity is part of the lesson.

It also comes down to what you want to become proficient at and how quickly, balanced by the importance of understanding the fundamentals deep enough to get out of trouble and also to avoid trouble in the first place.

---

For those who are concerned about Microsoft's continuing support for C++ development, the new version of MFC (the Microsoft Foundation Classes) and additional standard-library functions slated for the next version of the C++ standard have been released in a VC++ 2008 Feature Pack.  The feature pack is not available for VC++ 2008 Express Edition, although there is expected to be some future availability (although that might only be the non-MFC additions as part of VS 2008 SP1 when available).  Stay tuned.

---

[Update 2008-04-12T15:38Z: There was a phrase in one paragraph that nagged at me so I dove in and, in removing the nag, hacked up the paragraph fairly badly.  I like the new one much better though.  This is not unlike having a bit of code that just doesn't sit right, and sometimes it is the narrative in the comments that is the problem, some times it is the code itself.]

¶ posted by orcmid at 4/11/2008 12:17:00 PM

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nfoWorks: What Are those Harmony Principles, Again?

As part of readying the nfoWorks site for hoarding my hunter-gatherings for available materials in the wild, I have produced a refinement of the original attempt at some Harmony Principles.  The latest attempt will now be kept part of the "About nfoWorks" page, and an early draft (0.1 beta) is now available.

There is additional information being filled in over the next several days:

1. Harmony Principles
2. Deliverables
3. Incremental Development
4. Start-Up Activities
5. Related Work
6. References and Resources

This is a typical first draft, with many sections simply being placeholders for content yet to come. 

In arranging this material and the site, I did not have the foresight to create a blog or provide RSS feeds of the accounts being made on the site itself.  This post is my penance for that.  There is no way to make comments on nfoWorks, but you can always comment here and I will take notice.

Meanwhile, here are the basic ideas:

nfoWorks explores just how well documents can be made fully exchangeable when using a mix of different OpenDocument and Office Open XML implementations.

The first question: What prerequisites and restraints must be satisfied to ensure that documents are fully exchangeable and users can be confident that is the case?

The next question: Is there enough harmonization for users to willingly create, collaborate, and preserve their work using only only harmonious features of documents?

I offer these conditions of satisfaction for a high-level sense of what's intended:

• Users can be confident their creations honor the format standards and depend only on their harmonious features.  The Harmony Principles are honored by default.
    
• Users can be confident that documents confined to a particular profile of harmonious features can be interchanged and interoperated with via any software programs that honor the Harmony Principles for the class.
    
• In the event that a document relies on features beyond the harmonious level supported by a software product, profile-allowed limitation to supported features is explicit, automatic, and user-understandable.

Additional explanation and expanding detail are found via the About nfoWorks page.

¶ posted by orcmid at 4/11/2008 09:47:00 AM

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