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Thursday, November 20, 2003 - Posts

Gotcha!

With all of these tips flying about, there just had to be a trap to even up things up... If (when using VC++6 at least - I've not checked this with v7.1) you declare a const int in an .IDL file, MIDL will actually generate a #define in the header file, Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 6:05 AM by pdbartlett | 0 Comments
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More tips...

It's turning into Tips Day... Firstly an old one, which my previous post reminded me of: setting the registry value HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar to 9, say, enables completion of file names at the command prompt, using the Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 6:03 AM by pdbartlett | 2 Comments
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C++ string literals are NOT const

I guess I always subconciously knew this was true, but had never really thought about the consequences. First up is a variation of the infamous K&R "Hello world!" example program:#include void DoIt(char* sz) { puts(sz); *sz = 'J'; } Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 6:02 AM by pdbartlett | 1 Comments
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Tip of the day: Command shell FOR

I've known about the NT command shell's FOR command for a while, but have recently found myself using it more and more. You can check out it's features in full with HELP FOR, but my most common usage is analogous to *NIX's find -exec, e.g.: FOR /F Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 6:02 AM by pdbartlett | 1 Comments
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Books...

I am part way through reading Martin Fowler's Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture and can thoroughly recommend it. I'm finding it rather more useful than his previous book, Analysis Patterns, though that's not to say that was not also a good Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 5:59 AM by pdbartlett | 0 Comments
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Not at the PDC, and not bitter - honest

Everybody else is talking about the PDC, so I thought I'd offer my opinions, for what they're worth. I'm not at the PDC, and in fact have never made it further than a couple of VBITS events at Kensington Olympia. Yesterday I realised that I was never Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 5:58 AM by pdbartlett | 4 Comments
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Hurrah!

That's 3 posts in as many days. Perhaps I'll keep this blogging lark up after all... Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 5:58 AM by pdbartlett | 0 Comments
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Decorator templates

I have recently been looking to create a set of wrapper classes to hold Win32 resources using "resource allocation is initialization" (RAII) principles. Previously I have constructed such wrappers on an ad hoc basis, which in practice has meant heavy Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 5:56 AM by pdbartlett | 1 Comments
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A spoonful of sugar...

Many texts refer to the Liskov Substitution Principle (or LSP) which states, rather more elegantly than I am about to, that inheritance should only be used if an instance of the subclass is, to all intents and purposes, an instance of the base class. Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 5:54 AM by pdbartlett | 11 Comments
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assert ( PathToEnlightenment == PathOfLeastResistance ) ;

Brad Abrams has referred to Rico Mariani's pit of success: The Pit of Success: In sharp contrast to a summit, a peak, or a journey across a desert to find victory through many trials and surprises, we want our customers to simple fall into winning Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 5:52 AM by pdbartlett | 2 Comments
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Optimizing coding as well as code

The most well-known quote about optimization in software development must surely be Knuth's: "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" However, what exactly does he mean by optimization in this case? I suspect that he using the word in a Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 5:45 AM by pdbartlett | 1 Comments
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Just moved in...

... from out of town, so I thought I'd tell you a little about myself before I start moving my old posts over. Who? I am Paul Bartlett, and live in Colnbrook (a small village at the end of the runway at London Heathrow) with my wife Rosie and (almost) Read More
posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 5:38 AM by pdbartlett | 0 Comments
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