Cubic

I am in the process of moving roughly 1.5 million lines of C code to C++ for several very specific reasons I can't mention here - not yet anyway. I'm off e-mail, web surfing, IM, blogging, and general reality for the next 3-4 weeks. I expect that by the time I get back, I will have my fourth case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) in the past three years. Wish me luck and, uh, I hope it doesn't take much longer than that. I have already had enough setbacks, but this one could knock me out for a while.

What's hot? What's not? Below is my list of recommended companies to do business with and those whom you should avoid like the plague. As a developer, you need computer equipment and software that simply works. I am always looking out for newer and more interesting technologies to add to my core recommended list. If you are a hardcore gamer, these recommendations are not for you. If you are searching for a good PC that won't break down, these can be for you but may be slightly out of your budget. Recommended PC and/or hardware manufacturers: Dell. I have yet to have a problem with Dell. Good solid hardware, but not the best for gaming. Spending less than $500 on a PC will get you in trouble, though (you get what you pay for). IBM. Good hardware. Unfortunately, they shut down their PC division, so parts will be hard to find. Expensive. Micron. Their memory chips are still top notch for those who need an upgrade to existing hardware. ATI. NV...

Usually when I say, "wow," I refer to the negative sense of the word. This is most definitely a positive "wow." Apple has recently slashed prices on their hardware. About a year ago I got a new PC, but at the same time I was seriously considering a Mac. All developers, look at this: http://www.apple.com/macmini/ The Mac mini is visually impressive, but that isn't what counts. I have been saying for a long time that people won't move to Linux because it is unusable. Macintosh/Apple/whatever their name is today (such is the sad result of mergers - you can't figure out a company's name any more), has their sticky fingers all over making a usable OS. I would recommend Mac over Linux any day. I could care less about proprietary hardware - in fact, as a developer, it probably makes my life easier. For developers, I have been eyeing the Mac for a really long time. It has one thing that every developer needs: Three OSes rolled into one ...

Eons ago, in a day before my time, Douglas Macarthur once said that he would return. When he returned and set foot on one of the islands in the Philippines, he said that famous phrase, "I have returned." (Unfortunately for him, Ahnold Schwarzenegger's line "I'll be back" seems to have superceded "I shall return" in more recent times - I would wager that the difference makes for a good history test question). In roughly the same way that Macarthur returned, Microsoft today dropped a bombshell on the anti-virus companies. In my automatic updates in-box resides something called the "Malicious Software Removal Tool," which will get installed before the next reboot in roughly 23 days from now. Microsoft is wisely being very careful as they cautiously step on anti-virus vendor's toes not even daring to call it an anti-virus tool. Most people will not remember back to the Windows 3.x days as Microsoft was busy trying to define wh...

http://www.developershed.com/plugin/PIM_200501.pdf See the last page of that PDF. The author discusses an important topic about bloggers. Basically, bloggers can control the results that come back from search engines. For those who have no idea what I am talking about, I am referring to SEO. No, this isn't someone who has decided to shorten their long name to three letters, but rather stands for Search Engine Optimization. Most programmers are aware of things like Googlebombs and sites like that and generally think there isn't much to search engine optimization. Technically, there isn't. You want people to link to your site and they want you to link to theirs. A never ending battle of trying to get high quality and high quantity links to a website - and get spidered properly. The trick comes in knowing how each search engine algorithm works and what to do if it changes. Some people try underhanded methods to raise rankings. A Googlebomb, for instance, wil...

Okay, while I am not on the C/C++ committees, it has come to my attention over the more recent months and years that the core languages are simply not capable of handling modern devices - particularly dealing with PCs. If you search the archives of several of the many lists I subscribe to, you will frequently find programmers asking about how to use ANSI C/C++ to do: 1) Single keypress keyboard input. 2) Drawing graphics on the screen. 3) Printing to a printer. 4) Accessing USB devices (e.g. a scanner). 5) Responding to mouse movement. (etc.) Every single time, without fail, someone replies saying that these are not standard. I have, on occassion, jokingly made the suggestion that C was designed to output to a dot matrix or line printer. So, all of these discussions have me thinking about what to do. The result of all this thinking is that, because C is incapable of these things, people have to resort to using OS-level APIs. One of the major goals of C/C++ was to make it abl...

"i am having TreeCtrl which have check box can any body tell me how to get check box click event or what iwan to do is to select the child notes when theparent node is selected??? can any oyd help me????????????" The English language is a rich language. Please do not misuse it. As programmers who participate in the art of writing code (it is an art) and the science of writing code (it is a science) know how important it is to have detailed and complete comments. Their comments in programming forums should be of equal value. I found the above paragraph on a random forum. I'm sure Google will turn up where it came from, but realize that the topic of this is not about where the source is, but to use it as a mere example of the broad problem that plagues programmers. Programmers simply don't know how to write in English. If they can't write good English, they will be lousy commenters and therefore lousy programmers - no matter how good their coding skills are...