Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2

Got the DVDs for Visual Studio 2005. However it isn't working yet. It always ask for a team server and I am on WinXP. So Team Foundation Server couldn't be installed on my pc. Will try again. The good thing that comes with the Beta DVDs is the WEFLY247.net DVD. It contains more than 7 GB of data (Did I ever say that I read all that:P). But its looks cool. There are a lot step by step tutorials that realy gonna help.

I hope that I can get the beta running soon.

50th Episode of .NET Show

Just downloaded and watched the 50th episode of .NET show. Was amazed at a lot of things. Discussion was good but I dont want to discuss it here.

I was more amazed when I saw Brad Abrams as he looked so young. I wasn't expecting that he would be so young (Used to consider him of the age of Anderes Hejlsberg or Jim Gray). I was inclined to find out his age. His resume shows that he graduated in 1997 and he would probably be 24 at that time. So it makes him 31 or 32.

Well the last 6 or 8 minutes of the episode included an interview with Bill Gates. Came to know a few interesting things about him. Like he has done most of his coding in machine code and he still writes a few applications in C#. And moreover, once he used to understand all the code of the windows and used to modify it as his will ... Wow.

I think .NET show people have realized that everyone cannot download the movies due to slow internet. Hence they've provided with the Transcripts of the shows. These are available for episode 31 and onward. Here is the link

http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/transcripts/default.aspx

Have a look if you want to get a quick overview of the show before downloading it.

Cheers

Microsoft Support Policy

In December 2004, Microsoft announced that in 2005, Microsoft will discontinue the free support for Windows NT. I think that Windows Serviceability Team works on these support issues. For a complete news see http://www.techbuilder.org/news/59200477 or use google :).

I have read this news before and was confused that when should a developer or a development company should stop wasting useful resources on older operating systems and tools. While browsing through the MSDN, I found a link that expalins the Microsoft's Policy. By reading this FAQ, you can safely analyze that when a product is 10 years old, then its almost the time to say bye bye. See the FAQ at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy for a complete overview.

Also have a look at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/complifeport to see the exact dates after which the support will be available for a price to big clients.

Cheers

Operator should be += OR =+

We are quite used to operators like +=, -=.

Just going through the history of C, I came to know that older versions of C used =+, =- to mean what the operators +=,-= mean these days. And they changed it when they realized that assignment of a -ve number to integer is rather ambiguous e.g.

int i;
i =-1 // i is supposed to be -1 but this was resolved as i=i-1;

A way round to this problem might have been something like this

int i = 0;
i =- 1;

Of course it will not work in cases when i contains anyvalue other than zero.

C++ Object Creation

See to this code and try guessing the output

#include
using namespace std;

class Parent {

protected:
int num_p;
public:
Parent () : num_p (0) { }
Parent (const Parent& r) { num_p = r.num_p; }
int GetNumP () { return num_p; }
void SetNumP (int n) { num_p = n;}
};


class Child : public Parent {

protected:
int num_c;
public:
Child () : num_c (0) { }
Child (const Child& r) { num_c = r.num_c;}
int GetNumC () { return num_c;}
void SetNumC (int n) { num_c = n; }
};


int main( )
{

Child obj;
obj.SetNumP (10);
obj.SetNumC (20);

Child test = obj;
cout << test.GetNumP << " " << test.GetNumC ();
return 0;
}


The first thing that everyone says is that output is: 10 20. However the ouptut is: 0 20.
The reason for this is that the author of the code has forgotten to call the copy constructor of the parent from the copy constructor of the child. We usually do call the Base Class constructors from default constructors but mostly forget to do the same when dealing with copy constructors.

The reason for this output is that the parent object has to be created before creation of Child Object. So when copy constructor is called, it wants to call the constructor of the base class. However as no constructor is mentioned by the author of child class, it choses to call the default constructorof the base class that assigns 0.

I dont think that the correct solution .. rather corrected line is difficult enough to guess now. Write something like as the copy constructor of child class

Child (const Child& r) : Parent (r){
num_c = r.num_c;
}

Cheers!

Is it all about Parallel Computing?

These days everyone is talking about the limitations of silicon and the demise of Moore's Law by 2015 (e.g. I heard Anderes Heljsberg talking about the use of C# in Parallel programming and he used the term 'Desmise').

Recently Intel published an interesting article about the Moore's law and how Intel is developing new technologies to provide more and more computational power.

Take a look at the article: From Moore's Law to Intel Innovation—Prediction to Reality.

One more interesting thing is a video in which Gordon Moore himself explains his lecture. However I am not yet able to download it. See the flash movie. I saw that and its great.
The links to both of these are at the bottom of the page.

Cheers!

Will C++ Survive?

What these blogs might contain is still vague but of course mostly it will contain something interesting that I'll be studying or reading.

One interesting thing that I read today was: C++ Creator upbeat on its future

Well I may noy completely agree with Bjarne Stroustrup that the real development is going back to C++ from Java and C#, I would agree that universities should offer Introductory Programming courses in C++. If universities are again teaching C++, its a good news. The news says that the use of java has decreased slightly. I wonder that the java users switched back C++ or moved on to C#. C# seems more obvious due to its similarity with java.

Its almost 6 AM now and I've spent the last couple of hours chosing the templates, reading some other blogs and browsing in general. I better sleep now :).