# Tuesday, 06 July 2004

I know these things are silly, but anyway:

You are Windows 2000 SP3.  You're a steady and reliable friend.  People think you're all business, but with your recent therapy you've become a little more playful.
Which OS are You?

How did it determine I was service pack 3? I don't want to know. You can see all the possibilities at http://bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz_all.html. I think I would have rather been XP.

Kate

Tuesday, 06 July 2004 16:21:37 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Monday, 05 July 2004

My Microsoft DE, Adam Gallant, is blogging about DevCan so I guess I can too. I'm co chairing two tracks.

What is it? Well it has tracks, so it must be a conference, right? And it has Can in the name, and a maple leaf in the logo, so it's in Canada. And we're planning it now, so it's not in July but nor is it in the spring of 2006.

Stay tuned...

Kate

Monday, 05 July 2004 11:00:59 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Thursday, 01 July 2004

”For pure .NET, C++ typically 25% faster than C#” is the only English sentence (other than photos of slides) in a blog entry I just came across. The rest is Italian, but you know that one sentence certainly caught my eye.

The entry describes a June 30th (that would be yesterday!) Herb Sutter talk. I ran it through Babelfish, but automatic translation doesn't do well with technical terms:

Ago from landlady the "Deterministic finalization" where java and C # is under accusation in order not to have conserved the concept of annihilator in the language. The C#/CLI annihilator is the equivalent of the pattern arranged suit.

Er, OK. Still I think the slides say a lot, and 25% faster? 50% faster if there's heavy pinvoke? Wowza! The future of C++ is indeed a much rose-colored one.

Kate

Thursday, 01 July 2004 17:08:17 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    

Like this quote?

I may have to retreat from my stance of preferring C# and disliking MC++. With Whidbey, MC++ is a whole new language and nearly all of my current objections to it have disappeared.

It's from the last paragraph of an article by Brent Rector  :-) The article itself is worth a read, too.

Kate

 

Thursday, 01 July 2004 16:55:20 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Wednesday, 30 June 2004

In conjunction with the announcement of the Express products, Microsoft's Channel9 is running a coding contest. Each language has its own judge, and yes of course there's a C++ judge. “The Summer of Express contest is a worldwide skill contest where developers are challenged to create “non-business” applications using the newly announced Express products.” And yes, you can use the betas -- in fact that's the whole point.

 Why not?

Kate

Wednesday, 30 June 2004 09:56:54 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Tuesday, 29 June 2004

This is fun! If you want to get started using Visual C++ to write managed or unmanaged code, but you don't want to buy the full product, what can you do? You could use the free Visual C++ Toolkit, which I've told you about before, but that doesn't include the IDE though it does include some very nice samples and whitepapers: one blogger was nice enough to say “the samples alone are worth the download.” At Tech Ed Europe, Microsoft has announced the Express versions of the 2005 products, including Visual C++ 2005 Express (that means they're in beta now, whereas the toolkit is the current released version. You can't release products you create with a beta.) You can download now, so go ahead!

Kate

ps: if you know who the gentleman is at the top left of that Visual C++ 2005 Express Beta page, please drop me a note. I swear we've met and it's going to bug me until I get a name.

Tuesday, 29 June 2004 13:40:10 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Friday, 25 June 2004

Did you know that one person -- Bob Bemer -- pushed the development and adoption of ASCII? Or that he was also responsible for the backslash and escape keys? (There's more, too, like naming COBOL -- check his site.) Isn't it a shame we don't hear this stuff until the obituary? I love this quote: "He was a coder until he couldn't code any more. He lived it and breathed it." While I love dealing with customers, and doing “big picture” architecting, as well as training and mentoring, I too love to code, and I hope someone can say that about me someday -- 50 years from now would be fine.

Kate

Friday, 25 June 2004 12:39:22 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Monday, 14 June 2004

My latest codeguru column, C++ Language Changes for Visual Studio 2005, has been uploaded to the CodeGuru site.

Monday, 14 June 2004 19:53:47 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Thursday, 10 June 2004

Scott Bellware has to reschedule his appearance at the East of Toronto .NET User Group, much to our regret. We're looking forward to announcing the new date soon. The good news is that Marcie Robillard has stepped up to the plate and agreed to shuffle her “DataGrids and GridViews” talk forward a few months. Same time, same place, same URL. See you there!

Kate

Thursday, 10 June 2004 11:11:08 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #