Not unusual. They offered some free eBooks for their Visual Studio Express products. The books have hyperlinks in them which are not clickable. If you copy and paste them they still don't work because they used some strange coding so they don't paste as English letters -- you have to retype the whole thing.
I agree that developing a GUI in C# is superior to doing so in C++....*UNDER WINDOWS*.
This last qualification is extremely important. Programmers often compare C++ to other languages based on things that are actually not part of the language. For example, the atrocity that we call the GUI API for C/C++ under Windows has nothing to do with C++ as a language. This is not C++'s fault. It's Microsofts fault. Microsoft made poo with their GUI system, and decided to wait until putting forth and entirely new language before providing an interface that was somewhat agreeable. It is entirely conceivable that a portable GUI library could be developed in C++ that would rival C# and any other language in flexibility, performance, robustness, and elegance.This has not happened yet.
What concerns me is that people who call themselves engineers will often choose C# over C or C++ because they feel that C# will relieve them of the mental discipline required to bring forth good form in the end result. The best example I have to illustrate this point is what is written in bold in the following post. The programmers think that C#'s garbage collector will relieve them of memory management. It's plain stupid, but hundreds of thousands of programmes believe it anyway (like magic diet pills). Then, perhaps after 2 or 3 years, they learn that there is no silver bullet, and what they end up with is a design that had the the same challenges they would have had in C++, only the code is much slower and devoid of good form. See:
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Sure it has... Qt by TrollTech!
Granted, they do add some new keywords to C++ and thus require you to run a preprocessor before the compiler, but that's pretty painless when using a "make" process. Perhaps this detracts from it's "elegance..."
---Joel
This was a top end model, cant remember the exact specs. AFAIK it is still sitting on the service bench at the agent in South Australia after they wanted me to pay (Still under warrantee) for the freight to the US. In the end it was costing us far to much money in lost development so I told them to get f***ed and vowed never to look at a lecroy again.
That IMO is a bad design. If they wanted it to be a PC with scope attached thats how it should be designed. That way it can be safely patched and can even update itself automatically.
I had Qt in mind when I wrote what I wrote. ;)
Wasn't aware of the keyword additions. My gut feeling is that it is possible to find a regular model for GUI programming with no modifications to the langauge whatsoever.
I did, however, look at bit at Qt code, and while it is much better than using the Windows API in the raw, I didn't get goosebumps.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
I am actually a big fan of c# and .net. I have been given a month to evaluate CE and the compact framework. Whilst my initial thoughts were good, after just a week I have come to the conclusion that the compact framework is built for doing GUI toy applications for PDA's and smart phones. IMHO the compact framework is completly useless for industrialied applications. The code needed to implement byte size packing of structures for transmission over the wire can be acheived in 2 lines of c++ code, where as you need 100's of lines of code to do it with the compact framework. Furthermore, the code required is far slower.
I have done some benchamrk performance testing and i will publish the results here and in c.a.e when i am finished. Hopefully this may also promote some freindly competition to beat my heavy codeing!!.
Why Bother. Just make something up, everybody does; charge USD 20K a pop for prints of your "research" and Bob's yer Uncle!
That's pretty much what "analysts" and "consultants" DO: Provide management support (and the scape-goating) for decisions already made, while charging an arm and a leg for it. So why not you too?
One of my colleagues have been known to openly roll a dice in front of management to provide estimates for design times or costs in protest - and they will happily use the figure so obtained! The only bad answer is the truthful: "I do not know". ;-)
PS: It is INSANE to try to compare tools when one does not know what the job is!
Argh; Forgot the point:
Arguing with management that like to meddle in product design is pointless and self defeating:
*If* you win the discussion*, your head will roll over the eventual failure of the projects - whatever the reason, even if the product does not sell. At the same time, if the project is a success, you are forever branded as "not a team player" for showing management to be fallible in front of the plebeian "ressources"! And "they" will steal the honour for it!! *) ... sucks more because it will be the case that some of the more machiavellian bosses will see the business prospects for the project as being iffy and need YOU as a lightning rod for assurance and NOT because of your convincing argument which they treated as "free advice" ...ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.