What if .NET would be Discontinued?

November 3, 2008 1 minute read

I’m not known as a person who particularly likes the .NET framework but I still have to use it. The .NET Framework is basically a massive library of general purpose functions, much like the Standard Library is to C or the Standard Template Library is to C++.

But what if it all would be discontinued?

It’s not an impossibility and rather likely considering Microsoft’s track-record. The millions of applications, libraries and websites created with .NET would be useless.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of a VB6 (CGI) to ASP.NET (VB) conversion team and, trust me when I say this, you don’t want to be part of such an effort. These conversions require truckloads of time and money, and if you work for a mid-sized to large corporation, this could easily lead into the millions of dollars.

Now imagine all of your code obsolete. Everything you’ve coded since .NET 1.0. What would you do? Let’s take FoxPro as an example. Microsoft bought FoxPro in 1992 and released a couple of versions under the “Visual”-family of products. The last version was released in 2007 and a statement of Microsoft suggests that this is the last version.

No migration tools to any other language are being provided.

Another product would be J#, which will be retired in 2015. Keep in mind that J# is a fairly recent product and was only released with Visual Studio.NET.

How far will .NET go before a turning point is reached? Consider that .NET was first released publicly in 2002 and will be a decade old in less than four years. Knowing Microsoft, the end is quite possibly much nearer than you think.

Amount of Digits in an Integer

October 12, 2008 1 minute read

Here’s another little snippet that might come in handy in your programmatic travels. I’ll show you an example of usage below, which might also be of interest to you. The code presented is in C, not C++. First, the code to count the amount of digits in an integer:

Read 498 more words...

Flattening Multidimensional Arrays

October 11, 2008 1 minute read

Edit: Thank you, fixitman for the insightful comment; the code has been fixed to work with non-square arrays as well.

In an effort to produce a better performing multidimensional array, I would like to share the following with you. Say we have a Matrix (or multidimensional array) of 5 x 5 integer elements, M. In order to allocate such an array in C++, we use the following code:

Read 489 more words...

CriticalSection wrapper class

August 22, 2008 2 minute read

2023 Update: You probably don’t want to use this code since there are likely some serious issues with it. But, fun fact: a major tech company reached out to me to clarify what the license for this is. So, if you want to screw yourself over and use it, let’s say it’s MIT licensed and call it a day.

What: A C++ wrapper around both WINAPI (Microsoft Windows) and PThreads (POSIX threads) functionality.

Why: To abstract cross platform functionality.

Remarks: On windows, CRITICAL_SECTION objects cannot be shared cross-process. This means that the class is tied to your application or DLL process. Comments are in Doxygen/Javadoc style.

Read 568 more words...

Preliminary view of DirectX 11

August 16, 2008 less than 1 minute read

Following is a list of the major features that have been announced to be included in Direct3D 11, the next generation Graphics API included in the DirectX SDK. In my opinion, the changes (rather, additions) brought into this API are excellent so far. It seems as if the API has finally grown up and is in no way, shape or form comparable with older DX versions and deprecates OpenGL 3.0 at this point.

Read 115 more words...