Posts

Publishing C++/CLI on LeanPub

I came across LeanPub ¹ a few months back. I believe it was through hanselman² – blog, video or something. I liked LeanPub instantly because of a couple of reasons.

• It supports writing in markdown³ and I love markdown.
• There is a large collection and variety of books including technical books and material, some of which are free too.
• In case you are not a professional writer, the publication process encourages you with the feeling as if you are one.

I hadn’t written/published any lengthy material in a long time except the C+/CLI Primer on CodeProject⁴. Why not publish same, I thought, and actually published⁵. I wasn’t even expecting any response from anyone since the material was on C++/CLI, a language that gave me the impression that I was the only one using it at the time I published on CodeProject. 😀 I am really impressed that the material topped more than 50 downloads in about three months since it was published. Heck, a couple of them even paid despite the fact that the material is free. Not only am I humbled by this encouraging gesture but I am also convinced that C++/CLI is still being pursued and will continue to live – production, academic or as a pet language. Go grab your copy of the booklet – C++/CLI Primer. It’s free!

Lights Preserved

I have a separate blog – Lights Preserved where I get to claim myself a photographer, and where I publish some of my artistic snapshots. 😀

Nothing entertains me on a Sunday beating the nap and pecking around my old store. Published a few good snaps that brought back good memories. Take a look!

.NET for the next generation

It was about a decade ago when Visual Studio .NET 2002 was launched. Having worked with Visual Studio 6 until then, the new interface was refreshing and powerful along with .NET and the suite of languages, tools and technologies. If you were there, you would have felt times were changing. Beyond the cool and modern interface, Visual Studio .NET 2002 had a lot more to offer  compared to Visual Studio 6 — .NET. It was an exciting time for me back then. More ...

final, const and beyond

What are your thoughts on the following piece of code?

public String someGibberishMethod() {
	int length = someMethodReturningLength();
	int sum = 0;

	for (int index = 0; index < length; ++index) {
	   // some code that updates the sum variable
	}

	SomeClass someClass = new SomeClass(sum);
	int sumValueInsideSomeClass = someClass.getSumValue();
	// use someText, maybe log or something

	String someText = someClass.doSomeOperation(/*some parameters*/);
	// use someText, maybe log or something
	return someText;
}

The unconquerable

Hercules was a strong man; a tall muscular perfect masculine figure. He moved boulders with his bare hands. He stopped elephants and swung them by their tusks. No doubt, he prevented battles by his mere presence. His body drew its strength from within. He was no less than unconquerable.

Even such a mighty Hercules was brought down to his knees. He was taken over by an invisible force that turned him weak and set him on a curse, a terrible painful experience. He started worrying deeply, and wept like a scared kid. There was a time when he fought elephants head on. But this was a battle within that he was losing. He could still win this battle only if he could meet eye-to-eye with the enemy.

JAR Tips: Loading dependencies

If you are writing a typical console based application in Windows, you would end up with an executable (exe). You might also have one or more dependent libraries (DLL). The question is where do we place these DLLs so that they are picked up at runtime by the application; loaded and consumed. Actually it is no brainer, just put them along side the console application executable. Or you could place the DLLs in the System32 directory. Or you could add the directory to the PATH. Well, my point was actually to say that the DLLs can be simply placed alongside the executable and it would be picked up. More ...

An Unfair World of Tuples, Anons., var and auto

It all began when I wanted to return more than one value from one of the methods. Although my attempts ended futile, it was fun exploring and musing how things could have been.

There are at least a couple of options to return multiple values from a method:-

1. return an instance of a class that holds the values
2. return a tuple

A funny moment of IoC

IoC - Inversion of control, is a design that enables fluid flow of control by decoupling tight dependencies between the portion of a code that exhibits behavior and another portion of code that provides required functionality. One form of IoC, as we know, is Dependency Injection (DI). For instance, a TextEditor could refer an ISpellChecker instead of direct coupling to a specific implementation of spell checker thereby enabling the text editor to switch spell checker or even use more than one. More ...

Mutating Strings

Today, we question our beliefs! Is string really immutable?

  
string message = "Hello World!";

Console.WriteLine(message); // Prints "Hello World!"

unsafe {
  int length = message.Length;
  
  fixed (char *p = message) {
    for (int index = 0; index < length; ++index) {
      *(p + index) = '?';
    }
  }
}

Console.WriteLine(message); // Prints what? See for yourself!

A time when time did not exist …

Those of us, non-physicists, we do seem to realize that time is eternal. Yet there was a time when time did not exist; tough to comprehend? For us, time is something running on a clock or tracked on a calendar. Let me share what I think about when time did not exist. More ...