I’ve been seeing a lot of comments in various forums similar to this comment by Christopher Diggins: XML down a slippery slope. In most of them, there is the implied belief that XML is the solution to all problems and that anything that violates the spirit of XML is to be condemned. I have personally… Read More »
Code Reading Diomidis Spinellis Addison-Wesley, 2003 I have had this book on my list of books to read for some time. Although I have been reading code for years, everything I had heard about this book suggested that it would help improve my reading skills. Unfortunately, halfway through the book I was mostly disappointed. This… Read More »
Continuing my exploration of misunderstandings about multi-threading, this essay is about simplicity. If you are interested in the previous essays in this series, they can be found on the series page. This time I plan to start with an assertion that almost everyone will agree with and push it more than most people would. The… Read More »
This essay continues my exploration of misunderstandings about multi-threading. In the first essay of this series, Unintuitive Multithreading: Speed, I explained that multi-threading does not inherently speed up a process. In the second essay Unintuitive Multithreading: Waiting for Performance, I showed how to achieve better performance through waiting. In this essay, I plan to attack… Read More »
The Best Software Writing I Joel Spolsky (editor) Apress, 2005 Despite plenty of examples to the contrary, there is actually some good writing out there on various software subjects. Even though most of what you can read on the subject (on and off the web) is not particularly well-written, there are some gems out there.… Read More »
This essay continues my exploration of misunderstandings about multi-threading. In the first essay of this series, Unintuitive Multithreading: Speed, I explained that multi-threading does not inherently speed up a process. In this essay, I plan to show how to not achieve more performance from a multi-threaded system. Many new multi-threading (MT) developers make the same… Read More »
This begins a short series of essays on what most programmers get wrong about multi-threading. Over and over again, I’ve seen programmers make the same mistakes in multi-threaded applications on multiple operating systems and in multiple languages. So I decided to give you the benefits of what little insight I have into the problem. The… Read More »
C++ Common Knowledge Stephen C. Dewhurst Addison-Wesley, 2005 The subtitle of this book sums it up nicely, Essential Intermediate Programming. If someone has not mastered, or at least understood, the material in this book, he or she is still a junior C++ programmer. Although this material is necessary, it is not sufficient to make someone… Read More »
Isn’t it funny how you sometimes run into the same concept everywhere at once? A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece (Another View of Human Multitasking) refuting some of the conclusions in a Joel Spolsky article on human multitasking. This week, I stumbled across another article, Creating Passionate Users: Your brain on multitasking,… Read More »
Exceptional C++ Style Herb Sutter Addison-Wesley, 2005. Once again, Herb Sutter provides us with a set of problems that teach important lessons about the C++ programming language. Each problem in the book covers some problem that a C++ programmer might see in a particular program or design. As Sutter solves each problem, he gives insight… Read More »