The Lounge

(Taking off my *official mouthpiece* hat...) I think one of the biggest .NET benefits that gets overlooked is consistency of API and programming model. In the past, APIs got targetted towards different languages. An API that needed to be used by VB was typically written as a COM object using automation types. Easy to use from VB, often a pain to do from C++ (ie SafeArray). Other APIs got targetted towards C++ programmers (Exchange server, for example), and are at best very difficult to use in VB. If you want to write in another language (Perl, for example), you have similar problems. Even if the API you wanted was targetted towards your language, you still had to figure out the mindset of the team that authored the API, figure out what data types they deal with, how they deal with error cases, etc. In the .NET world, there's one way of doing these things, and that simplification is very powerful. Even if you aren't familiar with what a set of classes do, you can understand them fairly easily because they do things in the "standard way", and use standard datatypes.

Not the right place to post a code-related topic. Maybe 'age' is not the problem, but _DAY is. Try: int iDay(_DAY); lngDaysToSubtract = age * iDay; -- Alex Marbus www.marbus.net

Check the latest (one of the ~) 'Unedited Entries'. You'll see a very simple VC AddIn that shows the SP version (if any). I'm trying to 'inject' also in the 'About' box launching of Visual Studio.

The forums accept most HTML markup except for things like <object> and <frame> etc. If you want to display markup (the actual tags) in your post then you need to change the "<"'s to "<"'s. There is also a Preview button that may come in handy. cheers, Chris Maunder

English Black Black humour (nothing to do with race, but with taste) is difficult for even us native english speakers to understand. My Additional 's' in the name was purly a mistake ! The humour defies logic ! I'm sorry anyone found it offensive, But so be it I don't realy care. Regardz Colin Davies

Because it's coming! The new MFC and ATL libraries are here, we can use the new compilers, and the beta 1 VS.NET is totally useable. .NET is still in beta but that isn't stopping hundreds of companies from working on .NET components, or hundreds of sites from moving to ASP.NET. If I didn't make an effort to make you guys ad girls more aware of the potential benefits of .NET - and have a little bit of fun at the same time - then I would start getting 'Is CodeProject going soft' emails. The competition is NOT simply a C# or managed C++ comp - it's a competition about everything that is in the new package and I for one would very much like to see some MFC and ATL articles based on the new library. C# and VB.NET have had way too much of the limelight. cheers, Chris Maunder

Very nice article. Thanks for telling us about it. This reminds me of a question that I have never received a satisfactory answer to. The documented behavior of VC++ 6 is (according to the MSDN documentation for the numeric_limits sample program): 29 Representation of quiet NaN for float -1.#IND ... 40 How does a float represent a signaling NaN? -1.#INF I am not the greatest IEEE-754 guru, but shouldn't a signaling NaN be represented as "1.#NaN"? Can anyone here explain this to me? The behavior seems to be by design, so I hesitate to call it a bug or noncompliance, but I have not managed to get a definitive answer from anyone about where I am mistaken in my understanding of 754 signaling NaNs. For detailed and knowledgeable description of how MS has consistently undermined the intentions of the IEEE-754 standard, see the 1997 Dr. Dobbs interview with William Kahan, who was the principal architect of the IEEE-754 standard and who contributed significantly to the design of the original 8087. An excerpt: If I understand what the Microsoft C compiler does, it allows overflow to occur at run time, and then you get a run-time message, "Your expression is too complicated, go back rewrite it in simpler pieces and recompile." To do this, they have to test the invalid flag, which indicates either an invalid arithmetic operation or a stack overflow, depending on the state of another bit in the condition code. The trouble is, to detect this, they clear the flag after every statement, therefore you the programmer can't use it. You can't find out if an invalid operation has occurred, because Microsoft has cleared the flag before the code returns. DDJ: So you have to write your own libraries? WK: It's not the libraries. The compiler generates code that blitzes the invalid flag before you see it. You disable the trap on invalid because you want to test it. The compiler reenables the trap, you do your arithmetic operation, it traps, the compiler resets the invalid flag, and if the trap wasn't caused by stack overflow, it just continues. ... Numerics can be a lot simpler than they are, but they are not as simple as Java thinks, and they are not as simple as Microsoft thin

Glad you liked it, I used to watch it when I was in England. ( Will you be wanting the butcher's special then, Sir ;) )

Warnings? I never heard any warnings? My life is mine and I’ll do what I damn well like with it - I'm not going to let a bunch of highly acclaimed medical guys dictate what I should and shouldn’t do – so long as I am still breathing afterwards it can’t be *that* bad for you (with some obvious exceptions). (And before you think im some kind of alcoholic – im not. I just enjoy the occasionally night out with my mates). No, my head is fine again now, thanks. Although now the effect has worn off I am starting to feel the pain from my many new cuts and bruises - It nether ceases to amaze me some on the things people get up to when ‘under the influence’. Just so long as no-one has a polaroid handy its alright!

:) Hi Mick. Perhaps they are on different partitions. I don't really recall, because I installed them a while ago. I've removed the directories for the other two installs, so I'll see if that worked the next time I boot up. Thanks. Jamie Nordmeyer Portland, Oregon, USA

Some good info (including screenshots) of HailStorm can be found here. cheers, Chris Maunder

Here's a piece from WIRED news: Combating WAP's Bad Rap (Business 2:00 a.m. PST) http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42421,00.html?tw=wn20010319 WAP -- Web access from a phone -- has gotten bad press for its slow speed, lack of content and plain uselessness. Vendors at this week's CTIA tradeshow in Las Vegas are out in force trying to prove that WAP has a future. By Elisa Batista. cheers, Chris Maunder

Yes, you are the first sucker. Definition of Urban Legend - a story that gets repeated as fact, but is not true. Or am I the sucker and you are trolling ? Christian The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda. To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.

I just thought I'd add that if I have to learn something for a given task, I will, just like all of the rest of you. But I don't have the luxury of time to be using new technology simply for the sake of using the new technology, and I sure as hell won't force-feed a program with it if it's not necessary to the task at hand. Product schedules are shakey enough without having to back up and replace working code with the same stuff in a different language/framework.

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/icecream.htm Dates back to at least 1978, possibly 1971. FYI, Snopes.com has a bunch of urban legends, most of them with references, citations, history, etc. Very well-done site.

I can see that sceptical look on your face from here. Huh, all the way from oz to denmark ;P You need a BIG lense for your SLR camera to do that :eek: - Anders

I agree, Couldn't see what the fuss was about, despite various programming and non programming magazines running articles on it. I even got offered a few contract jobs to do with it. Crazy. Some of the 3G phones with colour displays look good though. I've seen footage of a horse race on a 3G phone. If it can do that there may be a future for them (not that I'm into horseraces though). Stephen Kellett

Chris, haven't you heard, Australian reds our out now. ;P With the exhaustion of the final stocks of the fantastic 1996 Australian Shiraz (at least my stocks :)), it's time to move on. Current fav, South African Nederburg Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 1998 (thanks to Jake for introducing me to it) David

I only saw the beta 1 but it looks very similiar to .net beta 1 - seems it is the "new" look. Lee ------ Lee J. Zuckett - MCSD Avanade, Inc.