Accelerated C++ by Koenig and Moo.

I can't tell you what is a valid test of intelligence, but I can tell you that it is definitely not something that came from the pen of Daniel Goleman.

In order from most effective to least... 1. An office with a door on it that can be closed. 2. Working nights/week-ends 3. Noise-cancelling headphones.

I just received the following broadcast email from the "Senior Marketing Manager - Global eBusiness".

Dear All, I wanted to let you know that we are experiencing further problems accessing certain pages within ANONYMOUS.com if using Internet Explorer v6 (ie6) as your browsing software. This is not an error on our site but a negative interaction via the World Wide Consortium <http://www.w3.org/Consortium/> . They are an independent group like the United Nations, whose mission is “to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web”. They no longer support ie6 use and are blocking users using ie6 from reaching any website. A workaround solution was developed 4 weeks ago for visitors using ie6 to access ANONYMOUS.com however in the last 24h some page layout types have encountered further problems. This is being urgently investigated and we will let you know as soon as we have a solution. PS You should not experience these problems if your computer uses a later version of Internet Explorer. regards, XXXX Senior Marketing Manager - Global eBusiness

I'm guessing not the Senior Marketing Manager - Global eBusiness for very much longer.

Essential C++ by Stan Lippman.

Kant wrote:

the more widely adopted meters and newtons

... or the even more widely adopted metres and newtons.

Snorri wrote:

best you can get from any headset

Wow! I had a look at the product spec for this. It looks impressive. I did not know that there was a whole product category of noise-cancelling headphones for pilots. Mind you, I suspect that all of the products in this category are still tuned to aircraft noise. Someone else posted a link to a Nokia headset that seems to be more of a consumer product. Does anyone actually use these products in an office environment? Before I invest a very large amount of money into a new headset, I would like to know that they really do eliminate words like "American Idol", "Project Runway", "Gordon Ramsay", etc. The other point is comfort. I spent some time reading the pilot product reviews of the Sennheiser, Lightspeed Zulu, and Bose Aviation X headsets. Comfort is important when you're wearing headsets all day every day. My consumer grade Bose QC3 headset is very comfortable, and is easy to wear for 4 hrs straight. Some of the pilot reviews criticised some of the headsets for applying too much pressure on the ears. I'd really like to hear from other CP'ers who use these things. Cheers, Peter.

Kschuler wrote:

silence or music without words.

Yes, this is my experience too, although I would say that instead of "no words", then at least "words I don't understand". There seems to be a lot of Bach among CP members --- I have one Gregorian Chant cd that gets a lot of play, and another one with Brazilian lounge music. Other good tracks for getting things done are Allegri/Miserere, Barber/Agnus Dei, Rodrigo/Concerto de Aranjuez, and Tristan and Isolde without the libretto. When I don't need to concentrate then Kruder & Dorfmeister or Bloc Party. I paid for the Bose QC3 noise cancelling headphones --- they block out the hum of the a/c admirably, but not the incessant chatter of my colleagues. I would pay a lot for noise cancelling headphones that go up to at least 8 kHz. Peter.

Mark Nischalke wrote:

They want to add user feedback from alpha and beta testing to the document.

Sounds like some-one at your business needs to open a book that describes "Change Control". A lot of people mix up "Change Control" with "version control" (aka "configuration management"). They're different. Once you are aware of your options wrt Change Control, you are in a position to make a decision that bests suits your situation. hth.

Mark Simonson one. Google hit #1. http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html#[^]

Very satisfied with 7.1 (2003). Install a font called "Anonymous" though.

Marc Clifton wrote:

what you really need is a process

Yes, that's right. I'm looking for books that advocate a process, and give a rationale/justification for the process. Thanks for commenting. P.

Hello World, I work for a business that develops devices that incorporate embedded software. In the past, these devices (no, I won't say what they are), have been pretty simple, but with increasing competition and customer expectations they are getting increasingly complex. What we used to do was put the "software" requirements into our system spec so that validation of that design would happen during system test, (which was not so unreasonable back in ye olde days of simple requirements). The problem is that the system engineers are now struggling with the complexity. What we want to do is redefine the process so that the system spec (and required system level testing) are framed in terms of lower level components, such that the system spec is smaller and more comprehensible. My question is whether there is a good software engineering book out there that deals with the system level questions, is comprehensible, and is NOT targetted at military/safety critical systems. We release a new product approximately every 6 months, so the process can't be too heavyweight. I have been searching Amazon, etc, but am swamped by the variety of texts, so some direction is very welcome. Thanks, P.

Thanks T-Mac-Oz. I had heard something along these lines some time ago, in a post by Joel Spolsky. See if I can find it again... http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html[^] Unfortunately, as you say, the "names carries the type" version of Hungarian notation is the one that most people understand. Personally, I don't understand why people try to perservere with this (name carries type) in modern C++. I argue that C++ removes the value in doing this. Apart from the simple fact that you aren't going to attempt to put the type into variables that are instances of classes, isn't one of the original design goals of C++ to limit the scope of the code that needs access to the instances of fundamental types? Sadly enough, I usually lose these arguments. ;-) Just the other day we had a coding standards meeting for a new project. Sure enough, in an hour we didn't manage to progress beyond the standard for encoding scope and type into variable names. (I'm happy enough to prepend something for scope, btw.) But m_kpkdwName (member data const pointer to const dWord)??? Seriously? It just aggravates me. I'll go home and pop some Prozac and tomorrow it'll all be good again. Cheers, P.

Steve Echols wrote:

n todays languages it would be: for (int i = 0; i < blah, i++) { for (int j = 0; j < blahblah; j++) do something; } for (int i = 0; i < blah, i++) { for (int j = 0; j < blahblah; j++) do something else; } ... but if you try that in C++ you get a duplicate definition error on i.

I was under the impression that this is an error in your compiler. If you're using Visual Studio, go to the Project Property Pages, C/C++ -> Language -> Force Conformance in For Loop Scope, and select "Yes". That ought to fix your problem. Cheers, P.

Ravi Bhavnani wrote:

as long as you don't declare inside a loop Why not?

Because every time around the loop the stack will be adjusted for the "new" variable, and then re-adjusted as the variable goes "out of scope". Try it a million times or so and see what happens. Seriously, most compilers will hoist the variable declaration out of the loop scope, but do you want to take the risk that the particular compiler that you're using will? Apropos the OP's question. You started programming in C, didn't you... Do you still use Hungarian notation? Some times it's better to just let go. ;-) You could try using more blocks if you absolutely must have declarations at the opening paren. Cheers, P.

Back in the day when "rocket science" meant a non-linear Kalman Filter running in real time on integer arithmetic hardware at the frequency of an excited dog's heartbeat, then maybe "rocket science" could be equated with "hard". But check this out... http://www.antigravityresearch.com :)

Personally, I think that above about 19" the screen starts to get too big to be able to see at a glance. However, the *big* gain is when you have two monitors. I can't believe that some posters say that there is no advantage to this. I will never again try to debug a GUI application without two monitors. Imagine the situation... there is an annoying bug that only appears when when a sequence of messages appears in the message queue. You don't know quite what it is, so you set a breakpoint after the first (known) message arrives. You run through the application. Bang! You hit it... and your IDE pops up in front of the application being debugged, causing a host of extra messages to be places in your application's message queue. That's why two screens are useful.

No, not necessarily. It sounds like you're relatively new, and haven't had the idealism of youth beaten out of you yet. ;-) The reason that the guys around you are faster is that they have developed a more complete understanding of the code, based purely on accumulated experience, (and the fact that they probably wrote it.) If you want to change things around there, as the new member of the team, you won't have a lot of credibility if you *tell* your colleagues. You need to *show* them. This probably means that you will have to work five times harder than everyone else. Do you have the conviction in your beliefs to do that? If not, then it might be time to start looking for jobs where your beliefs are more congruent with the views of the existing staff. Good luck. PS. You can never insult your former colleagues if you do move on. Make an excuse that sounds plausible when you resign.

Steve, Have you considered reading Donald Knuth's books on MMIX? There are two that I can find on Amazon, a shorter version that is new(-ish) http://www.amazon.com/Art-Computer-Programming-Fascicle-Millennium/dp/0201853922/ref=sr_1_2/104-0305406-5819919?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188429114&sr=8-2[^] and the original one (which is quite a bit longer) and is more about the architecture. http://www.amazon.com/MMIXware-RISC-Computer-Third-Millennium/dp/3540669388/ref=sr_1_5/104-0305406-5819919?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188429114&sr=8-5[^] There is no hardware that actually runs MMIX natively, but there are emulators, and if you are doing this for pedagogical reasons I think that doing the exercises out of the first book will probably be more useful for you. Cheers, Peter.