Tomasz Sowinski wrote: Scalability is where C++ really shines. With common code in base classes and/or templates you're free from copy-paste style of reuse, frequently seen in VB projects. Our current architecture keeps the cutting and pasting to an absolute minimum, but it is not always easy and it is not always possible. I'm chomping at the bit to be able to implement our application in .NET, in large part so we can take advantage of inheritance. Tomasz Sowinski wrote: Maintanability - well, it requires skilled programmers, generally they cost more than VBers. Okay, now it sounds like you're referring to skilled programmers and VBers as mutually exclusive groups, but perhaps I'm being sensitive ;) I'll just assume you mean skilled VC programmers v.s. skilled VB programmers :) Regards, Dan

First, thanks to you and the other posters for your responses :) Tomasz Sowinski wrote: Just like VB dev. I mean, VB is not the only tool for implementing modules communicating between themselves via interfaces. Of course, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Tomasz Sowinski wrote: C++ gives you much more degrees of freedom in implementaion... I agree. Of course this makes the decision of how to implement much harder :) Tomasz Sowinski wrote: ...but 10,000 feet view would be more or less identical. I was more interested in what the view looks like from 1,000 feet. I mean, would you use MFC extension DLLs containing doc/view classes, or ATL components or something else? I am fairly knowledgeable of the capabilities of VC++, however I have a weak knowledge of what is practical in terms of scalability, maintainability, etc., stemming from a lack of experience. Regards, Dan

I've had a few small projects requiring VC++ and I've dabbled a lot with MFC/ATL/WTL, but far and away I am a VB dev. As I don't know any VC devs, I've always been curious about what real VC devs do for work and how they get it done (tools, technologies, methodologies, etc...). I'm also curious to know if any VC devs are doing the kind of development I do with VB, namely a complex business application with a database backend. VB seems ideally suited to this project for many reasons. For example, we have a high number of data entry forms (100+) which are implemented as user controls in separate modules, then dynamically loaded onto a host form at runtime. The host form contains the toolbar and a couple other interface elements. It communicates with the user control through one or more interfaces. The host form will enable and disable certain interface elements depending on what interfaces the user control supports. How would a VC dev manage this complexity? Finally, I've been spending a lot of time with C#/.NET ever since the first NGWS SDK became available. Unlike the doc/view architecture, message maps, subclassing, etc..., the development model seems entirely familiar to me. This makes me wonder how VC devs are taking to it. Does it seem like a large change from the way things get done in VC? Regards, Dan

Joao Vaz wrote: Nish [BusterBoy] wrote: BITCH! This wasn't censured Censured? That seems kind of harsh. Maybe they could just change the offending word in the post, like B****! Regards, Dan

Paul Watson wrote: One thing though. A federation of states like the USA is, or was, a lot more achievable than trying to tie Europe together. The States was an "unpopulated" land effectively (respects and apologies to any indigenious Indians (American Indians Nish, not Asian Indians)) and the states that formed were formed by a relatively similar bunch. e.g. They all pretty much spoke English. They all had only been there a short time. I think they prefer the term Native American. Also, what do you call someone with American citizenship, but Asian Indian ethnicity if not American Indian? Indian American? :) Oops! Forgot the sig. Regards, Dan

I was 22.5. I'm also curious to know the relative ages of the spouses of CPians. My wife is 2.5 years older than I. At least in the U.S., I think this is unusual, as the husband is, I think, usually the same age or older. Of course I am particulary mature for my age :) My hair has been completely gray since I was about 20 :) Regards, Dan

Jamie Hale wrote: As one other poster mentioned, try having kids. I have a 2-month old little girl at home, and damned if I have enough time or energy to take a nice crap. This I can relate to :) I was initiated into parenthood about 4 mo. ago. I estimate my cumulative home computer use since then at about 4 hours. I have a plan however, which is to teach my child in the way of the developer, and eventually double my productivity for work, leaving time for hobby programming :) You may think this is foolish, but already my plan is working better than could be expected. Our little girl is barely one year old and is already generating code with tremendous efficiency. Unfortunately it is encrypted with a proprietary scheme. Until she learns to talk in complete sentences, I don't think we'll be able to decode it :( Regards, Dan

Jamie Hale wrote: And on and on. The whole concept of "sin" draws a line between "Christians" and "sinners", and that in itself opens up unnecessary conflict. Although this isn't exactly what you said, I want to make it clear that the Bible makes no distinction between "Christians" and "sinners". In fact the opposite is quite explicitly stated: For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, an are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Rom 3:23-24 A person hating another person because the other person has commited sins against God is truly ironic. Its like an abusive husband hating someone who hit his wife. As a Christian I can tell you its a frequent struggle not to hate people who commit certain sins that I consider heinous, but if God loves me despite my sin, then I should try to love them. Regards, Dan

Navin wrote: ATM also means Automatic Teller Machine. Asynchronous Transfer Mode :) Regards, Dan

Josh Knox wrote: How 'bout in India the other day: A train full of Hindus was set ablaze by a mob of angry Muslims. 50+ Hindus were burnt alive. WTF!?!? I have nothing against peace loving Muslims, but whay the hell are they always killing people? My wife has been reading "A Fine Balance" (Rohinton Mistry). The novel is fiction based on reality. It describes the lives of several different people living in India during "The Emergency" (1970s). The recent incident reminded me of a passage that my wife read to me. The passage describes the situation of increasing anti-Islamic sentiment amung Hindus at that time. This led to many violent acts against Muslims. A large number of Muslims took the hint and headed for the border by train. A Muslim character in the book decides not to leave when he is told that there are trains full of dead Muslims near the border. Whereas the book is intended to be based on reality, I would guess that such events did take place. Perhaps someone with good knowledge of Indian history could confirm or disconfirm this. Regards, Dan

This post (to which I am replying) appeared as a reply to my earlier post seemingly instantaneously after I posted. This got me wondering if I blacked out for a minute ;) "Mistah Vail?...I lo...los...lost time." Well then I noticed the time of your post was before mine! What kind of computer voodoo are you practicing :) Regards, Dan

Do we have to limit ourselves to one title? I'll assume not ;) 8am to 5pm - Dan the VBer 5pm to 9pm - various: Dan the Diaper-Changer; Dan the Baby-Feeder; Dan the Tickler, Dan the Chaser-After... in my spare time - Dan the C#-C++-ATL-WTL-ASP.NETer Regards, Dan

Nish [BusterBoy] wrote: CodeProjectSQ wrote: 2. Does anyone have a comment as to whether the .NET runtime slows down their .exe programs? Managed code runs slower than unmanaged code. This is generally true, but its not a simple as that. Typically a performance comparison between managed and unmanaged code would be dominated by the fact that managed code has more overhead (initialization of variables, bounds-checking, run-time security checks, etc.). Furthermore the unmanaged C++ compiler is probably a lot better at optimizations than the managed/JIT compilers at this early stage of .NET. On the other hand, managed code has a couple advantages over unmanaged code. For example, object memory allocation (heap) will probably be faster in managed code. Because managed code uses a garbage collection scheme the heap is never fragmented. New objects always go on the top of the heap. In the future managed code will be able to take advantage of the fact that it is compiled on-site by making code optimizations specific to the processor/machine that it is deployed on. Additionally, IL (and C#) supports "unsafe" code. Unsafe code is still technically managed code, but it allows the use of pointers and all that implies. For specific tasks this can make a huge difference in performance v.s. "safe" code. Finally, if we accept that managed code will generally run slower than unmanaged code, then the next logical question is how much slower. I'm not a C++ coder by trade, so I'm not qualified to answer that question, but I get the impression that the difference in most cases is not something that end users would notice. The following quote is from an ng post by Ronald Laeremans: "While you may be able to construct a synthetic test that shows performance [of managed C++ code] for a very specific case to be 7x slower [than unmanaged C++ code], that is far from the typical results we have been getting. More typical would be performance differences within the single digit or low double digit percent range." Regards, Dan

From about May/June 2000 til about 4 months ago I spent any spare minute I had researching and playing around with the .NET (formerly NGWS), in particular C#. It was all so cool that it made what I do for a living (VB6 mostly) seem somewhat boring. So what happened 4 months ago? Well, the worlds most beautiful brown-eyed girl came into our lives. Now the only spare time I have is when she takes a brief nap :) It turns out she is the perfect antidote to workplace drudgery :) I can look forward to evenings and weekends while I'm at work, but by the time Monday rolls around I can look forward to going to work and a chance to relax (and escape diaper-duty :) ) Regards, Dan

Domenic [CPUA 0x1337] wrote: You guys are ancient My first computer was a 200MHz Pentium with Windows 95 If we're talking about the first computer we actually owned v.s. used then I've got you beat. My first (and so far only) computer is a PII 333 running NT :) Its had a couple memory/hard drive upgrades and is now running W2K. On the subject of memorable programs, my first working, semi-useful program was a password checker written in Pascal. I didn't know much about loops or functions at the time so I copied the password check code five times to check the password a maximum of five times :laugh: Regards, Dan

Can't say as I have travelled in an autorickshaw, but we almost ran one over in a taxi. I guess we felt like driving around Kolkata in a taxi was adventurous enough :-) Maybe next time... :-) Regards, Dan

William De Prêtre wrote: Didn't you wipe out your entire policeforce now ? As I interpret the code, I think the police force is completely unaffected :-) Regards, Dan

For anyone that answers this post I'd be curious to know if they've visited any the countries of which they speak. It's unfortunate that travelling is so expensive. I think it would do wonders for inter-Country relations if people could actually meet and get a direct impression of one another. As an un-travelled American, I think that had this subconscious sense that people in other countries (particularly non-English speaking countries) were very different in their attitudes than me. I had (and still have, I'm sure) a very caricature-ish impression of foreigners. I'm sure the opposite is also true. I know this is hugely cliche, but we are more alike than many of us think. Regards, Dan

Richard Stringer wrote: But the US is still the very best of the very best. The cream of the crop so to speak. Not all of it Just Texas. The rest of the US is getting in pretty bad shape. I don't watch King of the Hill very often, but I get a good laugh every time one of the Hills uses "Texas" where any non-Texan would say "America" :) I'm rather partial to Maine, myself :) The top 3/4 probably has almost as much independant spirit as Texas, but the botton 1/4 would sooner be part of Mass. Regards, Dan

Nish [BusterBoy] wrote: What do americans have to complain about? No doubt a lot less than most. On the other hand there are a number of people in this world who would feel fortunate to lead the life of anyone of us (in this forum, I mean). Regards, Dan