The other day I built a 16bit messaging system in Minecraft. Best pointless fun I've had in a long time.

I think that if a user has multiple tabs or windows open in their web browser then each one will be considered a different web socket connection. A HashSet isn't something I've used, but I believe it is a high performance List that will never store duplicate values. I would recommend reading the [MSDN remarks]((which I believe is essentially the same as a List<T>)) on the class to make sure you understand what it is: The reason for this HashSet would be to ensure that all connections to a given user are associated with each other, so that a message intended for that user would be sent to all of his active connections. I think the idea is that your user name would be a unique value - for example a user logging into your site using their email address. If you wanted to make users share the same visible user name, you would still need to give them a unique identifier to track them with. I understand that English is probably not your primary language, but is there some specific point in that tutorial link that you sent that you're having difficulty understanding? I'm afraid that without you being more specific I would only be able to repeat whatever is written in that article, and probably only confuse you more.

I'm not really familiar with the stuff you're using, and I haven't used C++ for a few years, but from what I remember any functions in the Windows API that changed between character types depending on precomiler definitions had other similarly named functions. I remember the function to show a message box was called MessageBox(), and internally it mapped to either MessageBoxA() or MessageBoxW() depending on precompiler definitions. Maybe you'll find something similar with your function for sending the mail? Then depending on how speedy you need it to run you could write some code to attempt the other version of the function if the first try failed, or if you need it faster try to detect what the MAPI client needed you to use and have some kinda fancy interface, function pointer, etc to convert your text and send it using the right format. Alternatively, you could try using .Net from C++ to use all of the email junk built into that - though I'm kinda assuming you're avoiding needing to install the entire .Net framework alongside your application.

Depending on where you're getting the value to set funcLength to, maybe you could read it from a config inside the static constructor?

We all know the Hobbit is just a 9 hour commercial for tourism in New Zealand.

I'm a Kiwi, so I hate Australians. I also like rugby.

Now let's be fair on Bing. It's perfectly good for finding the documentation you need... so long as you're looking for MSDN, and you type the exact name of what you're looking for.

I've only met one project managers, one client, and two senior developers capable of giving concise requirements. If a client say "this needs to be for each item", when really they mean "this needs to be shared by all items", then no understanding of English will help. Only an understanding on the clients business will help, that way you can understand what they mean even though it's not what they said.

This one time I was asked to change a dynamically generated list make anything with the same "{value} - " mutually exclusive. They're horrible hacks that only happen due to improper scoping, but anyone unfamiliar with the code could trigger weird bugs if maybe they decided that a letter in "{value}" wasn't properly capitalized or something.

Stability of your base technologies isn't really a factor. If you're building on top of another framework or library, then you can consider stability and performance. For example a good PHP framework will probably do just as well as out of the box ASP.Net. I would just pick some technologies that me and my team were familiar with. If you've got mainly .Net developers, use .Net. Same for if you have mainly Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, etc. developers. You could pick your target based on things like licensing costs, but unless you've got someone with some server administration know-how you'll probably be better off paying a little bit extra for hosting where your stack is set up for you; in which case your licensing is probably part of your monthly fee.

If I'm compared to a welder, I have to say sometimes I feel like I'm being asked to weld a piece of wood to a piece of concrete in an unspecified manner, using a screwdriver rather than a welding plant.