We started using Winrar at our company because we often compress and package Virtual Machines (often 3-10 GB) for a variety of reasons, such as demos, development environments, staging environments, etc. Winzip last I checked still could not be broken up into several files. Without this feature, you can't burn some of these on DVD's or CD's. Also when you package as an executable with WinRar (at the time we decided this), you had more flexible options than WinZIP. As another person mentioned, WinRAR started charging more ... but it has WinRAR has stuck with us so far. I am sure it could be a good time to re-evaluate. Finally, WinZIP is a great program, it compresses much slower than WinZIP, but at time it can compress better than WinZIP ... I haven't found the time trade-off worth while most of the time ( :p ). Cheers, Brian

This analogy is quite accurate. When I was in College I did a little bit of work on RentACoder ... it wasn't long before I realized, I was better of working at McDonald's for minimum wage. The only was to make decent $$$ on rentacoder is to live in the cheapest country in the world, or produce subquality work. I quickly left the scene. Later, I had an idea to code a couple things that I didn't have time to (non-work related) ... due to my previous experience, I knew going into it that whatever I get will not be the best (or even what I would produce). Yet I figure it will get me started right ... so I got what I paid for a recoded the project after. Another instance, I had a project I had been working on ... I just needed someone to wrap it up. I wrote a detailed specification on what needed to be completed and how ... so they re-wrote the whole thing in a different language and it worked for the most part ... I had to fix several things ... test it to death and reintegrate some of the functionality I had already produced ... this was a complete waste in the end. I even had to question if this was original code. Long story ... so in the end I think it will not benefit anyone about 98% of the time. There's also a real danger in that you don't know where the code is coming from. You may be getting code that will affect your licensing or land you in court eventually. Rentacoder does have very goes technical writers though ... I have found that farming out documentation has been quite good. Good luck! :cool:

I am learning C++ and I have several questions regarding the C++ coding style. 1.) Why most functions are named in lower case? this is preference ... C and C++ came around way before we really developed formal coding standards. Also, no intellisense back then ... making everything lower case or all uppercase was easier to remember. Uppercase was used for constants. 2.) Why the extensive use of shorts such as printf(),instead of PrintFormat()? Sharthand is always easier ... less typing .. but also less storage. C and C++ were created during times where a mere 20 MB drive was very expensive. You noobs are used to seeing large storage drive capacity for very little $$$. 3.) Why do we need something like HWND, HINSTANCE, instead of a simple int? As members have already mentioned. You create a a type HWND to denote its function and use. Comments only go so far. Try declaring everything as int ... sooner or later, you'll realize you have extremely hard to trace memory leaks (at best). 4.) How could someone possiblily learn and use MFC without learning the win32 api? I see someone who considered themselve as experienced C++ programmer, and they can create a working MFC app, but they can't create a menu without a resource editor. I mean, creating menu is probably the first thing I learn in Windows programming. Is that normal? Win32 came around before MFC ... naturally everything you can do in MFC can be done in Win32. MFC is an extension of Win32 (not a 100% as noted by other members). MFC does simplify creating applications, much in the same way that printf accomplishes a task in 1 line where as in Assembly requires 8-20 lines. After writing a couple applications, you will greatly appreciate MFC over Win32 Api. Good luck!

I would have to disagree partially. In general nobody has loyalty towards anyone, but if you build a network of people you can build a limited loyalty. The loyalty should be there as far as helping each other out, but you can't rely on it alone. Having said that, my network has always come through for me, and I have always sought recruits in my network before I go outside of it. Because of my network, I have never found myself unemployed for longer than a month. These jobs have usually been the best offers, I always interview outside my network too (as a way to gauge all my offers). I use my offers during negotiations and I take the best offer that fits my goals the best. In our field, its important to take the opportunities to grow as they come. I always try to get paid to learn new technologies (and build experience). This can get frustrating but its better than being unemployed and having to learn while on the bench and job hunting. Also, think about your career as to where it is going 5 years from now, and 1 year from now, and is the industry also going in that direction. We have seen many exciting technologies appear, succeed, and fail miserably. I have swore that one technology was the bomb and it would dominate ... to my shock, I couldn't have been more wrong ... then there are times I've been on the money. You do what you can and try your best. :-D As Ennis mentioned, keep that resume upto date. I maintain at least 2 versions ... 1) a complete resume of everything I have ever done (jobs, projects, etc.) and 2) my tailored resume for job hunting. I tailor it to the job specifications and the company. I don't claim to know the best methods, but these have served me well over the years. :cool: El Gato -- modified at 4:34 Saturday 8th July, 2006

As the thread has mentioned, you want to Obfuscate your code. I researched this topic several month ago, and I discovered that it is quite reliable. Different vendors will increase the level of obfuscation; thus, making it that much harder to decompile the code into something useful (or worth taking). My search led me to investigate what would you do if you legitimately needed to recover code which you were entitled to, but you had lost your code. Restoring the code is quite expensive and difficult. Even on the simplest obfuscators, simple decompilation and recompilation fails ... there is not enough space to describe what all can be done. Nonetheless, language rules are far stricter than the byte code. Obfuscation will protect intellectual property most of the time ... but there are determined people out there that don't value their time at all and may take the time to decompile ... and rebuild the app. After a time analysis, I feel confident by saying that they usually could've coded the app in about the same time it took fix the decompiled obfuscated code. Unfortunately, obfuscation does not protect you from hardcoded values and such, nor smaller identifiable code block that may shed light or even reveal how a particular task was accomplished. During my research I did find vendors that could even protect you in these areas ... but I couldn't dream of affording their proud products. Just my 2 cents ... hope this is helpful to someone if not interesting. It is worth protecting your work always, even simple measures are better than none. :cool: Thanks, ElGatoRojo13