Phew, that was close but I've got my 25 GB back now -- thanks much for letting us know about that link! :cool:

“The definition of embedded system has broadened over the geezerhood.”

I think so, personally. I still recommend it as one of the first books a C++ beginner should read. :thumbsup:

“The definition of embedded system has broadened over the geezerhood.”

Whew, you had me puzzled there for a bit. :) I wrote the 68000 version of Tiny BASIC (it's one of the links on that Wikipedia page), and I didn't remember anything about an IL interpreter. So, I just had to hop over to my web site and downloaded my source code (I'm not at my home computer) and do a quickie review. Luckily, my memory's not as bad as I feared. :-D I based my version on Li-Chen Wang's Palo Alto Tiny BASIC, which is a direct interpreter; no IL is involved. That Wikipedia page is a bit misleading in that respect -- I think I have some Wiki-editing to do. I do still occasionally get questions about my interpreter, though of course that's dropped off over the years. I haven't received any at all this year so far. On the other hand, I did get questions from a whole three people (I think) last year. I found Li-Chen Wang's source code reasonably easy to read, and the translation I did to 68000 assembler was fairly straightforward, as I remember. So, if you run into trouble with your conversion efforts and you're not using Palo Alto TB, I would definitely recommend using that as a base to start from. I might even remember enough about my interpreter to answer a few questions. Maybe. :) By the way, the closest I ever got to an 1802 was seeing a couple of COSMAC ELFs in operation at my local computer club. I sure did like their low power drain -- just never had a chance to design 'em into anything.

“The definition of embedded system has broadened over the geezerhood.”

As Mark said, it's pretty subjective. Having said that, I do have a recommendation: I recently needed to update my knowledge, and I ended up buying Web Design in a Nutshell[^]. I'm quite happy with it, though it's getting a little dated now what with the oncoming HTML5 / CSS3 onslaught. I've read most of the book, and it brought me back up to speed. Thanks to that, these days I can just usually look things up on the Web when I have a question or need a refresher on a particular language element. I still refer to the book from time to time though, so I'm still getting some use out of it even now.

These days I mostly develop in C for Microchip PIC MCUs. I do a fair amount of desktop development as well, which is almost all done with C++Builder. As time permits, I'm looking into the new Cortex-M3 MCUs -- I have a cool little development system here I haven't had much time to play with, the STM32 Primer 2[^]. Out of the box it has some impressive little demo apps. I'm old enough to remember when the only readily available source of big(ish) transformers was old console colour TVs -- microwaves barely existed back then. :laugh:

VE6BIO here. I do lots of embedded work, but nothing to do with ham radio. :( I wonder if there are any other Canucks here who have one of the Canadian Digital service certificates? We seem to be a pretty small group. The Digital certificate was no code, restricted to 2 metres and above. If I remember right, Canadians got this kind of certification long before the Americans. I did use 2-metre voice for a few years, but my digital comms projects came to naught -- even back then, I didn't have the time to put into my hobbies that I'd have liked. Just for kicks, I got grandfathered into full-service certification some years ago -- I don't think I'd trust myself to operate a kilowatt HF rig, though. 73!

IZarc -- just gave them (him?) my second donation; first was a couple of years ago. Still my favourite zipper! (Hmm, now there's a statement that could be misinterpreted!)

I just tried out Quick Answers and even edited a few questions and answers -- looks promising! :cool: I selected questions with the "STL" tag and it looks to me like every question that got tagged with "C++" also got the STL, ATL, and WTL tags, even though they're not appropriate, at least for the questions I've looked at so far. Is that a bug, or should I go ahead and remove those inappropriate tags when I see them? Thanks again for doing all the work to set up Quick Answers -- it's definitely renewed my interest in answering questions again!

John C wrote:

It's "lose" not "loose". This is fast becoming the most common spelling mistake online.

Amen! If I had a nickel for every time I've seen that over the last few years, I might not "loose" it, like I feel more and more like doing the more I see people mangle "loose" and "lose". It drives me CRAZY! :mad:

Here's a slightly different idea for you, Chris: How about our own version of Canada's Worst Handyman[^]? I don't have much time for TV, but I do watch this one when I get a chance -- makes me feel so good about my lame-ish renovation skills! Contestants would probably be nominated by friends and co-workers instead of spouses, but otherwise the show would be pretty much the same... "The Code Project's Worst Code Mangler", perhaps? :laugh:

Another vote here for FineReader. I've used it semi-regularly since version 5 (what is that, four or five years maybe?) and it's always done a good job for me.

Those pictures have got me wondering: isn't it bad practice to bundle a whole bunch of unshielded twisted-pair wires together like that? I would think there would be horrible crosstalk in such an arrangement. Any networking experts out there care to comment?

If it's a Toshiba laptop, Fn + F9 will toggle the touch pad on and off, at least on the several models I'm familiar with. If yours isn't a Toshiba, there might be some other function key combination that will do it.

Well, it doesn't cover any numerical analysis stuff, but what I usually recommend is Thinking in C++ Volume 1[^], which is also available on line[^] for free. I keep electronic copies of both volumes 1 and 2 on all of my computers, and I still consult them once in a while whenever I've been away from C++ for a while. Off hand I'd say just buy Volume 1 in dead-tree form; I don't think Volume 2 is quite as good, though it's still a useful reference.

Ah, you're thinking of the Unicomp[^] line of keyboards. I have a Customizer 104[^] at home and it's certainly the most rugged -- and noisiest -- PC keyboard I've ever owned. :) It's sooooo much nicer to type on than any of the cheap keyboards I've had over the years (and it's not as noisy as the Teletype ASR33 someone mentioned in this thread). I learned on manual typewriters and got lots of practice on several models of Teletype, so I really hit the keys hard -- el cheapo mushy keyboards only last a couple of years for me, the way I treat them. The IBM keyboards and my Customizer 104 would last for decades, I think, even the way I pound them. Having said that, I got a Fujitsu FKB4726 for work -- still a nice keyboard, but not as rugged as the Unicomp. The Unicomp's so noisy, though, that I don't dare use one at work. :(

http://www.lvr.com/parprtib.htm[^]

I've used Refactor! on my not-very massive C++ projects and it works OK for me. For some refactorings I prefer Ref++[^], though. It's not free but it works very well. I keep both Ref++ and Refactor! installed on my dev machines because they each do things the other won't do. One word of caution about Ref++: I think it must be made by a one-person shop because I e-mailed them a couple of months ago about not being able to install Ref++ on Vista and I never heard back from him/her/them. Ref++ works fine on my Windows XP machines, though.

Ah, I've been reading this forum for months, waiting for a question I could actually answer. :-D At least, I hope I can answer it. If, when you say "managed C++", you actually mean C++/CLI, then the answer is yes. I have written a couple of test applications that statically link one of my native-code libraries to a C++/CLI application that uses managed code. I had some trouble getting static variables in the library to initialize properly, which caused various crashes. I was an MSDN subscriber at the time, and I got a solution from the MSDN-only forums in a matter of days -- I was impressed. If you're trying to link to a C++/CLI application and you have static variables in your library, I'd be happy to send you the workaround. If you're using the old Managed C++ or don't have any static variables in your library, then I can't help you, sorry.

And how about that lovely word "thesises" on their home page? Yeccch! (I hope I spelled that right. :))

I can answer both of your questions at once: http://www.dahloakland.com/grandpa/programs/tutor/BCBDEV_COM%20Articles.htm[^] That's the only article I know of on the subject of DLLs and Builder. It comes from Harold Howe's excellent BCBDEV.COM Web site, which unfortunately he shut down a few years ago. I keep an archived copy of that site on my development computers, because it's still extremely handy now and then when I need a C++Builder "how to". I'm sure some of the info is now out of date with respect to C++Builder 2006, but most of it should still be relevant -- that's probably why I was still able to find it on line. There used to be several useful Builder sites on the Web, but they've all gone the way of BCBDEV.COM. The only really good resource left is the borland.public.cppbuilder.* newsgroups. (Though some of the Delphi web sites can be a bit helpful once in a long while.) Unlike some of the replies you got to your questions, I've been happy enough using C++Builder 5 for years. (I hereby give the "C++Builder is the devil" replies a hearty ;P, but I didn't really expect anything else from a Microsoft-centric community. :)) But, as I've mentioned here a few times, none of the versions of C++Builder can really hold a candle to Visual Studio 2005. The one big advantage of Builder is the ability to easily and quickly create/modify a Windows program with a nice GUI that uses native C++ code. I'm learning C++/CLI slowly, but it's got a whole new set of gotchas to learn if you want to interoperate with unmanaged C++ code, and VS 2005 has already crashed on me a few times while I was editing a C++/CLI WinForms app (I hear it's much more stable and usable in its C# and VB modes). So fare I've found that the really big advantages to Visual Studio 2005 are: - Intellisense blows Code Insight out of the water, even in C++Builder 2006. - AFAIK there are no real C++ refactoring tools for Builder; for VS 2005 I have two great tools, one free and one I paid for, I like it so much. Hope that's of some help. :) -- modified at 17:18 Wednesday 6th June, 2007