My Babies...

Franky that is our new boy dogie and Zoe our little girl... cuddling on the couch!

For The Love Of C++ Part 2

For the last year I've been programming in C++ on a personal top secret project.

I'm using Visual C++ 2010 with the new C++ 0x language features.

C++ is difficult mostly because it needs to b backward compatible with C but it is also powerful. For me I tend to learn everything and sometimes I say to myself "Nope I will not do it that way" Or "Nope, that is dangerous! Never do that". off course all this comes from experience or reading blogs etc to gain knowledge from others that do have the experience.

For example, many times I read "don't do multiple inheritance" and many reasons why... I tried it myself and yes it does hurt. So yes you see why blogs say that.

On that note its always good for you to try something yourself to learn the advantages/disadvantages etc.... remember that programming isn't just about reading about it but actually doing it... get a project to work on being your own personal project, a project at work or join an open source project.

Slow Death Of The iPhone Platform

Yes your heard right, the iPhone platform is going to die a very slow painful death all thanks to its own maker: Apple

Picture an entrepreneur that got an idea for a new fantastic mobile application, off course that person want to target all mobile platforms to archive the greater market place: Android, Symbian (J2ME/C++ whatever the tool), Blackberry, Windows Mobile/Phone 7 and the iPhone.

So the person might get individual quotes for each platform but because the iPhone is such a close environment the developers that can target that platform will off course charge much more for development so because development for all the other platforms are reasonable they might decide that its then not worth targeting the iPhone... Note that even if they do accept the quote there are still all the issues where Apple reject applications to the AppStore sometimes for every stupid bizarre reasons.

iPhone Development Just Got Harder

When I look into buying a new phone this year I look at a lot of things (does it have a camera, are there apps available , does it have a nice data plan, does it have 3G and Wifi etc) but as a developer I mostly want to code for it... That is why my current phone is a Windows Mobile device since I can easily use MS Visual Studio.Net with C# without having any other cost.

The iPhone is a great device (like the new iPhone 4G will b even better) but its hard to code for it, a big disadvantage.... You need to buy a Mac, learn Objective C or some other tool (like MonoTouch etc), pay the USD $99.00 per year (that isn't actually very bad if you got the money)

With the release of the new terms and conditions for the iPhone OS 4.0, Apple disallow applications not written in C / C++ or rather Objective C.... Development just got harder!

I just want Apple and everyone to remember, for us developers and companies its about USERS/CUSTOMERS... If we can't develop applications easily because a platform is closed down then its the USERS/CUSTOMERS that will suffer since they will not get the kind of applications that they want.

THE USER / CUSTOMER MUST B MORE IMPORTANT, ALWAY!!

I hope this will change for Apple else I will go for another platform like Android where I can actually use a tool like Java to code or go for Windows Phone 7 where you can use MS Visual Studio.Net 2010.

MWEB Uncapped ADSL Launch Overview

For more than a decade South African internet users wasn't happy with the pricing and level of services for ADSL... ADSL is expensive, you use to buy per GB and monitor your usage all the time to make sure that you don't go over... You don't download anything or like me way back ask a friend from the UK to download software for me then post it on a DVD.

We are jealous with America where there is uncapped ADSL at a very low price, uncapped ADSL on a smart phone (like iPhone 3G)

Yesterday, 18 March 2010 MWEB surprise (or shocked) the ISP market by offering uncapped ADSL service at a very reasonable price.

I phoned the call center (not going thru any other channels as an MWEB employee) and signup within minutes for 4Mbps uncapped ADSL at R539.00 per month.

The speed is fast, being at other providers before, MWEB service is REAL and reliable.

Please visit there website for more information on the different packages available like 384Kbps uncapped ADSL for R219.00 per month.

Note that you also get a free 2GB mailbox, 300 free Wifi minutes that can be used at Mugg & Bean or airports. Other value added service also included like Faxmail.

Increase Your Existing Language Skills First

This topic is programming related but let me first start with a small story, I am originally Afrikaans but I married a wonderful lady who is English. I could always learn a new language like German / Spanish but I need to improve my existing language skills first, to be able to speak/read/write English... My wife corrects me a lot on this if I say
something wrong... it's a learning process!

The same applies to a programming language, you can learn 100 programming languages but are you productive in them? The languages that I use the most is:

• C#
• VB.Net
• Java
• C++
• PHP

and I am still learning new language features etc daily. Some developers are stuck programming in only one language like Java and will never look at another language like C# via different reasons, I agree that you should know more than one language but being productive in them is another story.

Another reason for learning a language is the current market demand, currently in South Africa mainly C# and Java jobs are available, sometimes PHP jobs or other tools (Flash etc) if your looking for example to get a job as a COBOL developer then you will struggle. You need to see what the demand is else you will not get a job.

So going forward look at your existing langauge skills and see how you can improve, do you know how to write a design pattern in your language? Do you know how to use generics in C# or are you just used to doing a "List"? What about other generic features? So my point is, rather learn something new, something that will make you more productive something that you haven't looked at before (maybe how to write annotations in Java? or C# Reflection?)

It gives you a lot of advantages, you're then a more productive developer in the given language and able to find mistakes easily etc.

C++ Blogs Worth Reading/Bookmarking

Here is my list:

http://herbsutter.wordpress.com/
http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/cppblog/
http://www.artima.com/cppsource
http://googletesting.blogspot.com/
http://blog.think-async.com/
http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&blogger=andrewk&Itemid=29
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/More_C++_Idioms
http://www.reddit.com/r/cpp
http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/
http://cpp-next.com/
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/
http://learningcppisfun.blogspot.com/
http://attractivechaos.wordpress.com/
http://www.gotw.ca/gotw/
http://www.devx.com/cplus/Door/7042
http://pocoproject.org/blog/
http://kenanlee.blogspot.com/search/label/C/C%2B%2B
http://embracingcpp.blogspot.com/
http://pizer.wordpress.com/
http://cplusplus-soup.com/
http://www.gregcons.com/KateBlog/CategoryView.aspx?category=C%2B%2B
http://cpptruths.blogspot.com/
http://turboc.blogspot.com/