The last few months have been very busy for me. Usually I keep myself busy anyway -- I have this blog, another blog and even another blog, but those are only for my amusement and not for money or fame.
I am working too hard now to maintain these blogs as frequently as I'd like. What at first seemed like a 2-3 month contract has now entered the 5th month, and as far as I can tell, it may extend indefinitely (not infinitely, mind you) into the future. I am not complaining about the job at all, I welcome that aspect of things.
Being a C programmer by preference, and a sometimes C++ programmer by employment, I am not put off by immensely complex projects. Every non-trivial system I design takes mind numbing quantities of complex steps to complete, sometimes reaching into years. I would rather complete things in far less time, even in days -- if possible -- but complexity takes time.
Microsoft's .NET programming environment is my least favorite toolkit however, and it has taught me much about the power of a monopolistic corporation to bastardize an otherwise fine programming language like C++. I would much rather code in C, with all its warts and pitfalls -- but that is not the goal of .NET that I can determine.
C is like machine language with libraries of functions that many, many fine programmers have already written. All I do is write my mess in there and -- whooosh! A new system. C allows one to shoot themselves in the foot, of course, but any cowboy that shoots themselves in the foot is not a very competent cowboy.
Visual Studio (2005 in this case) seems to bend everything around the idea of "Common Language", as though C++, Java and Visual Basic can be simultaneously enveloped by a "Studio" of glorious multilingual software agents, all dancing in harmony and providing a "rich user experience". To me that is just Marketing Propaganda disguised as a programming language.
I just see it as unnecessarily complex, composed of far too many layers, and replete with thousands of "objects within objects" which almost-but-not-quite do what I need to do. I wind up writing all kinds of dumb wrappers or "un-wrappers" to fix things that shouldn't need fixing.
If all I did was write business programs in a relational database environment, I guess I could see the point of all that .NET crap. But trying to write scientific programs, it is just mountains of goop that crowd out the entire point of the system -- to solve problems.
I can write 2 programs -- 1 in C (with a GUI of sorts) and 1 in C++.NET (with an immensely complex GUI). The C version will run in about 1 megabyte of RAM. The C++.NET version will run in about 90-100 megabytes of RAM. The programs will perform the same task, although from a different philosophy, however the C version, being about a million kilograms lighter, will outrun the C++.NET version hands down.
I am working too hard now to maintain these blogs as frequently as I'd like. What at first seemed like a 2-3 month contract has now entered the 5th month, and as far as I can tell, it may extend indefinitely (not infinitely, mind you) into the future. I am not complaining about the job at all, I welcome that aspect of things.
Being a C programmer by preference, and a sometimes C++ programmer by employment, I am not put off by immensely complex projects. Every non-trivial system I design takes mind numbing quantities of complex steps to complete, sometimes reaching into years. I would rather complete things in far less time, even in days -- if possible -- but complexity takes time.
Microsoft's .NET programming environment is my least favorite toolkit however, and it has taught me much about the power of a monopolistic corporation to bastardize an otherwise fine programming language like C++. I would much rather code in C, with all its warts and pitfalls -- but that is not the goal of .NET that I can determine.
C is like machine language with libraries of functions that many, many fine programmers have already written. All I do is write my mess in there and -- whooosh! A new system. C allows one to shoot themselves in the foot, of course, but any cowboy that shoots themselves in the foot is not a very competent cowboy.
Visual Studio (2005 in this case) seems to bend everything around the idea of "Common Language", as though C++, Java and Visual Basic can be simultaneously enveloped by a "Studio" of glorious multilingual software agents, all dancing in harmony and providing a "rich user experience". To me that is just Marketing Propaganda disguised as a programming language.
I just see it as unnecessarily complex, composed of far too many layers, and replete with thousands of "objects within objects" which almost-but-not-quite do what I need to do. I wind up writing all kinds of dumb wrappers or "un-wrappers" to fix things that shouldn't need fixing.
If all I did was write business programs in a relational database environment, I guess I could see the point of all that .NET crap. But trying to write scientific programs, it is just mountains of goop that crowd out the entire point of the system -- to solve problems.
I can write 2 programs -- 1 in C (with a GUI of sorts) and 1 in C++.NET (with an immensely complex GUI). The C version will run in about 1 megabyte of RAM. The C++.NET version will run in about 90-100 megabytes of RAM. The programs will perform the same task, although from a different philosophy, however the C version, being about a million kilograms lighter, will outrun the C++.NET version hands down.
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