The landscape of GUI C++ development is pain - native Windows gets third tier support from Microsoft, and Android actively discourages native API. Linux is better with Qt and GTK, but GTK on Windows is rough. My go to choice for years has been Qt.
Lately though, it seems Trolltech Nokia Digia The Qt Company has an active dislike of their users. I’ve brought up the idea of Qt at my day job, but the word is they won’t cut a deal amenable to requirements. So we mush on. There’s lots of homebrew garbage out there - especially if you start looking at widget sets on top of Unity. Hey, why not yet another CSS Browser?
How many programmers view themselves as craftspeople? From those I know, the vast majority.
When dates are on the line and customers are shouting - many programmers with that mindset will hunker down, work extended hours, and chant the mantra - “Once we ship, everything will be better.” This is a lie.
Best Case Scenario: You hit whatever date the boss or customer wants and deliver exactly what they want. In years of development, I’ve yet to see a single deliverable that qualified as exactly what someone wanted. Even with extensive documentation and discussion beforehand. Delivery is compromise. The verified features and functionality of software meets the standard set. People always want more, it’s why no software is ever “done”. If the end product is exactly what they wanted, the bitter taste of angry meetings and phone calls will flavor your delivery like an open container of ice cream left in a freezer of rotten meat and onions. It may still be ice cream, but it tastes like garbage.
First, it’s not so much a rule as a disclaimer. You’ll always find an exception to the rule - even this one. To quote a pure cinema classic, “not so much rules as guidelines”. I know enough about nerd mad typing from having done it so many times. I’m not going to argue with paragraphs of text justifying violation of one of my personal rules. Chances are, I’ve violated that rule more often and with more gusto than you anyhow.
As I dive more into web programming in an effort to become stronger at the front-end, I figure I’ll drop some notes for any other enterprising embedded / server programmers wanting to join in.
Plodding along on the internet, I’m rapidly discovering that the choice of libraries seems to expose on to an endless array of different methods of building / compiling your web-app. PHP seems much more straightforward in comparison. The first, and most confusing element to me was ’nodejs’ itself.
Not long ago, a fellow software engineer popped his head into my office to reveal some new daily horror worthy of posting to TheDailyWtf. As usually happens in such situations, my brain ejected a small stream of profanity before I gave into an uncontrollable urge to shake my fist and point out the voluminous reasons this particular example indicated the responsible party should be tossed off the roof of our building. As my face returned to the normal shade of programmer day-glow white, my fellow laughed and said that I should write down my personal development philosophy.
I’ve decided to start writing a bit about various theories I have on social networks, Facebook, twitter, and the blogosphere. I fear that attempting to start an “Open Source” social network, or join an “Open Source” network is a cause doomed for failure. But, I’m not sure why. Back when I started blogging, I was amazed to find a network of real-world people brought together over blogging. The years haven’t been kind to blogging. Facebook and Twitter have slowly pulled users into their clutches.
As C++ code is so close to the metal, we often make dodgy assumptions that hurt portability. One of the ‘simplest’ problems that I’ve seen repeatedly is packing and unpacking binary data.
The C++ works hard to eliminate definitions that would tie us into a particular hardware architecture, and this area invites a desire to throw caution to the wind and make assumptions as to exactly what’s going on.
The new college grad (and old-hat that views this as all theoretical anyway) might write:
Searching for a way to carefully control illumination of a project, I discovered “Blinkt!” by Pimoroni. I was hoping for something that would easily connect to a Raspberry Pi 3 with a minimum of fuss.
The Blinkt! connects straight to the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi 3, and can also work on an extension board or off a ribbon cable. A warning: many cases have ‘ribbing’ along the side that will interfere with mounting the Blinkt! directly on the Pi - NONE of my cases were compatible without the ribbon cable.
Back when I started college (2001), I remember a world where tech was, well, ‘fun’. I was a die-hard free software guy willing to put up with far-to-much in the interests of ’tweaking’ my computer. Running Linux was like drive a custom made hot-rod. I knew every piece of the system and was happy to tweak it all day long. I followed slashdot, freshment, linux games, and laughed out loud while reading userfriendly.
