Out of morbid curiousity, I decided to install Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop on my Windows 7 machine. The required prerequisites included the notorious in-place upgrade to .NET Framework 4.5 and the new Windows SDK 8.0 for Windows 8. Here’s what I found: The .NET 4.5 in-place upgrade does indeed reuse the same … Continue reading “.NET 4.5 & Windows SDK 8.0”
Category: Development
General software development
No .NET 4.5 for XP/2003
Microsoft has just declined a UserVoice request that the upcoming .NET 4.5 should be made available for Windows XP and Server 2003. With 3,322 votes this was the second most popular request on Microsoft’s own feedback site, proving once again that actively providing any sort of feedback to Microsoft is generally a waste of time. … Continue reading “No .NET 4.5 for XP/2003”
Java adds numbers really fast
Daniel Lemire has posted a tiny benchmark for a basic part of many numerical applications: a loop that sums up numbers in an array. The astonishing part is the performance of Oracle Java 7 which dramatically outperforms an older GCC version, and keeps up quite well with newer compilers! I tested the same code against … Continue reading “Java adds numbers really fast”
Microsoft Un-Connect
Microsoft Connect is where Microsoft pretends to listen to customer feedback. In my experience, you shouldn’t bother unless you’re helping Microsoft debug a beta product. On 26 October 2008, I reported a WPF exception handling defect in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 which still persists in VS 2010 SP1. Within the VS debugger, exceptions in WPF … Continue reading “Microsoft Un-Connect”
Minimal Programming
Some amusing links on minimalism in programming during the last three decades… Greg Lindahl preserved Ed Post’s classic 1983 manifesto, Real Programmers Don’t Use Pascal. Of course they didn’t use silly C either, like those modern wimps. Real programmers used FORTRAN IV. Real Programmers like Arithmetic IF statements – they make the code more interesting. … Continue reading “Minimal Programming”
CPU vs GPU in Matlab
Michael Croucher’s Walking Randomly covers numerical computing for engineers, using tools such as Mathematica and Matlab. However, his series of posts starting with MATLAB GPU / CUDA experiences and tutorials is recommended for any programmer considering GPU parallelism. Michael compares optimized multi-threaded CPU algorithms to massively parallel GPU equivalents when all their extra costs, such … Continue reading “CPU vs GPU in Matlab”
Static Analysis in the Real World
Vivek Haldar’s recent post Bug finding and static analysis in the real world covers the application of two static analysis tools, FindBugs and Coverity, on large commercial software systems. The Coverity article is a cornucopia of terrifying anecdotes from the trenches of C/C++ development. Here are some gems: “Isn’t that bad? What happens if you … Continue reading “Static Analysis in the Real World”
No Macros in Visual Studio 11
Microsoft certainly didn’t bother to advertise this whopper in their VS11 blog posts: Visual Studio 11 drops macro support, including the separate Macros IDE, the VB-like macro language, and even recording & replaying keystrokes! I only just noticed this because of an InfoQ post mentioned on Twitter. To be sure, there are plenty of other … Continue reading “No Macros in Visual Studio 11”
Eric Woodruff takes over Sandcastle
Eric Woodruff has taken over all future maintenance of the Sandcastle documentation compiler. The newly fixed release, plus Eric’s existing GUI and improved style sheets, are now included in his Sandcastle Help File Builder. On the bright side, this is the best thing that could possibly have happened to the project. In the past six … Continue reading “Eric Woodruff takes over Sandcastle”