Re: curiosity about includes

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

I've got an interesting problem; I need to get a new cell phone, and trying to find a cell
phone without a camera is challenging! One store manager said "Why is it you don't want a
camera?" as if that was an issue--I don't want a camera, and that should be a sufficient
reason.

But the reason is that I am a consultant, and several companies I consult with have little
clauses like, if I'm found on the premises with a camera phone I am subject to arrest; I
also consult with DoD and DoD-related companies, and if I'm found on the premises there
with a camera phone, I end up having unpleasant conversations with Military Police,
usually a couple days after they've arrested me and held me in the local military jail. In
either case, I can lose a client. Not to mention my freedom.

Trying to find an MP3 player without a microphone is another challenge. Same issues. I'm
allowed to have anything that does not have a memory chip in it that can be used to sneak
data out of certain sites.

Getting my laptop in so I could teach an onsite was a major challenge. Fortunately, there
was a major who could sign off on it, but they had to do things like disable all the
Internet ports in the room, and it had to be carried to and from the teaching room by a
uniformed guard, who watched me turn it on and turn it off. I was also told that if a
wireless signal was detected, I would be subject to arrest. (My new laptop has a built-in
WebCam, and this will undoubtedly create serious problems in the future, but it was
otherwise the perfect laptop).

But cell phones with cameras are "cool", so OF COURSE I must be limited to buying one. And
the GSM chip is "locked" to my supplier, so I can't buy a third-party telephone (I've
basically told them when the phone fails, I will be finding another cell phone vendor).

Web 2.0 bores me to tears. And I've never wanted to download music, or have a YouTube or
FaceBook entry (or even viist those sites). I will not allow Flash Player on any of my
machines, although I'm considering Flash for PowerPoint presentations, but the learning
curve is so far too high. But I don't want to see animated Web pages. I turn off Web
page animations and Web page sounds because I want a pleasant browsing experience. Sitting
through somebody's amateur attempts to do animation does not rank high on my list of
favorite activities when all I want to do is read the contents.

Languages like C# are not only cool, but far more practical, but none of my client base
cares about them, even though I could be more productive. They have established bases of
C/C++/MFC code and are unwilling to change for the sake of change. Many of them are still
using VS6 because it was the last usable version of Visual Studio that Microsoft produced.

I turn off most of the "cool" features of Vista, since they have no relevance to having a
pleasant user experience (I have yet to figure out what good a gadget bar is when I run
everything full-screen and can't see anything on it anyway). I find transparent caption
bars offensive. They are hard to use. And the new Office ribbon bar is one of the
worst-designed interfaces I've had the misfortune to be subjected to in a very long time.

The problem is that the focus at Microsoft has left the concept of "usability" and been
defined by "cool" (the VS.NET IDE is a prime example of what happens when usability is
ignored). When they think of usability at all, they seem to be thinking of beginners, and
the result is interfaces which are unusable by professionals.
joe
On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:14:20 -0400, "Ajay Kalra" <ajaykalra@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Joseph M. Newcomer" <newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:kq3mu3l4qhhu7kcpsf0cgecaj06djg3png@xxxxxxxxxx
The older I get, the lazier I get. Adding gratuitous complexity for the
sake of adding
gratuitous complexity serves no purpose.

You may be surprised that how many people I know who do exact opposite,
mostly in the name of using cool features. It makes me feel kind of old as
one time I used to think like that. It using something(new or exciting etc)
for sake of it rather than the need.

---
Ajay


As for a seriously annoying problem caused by grotesque misuse of
#include, see my latest
post at

http://www.flounder.com/msdn_documentation_errors_and_omissions.htm#_USE_MATH_DEFINES
joe

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:35:56 -0400, "Ajay Kalra" <ajaykalra@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

As the time passes, I realize more and more that things which *can* make
your life complex should be avoided altogether. Although I understand all
this, I just find that they *can* add needless pain from maintenance point
of view.

---
Ajay

"Joseph M. Newcomer" <newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:11rlu3l9tnar8u5rct9emhjbregp4grcaj@xxxxxxxxxx
Used properly, header files can be largely ignored as a complexity.
Used
poorly, they are
a disaster, and that's one of the reasons that modern languages tend to
not use them.

Precompiled headers are a useful trick, but they can be largely ignored
most of the time
because they simply work.

Much of what macros did have been replaced by concepts such as generic
methods
(templates), which are linguistically sounder (and usually have
well-defined semantics)
joe

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:38:34 -0400, "Ajay Kalra" <ajaykalra@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


"Joseph M. Newcomer" <newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:it0lu3tmn5p5l22djlfhbdr5gm32sg8jdj@xxxxxxxxxx
For many years I worked on the principle that every #include file
should
include
everything it needs to compile correctly. After one disaster about 12
years ago when I
inherited a mess of code where A required B required C required D
required E, and also Q
required B, but none of the headers had include guards,... anyway it
was
a
total mess, and
I spent about three days making it sane, only to have the client tell
me
that "the
compilations are inefficient because you are including files more than
once" (never mind
that on my poor old 500MHz machine it would compile in under a
minute...AFTER then
changes!) and demanded I "fix" the code back to its original state.
After
a couple weeks
of arguing, I basically dropped the client, saying I would not work on
a
project whose
integrity was compromised by antiquated notions of "efficiency" (their
lead programmer had
apparently learned on PDP-11s, and was even unhappy that "the
preprocessor
is always run
even when it isn't needed", and did not understand precompiled
headers)

But I've always been disappointed that Microsoft requires the #include
order, when it
makes a lot more sense for every view header to include the document
header file.

I have always hated the concept of include files and the tricks that one
can
play to make it "Efficient". For me it was a welcome change that I didnt
have to deal with this mess (no macros etc) when I moved to .net.

---
Ajay

Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm
Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm
Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm
.

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