Archives
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What’s Next for Window Clippings
I know a lot of you are wondering what’s going on with Window Clippings. I had hoped to release another update this year but time has just slipped away. It’s turned into a pretty hectic year what with moving from Canada to the UK and starting a new job as a technology consultant in London, quite a departure from commercial software development.
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Parallel Programming with C++ – Part 3 – Queuing Asynchronous Procedure Calls
In part 1 of the Parallel Programming with C++ series I introduced asynchronous procedure calls (APCs) and how they can be used with alertable I/O to process asynchronous I/O requests without blocking an application’s thread. In part 2, I showed how APC handling can be integrated with window message loop.
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Parallel Programming with C++ – Part 2 – Asynchronous Procedure Calls and Window Messages
In part 1 of the Parallel Programming with C++ series I introduced asynchronous procedure calls (APCs) and how they can be used with alertable I/O to process asynchronous I/O requests without blocking an application’s thread.
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Parallel Programming with C++ – Part 1 – Asynchronous Procedure Calls
Who says you need to add additional threads to your application to keep it from becoming unresponsive? The golden rule for responsive client applications is to avoid blocking calls on window threads. A blocking function call on a window thread prevents the thread’s message loop from dispatching messages promptly and the result is an unresponsive set of windows since the window is not able to respond to input from the mouse, the keyboard, other applications or the operating system itself. A common solution is to make blocking calls on worker threads but threads are costly, introduce complexity into your application, and would itself not be doing much of use other than managing some state and waiting for the blocking call to return. One simple and efficient solution to this problem is called alertable I/O and makes use of asynchronous procedure calls (APCs) and that is the topic of this first part of the Parallel Programming with C++ series or articles.
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Parallel Programming with C++ – A New Series
Microsoft’s developer division has, at least publicly, been placing a lot of emphasis on making it easier for C# and VB developers to build scalable applications more easily. The Parallel Extensions CTP for .NET 3.5 is clear evidence of their commitment to the C# and VB developer. Why C# and VB and what about C++? Is C++ not getting the attention it needs in the age of parallel programming?