Kenny Kerr

Lutz Roeder has released a new build of the .NET Reflector that fixes some problems I ran into while trying to browse assemblies built with Visual C++ 2005.

Joel Spolsky recently posted another essay, this time ranting about Microsoft, platform shifts, runtimes, etc. I'm a big fan of Spolsky's and I strongly encourage anyone who is at all interested in software to read all his essays on software. He seems to be showing a bit more bitterness than usual these days though. One of the points he tries to make is that the reason developers are more productive with programming platforms like Visual Basic or the .NET Framework compared with traditional programming languages like C and C++ is because the former have automatic memory management.

With a shared computer you can get into a situation where one user installed a program and a different user wants to uninstall it. The trouble is that the program may not be listed in Add or Remove Programs when the second user logs in. You need to log in as the original user to view the program as an installed program in the list. So how do you discover who originally installed the program so that you can chase them down?

In supporting or diagnosing .NET based products, I often find it useful to check what versions of the .NET Framework are installed on a given machine. Most programmers know by now how to do this by checking the registry or some file on disk. But when you’re on the phone to a customer you want a simple solution that does not involve them cranking open the registry. What you need is a simple, low-tech solution.

The current beta of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 includes some changes to the API when compared to the original alpha build that had been around for quite a while and was effectively a Microsoft-labeled Connectix build. Besides for some changes to the interface and class names to improve consistency, the most noticeable change to the API is in the security requirements.

Beman Dawes has written a nice introductory article about the Boost C++ libraries on the Visual C++ Developer Center. Well worth reading if you haven’t played with Boost before.

Being a parent is hard, but the rewards are huge. One such reward is having my two year old son call me at work while I’m away from my desk and having the message recorded. He hasn’t learnt about voicemail yet.

When you need to write a Windows service application in C++, does it end up looking something like this? If you don’t understand this code, don’t worry we’ll get to that in a minute.