Better debugging

Amazing how a completely fresh copy of windows xp will complain about the slightest code problems ...
My app on windows 7 has a constructor for a graphical pane and the graphical pane has member variables
int w; // screen width
int h; // screen height

now the constructor has an error,

int w = this->GetWidth();
int h = this->GetHeight();

and this is incorrect because they are already declared in the class definition. But the constructor already works in Windows 7!!??!!

UI tutorial

http://wiki.eclipse.org/User_Interface_Guidelines
The part about icon lighting is very interesting ... also I can just imagine a tooltip that says something like
"DO NOT PRESS THIS BUTTON" causing a crash in a demo .... LoL

Google Chrome or Chromium

I found out yesterday that Google Chrome (also called Chromium) is open source ... I decided to look at the code ...

This experience made me realize that using design patterns, macros, heavy object orientation can be good, but also that it can be a bad thing. Google Chrome is such a large scale project that the leading developers need to use object orientation to that extent, but in small scale projects (i.e. solo projects) there is nothing wrong with using code like

if( A ) then B
else if ( C ) then D

instead of using objects for the same simple purpose. The point I realized is that just because it is heavily object oriented does not mean that the logic is correct.

The question is really, what should a solo developer do when faced with the task of writing a potentially commercial app? Heavy object orientation or good plain 'ol code? I am really not sure. I think that actually the good plain 'ol code technique is much more flexible ... so perhaps old-school procedural programming (i.e. everything in one big page of logic) will make a come-back later with the title "flexi-code".

Text Control Blues

I found out earlier that I was calling GetTextExtent( textString, &length, &height, &extent )
on an empty string! The "height" variable was very important to my program.

Website unsused ...

I am thinking about improving the theme on this page (still unused). The problem is that the site layout is very art-dependant.
http://superlifefood.co.uk/

Java vs C++

I have to admit I like Java.

Blue Screen of Death!

The windows 8 blue screen of death has a new face ...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/windows-8-blue-screen-of-death-gets-a-revamp-and-a-sad-face/
This means your computer is badly broken ...

Anyway ... here are some images of the older blue screens...
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=blue+screen+of+death&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=667&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=c3iKTrjYBeit0QX167C9BQ&sqi=2&ved=0CFgQsAQ