Discussions

10 minutes ago, Sven Groot wrote

Whether managed or native is faster has no simple answer. With native code, it is possible to perform more optimizations so it is possible to write faster code than with managed. However, in practice it may be require extremely complex and hard to maintain code to actually beat managed code. 

In my C++ code all strings are in std::wstring and I am making a lot of use of unique_ptr<class>. And since I do a lot of function calls which return these types, there must be a lot of constructors and destructors being called.  Compared to C# simply returning a reference.

6 minutes ago, Proton2 wrote

@SteveRichter: No. Perhaps the C# compiler is more parallel optimized during the compilation process. C++ is the fastest language there is. (in production use).

ok.  I am just guessing that the C++ compiler, having been written in c++, is impossible to refactor. I am finding it very sluggish and the compiler errors often times misleading. The other day I had the header version of a function returning a different type than the code version and the compiler just went nuts. Telling me I had over 100 errors.  I run into that kind of scenario very frequently, forcing me to change my coding style where I recompile very frequently, after small code changes.

the C# compiler is like 5 - 10x faster than the c++ compiler. Does that prove that real world managed code runs faster than native code?

3 days ago, evildictait​or wrote

Eric Rudder, chief technical strategy officer, is taking over some of Mundie's duties overseeing research, privacy and security, as well as technology policy, ...

Mundie was responsible for Microsoft's early efforts in software for handheld organizers, cars and televisions. ....

Microsoft has made a huge mistake in missing the boat on the potential of mobile device computing. Mundie should have been gone a lot sooner and why promote Rudder when he was likely  right in the middle of Microsoft's big miss on this aspect of the business?  Even now Windows 8 phone is doing poorly because Microsoft does not have an OS available for every phone with a CPU.

Has Julie Green made any public statements about Windows 8 since she was put in charge?

Despite all of the content channel 9 is putting out about Win8 I still know nothing about what it can do for me when programming a desktop app.

Doing a lot of reports where the report is a file in CSV format and the user opens the report in Excel.  What can I do to stop Excel from thinking a value is a number that is expressed in scientific notation?

Open excel. Type the text 1226E1 into a cell and press enter.  The value is displayed in scientific notation ( 1.23E+04 ).  Then you format the cell as text and excel displays 12260, replacing the E1 with a 0.

I have checked on the excel forum and saw a message saying that is just the way it is, nothing can be done outside of replacing the CSV import file with one in XML open interchange whatever form.

Enclosing the value in double quotes makes no difference. The best I am doing so far is to append a "." to the front of the value. Which is nuts.

I actually would not mind having to write the CSV file as XML, but in my brief experience doing that the user could not automatically open an email attachment as XML into Excel like they can a CSV file.

1) handling fragile items: humans can tell if an item needs careful handling and a machine may not.

everything to be picked is in a package or a box. The label on the package references handling instructions.

2) odd shapes and sizes: again the human can recognize something and how to pick it up, a machine at this stage can handle standard shapes ok but not all kinds of different ones.

ok. So every item is packaged to the degree necessary so the machine can pick it, transport it and put it away.

3) exception handling:  all the odd things that can happen that we can "figure out" better than a machine.

what I am seeing in the warehouse is exceptions occur frequently because the humans did not follow the instructions in the first place. Pallets are putaway with their barcodes blocked by the pallet next to it. The humans do not scan all the cartons on the pallet so we are not sure that the pallet was built correctly.

I don't know. Google has been able to develop cars that can drive themselves on the highway. Where is the driverless forklift?

How soon before they can automate the carts that travel around the warehouse and have a machine that does the picking and replenishment? I do programming in a warehouse and can't  help but notice how labor intensive the process is. A lot of people on the line putting labels on boxes. Boxes being taken off of finished good pallets ( same product code ) and placed on ship pallets ( a mix of product codes to be shipped. ) Fork lift drivers taking the pallets from assembly locations to staging locations and then to the door.  I figure with some Kinect devices, arduino programming and millions of dollars I could automate the entire process. Yet in the Amazon photos I see countless people pushing carts between aisles. What is the holdup?  A social conscience?

@JohnAskew:

Holman Jenkins, a great writer for the WSJ, wrote about Hostess today:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324352004578130912150512612.html

Under the latest turnaround plan, the sticking point was Hostess's distribution
operations, source of the Hostess horror stories filling the media.
Union-imposed work rules stopped drivers from helping to load their trucks. A
separate worker, arriving at the store in a separate vehicle, had to be employed
to shift goods from a storage area to a retailer's shelf. Wonder Bread and
Twinkies couldn't ride on the same truck.

True, a slight inconvenience is that many of the private-equity firms involved
with Hostess are linked to the Democratic Party. This should not be a surprise.
For good reason, private investors plying heavily unionized industries find it
useful to maintain strong connections to Democrats. The only reason that Bill
Clinton buddy Ron Burkle isn't mixed
up in the Twinkie mess is that his bid to buy Hostess out of its previous
bankruptcy didn't succeed.

19 hours ago, JohnAskew wrote

Hostess is seeking permission from Drain to pay bonuses to key managers while closing operations that will leave most of its 18,500 workers unemployed.

Loot and scoot.

I do not follow. The allegation is that the private equity firm that owns hostess wants to give money to key employees out of some honor amoung thieves loyalty arrangement? Why not just accept the obvious. The owners need key people ( programmers? ) to stay with the company despite knowing they will be unemployed at a certain time in the near future