From David Chisnall: If you find yourself optimizing your code, then it means that the author of your compiler has failed. This is just very, very untrue. Even if you strike algorithmic optimization from the picture, code optimization is still a very important and useful skill to have no matter what sort of programming you’re …
Author Archives: Erik Novales
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue (Kindle version) is a book that my wife gave me awhile back, and to which I finally got around to reading. It’s a bit of a strange book – it purports to challenge existing dogma about the origins of modern English, but does so in a manner that seems too casual …
The Xbox (1) Live Shutdown and Secret Weapons Over Normandy
A few months ago, Microsoft announced that it would be shutting down the Xbox Live service for the original Xbox on April 15, 2010. I haven’t played an Xbox 1 Live game in years, but this news still makes me a little wistful, because for the first time something that I’ve worked on will essentially …
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Thoughts on Dragon Age
I’ve been meaning to write this up for awhile, since I beat the game a month or two ago, but only just now got around to it. I quite enjoyed the first 10 or 15 hours, tolerated the next 35 or so, and then slogged through the last 20. I would say that once the …
More about debugging.
One of the blogs that I have on my feed list recently reposted this tidbit: There are only two debugging techniques in the universe: printf. /* */ Since I recently posted my own little list of some debugging techniques, I can’t resist weighing in on this assertion. While their list is a bit flip, changing …
Me and Google
Two unrelated stories: We’ve both recently been the target of hacking attempts originating from China. Of course, the attack they suffered was much more serious and alarming than mine, which appeared to be a bot trying to log into my wireless router (running Tomato) and was mindlessly trying every entry in a password dictionary. I …
Debugging!
Here’s another Reddit stub dealing with a topic that is near and dear to my heart: debugging! Unfortunately, the comments on that article seem to focus more on the “fuzzy” aspects of debugging – the “go home and mull it over while watching TV” kind of stuff, rather than more concrete debugging techniques. Whenever I …
First Chance .NET Exception Handling
I saw this article posted on Reddit’s programming feed*, which talks about a Visual Studio debugging technique for getting first crack at exceptions, before any upstream handlers run. The Debug->Exceptions dialog can be used to set the debugger to break before any exception handlers fire for a particular exception. This is useful not only for …
Overdue…
It’s time for the standard “I’ll try to update more often” post. Seriously!
Windows 7 on my netbook
I decided to try running Windows 7 Ultimate on my netbook (an Asus EEE PC), since I had heard that it was nearly as fast as XP (and much more modern). I installed it by burning the ISO (acquired by virtue of being an MSDN subscriber) and then booting the netbook from an external DVD …