I'm multitasking between three clients at the moment, two of whose projects are based primarily around C++. It's interesting seeing the differences between all the languages, programming styles, and tools, involved. For a consultant - horrid word - it's a refreshing and enlightening experience.

Although there is a C standard and a C++ standard, there are also different degrees of support for the standards by different compilers, not to mention some subtle (and some not-so-subtle) extensions and non-standard features. Consequently, there are myriad ways in which competent programmers can find themselves mired in incompatibilities. And that can even happen when they're adhering to the standard(s)!

A fascinating coincidence today: I was watching Billy Connolly participating in (his wife) Pamela Connolly's Shrink Wrap programme of psychological interviews. At the same time, I'm wrestling with Office 2007's perverse new user interface paradigm. And Windows 7. And my iPhone.

I think - well, I hope, anyway! - that the battle for Hungarian Notation has been resolved for most programmers. Nonetheless, it seems to have left more than a faint trace  in the .NET world. Is this a good thing? Can it be avoided?

In the interests of fairness - not to mention my dislike of unchallenged monopolies - I decided to give Bing a chance. Only problem is, it thinks I've gone home. Could it be my grammar?

In my previous post, I started looking at a simple recursive-search implementation in C#, using recls 100% .NET. I'd next planned to look at the equivalent C++. However, because the recls (C/C++) library is still in-flux - between versions 1.8 and 1.9 - presenting a C++ example right now will require either using the 1.8 C++ API, which is a little tired, or using the 1.9 C++ API, which is not yet available in the public-domain. So, my current plan is to present an example using recls' C API, while I get the 1.9 released; hopefully in a week or two I'll be able complete the story with the C++ implementation.

In light of my recent article on recls 100% .NET, I thought I'd do some bits on the recls library: the C/C++ version, and the new .NET version.

First up, let's write a utility that, say, reports the number of C# source files in/under the current directory, excluding the ubiquitous Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs, and reports on the total size of all. We'll write it in C# using recls 100%.NET and in C++ using recls. As you'll see, we see a pretty obvious difference in development effort, which probably isn't a surprise. What is a surprise, given the application domain, is there's a substantial performance difference, which I think might be due to the .NET runtime.

I'm investigating the performance of various ways of enumerating collections in .NET, and have some results you might be interested in. The firstbunch concern enumeration of collections (of strings).

As new boy on the block, I think it behoves me to give a little introduction: my experience, my interests, and what subjects I intend to cover in this forum.

The bio at the top of this forum describes much of what you need to know about my experience, so I won't bang on too much more about that. Professionally, I enjoy leaving behind happy clients, and in particular I take it as a point of pride to build systems that don't break. Not always easy to achieve, of course. Although I primarily work for clients within Australia, I do occasional work with overseas clients . The common factor between them all is that they want reliable software.

 Unprofessionally (that doesn't sound too good, does it?) Non-commercially, my interests are pretty cleanly split into two: