[Sussex] Re: Magazines and developer questions etc.

[Geoff Teale]

On Thu, 2004-11-04 at 13:12 +0000, Mike Diack wrote:
> Like I say, personally I think MFC isn't as bad as made out (though it's 
> internals are UGH).

Been there, done that... __T() says it all realluy ;)

> ATL and COM on the other hand are truly horrendous to use and are so poorly 
> documented - goodness only knows why they ever became popular.
> (Thank your lucky stars if you've not had to deal with them - and don't even 
> start me on the buggy wonder that is DCOM - I can bore you for hours
> with obscure bugs in that if desired! ;))

Also been there and done that - prior to this job the majority of my
career was spent to Windows development (despite my protestations).
There are very few things I miss about windows development.

> WTL I actually do like though and am really quite impressed with.
> I am a great disliker of .Net (for much the same reasons I've never bought 
> into the COM hype, in spite of having to be a COM developer!), so not 
> interested in Mono.

Fair enough.  I feel much the same, but at least one of the guys here
loves it.

> Thanks for all of the comments - please give me a pointer to the free book 
> that you mentioned on GNU development.

Here it is:

http://autotoolset.sourceforge.net/tutorial.html

It's not in-depth (all of these things have very good GNU manuals that
you can get from http://www.gnu.org or buy as books) but it covers the
bulk of what you need to get started doing serious work with the GNU
development tools.  It's particularly useful as a primer on Autotools,
which looks hideously complex to the beginner, but is actually really
simple and powerful.

Using Autotools is a big help if you plan to distribute your code, or
even build packages (RPM, deb, or pretty much anything else is a lot
easier if your code is autoconfiscated).

> Cheers for all of the advice, comments and friendly banter, but please do 
> pass on the GNU development book link.
> 
> By the way, hopefully, one day I'll make it to one of the meetings!

Cool, I'm almost never there these days...  A couple more pieces of
advice:

- Read a copy of linux journal, or check out some of their free online
content (http://www.linuxjournal.com) for some more ideas on development
under linux.
- Think about joining the ACCU - the conference and the members
magazines are full of useful information.


-- 
Geoff Teale <gteale at cmedltd.com>
Cmed Technology