Category Archive for Software DevelopmentMy Article “Advanced C++ Tips and Tools” on AmazonMy article “Advanced C++ Tips and Tools” is live on the tech.book(store) website of Amazon.
You can read the full article here.  Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 Now AvailableMicrosoft has released Update 2 for Visual Studio 2012 (VS2012.2). You can get it here.
Check out Somasegar’s blog post for more details on this update. Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 Now Available
We can now target Windows XP again with C++ code, and there have been a couple of C++ unit testing enhancements. For Windows Store applications, the update includes support for both mixed-mode managed/native debugging and for native ARM dump debugging. Get more details about the update. Visual C++ November CTP, now with more C++11As promised, Microsoft is releasing out-of-band updates for Visual C++. A preview of the first such update has now been released as the November 2012 Compiler CTP. This is a Customer Technology Preview and does not come with a ‘Go Live’ license, but it allows you to start experimenting and testing new features, and to provide feedback. This November 2012 CTP contains a lot of new C++11 features:
More details, including installation instructions and how to give feedback can be found here. Download the November 2012 CTP and start playing with these new C++11 features. Implementing a Thread-safe Singleton with C++11C++11 makes it easier to write a thread-safe singleton. Here is an example. The class definition of the singleton looks as follows: #include <memory>
#include <mutex>
class CSingleton
{
public:
virtual ~CSingleton();
static CSingleton& GetInstance();
private:
static std::unique_ptr<CSingleton> m_instance;
static std::once_flag m_onceFlag;
CSingleton(void);
CSingleton(const CSingleton& src);
CSingleton& operator=(const CSingleton& rhs);
};
The implementation of the GetInstance() method is very easy using C++11 std::call_once() and a lambda: std::unique_ptr<CSingleton> CSingleton::m_instance = nullptr;
std::once_flag CSingleton::m_onceFlag;
CSingleton& CSingleton::GetInstance()
{
std::call_once(m_onceFlag,
[] {
m_instance.reset(new CSingleton);
});
return *m_instance.get();
}
Kate’s C++ AMP BookKate Gregory (a fellow VC++ MVP) has published her book called “C++ AMP: Accelerated Massive Parallelism with Microsoft Visual C++”. The official description is as follows.
Find out more about this book here. BeCPP Meeting OctoberThe next meeting of the Belgian C++ Users Group is planned for Tuesday October 16th 2012 at 18:30 in the Microsoft offices in Zaventem. The agenda is as follows:
Microsoft is sponsoring this event by providing the location, drinks and sandwiches. The event is free for everyone, but you need to register for it. Visual Studio 2012 RC AvailableMicrosoft has made the Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2012 available for download. The release candidate comes with a Go-Live license. Read Jason Zander blog post for details of this release. BeCPP Meeting June with International SpeakersThe third meeting of the Belgian C++ Users Group is planned for Wednesday June 27th 2012 at 18:30 in the Microsoft offices in Zaventem. There will be two presentations, and we are proud to announce that they will be given by 2 international top speakers:
Both are experienced speakers, and it’s a perfect opportunity for networking. If you ever wanted to ask a question to a member of the Visual C++ product team, now is your chance. The agenda will be as follows:
Microsoft is sponsoring this event by providing the location, drinks and sandwiches. The event is free for everyone, but registration is required. Register now. ( PS: If you know anyone interested in C++, please forward this invitation to them. ) Visual Studio 11 UI Updates Coming in RCMost op you will know by now that the Visual Studio 11 Beta UI is rather gray. There was a lot of feedback about this from the communities, and it seems Microsoft is listening. They have announced a couple of UI changes to bring back some color to the UI. Check out this blog post for a description of the changes, including before and after screenshots. I definitely like the new upcoming changes Visual Studio 11 Beta AnnouncedMicrosoft has announced that it will release Visual Studio 11 Beta on 29th of February, and that it will be “go live,” meaning you will be allowed to start using it in production environments. Read the official announcement. The user interface of the new Visual Studio 11 is completely overhauled. It now follows the Metro principles of clean UI that uses typography and white space for layouting instead of lines. Below are two screenshots of the UI in the beta version. 
As you can see, it’s completely different compared to Visual Studio 2010. Themes are supported, so you’ll be able to design whatever theme you want. An in-depth discussion of these changes can be found on the Visual Studio Team Blog. The product pages have also been updated with information about the upcoming releases. One new version of the product is called “Team Foundation Server Express Beta”, which is a free collaboration software targeted at small teams. Read more about it here. Double precision support in C++ AMPDaniel Moth from the C++ AMP development team has posted an interesting blog post about double precision floating point arithmetic support in C++ AMP and its limitations on current hardware. C++ AMP Open Specification PublishedAs promised, Microsoft has released an open specification of C++ AMP: Accelerated Massive Parallelism Read the official announcement. Mandelbrot Using C++ AMPIt is time to start taking advantage of the computing power of GPUs… A while ago I wrote an article about how to use the Microsoft Parallel Patterns Library (PPL) to render the Mandelbrot fractal using multiple CPU cores. That article can be found here. This new article will make the Mandelbrot renderer multiple times faster by using a new Microsoft technology called C++ AMP: Accelerated Massive Parallelism, introduced in the Visual C++ 11 Preview. How to programmatically toggle the visibilty of the desktop iconsThe following code will toggle the visibility of the desktop icons, and will update the checkmark in the menu when you right click the desktop. HWND GetDesktopHWND()
{
HWND hProgman = FindWindow(_T("Progman"), 0);
if (hProgman)
return FindWindowEx(hProgman, 0, _T("SHELLDLL_DefView"), 0);
return NULL;
}
void ToggleDesktopIcons()
{
HWND hWndDesktop = GetDesktopHWND();
if (hWndDesktop)
SendMessage(hWndDesktop, WM_COMMAND, 0x7402, 0);
}
Call for C++ Community folks in Belgium – January 10th meetingI’m going to try to get a C++ User Group going in Belgium, and got support from the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Belux Team Are you passionate about C++ and interested in finding like-minded people? Feel like coming together, setting an informal User Group in 2012? We’d like to support you in that and have a call to action for you. Marc Gregoire, C++ MVP and author of the book Professional C++, 2nd Edition is one of the folks passionate about the technology and interested in starting up a more active C++ community in Belgium. Are you interested? Join Marc and the MSDN Belux Team for an informal discussion at the Microsoft office in Zaventem on Tuesday January 10th 2012 at 6:30 PM. Contact Marc through email, leave a note on the MSDN Belux Team blog or reach out to Katrien De Graeve from MSDN Belux via her Twitter and we’ll see you in January. If you are looking for some of the other Microsoft technology communities there is the full listing here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/nl-be/cc196311. Introduction to WIC: How to use WIC to load an image, and draw it with GDI?The Windows Imaging Component (WIC) is a flexible and robust API for working with images on Windows. The API is extensible. Third-party vendors can create new image codecs (readers and writers) to make new image formats available to all applications that use the WIC API. Here is a brief description from the MSDN:
The MSDN states the primary features of WIC as follows:
WIC comes with the following standard built-in codecs:
All codecs can both load and save the specific image format, except the ICO codec which can only load icon files and not save them. Reading all this, it looks like WIC is pretty powerful, and the best part is that it’s easy to use as I will demonstrate in this article. Read the rest of this entry » C++11 Standard Published by ISOThe ISO International Organization for Standardization has now officialy published the C++11 standard
You can read the complete press release here. “Professional C++, Second Edition” Featured on the Microsoft VC++ Team BlogMy book “Professional C++, Second Edition”, published by Wiley/Wrox, is now featured in a dedicated post on the Microsoft Visual C++ Team Blog Windows 8 Developer Preview
The developer preview also includes a preview of Microsoft Visual Studio 11 express edition, which makes it very easy to make Metro style applications in C++, C#, VB.Net, or JavaScript. Any serious developer should download this preview and learn as much as possible about the new Windows platform. Go to the BUILD website to download the preview and to download interesting video recordings of the sessions on the BUILD conference. |
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By now, virtually everyone on this planet heart about the Windows 8 Developer Preview that was launched a couple of days ago on the Microsoft BUILD conference.
