C++ Team Blog
The latest in C++, Visual Studio, VS Code, and vcpkg from the MSFT C++ team
Latest posts
Sharing the Heritage (Quiz Game)
I was reading recent discussion threads and found something interesting that someone introduced as a question, but instead of start developing the whole story from here, I’ll just challenge you with two different quiz games. Quiz 1 Without using Visual Studio or your building tool of preference, just your knowledge, if we tried to run this code, what is expected to see in the console? Why?Now let’s make a little variation and substitute the method getting no arguments for one getting char, as follows: Quiz 2 If we ran this new ...
The Visual C++ Weekly Vol. 1 Issue 4 (Jan 22, 2010)
Paperli.PaperWidget.Show({ pid: 'visualc/news', width: 200, background: '#000666' }) Greetings!! The 4th issue of The Visual C++ Weekly is out there. This issue starts with an article due to C++ MVP Marc Gregoire on an extension that Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta brings to Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) to allow animations. A book of techniques in reengineering patterns for object-oriented applications is available for download by its authors. C++ MVP Giovanni Dicanio reveals a cost-efficient way to deal with bidimensional matrices. Gus Class (Windows Development) shows how he builds VC project...
Feedback Wanted: Participate in User Experience Research on the Visual Studio Help Experience
Microsoft is working to provide developers the next experience with local documentation. Last December, the Library team released the SP1 beta version of its Microsoft Help Viewer for Visual Studio. Additionally, there are a number of changes and improvement being made on the local Help Viewer, as well as MSDN and other documentation-related assets at Microsoft. As part of ensuring that our efforts align with and respond to the needs and desires of our customer, the Microsoft Developer Division is increasing the user research conducted on its assets. For us to better understand your needs and desires, we nee...
Herb Sutter: “Coding, like Speaking a Language, Implies that You Think in that Language”
Erik Meijer –host of the “Expert to Expert” series in Channel 9- interviews Herb Sutter -an Architect on the VC++ team and chair of the C++ Standards Committee.In this thought-provoking talk, Herb and Erik cover generic programming, function objects, lambdas, futures and argument passing by value vs. by reference, among other topics. This talk is very interesting for those who already know C++ but never thought about the reason why some of its features were designed the way they are. This talk is also useful for those developers coming from managed languages, who are looking to native deve...
The Visual C++ Weekly Vol. 1 Issue 3 (Jan 15, 2011) Is Out
We just released the third issue of The Visual C++ Weekly. For technical reasons, from the original list of articles, there are two that weren’t caught and got lost but we’ll make sure to include them in the fourth issue (to appear next Saturday, January 22). This issue contains an Intel concurrency demo based on the classic dining philosophers problem, where the authors showcase Intel’s Threading Building Blocks. C++ MVP Kate Gregory encourages you to vote C++ and native development sessions for the next TechEd North America 2011. MS’s Chas Boyd features an on-demand session (ori...
A 101 on GPU-Accelerated Apps in the Windows Platform
In the last Professional Developer Conference (PDC), a few months ago, Chas Boyd –PM Architect with Windows Graphics at Microsoft- delivered a general overview of the Windows Graphics architecture, its different APIs and the application types they are intended to. It’s a 100-level session, what means that is informative with no code being shown, but a gentle overview for those of you interested in starting with GPU-enabled applications who may have wondered about its many technologies or felt a bit overwhelmed in your initial approaches to it. The speaker offers an interesting list of usage example...
C++ Programming Interviews: What Interviewers Want You To Show
A recent study showed that C++ is still among the most used languages (ahead of any other Visual Studio officially supported language like C# or Visual Basic). But despite being widely used and known by several generations of developers –thanks that it has been out there for decades now, while being still the most taught language in the Academy- when you look for a C++ development job those facts don’t guarantee that you’ll be chosen. It will depend on how well you perform in the programming interview –among other factors. Regardless of how deeply you know the C++ syntax, how many STL components you memorize, it ...
The Visual C++ Weekly Vol. 1 Issue 2 (Jan 8, 2011) Is Out
C++ MVP Kenny Kerr starts a new series on modern Windows development with C++0x. Intel features a highly parallel optimized crowd simulation technique. Get All-In-One: a code sample library for Microsoft development technologies. C++ MVP Kate Gregory shares a “lost+found” ISO technical report on C++ performance. And much, much more in the current issue of The Visual C++ Weekly.
Rvalue References and Type Traits – Video Introduction to the STL, Parts 9 and 10
The final parts of my video lecture series introducing the Standard Template Library are now available. Part 9 covers a single function, std::move(), and explains how rvalue references power move semantics. Part 10 covers <type_traits>, a header added by TR1/C++0x, and explains the basics of template metaprogramming. Here's the full series: Part 1 (sequence containers)Part 2 (associative containers)Part 3 (smart pointers)Part 4 (Nurikabe solver) - see Wikipedia's article and my updated source codePart 5 (Nurikabe solver, continued)Part 6 (algorithms and functors)Part 7 (algorithms and ...