You, a retro gamer, are on a new quest to bring back a classic arcade hit to a whole new generation of space faring digital cosmonauts. But it is dangerous out there and you need to show these rookies the dangers of journeying their ships alone in the vastness of space. So you want to create your own game of Asteroids. For those unfamiliar with this game, and I can't ...
I caught a wonderful article on Dzone today by Jonas Gauffin titled "How Resharper rocks my average work day". In this article Jonas talks about a tool he uses regularly called "Resharper" that makes common tasks a bit more automated when coding in C#. This article reminded me that we are continuously developing better and better tools that help us write code. But is there a point where we are ...
When we think of the comma character we often think of it as a separator. It separates values in an CSV file, it separates items in lists, it may separate index values in multidimensional arrays (in other languages) and more. But in C++ an obscure way of using them was as an operator. The reason it never made it big as an operator and into the typical programming psyche is ...
You wouldn't believe how many programming questions I run across, on a daily basis, asking for help with programs that contain repetition, duplication and enough spaghetti code to feed half of Italy. Often times the person asking the question has a particular problem but they don't know exactly where the problem originates. So they plop down a bunch of code and say "It is somewhere in there... I think". Usually ...
One of the most underutilized properties of any control is a property called "tag". What does it do? Does it cure world hunger? Does it save the planet from annihilation? I would probably say no on both counts, but it does have a bit of a mystique that beginners may not be fully aware of. In design mode of Visual Studio if you select a control, a button or text ...
Beginners to C++ programming find the concept of pointers foreign to them. Pointers, and code that manipulates pointers (aka pointer arithmetic), can even be daunting to some of the most seasoned programmers. Pointers in C++ account for a fair share of bugs in programs due to the lack of understanding. So why even use them? Well, besides being the most problematic, they are also some of the most powerful features ...