Recently in Programming Category

For years I've only done development work on Unix machines. It's just easier - everything is there, and for the most part it works. Compilers, debuggers, parser generators, they're all there, they're all free and standard.

My memory of Windows development is rather different. You used to need Visual C++ (better yet, full-on Visual Studio), and that meant either a cash layout or a trip to dodgy software land. I have a rule with my new development machine, that there will be absolutely nothing on here that's not 100% legit. That means no Visual Studio, because I refuse to pay that much money for a toolchain and an IDE, however good they might be.

Now I'm trying something different. I have Eclipse, for my sins. I have installed the C/C++ Development Tools (CDT) feature, and now I'm going with MinGW. I have Cygwin as well, but that ties me to the GPL and to having the Cygwin DLL present. I have no problem with the GPL, but it's annoying to not have a choice. So: MinGW it is.

Eclipse is a fine IDE, but it's a complete monster - Visual Studio was a lot easier to grasp at first. I've been using Eclipse for a little while now, and it still feels like I'm barely in control of it. Luckily we spent big on my dev machine, because a lesser laptop would struggle.

To my amazement, the instructions that ship with the CDT are right, the toolchain installed as documented, and the sample application built and ran first time. I almost feel cheated - I was ready for a fight.

Stumbled upon this, only a week or so late: Python is moving to the Mercurial (Hg) version control system. How spiffy - another VCS tool to learn.

I'm sure it's a sign of good health that there are so many credible VC choices now, instead of everyone being stuck with either CVS, SourceSafe, PVCS or ClearCase. On the other hand, it means a whole bunch of different (but very similar) commands and options to learn, which is a pain. Oh well.

At least Hg is a properly distributed VCS. I quite like Subversion, probably because I'm used to it, but it's a nuisance to have to keep phoning home all the time. I didn't spend enough time using git to get really comfortable with it, but it made a lot more sense to me. I used svk at work for a little while, and whilst I could admire it and even be impressed with it, it never became something I actually liked using.

Next problem: As I use Eclipse more and more, every VCS has to have hooks into idezilla to become really useful to me. I hope Hg shapes up.

Another year, another blogging program.

It wasn't that I didn't like WordPress. I didn't like the fact that it used PHP. PHP is scary. I hated it with a passion and I couldn't wait to be rid of it. Then, I was running Horde so was kinda stuck with PHP. Now I'm not; PHP is history.

Likewise, I didn't get on with the manual slog of using Dreamweaver to do everything. I could have automated it, I guess, using lots of server-side scripting and JavaScript. No, actually, that really was never going to happen. Web programming bores me.

So here I am again, using blog software. This time, as the ad icons show, it's Movable Type. It's written in a language that's ok (Perl; more on which in later posts I'm sure). Nowadays it's available in a more-or-less free kind of way too, otherwise I just wouldn't use it.

Here's to frequent, relatively pain-free updates. Hello again.