How To Be A Programmer [PDF] [Ned Batchelder]

All sorts of interesting stuff here.

I've heard a saying: "When your tool is C++, everything looks like an auto_ptr". I actually thought about this in the car today... and what I did Monday (and part of Tuesday) was implement a fancy auto-ptr for a quasi-typed data structure.

(Auto Pointers dispose memory when the variable goes out of scope, as opposed to having to call delete explicitly. For a bit of a performance hit, of course).

Why didn't I just use an auto_ptr? Seems to me like auto_ptrs work best on OBJECTS, and not just plain-old-structures. And I had to use a plain-old-structure.

It solved my problems though, and now I'm happy. (and my program doesn't trash memory any more, so it's happy as well).

It's not that I dislike C++... although I do agree with this other quote (attributed to Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++): "Within C++ there is a smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out"

Alternative Energy in the home [kuro5hin]

Interesting info. I'm also interested in alternative transportation methods... I may be doing a lot of walking from now on. But more on that later.