February 4, 2003

I grew up in a world of pointers.  I've taught a number of people C or C++ programming and tried explained pointers to them.  I'm not sure they ever got it. Now with Java, VB and C# we have languages that don't have pointers.  It's quite conceivable that a whole generation of programmers (and perhaps a high percentage of every future generation) will never need to know what a pointer is or how to use it. Unfortunately the most efficient code will always involve pointers.  It's a system level concept - something the processor understands, fundamental.   I wonder what else we'll virtualize away in the future.  Files?  (as the FileSystem turns into a database)  Interrupts?  (wait, we already did that - now they're Exceptions).    10:40:22 PM    comment []

Win32 Notes I've started jotting down Win32 programming notes as they occur to me.. as the page says, it's little things I've run across that initially took me a while to figure out.  If it shows up in a Google result and saves someone a few minutes, then cool. 10:57:00 AM    comment []