CrashTheuniversE

C++ Faq Lite… I was reading around to find out some nice resources about the nitty gritty details of the C++ … I think I know a bunch of stuff, but that’s never enough, so must keep reading and studying … and at this url, there are a lot of useful answers… Mostly you can read them so you just keep ‘em popping in your mind while you code…. Only using them frequently can lead to a complete understanding of them …

http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/index.html

More sites to come

Something often overlooked by programmers and that can save your life, is the task list in Visual Studio.

If not already shown you can bring it up by using :  On the View menu, select Other Windows and choose Task List.

It will show a lot of useful hints while you progress as you use it. Of course at the beginning that’s plain empty.

To add a Task you have two ways. The first one is by adding comments in your code using in C++ comments that have a tag like: TODO, HACK, UNDONE. You can even add customs but they are already fine for the wide use.

The second one is to add it manually. In this way the task won’t be related to the current edited file.

So you can have a hierarchy of tasks that are marked bot locally at file level and globally at project level. That’s really helpful.

An example of Task in the code:

// TODO add a check to the return value
float value = getFloatValue();
// HACK this is really here just for quick prototype but remove quickly!
int value = mValues[x];
// UNDONE this is a stub function will just alwasy return -1
int getValue() {
    return -1;
}

And they will simply pop up in you task list in the file they have been inserted to

I got addicted to this quickly. Enjoy!

That’s a strange question, but this is important to understand upfront. When trying to make something that can be browser enabled.. well that’s a possibility.

I think FLEX is the only solution for a programmer. There is a pretty good article about this, and the link to read and understand the differences at a glance is here:

http://theresidentalien.typepad.com/ginormous/2009/02/the-difference-between-flex-and-flash.html

I’m probably not going to be the smartest PHP developer ( argh.. I love you ARM asm), if you give me a language C / C++ style (yes doesn’t matter if that’s OO or not), I think I can make Unreal T.3 or Doom 3. That’s it :).

Something that looks like a promising Free way to start :

http://www.flashdevelop.org/wikidocs/index.php?title=Main_Page

Another interesting tutorial from the ground up (for game development):

http://www.brighthub.com/internet/web-development/articles/11010.aspx

This can be another option. Since we all know C, this could be interesting to have a nice C++ real time scripting system like then one in QuakeC to make everything working and run smooth inside our code. This would improve productivity! More tests on this subject as well.

Google V8 is C++, and open source… so quick to install and get it running (?)… it deserves a test and comments (just have to see if really platform independent!)

Some links that can become useful: 

http://code.google.com/intl/it-IT/apis/v8/embed.html

http://cplus.about.com/b/2009/01/26/using-javascript-in-your-c-applications.htm

 An alternative can be: 

http://flusspferd.org/

More on the topic soon

One of the misconceptions i’ve seen in early c++ programmers is the continuous vision of the operator[] as the old C counterpart. 

When using an std::vector you have a powerful container with random access iterator. When you write something like

std::vector<int> mV;

mV.push_back(7);

int val = mV[0];

What you get is a call to the operator[] of the vector template. So you still have a function call penalty (that could or couldn’t be inlined). Of course this is costy, but what’s more costy if the lack of range check. So usually in real case scenarios (and only if you really can’t predict who’s gonna call something inside the vector otherwise there is no need for range check all the time… if you add it “just to be sure” have a revision at your code, since something is going wrong already). 

Anyway if you need a range check, us the std::vector::at() function. This is going to provide you with range check automatically, so you write cleaner code in a single line. If for example you are refactoring some code, you can safely eliminate every block of code where you have a range check for the var with a call to the .at() function. 

Of course in the case the range check was an assert, it would have been wiped away, but still try to consider if the function is called often or just seldomly, and evaluate the potential risk on unchecked access of vector values.

Of course this is calling for troubles. 

When you declare data members in an abstract base class (that is a class that has at least a pure virtual function in it), you get all the kind of results. 

First of all, the constructor is not called on a hierarchy of classes, you still have to call it explicitly! Take as an example a three tier class hierarchy with single inheritance, this means that the most derived class will still have to call explicitly the constructor of the Base abstract class to initialize the data members. 

What’s worse is that on same cases and some compilers you get directly a wrong sizeof of the class! And a memory fault when trying to access the data members inside the class.

You may think that is senseless as the new operator should anyway calculate the proper sizeof the class. Well that’s not properly true. At least not in XCode :). I will investigate if this is going to happen the same in the VC++ . But anyway that’s calling for troubles, so if you really need to declare an ABC for interface purpouses (like in Java), avoid inserting members inside it. Probably if you wanted base functionality in your class ( I hit this problem when making a hierarchy for an UI Elements group inside our game), you don’t really need an interface but some specialization. For example a BUTTON class could have position, and an image over it. If you want a BUTTONWITHTEXT inheritance can go straight, but don’t try to virtualize the behaviour of the POSITION inside an ABC (Abstract Base Class).