Neowin

As Neowin has announced the end of these blogs, I'll make any future post at http://zeckul.wordpress.com/ instead of here from now on. So please update'em favorites ;)

The thing is I'm a complete wordpress n00b and I don't know how to post code properly. For now I'm just relying on Pastebin and...

Of all computer parts I have bought over the years, my best purchase is, by far, studio-quality monitors (I’ve yet to buy a good lcd – student salaries etc.). All performance-sensitive components: hard drives, CPUs, motherboards etc., eventually die or simply become obsolete as better, cheaper versions become available. When it comes to performance,...

I watched several talks from Build 2012 this week – fascinating event. I was pleasantly surprised to see the people behind MonoGame and Unity there, as well as Brandon Bray’s talk on the future of .NET. For all the fear-mongering there has been around...

The g++ team really needs to work on its compiler error messages. Real-world example, 2 minutes ago. Compiling the following class for use with Intel's Thread Building Blocks (parallel_for to be precise):


class DragonDraw {
struct draw_data* _data;
int id;
public:
DragonDraw(draw_data* data) : _data(data), id(0) {}
...

Today I'll illustrate how discriminated unions in F# can contribute to reducing code size and complexity, compared to a typical object-oriented approach. I'll present a problem, model it in typical object-oriented C#, then in typical functional F#, and contrast both approaches.

The problem: evaluate expressions of the form 1 + 2 * 3. The...

I first tried to present this as an emotional rant on how no one seems to understand the subtle differences between the cast operators in C#. That proved to be rather long and uninteresting, so instead, I will succintly present their correct usage in hope some might stumble unto this article somehow and it might alleviate their ignorance.

1. The normal way...

Tonight I’d like to write about what used to be my religion: Catholicism. Why should you care, dear reader? Maybe you’ve never been in the Church, or any Church, and would like to get some insider information. Maybe you’ve only been told bad things about the Catholic Church and are wondering how a billion people can be so stupid as to still be part of...

In the wake of my "Why C# sucks" article, I've come to realize that there are real problems with the C-based, imperative-style languages I've learned (C++, Java, C#, Python, Javascript, etc). It's hard to pinpoint what because it's the...

Herb Sutter likes to point out how Console.WriteLine() calls a virtual method - ToString() - to illustrate the reliance on virtual methods in .NET vs direct method calls (through templates) in C++. He's done it on his blog, and more recently at...

It's no secret that I love C#. I believe that in this day and age, C# is, 1) overall and 2) for the majority of development needs, the best solution. Let me clarify my thoughts about 1) and 2):

1) C# doesn't win in all areas against every language. It doesn't match Python in beauty, C++ in control and efficiency, Java in...