This is a post about a serious bug I turned up in the Microsoft C++ compilers that target CLI (both Managed C++ and C++/CLI). One of the key concepts in software engineering is Design by Contract.  Design by Contract boils down to “say what you do and do what you say.”  Essentially, when I make a semantic definition, I would like it to ...

In Part I, I wrote about the effect of information overload, poor communication, and misplaced convenience on user experience.  I’m going to discuss information overload in more detail and speak in a more meta sense about tools. Once again, I’m going to pick on Antonio’s (although I could choose any number other pizza places) pizza box: ...

I’m going to discuss the user experience at a local pizza restaurant as a model for what not to do in user interface design. In Easthampton, there used to be a pizza place called Pizza Wings and Things – it closed and was purchased by a place call Antonio’s, which has a reputation for carrying erudite (and delicious) pizza.  The new location ...

One of the things that we don’t like to talk about in software engineering is the effect of recurring obsolescence.  In an industry that likes the new and shiny, the old and busted is a persistent thorn in our side.  Not simply because it is old, but because there are issues in the management of the obsolete. Consider data ...

In this post, Lou refers to a Seth Godin’s talk about the way things can be broken.  I watched Godin’s talk, and entertaining as it is, it is missing an aspect which I think should be part of every “this is broken” statement: “…and here’s how to fix it.” This is one of the aspects that I like about the Naval Safety Center’s Photo of the ...

In no particular order - Common Design Patterns – Design patterns are tools to let us solve common problems.  Knowing your design patterns can make the solution to a problem easy. At Least One Assembly Language – One can program quite well without this, but when it comes time to debug something for which the source isn’t available or ...

This week’s theme is functional programming.  Included are discussions on Software Transactional Memory, Functional Architecture and the impact of the CLR on functional Programming in .NET.   Blog: Brandon Werner’s Software Transactional Memory: Debunked! In starting with a title that is decidedly sensationalistic, Brandon effectively ...

Did you know that .NET provides an easy way to interact and control console programs?  In this article I will walk you through this process by creating a wrapper class for Google’s Tesseract OCR application.  At the end of this post, I will provide a complete WinForms-based frontend for Google’s Tesseract OCR Engine.   Initial ...