The Insider News

The Old New Thing[^]:

James wonders why many functions kept DWORD for parameter lengths instead of upgrading to SIZE_T or DWORD_PTR. When updating the interfaces for 64-bit Windows, there were a few guiding principles. Here are two of them. 1) Don't change an interface unless you really need to. 2) Do you really need to? Changing an interface causes all sorts of problems when porting. For example, if you change the parameters to a COM interface, then you introduce a breaking change in everybody who implements it.

DZone[^]:

TDD's goal is to prevent programmers from introducing new bugs into working code. However, when you're writing code from scratch, your tests won't help you find all the bugs in your code. That's because you can't possibly write tests for all the ways your software will be used (or abused). When I first started doing TDD, I had really good tests, but I was too tired to do much exploratory QA. However, my boss wasn't, and I was very embarrassed to find that my software had lots of bugs. Simply put, he used my software in ways that I hadn't intended.

DamienG[^]:

Here’s a few unusual things about C# that few C# developers seem to know about. And to those of you that say “I knew all/most of these!” I say “Where are you when I’m recruiting!” Seriously, it’s hard enough trying to find C# devs with a solid understanding of the well-known parts of the language.

Hal's (Im)Perfect Vision[^]:

We’re just hours away from what will hopefully be an enlightening and exciting Windows Phone 8 launch. I must admit I’ve mostly been ignoring Windows Phone the last few months . It’s hard to get excited, or even pay attention, when Microsoft is trying so hard to keep everyone in the dark. Hardware announcements with no software details? No upgradability of old devices, and little information on the WP 7.8 release that will cover those as well as new low-end devices? I just tuned the Windows Phone world out. We’ll see if Microsoft can regain my attention tomorrow. If they can’t get me interested I don’t know how they’ll get anyone interested. Sigh.

Ars Technica[^]:

Windows 8's most obvious—and most divisive—new feature is its user interface. However, it would be a mistake to think that the user interface is the only thing that's new in Windows 8: there's a lot that's changed behind the scenes, too. Just as is the case with the user interface, many of the improvements made to the Windows 8 core are motivated by Microsoft's desire to transform Windows into an effective tablet operating system. Even those of us with no interest at all in tablets can stand to take advantage of these changes, however.

iFixit[^]:

We got our hands on Microsoft's new Surface, and to its credit, it lasted a good twenty minutes before we decided to tear it open.

PCWorld[^]:

Titan is built into 200 server cabinets, which is the same size as Jaguar. ORNL upgraded by moving to 16-core CPUs and the latest graphics processors, which are faster and more power efficient. Titan has 700TB of memory. Titan consumes about 9 megawatts of power and the energy costs for running the supercomputer could add up to $10 million a year.... The next milestone for supercomputers is to reach exaflop performance, which is about 1000 petaflops, by 2018.

Coding Horror[^]:

I don't want to extend Markdown by adding tons of crazy new functionality, or radically change the way it currently works, or anything like that. I'd be opposed to such changes. I just want to solidify and standardize the simple, useful version of Markdown that is working so well for everyone right now. I want there to be an unambiguous, basic standard that everyone using Markdown can expect to work in the same way across all web sites in the world when they begin typing.

TechCrunch[^]:

The TinyBASIC port consists of an editor, called TinyBASIC One, which allows programs to be inputed, edited and run; the BASIC interpreter — including support for language features such as PRINT, REM, LET, STOP and GOTO — and in the raspberry flavour additional features include WHILE/WEND and REPEAT/UNTIL loops (but not GOTO).

PCWorld[^]:

Since most free games are (usually) made by small teams on shorter timelines, they have to scale down their games in comparison to AAA titles with budgets in the tens of millions and hundreds on staff. Scaling down doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, though; sometimes whittling a game down to its core elements results in a game with a laserlike focus on what makes it fun. This week we’ve got free games that make less into more in different ways.

jeffwofford.com[^]:

Herb Sutter—Microsoft’s chief C++ language guru—recently admitted that Microsoft found implementing variadic templates—a C++11 feature that the open-sourced GCC had already possessed for a couple of years—simply too hard. Makes you wonder about brain drain at Microsoft.

Ars Technica[^]:

Microsoft killed Drive Extender not long before pulling the plug on the Windows Home Server entirely, but the intent behind it lives on in Windows 8's new Storage Spaces feature. In essence, Storage Spaces takes most of Drive Extender’s underlying functionality and implements it in a way that is more technically sound; early versions of Drive Extender sometimes corrupted data when copying files between drives and mangled file metadata, but the underlying filesystem improvements made to support Storage Spaces should make it much more robust, at least in theory.

Hal's (Im)Perfect Vision[^]:

I have been trying every which way to avoid calling the new Windows 8 user experience and applications by the code name Microsoft used, Metro. But I’m giving up. I mean “Windows Store Apps”, “Microsoft Design Language”, “New Windows Experience”, or whatever BS ways they’ve been coming up with to try to refer to this stuff just doesn’t cut it. Sure they have some kind of trademark problem with the name Metro. So why not come up with some catchy easy to use name to replace it? Absent that I’m going back to using the name Metro.