If it was a C library... well, you couldn't really take advantage of all of the advantages C++ has vs C especially when implementing a windowing UI / application framework - inheritance, polymorphism, etc. really make a difference. If you did that in raw C you'd have, well - pretty much what we had to use for programming to the Win16 (now Win32) API before Borland's OWL (Object Windows Library) made the scene (this is before MS ever came up with MFC) - opaque handles to this and that, breaking down and handling Windows messages, etc. It was very low-level stuff, tedious and prone to error.
If you're happy with a CURSES-like library, that's fine (I've done my share of that also with C on DEC platforms, back in the VT-100 days) - but for anything this side of Y2K, application frameworks and OOP are the way to go. wxWidgets is definitely a valid way to get a cross-platform (and cross-language... look at wxPython) GUI app out there and still keep what's left of your hair.
Disclaimer: I've been using wxWidgets (was wxWindows) creating apps for a Fortune 500 international since the early 2.0 days (mid-90's).
You should have seen Canoga Park (CA - we were shipping you guys software;-) - we had buckets on the floor some places between cubes to catch the drips when it rained - and don't get me started on the neighborhood!
Though Huntsville may very well have been worse - haven't been there - but I feel for 'ya.
When I was 19, BattleZone was 50 cents a play - I _loved_ that game.
Being a starving college student, however, I eventually ran out of quarters (not just because of BattleZone, but...)
Had also just taken my first programming course as a math elective about then (was a bio major at the time - and had just found out that I _hated_ O-chem) - my grades suffered considerably as I found myself spending inordinate amounts of time in the comp lab - but it turns out that that was the only programming course available ('twas BASIC over teletype on a CDC-750 timeshare, but what did I know?)
Anyhow, having run out of money, disillusioned with my major, and a BattleZone junkie, what could I do? I Joined The Army - and became a DAT (Dumb Ass Tanker). Spent the next six years running over stuff and/or blowing it up - great fun! And, to put this back on topic, spending an inordinate number of quarters on Space Invaders, Galaga, et al in various kasernes scattered throughout Bavaria, etc.
After a while, of course, I got put on a desk job (by this time I had obtained an Apple ][+ out of personal savings and was writing database analysis / report-generation stuff for our unit on my spare time - higherups found out about this and over my protests pulled me off my track and into Operations) - so wasn't having fun running over / blowing up stuff any longer... luckily I'd been saving up for college all this time (VEAP - the GI bill had been discontinued while I was in service).
So, I got out from under Uncle Sugar and went back to school - got the CS degree, and the rest is OT.
But, a contributing factor to my life's taking that particular turn was indeed a coin-op videogame of that day... and that sense of nostalgia (as others have described here) is a powerful motivator - perhaps I'll wait until the furor dies down and grab one of those SI boxes for myself (I'll justify it as really being for my young son, of course;-).
It creeps out a lot of Americans, as well (myself included - though perhaps because I'm an agnostic, patriotic veteran - still have my dog tags, with the religion stamped as 'other' [the only relevant option available at the time]).
But, 'creeping folks out' in the way and for the reasons you describe is kinda the point - someone finally pushed the issue (the Moral Majority is neither, IMO) and now it's going in front of the Supreme Court - kudos to those responsible.
For those who don't have access to the article, these guys are making measurements on the anomalous Hall effect in a strontium ruthenate crystal. As far as I can tell, they are claiming that the fact that the transverse magnetoresistance is nonmonotonic with temperature implies an anomaly in the Berry phase of the electrons, hence a singularity in the vector potential and a magnetic monopole.
I was suddenly struck by an urge to model what my kitchen would look like if I tore out the pantry between the kitchen and my living room... I didn't have any 'architectural' software available (spur-of-the-moment, y'know), but had purchased 'Lego Creator' for my young son not much earlier.
It actually didn't work out half-bad - walkthroughs, animated characters... great stuff;-)
At US$5 a pop on Amazon, it's worth a shot...
Lego Creator - and don't blame me if you forget about your design project, and just start playing it...
Was very enjoyable (at least when I read it for the first time, as a young teen). The latter books in the series tend to squishify (aka the 'Piers Anthony Syndrome)... but I recommend the first one 8-).
Another (post-Bill TGH) Harrison series. Not exactly out of print... but the first one was a hoot (I haven't read all the others, so can't personally recommend).
There exists a real need for moving some of the bits I see on my CRT (actually, 3 20" CRTs as one virtual desktop, but I digress 8-) a few meters over, in a form factor appropriate to the venue.
Specifically, I'm talking about moving some of the bits described in this article, like those you can find here, onto digital paper so that I can then wander over to my lavish master bathroom, where I'd like to then peruse same either sitting on the porcelain throne or wallowing in the hot jacuzzi in close proximity.
A laptop/pda does not (IMHO) fit the bill here - but a (preferably steamproof 8-) 'digital' paperback (uploadable via a USB socket in the spine, perhaps) would certainly be welcome. At the cost of a half-dozen paperback novels (~US$50) I think they'd sell a boatload of the things... I'd buy one!
My (now-ex) wife and I started a software company, selling a niche CAD/CAM application. She provided the specs/unit-test/marketing/sales (being the domain expert) and I wrote the code (handling SCM/QA/etc. - we actually used a code repository and written bug reports w/db for same for two people working in the same room 8-).
Actually, this product is still a going concern... the ex still runs the shop (takes her about 1 hr/month - essentially cuts trial license keys and fills P.O.'s) - we get about 1 order/month on a codebase I haven't really touched in the past 3 years (would be 5 years, but I fixed a minor bug reported 3 years ago, plus one minor tweak for y2k compliance).
At ~US$500.00 a pop, split two ways, that's at least beer money 8-) - not counting the dozens of customers we got in the beginning - somewhat of a Poisson distribution, that, with the effort being expended being proportional to the area under annual 'chunks' of the asymptotic tail of the curve... FYI, this is not my 'day' job - there isn't enough area under the curve of this niche to make much further investment of our time in this area worthwhile.
At some point, I should port the code to some platform with a better future (it is currently Borland C++, Win16/OWL based - runs on a 386 w/4MB ram, fits on a 3.5" floppy;-) - but since we have customers from all over the world who haven't access to the latest/greatest Windows OS's, this has been a concern we've been able to put off, at least for now.
And NO, I won't post a URL to our website... the subsequent/. effect would likely eat up my beer money for the next 3 years;-).
OK, I ramble... the original poster wanted to know about zoning - wasn't an issue for us, as this was a 'home' business - the restrictions were (paraphrasing) a) no employees, beyond residents, b) no physical manifestations of the business visible in the neighborhood (signs, etc.), and c) a certain limitation on the number square feet of our home dedicated to the business.
Note that said zoning is very much dependent upon your local area (country, state, county, municipality, what-have-you-ity) - YMMV.
And, I can't stress the amount of stress putting your livlihood on the line in your home can have on your family life. While this wasn't the major reason my wife and I were divorced, it was certainly a contributing factor - be warned. (Though we still are good friends - probably get along better now than before 8-).
Coders will become extinct, in one sense, if and when Man _becomes_ the Machine (for an explanation, google on 'singularity' and 'vinge', or if you just want the/. perspective, try slashdot itself).
But even then, Ubër-Carmack will (hopefully) be crafting the Doom XXV Engine for the delight of the Gestalt.
I didn't 'find' mine - it was just a matter of circumstances. Personal issues arose, so I found myself in a situation where know I would have to move about 2600 miles away in about six months - I went to my boss immediately (effectively 6 months notice) and filled him in - no BS, just laying it all out. You don't often find bosses like this - it took him, _his_ boss, and his _boss's_ boss months of wrangling to get things through HR.
Fortunately I had a pretty good track record up to that point, was essentially in an R&D/architectural position (which meant I spent a good portion of my time staring at the ceiling _whereever_ I happened to be physically at any given time), and the alternative was leaving the company altogether. It took quite a while to work things out with HR - I paid for the move myself (though the company supplies all my equipment) - and the kicker is that I'm on perpetual probation - every quarter, my boss has to give HR feedback on how I'm doing - if I don't measure up, then I can be summarily requested to report back to the office (not likely, 2600 miles away 8-), effectively meaning that I either produce, or get canned, without recourse.
So I can't tell you where to find a telecommute job - if circumstances warrant, though, one might find you 8-).
Sitting here deep in the woods of Central PA (USA) - doing a mix of R&D/architecture/product development for a large corporation - I'm 2600 miles from my manager (on the west coast), and another of my co-workers (reporting to the same manager, dotted-line) works out of Switzerland (but commutes from France, where he lives - but he telecommutes quite often, as well... 8-). We could be a candidate for classification as a classic 'virtual workgroup'.
I don't follow most of the rules described above wrt 'separation', second phone-lines, etc. (my boss might call me once a month, so a second phone line doesn't make sense for me). I have only one 90-minute teleconference (sometimes w/webcam) each week - that's the only meeting (the rest is done via email).
I do take breaks (when the weather is good I often take a 6-8 mile walk in the mornings - I get a lot of design issues worked out doing that) but then, perhaps my personality is just conducive to immersion in my work (some of my best ideas pop up while on said walk, or almost as often, in the shower 8-).
They pay me well, they leave me alone, and I bust my butt for 'em - because a) I really enjoy my work, and I'm fairly good at it, and b) they are placing their trust in me, so I feel obligated to keep to a pace / strike a balance that will help me stay both sane and productive 8-).
So, I guess it depends on what you do, how you feel about what you do, your inner quirks, and your employer - hopefully you'll find a balance that will work out OK for you...
You might have to flip the floppy over - this was a classic hiding place for Easter Eggs on the Apple ][.
Example: Karateka (one of my favorites!) - flipping the disk over +boot would result in the game playing _upside_down_ - funny, in and of itself, but even more so was acting nonchalant whilst demonstrating this effect to non-computer-geeks (at that time, practically everyone else 8-) and internalizing the mixed emotions evoked when I realized that this effect wasn't (much) questioned as anything but a natural result of said floppy inversion.
Yes, this was insensitive - but I was much younger then...
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)
An old Xeroid, me... used a 6085 for a couple of years, which was then replaced by GlobalView running on a SPARC - 'till we then upgraded everyone to PC's running Win3.11 - I don't miss the 6085's much (took _forever_ to boot up).
Try asking on comp.sys.xerox - that's the kind of thing that USENET group was originally set up for... even though nowadays its mostly used for people asking about printer drivers and Metacode converters, folks with 6085's, etc. still check it out periodically.
Slashdot Mirror
If it was a C library... well, you couldn't really take advantage of all of the advantages C++ has vs C especially when implementing a windowing UI / application framework - inheritance, polymorphism, etc. really make a difference. If you did that in raw C you'd have, well - pretty much what we had to use for programming to the Win16 (now Win32) API before Borland's OWL (Object Windows Library) made the scene (this is before MS ever came up with MFC) - opaque handles to this and that, breaking down and handling Windows messages, etc. It was very low-level stuff, tedious and prone to error.
If you're happy with a CURSES-like library, that's fine (I've done my share of that also with C on DEC platforms, back in the VT-100 days) - but for anything this side of Y2K, application frameworks and OOP are the way to go. wxWidgets is definitely a valid way to get a cross-platform (and cross-language... look at wxPython) GUI app out there and still keep what's left of your hair.
Disclaimer: I've been using wxWidgets (was wxWindows) creating apps for a Fortune 500 international since the early 2.0 days (mid-90's).
I read the Elegant Universe last week - now about 3/4 done with Fabric of the Cosmos.
I'd recommend it - FOTC has a much more macro perspective than EU - especially wrt the whole 'arrow of time' thing... and IMO very well presented.
FWIW - YMMV
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)
Dude, you think Huntsville was bad?
;-) - we had buckets on the floor some places between cubes to catch the drips when it rained - and don't get me started on the neighborhood!
You should have seen Canoga Park (CA - we were shipping you guys software
Though Huntsville may very well have been worse - haven't been there - but I feel for 'ya.
OldFart 8-)
"...we first had to concentrate biomedical effort on making a pill that gives old farts a rock hard meatpipe..."
Hey... we aren't complaining!
OldFart 8-)
When I was 19, BattleZone was 50 cents a play - I _loved_ that game.
;-).
Being a starving college student, however, I eventually ran out of quarters (not just because of BattleZone, but...)
Had also just taken my first programming course as a math elective about then (was a bio major at the time - and had just found out that I _hated_ O-chem) - my grades suffered considerably as I found myself spending inordinate amounts of time in the comp lab - but it turns out that that was the only programming course available ('twas BASIC over teletype on a CDC-750 timeshare, but what did I know?)
Anyhow, having run out of money, disillusioned with my major, and a BattleZone junkie, what could I do? I Joined The Army - and became a DAT (Dumb Ass Tanker). Spent the next six years running over stuff and/or blowing it up - great fun! And, to put this back on topic, spending an inordinate number of quarters on Space Invaders, Galaga, et al in various kasernes scattered throughout Bavaria, etc.
After a while, of course, I got put on a desk job (by this time I had obtained an Apple ][+ out of personal savings and was writing database analysis / report-generation stuff for our unit on my spare time - higherups found out about this and over my protests pulled me off my track and into Operations) - so wasn't having fun running over / blowing up stuff any longer... luckily I'd been saving up for college all this time (VEAP - the GI bill had been discontinued while I was in service).
So, I got out from under Uncle Sugar and went back to school - got the CS degree, and the rest is OT.
But, a contributing factor to my life's taking that particular turn was indeed a coin-op videogame of that day... and that sense of nostalgia (as others have described here) is a powerful motivator - perhaps I'll wait until the furor dies down and grab one of those SI boxes for myself (I'll justify it as really being for my young son, of course
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)
Will they do the same lame thing next year?
If so, it will then also be a clear-cut BOHICA situation...
BOHICA: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again
(another military 'from the trenches' acronym)
OldFart 8-)
It creeps out a lot of Americans, as well (myself included - though perhaps because I'm an agnostic, patriotic veteran - still have my dog tags, with the religion stamped as 'other' [the only relevant option available at the time]).
But, 'creeping folks out' in the way and for the reasons you describe is kinda the point - someone finally pushed the issue (the Moral Majority is neither, IMO) and now it's going in front of the Supreme Court - kudos to those responsible.
OldFart 8-)
For those who don't have access to the article, these guys are making measurements on the anomalous Hall effect in a strontium ruthenate crystal. As far as I can tell, they are claiming that the fact that the transverse magnetoresistance is nonmonotonic with temperature implies an anomaly in the Berry phase of the electrons, hence a singularity in the vector potential and a magnetic monopole.
Dude!
I just had a STNG/Jordy flashback moment there...
(whoa...)
OldFart 8-)
Bravura!
Bravo!
OldFart 8-)
No joke! Really!
... I didn't have any 'architectural' software available (spur-of-the-moment, y'know), but had purchased 'Lego Creator' for my young son not much earlier.
;-)
I was suddenly struck by an urge to model what my kitchen would look like if I tore out the pantry between the kitchen and my living room
It actually didn't work out half-bad - walkthroughs, animated characters... great stuff
At US$5 a pop on Amazon, it's worth a shot...
Lego Creator - and don't blame me if you forget about your design project, and just start playing it...
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)
Umm... no. Wasn't that patent number 0? In an orderly universe, IMHO, counting starts at zero ;-)
Was very enjoyable (at least when I read it for the first time, as a young teen). The latter books in the series tend to squishify (aka the 'Piers Anthony Syndrome)... but I recommend the first one 8-).
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)
Another (post-Bill TGH) Harrison series. Not exactly out of print... but the first one was a hoot (I haven't read all the others, so can't personally recommend).
Have fun!
OldFart
There exists a real need for moving some of the bits I see on my CRT (actually, 3 20" CRTs as one virtual desktop, but I digress 8-) a few meters over, in a form factor appropriate to the venue.
Specifically, I'm talking about moving some of the bits described in this article, like those you can find here , onto digital paper so that I can then wander over to my lavish master bathroom, where I'd like to then peruse same either sitting on the porcelain throne or wallowing in the hot jacuzzi in close proximity.
A laptop/pda does not (IMHO) fit the bill here - but a (preferably steamproof 8-) 'digital' paperback (uploadable via a USB socket in the spine, perhaps) would certainly be welcome. At the cost of a half-dozen paperback novels (~US$50) I think they'd sell a boatload of the things... I'd buy one!
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)
Well, you might try here:
Xerox Publishing
Somebody must be buying this stuff - it is expensive to R&D/produce...
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)
Didn't they say somthing like that in response to heavier-than-air flight? Or any number of then-sci-fi ramblings now-fact?
Methinks you might be even more of an OldFart (TM) than I am... Good luck! OldFart 8-)
My (now-ex) wife and I started a software company, selling a niche CAD/CAM application. She provided the specs/unit-test/marketing/sales (being the domain expert) and I wrote the code (handling SCM/QA/etc. - we actually used a code repository and written bug reports w/db for same for two people working in the same room 8-).
;-) - but since we have customers from all over the world who haven't access to the latest/greatest Windows OS's, this has been a concern we've been able to put off, at least for now.
/. effect would likely eat up my beer money for the next 3 years ;-).
Actually, this product is still a going concern... the ex still runs the shop (takes her about 1 hr/month - essentially cuts trial license keys and fills P.O.'s) - we get about 1 order/month on a codebase I haven't really touched in the past 3 years (would be 5 years, but I fixed a minor bug reported 3 years ago, plus one minor tweak for y2k compliance).
At ~US$500.00 a pop, split two ways, that's at least beer money 8-) - not counting the dozens of customers we got in the beginning - somewhat of a Poisson distribution, that, with the effort being expended being proportional to the area under annual 'chunks' of the asymptotic tail of the curve... FYI, this is not my 'day' job - there isn't enough area under the curve of this niche to make much further investment of our time in this area worthwhile.
At some point, I should port the code to some platform with a better future (it is currently Borland C++, Win16/OWL based - runs on a 386 w/4MB ram, fits on a 3.5" floppy
And NO, I won't post a URL to our website... the subsequent
OK, I ramble... the original poster wanted to know about zoning - wasn't an issue for us, as this was a 'home' business - the restrictions were (paraphrasing) a) no employees, beyond residents, b) no physical manifestations of the business visible in the neighborhood (signs, etc.), and c) a certain limitation on the number square feet of our home dedicated to the business.
Note that said zoning is very much dependent upon your local area (country, state, county, municipality, what-have-you-ity) - YMMV.
And, I can't stress the amount of stress putting your livlihood on the line in your home can have on your family life. While this wasn't the major reason my wife and I were divorced, it was certainly a contributing factor - be warned. (Though we still are good friends - probably get along better now than before 8-).
Good luck!
OldFart 8-)
Coders will become extinct, in one sense, if and when Man _becomes_ the Machine (for an explanation, google on 'singularity' and 'vinge', or if you just want the /. perspective, try slashdot itself).
But even then, Ubër-Carmack will (hopefully) be crafting the Doom XXV Engine for the delight of the Gestalt.
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)
I didn't 'find' mine - it was just a matter of circumstances. Personal issues arose, so I found myself in a situation where know I would have to move about 2600 miles away in about six months - I went to my boss immediately (effectively 6 months notice) and filled him in - no BS, just laying it all out. You don't often find bosses like this - it took him, _his_ boss, and his _boss's_ boss months of wrangling to get things through HR.
Fortunately I had a pretty good track record up to that point, was essentially in an R&D/architectural position (which meant I spent a good portion of my time staring at the ceiling _whereever_ I happened to be physically at any given time), and the alternative was leaving the company altogether. It took quite a while to work things out with HR - I paid for the move myself (though the company supplies all my equipment) - and the kicker is that I'm on perpetual probation - every quarter, my boss has to give HR feedback on how I'm doing - if I don't measure up, then I can be summarily requested to report back to the office (not likely, 2600 miles away 8-), effectively meaning that I either produce, or get canned, without recourse.
So I can't tell you where to find a telecommute job - if circumstances warrant, though, one might find you 8-).
Good luck!
OldFart 8-)
Sitting here deep in the woods of Central PA (USA) - doing a mix of R&D/architecture/product development for a large corporation - I'm 2600 miles from my manager (on the west coast), and another of my co-workers (reporting to the same manager, dotted-line) works out of Switzerland (but commutes from France, where he lives - but he telecommutes quite often, as well... 8-). We could be a candidate for classification as a classic 'virtual workgroup'.
I don't follow most of the rules described above wrt 'separation', second phone-lines, etc. (my boss might call me once a month, so a second phone line doesn't make sense for me). I have only one 90-minute teleconference (sometimes w/webcam) each week - that's the only meeting (the rest is done via email).
I do take breaks (when the weather is good I often take a 6-8 mile walk in the mornings - I get a lot of design issues worked out doing that) but then, perhaps my personality is just conducive to immersion in my work (some of my best ideas pop up while on said walk, or almost as often, in the shower 8-).
They pay me well, they leave me alone, and I bust my butt for 'em - because a) I really enjoy my work, and I'm fairly good at it, and b) they are placing their trust in me, so I feel obligated to keep to a pace / strike a balance that will help me stay both sane and productive 8-).
So, I guess it depends on what you do, how you feel about what you do, your inner quirks, and your employer - hopefully you'll find a balance that will work out OK for you...
Good luck!
OldFart 8-)
I just realized this wasn't directly on-topic - was the orig reference a Win32 download (I know, I know - RTFA - which I did, mostly 8-).
If the parent didn't download an Apple ][ disk image for use in an emulator, my apologies (hard to flip over the disk, in that case)...
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)
You might have to flip the floppy over - this was a classic hiding place for Easter Eggs on the Apple ][. Example: Karateka (one of my favorites!) - flipping the disk over +boot would result in the game playing _upside_down_ - funny, in and of itself, but even more so was acting nonchalant whilst demonstrating this effect to non-computer-geeks (at that time, practically everyone else 8-) and internalizing the mixed emotions evoked when I realized that this effect wasn't (much) questioned as anything but a natural result of said floppy inversion. Yes, this was insensitive - but I was much younger then... Have fun! OldFart 8-)
An old Xeroid, me... used a 6085 for a couple of years, which was then replaced by GlobalView running on a SPARC - 'till we then upgraded everyone to PC's running Win3.11 - I don't miss the 6085's much (took _forever_ to boot up).
Try asking on comp.sys.xerox - that's the kind of thing that USENET group was originally set up for... even though nowadays its mostly used for people asking about printer drivers and Metacode converters, folks with 6085's, etc. still check it out periodically.
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)