March 2007 - Posts

• Exceptional wisdom

  In Visual C++ 7.1 and earlier, "catch(...)" would catch all exceptions, both C++ and SEH. The behavior has changed with Visual C++ 8.0. This has caused some confusion. The details get a bit tricky, but the generally accepted wisdom among the C++ gurus Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 28, 2007 11:09 PM by dcook | 1 Comments Filed under: c++

• Who ate my memory?

  The consumer versions of 32-bit Windows XP and Vista have a stated limit of 4 GB RAM, but a practical limit of about 3.1 GB. A lot of partial explanations have been floating around, so I thought I would try my hand at clearing up the issue. (Wish me luck!) Read More... Posted Sunday, March 25, 2007 3:03 AM by dcook | 48 Comments Filed under: hardware

• Changes in Nmake 8.0: Answer

  In my previous post , I described two issues encountered after updating our build system to Nmake 8.0 (the version from Visual Studio 2005) from earlier versions. Both issues turned out to have essentially the same root cause. Nmake's job is to execute Read More... Posted Sunday, March 25, 2007 2:38 AM by dcook | 0 Comments

• Changes in Nmake 8.0

  I've run into this issue twice now (in different forms) after upgrading build systems from old versions of Nmake to Nmake 8.0 (the version from Visual Studio 2005), so I think that means it's time to blog about it. Scenario 1: Your stuff builds ok, but Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 20, 2007 7:07 PM by dcook | 1 Comments Filed under: ce, nmake, build

• Performant: I do not think it means what you think it means.

  Around Microsoft, people talk about making things performant. They mean "fast" or "performs well". It is a real word, but according to OED , it means a person who performs something. In any case, I think it really isn't all that important (that is a "real Read More... Posted Friday, March 16, 2007 6:24 PM by dcook | 2 Comments Filed under: language

• What is Platform Builder?

  I work in the Windows Embedded CE group on the "PB IDE tools" team. That might take a bit of explaining. (Sometimes, I'm not entirely clear myself.) CE is the "miniature" version of Windows. (The big version, referred to as "NT" on this blog, is familiar Read More... Posted Sunday, March 11, 2007 2:21 AM by dcook | 1 Comments Filed under: pb, ce, team

• Hey, everybody, I have a blog!

  I'm a little late to the blog scene, but I hear it is all the rage, and that all the cool people are doing it. I guess it's time to get with the program. (Sorry I'm late!) They (1) say that the first blog entry is supposed to set the tone for the blog Read More... Posted Sunday, March 11, 2007 12:56 AM by dcook | 0 Comments Filed under: me, blog