Dr. Dobb's C/C++

Aliasing Is Particularly Troublesome With Vector Elements

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:28:00 -0400

I would like to continue our discussion with a particularly nasty case in which the result is not well defined.

Some Subtleties of Aliasing

Thu, 09 May 2013 19:27:00 -0400

Aliasing can cause paradoxical behavior.

Sometimes, Making a Program Clearer Makes It Faster

Wed, 01 May 2013 21:15:00 -0400

We can "optimize" our code by removing requests for operations that our data structures do not really need to support.

Some Optimizations Are No-Brainers

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:53:00 -0400

Kernighan's rule for optimizations (Don't do it) is good advice. But as with most rules, there are exceptions.

Porting BlackBerry Z10 Apps to the Q10

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 01:12:00 -0400

With the release of the BlackBerry Q10 right around the corner, BlackBerry 10 application developers should be thinking about adapting their code to support the new devices. This article presents background and tips on development for this new handset.

Sometimes Optimizations Cancel Each Other

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:43:00 -0400

Two rights can make a wrong in the software-design world.

World's First 'Language-Aware' Source Code Merge Tool

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:05:00 -0400

Codice's Semantic Merge is a programming three-way merge tool with semantic support

Optimizing a Program Means Making It Run Faster, Right?

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:18:00 -0400

People often use optimization to mean changing a program in ways that they think will make it run faster, but that casual definition is far from complete.

Optimization Versus Flexibility — An Example

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:04:00 -0400

Last week, I discussed how optimization can sometimes mislead programmers into writing code that works better in the lab than in the field, perhaps because the problems that programs encounter in the field are larger than those that are used during testing. As luck would have it, since I wrote that article, I encountered a real-world example of that phenomenon.

MongoDB with C#: Deep Dive

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 07:36:00 -0400

Using MongoDB in an ASP.NET MVC Web app.

The Quiet Revolution in Programming

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 07:14:00 -0400

During the last two years, one of the longest eras in programming has quietly drawn to a close.

Is Optimization Immoral?

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 07:50:00 -0400

Dynamic memory allocation in C++ (and C) can be surprisingly expensive.

An Objective-C IDE Done Right?

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:10:00 -0400

AppCode 2.0 integrates with Kiwi testing framework and documentation browsers

If Order Relations are Such a Pain, Why Bother?

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 05:30:00 -0400

Whenever a problem turns out to be harder to solve than we expected, it makes sense to ask whether perhaps we were solving the wrong problem in the first place.

Numerical and Computational Optimization on the Intel Phi

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 03:01:00 -0400

How tuning functions for large data sets and profiling the results gets most of the benefits of the Phi's 60 cores without hand wringing and late-night hacking.

Comparing an Integer with a Floating-Point Number, Part 2: Tactics

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:27:00 -0400

We continue last week's discussion by getting down to details.

Xamarin 2.0 Review

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:34:00 -0400

Write Android and iOS Apps in C# from Microsoft Visual Studio.

Getting to 1 Teraflop on the Intel Phi Coprocessor

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 06:53:00 -0400

The key to truly high performance with the Phi coprocessor is to express sufficient parallelism and vector capability to fully utilize the device. Here is a timing framework that enables you to measure and optimize performance and push it past 1 teraflop.

Comparing an Integer With a Floating-Point Number, Part 1: Strategy

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:10:00 -0500

We have two numbers, one integer and one floating-point, and we want to compare them.

Learning New Languages

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 10:31:00 -0500

If you want to expand your programming horizons, learn a new language. But don't take the path of least resistance — aim for mastery of the advanced features.

It's Hard To Compare Floating-Point Numbers

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:06:00 -0500

Last week I posed a problem: Suppose you have an inheritance hierarchy that lets you represent integers or floating-point numbers. How would you define comparison within your hierarchy? We can restate this problem in a language-independent way: How can we compare two numbers, either of which might be integer or floating-point?

Why Code in C Anymore?

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:40:00 -0500

The traditional reasons for preferring C to C++ have been steadily whittled away. Are there any good reasons to still use C?

Concurrent Programming with Chain Locking

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 06:10:00 -0500

Concurrent access to trees and lists requires carefully managed fine-grained locking. Here's a generic solution in C# that removes many of the typical problems.

Comparison and Inheritance

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:36:00 -0500

We continue last week's discussion of comparison functions by thinking about how to compare objects from different parts of an inheritance hierarchy.

Task-Based Programming in Windows

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 02:30:00 -0500

Convert programs into a series of independent executable parallel tasks.