C / C++ / C#

If you know Python then you might find Lobster of interest as the syntax appears very similar. I'm not sure whether the world really needs another programming language but it's open source and clearly there's been a lot of development done on it already.

It's the creation of developer Wouter van Oortmerssen and uses C++ 11 features (auto, lambda and range-for) so it needs either XCode 4.6 (on Mac) Visual Studio 2012 (free is ok) on Windows and a recent GCC (4.8 should do, maybe earlier).

Although it's comparable to Python, it runs several times faster according to the author and can be extended by C++. It has a high level interface to OpenGL and uses SDL 2.0 and FreeType and is really quite impressive.

• Permanent link added to Cross Platform C++ Software

I'll be back on other stuff this week but while this was fresh in my mind I wrote the first tutorial (Link now fixed) on developing iOS Apps with Xamarin Studio.

I use the term Xamarin Studio loosely as I have the Business edition which uses Visual Studio on Windows but in all the Xamarin tutorials, I will be using the Mac based Xamarin Studio which is free (fr Apps up to 32Kb in size).

You can develop any kind of App (including games) in C# with Xamarin Studio including games as every APi is supported.

• Want to Learn C#? Try the C# Tutorials

After a couple of days of intense reading and trying stuff out, it's finally starting to make sense. There's a kind of magic when I first got it to step through a program on my Windows PC and the iPhone simulator on the Mac steps forward.

Mind you there have been a few gotchas along the way. Nothing major but little things like making sure the important fields were filled in the properties or Visual Studio wouldn't connect to the Mac. Also be sure to Quit the iPhone Simulator to flip VS out of debug mode. Oh and occasionally the Xamarin Bonjour service hasn't started. It was set to manual and I've made it automatic with a delayed start.

But its worth it for the first time you see something new like getting the Apps settings working. That needed an XML file in a specially named folder and a property setting for Build Type to set it to Content. That was a very good feeling when I looked in the settings and there was My app with my settings fields. Oh and a recommendation for any other nascent Xamarin iPhone developers. Get the Bryan Costanich Apress book "Developing C# Apps for iPhone etc". It's very good.

My only gripe so far. It takes a minute to get debugging after pressing F5. Now whether thats my 100 MB network being a bit slow (it will get upgraded in a couple of days to gigabit) or just a longer build time I don't know. Is this normal?

A straightforward challenge this time, solve four puzzles filling in a 30 x 20 grid with rectangular shapes whose sizes are predetermined. All puzzles add up to 100. A 1 value shape occupies 6 squares in any rectangular shape 1 x 6, 2 x 3, 3 x 2 or 6 x 1.

The first puzzle is 1,1,1,2,2,6,7,14,11,4,13,5,5,12,3,2,4,4,3. So the 14 shape will occupy 84 squares and it's constrained to be a maximum of 30 wide or 20 high, it could be 3 x 28, 4 x 21, 6 x 14, 14 x 6, 7 x 12 and 12 x 7. Have fun!

Note i've published three puzzles and the 4th will be added by me to your source code, so please code it to solve four puzzles. And I'll have the programming challenge 71 test data up later tonight.

• Enter Programming Challenge 71 - Unweave tags
• read Fill a grid - Fill a Grid.

Improving on snippets by displaying Intellisense (in a web page) is quite clever. That's what the free Csharp.io website does.

It's a nice modern looking website though if you don't like the Visual Studio IDE color scheme...<g>

• Link to List of Online Code repositories

I have to say that I do like this book though I think its title could be improved. It's really about developing business applications in C# and focuses on the technologies most useful for that including Windows Form, databases, XML etc.

But from a more general C# point of view, it includes a large number of How tos, making it a cook book as well as good for learning C#. Recommended. Read the full review.

• Here are some other book reviews

They were new to me as well. Nocco is an open source C# implementation of a utility that reads your source code, separates the comments out and then displays them side by side with your code.

Docco is the original implementation in CoffeeScript and has links to other language implementations including Go

• Find this and more in the C# Code Library

I'm not a git user, instead I run a Perforce Server and client locally. That's an Enterprise VCS that's free for up to 20 users. I used it for five years at my last job, so got quite used to it.

But if you use Git, and develop on Windows, one way to manage Git repositories in a friendlier way than command line is the Bonobo Git server. It's open source ASP.NET MVC and provides user friendly browser access.

• A permanent link to this was added to the ASP.NET C# Code Library

If you've never seen it, try the Wordle.net website. It's a free site that lets you paste a page of text (or a website url) into it then it generates a word map with the most frequent words being shown larger. (Note it needs Java enabled, but so long as your Java is up to date it is safe).

The image to the right was created from this web page. Of course now this blog entry has been published, it will affect the word frequencies. So the next one done from this page will be subtly different.

It uses different fonts, colors and layouts and you can change them. So my challenge to myself is to see if I could write 4 x desktop application to do this in C,C++, C# and Google Go. I did think of it as a programming challenge but I think it's just a little too involved. The C/C++ version can use SDL, I might use SDL.NET, MonoGame or just normal GDI+ functions for the C# version but for the Golang version, I'm not sure yet, though I know SDL bindings are available.

I'm not going to use anybody elses code but I will publish it all and write it up. If anyone else has interesting ideas that would make for interesting projects, please email me at cplus@aboutguide.com?subject=Project ideas for Cplus

Thanks to all three who entered: Ken Weinert, Stephen Burris and Ron Spain with two C and one C# entry, and the C# entry appears to have won. I just need to check the results as when two entries get the same score and another gets a better one it raises a question mark. But provisionally first time entrant Stephen Burris has won. Congratulations Stephen.

Challenge 71 is now open and you have about four weeks to enter it. As always, feel free to resubmit entries as many times as you want up to the deadline of June 30th.

• Enter Programming Challenge 71 - Unweave tags
• read Programming Challenge 70 - Artillery Shoot.