Past Diatribes

I had forgotten what it's like in the States. We just arrived back in Dublin today after two weeks in Florida. . . it was funny noticing 24-hour supermarkets on every other corner and 24-hour Denny's occupying the rest. It is no wonder that half of the people ahead of us in line at Universal Studios were distinctly obese. There are some overweight people here, but you simply don't see that in Ireland.

Other funny things had changed, not been forgotten. The money is an obvious for instance. US notes are currently in transition to a format with large pictures and writing. The quarters have changed too. On the backs there are pictures of horses and boats commemorating events in state histories. They look like tokens from Chuck-E-Cheese or Funland Arcade or something. Weirder yet, Donnie and Marie have their own talk show. It's a trip.

A more significant change has occurred in communications. The Internet has taken over everything, it seems. Every business has its own website, from the Mexican food joint in the strip mall to the gas station around the block. Every ad in the paper lists the business' URL address. There are ads on the telly for websites (some of which are actually useful, like trip.com.) The whole country is wired, and the wires are as live as those in any house.

A development which particularly concerned me, working for a company that sells computers, is the fact that computers in the US are now being given away for free. There were full-page ads in the Orlando Sentinel informing all comers that AOL (for instance) would provide a 400MHz computer with 32MB of RAM and a 2GB Hard Drive to anyone who signed a three-year ISP contract. I examined these offers closely and, sure enough, it works out legit. Sales tax alone- as well as the standard $19.99 a month- is the sole expense. Give this bit of news some thought--- and keep those implications in mind over the next couple years.

The C++ programming continues to go well. It's a different sort of computer language to Visual Basic. Everything is text, for a start. Instead of drawing a little picture, C++ programmers type in lines like:

cout << "Please enter the number you would like to dial.";
gotoxy (12,9);
cin>>array;
for (i = 0; i< length && array[i] !='\0'; i++)

{
switch (array[i])

{
case '0': case '1': case '2': case '3': case '4':
case '5': case '6': case '7': case '8': case '9':
dial_valid = TRUE;
break;

default:
dial_valid = FALSE;
break;
}

}

All of that simply asks the user to type in a phone number and makes sure that the right sort of entry comes in. The same thing in VB would take one line of code, a drawn label and a drawn text box. C++ is much more structured like that: everything needs to be written out and written out very precisely. Though tedious, this actually places a good deal of power in the programmer's hands. It has also demonstrated to me the power of writing functions, like the one excerpted above. After a piece of code like the number-checking bit above is written once, it can be included in any other program and called over and over again.

To learn more about C++ I recommend giving a browse to The Story of C++: A Day in the Life of a Programming Language. It's a book on line that gives an easy-to-follow, conversational introduction to principles of programming, program design, the syntax of C++ and other topics. Also examine Jamsa's site, the folks who have produced the C/C++ Programmers Bible. This is a hefty yet concise and modular reference I recommend. It also comes bundled with a Turbo C++ Lite compiler.... I've been giving myself a lot of practice outside of class, and this yoke has proved dead handy.

One last thing you must know: contrary to what my fiancé thinks, typing away programming is not the same as typing away playing space invaders. It drives an industry that employs more than 18,300 people, with annual revenue exceeding £4.5 billion in Ireland alone (1997 figures). Visit The Irish Software Association website, the National Software Directorate site and Opportunity Ireland to learn more.

Peace.