Win32/C++ Resources

A “healthy set” of Win32 and C++-related links (related stuff, anyway):

• MVP Tips, Techniques, and Goodies by Joseph M. Newcomer has a lot of C++ and Win32 topics, covering all “gray” areas like asynchronous operations, synchronization, threading, memory leaks, optimizations, various Windows APIs, device drivers, etc. For example, there is An introduction to memory damage problems that goes thoroughly through the topic, or absolutely fantastic The n Habits of Highly Defective Windows Applications that nicely enumerates ugliest “no-no’s” one should avoid in his code if he wants to sleep well :)
• C++ In Action, book by Bartosz Milewski. Cool thing is that there is a web edition of the book. Additionally, on the C++ Resources page there is Windows API Tutorial, RSWL: Free Windows Library, and some other papers and presentations, including topics on Resource Management, something called auto_vector ;) , and rather interesting Dealing with Software Complexity presentation.
• Win32 samples has a lot of samples for Net*() APIs, as well as for LSA, NTFS streams, processes, security

Quince – UX Pattern Explorer

Found Quince – UX Pattern Explorer (UX stands for User Experience – a “modern” hype-replacement word for the now “old fashined” UI) some time ago and decided to save it. It is what it claims to be – the explorer of the user interface patterns. It is one of the few things that Infragistics ever got right, perhaps the only one.

“Bit Twiddling”

Needed to do some “weird” things recently that involved bit operations, e.g. to create masks with certain number of bits set. During my “research” I found few interesting places:

• Bit Twiddling Hacks – lots of snippets related to bit operations, e.g. counting, reversing, swapping, interleaving, testing, etc., etc., etc.
• Creating multiple numbers with certain number of bits set – this was the answer to my need, clean and simple
• Technical Interview Questions – has a lot of interesting topics, nicely categorized, although not all-encompassing, if comparing to the first link above