Converting Au3 to C++?

[Nutster]

Ya' know, Valik, this kind of reminds me of one of my former students. I was teaching a multi-lanugage programming course and the students were to write a business application during the last week of the VB section. This one student (that I am reminded of by some of the comments on this thread) was going to write a bank control program: for multiple clients, allow deposits and withdrawls, etc. He spent all of his time writing a very nice and fancy sign-in screen but had none of the core functionality working when the program was due. The program and the student failed.

One of my students in that class went on to IT managament at one of Canada's big banks. No, not the one described above! This guy's project managed a pizza store.

For everybody else:

I am a professional programmer with over 20 years experience programming or teaching. I have worked with over twenty different (and sometimes very distinct) languages. Each language has stengths (or nobody would use them) and weaknesses (usually from trade-offs to give those strengths). No one language is suitable for all tasks.

Cobol was made easy for managers and engineers to read. The result however was source code that is absolutely huge! In collage, one of my first Cobol programs was a 14-page "hello world" program, but pretty much anybody, even my computer-illiterate parents, could have figured out what it did. These days most Cobol applications would be written using SQL.

Fortran was designed for effiecent mathematical processing. One of the main trade-offs has been its limited use outside of that field. There have been some resent expansions to the language, but most of Fortran's features are surplanted by C++.

VB code can be faster to write than finer grained languages like C++, but the level of control is less and execution is generally a little slower.

SQL is an execellent language for managing and manipulating relational databases. For anything else, it is pretty much useless.

So each language has stengths and weaknesses and must be considered as such.

Edited March 20, 2006 by Nutster

[Valik]

Ya' know, Valik, this kind of reminds me of one of my former students. I was teaching a multi-lanugage programming course and the students were to write a business application during the last week of the VB section. This one student (that I am reminded of by some of the comments on this thread) was going to write a bank control program: for multiple clients, allow deposits and withdrawls, etc. He spent all of his time writing a very nice and fancy sign-in screen but had none of the core functionality working when the program was due. The program and the student failed.

One of my students in that class went on to IT managament at one of Canada's big banks. No, not the one described above! This guy's project managed a pizza store.

User interfaces are almost always the last thing I design. In fact, I often never complete my UI's to my specifications because I get used to my quick, temporary solutions I put in to access the features during testing.

The thing I'm seeing most is level of experience. I've been doing this stuff for 3 or 4 years now and have started to figure out what things are more important than others. Obviously others have very little experience and are focused on very unimportant things.

[Jon]

Snippet from the AutoIt (c++) source code.

for (i=0; i<m_Array->nElements; i++)
            {
                if (vOp2.m_Array->Data[i] != NULL)
                {
                    m_Array->Data[i] = new Variant; 
                    *(m_Array->Data[i]) = *(vOp2.m_Array->Data[i]);
                }
            }

             m_Array = new VariantArrayDetails(*vOp2.m_Array); // bitcopy
             if (m_Array->nRefCount)
                 ++*m_Array->nRefCount;

Brackets don't necessarily make a program understandable.

[cppman]

larry, im really sorry... that kinda came out wrong from me..

I Did'nt really mean AutoIt in particular.

just basic languages are a bit sloppy

I had no intentions on making fun of AutoIt.

I Love AutoIt and Always will. and thank you and the developement team for programming it...

I did'nt mean to offend u by that..

ONCE AGAIN...

> Everyone,

im sorry... did'nt mean to bug anyone....

[Richard Robertson]

BASIC wasn't designed to be "pretty." It was designed to be easy, or in better terms, basic.

@Larry: You don't understand C++'s postincrement, preincrement? (++before evaluation) (after evaluation++) And whats wrong with pointers? You don't like **CHAR[]? Haha, me neither.

As for what is better, I agree heavily with Valik. What is better, is what gets the job done better. A working program is more important than what it looks like codewise. If you want messy code and working programs, look at my source. They work, but no one with ever understand half of it.

[cppman]

lol. I just said, okay.. i agree with everyone, lmao.

[greenmachine]

lol. I just said, okay.. i agree with everyone, lmao.

If I've been reading correctly, you don't agree, you never have agreed, and you don't intend to agree (I make these assumptions based on the continuous points bringing up the same info). Your newest response is just to give in to others because they pointed out a flaw in your logic and your arguments. So now this is the equivalent of backing out of a fight - not the same reaction you've been having for a few days now...

[Valik]

If I've been reading correctly, you don't agree, you never have agreed, and you don't intend to agree...

The part I have bolded is the key part. There are some experienced people who have chimed in and stated things based on experience and first-hand knowledge yet he continued to defend his flawed views until such time as every point he tried to make was blown away by multiple people. At that point, he did exactly as you have said which is to back-pedal out of the fight saying what he thinks we want to hear in order to get us to leave him alone.

People pay lots of money to get the advice we throw around for free and now we got a real winner who thinks he's too right to be wrong.

[cppman]

I Just said, i agree with you. I was wrong. what else am i supposed to do? i have nothing else to back up my point with... what am i supposed to do, i told you i believe you... u win...

[cppman]

The part I have bolded is the key part. There are some experienced people who have chimed in and stated things based on experience and first-hand knowledge yet he continued to defend his flawed views until such time as every point he tried to make was blown away by multiple people. At that point, he did exactly as you have said which is to back-pedal out of the fight saying what he thinks we want to hear in order to get us to leave him alone.

People pay lots of money to get the advice we throw around for free and now we got a real winner who thinks he's too right to be wrong.

Okay.... that was retarded... I JUST SAID I AGREE WITH U..... ^^

omg... Their is nothing more i can say or do... if u wish to keep on a fight, that I ALREADY LOST, AND ADMITTED I LOST, and I SAID I HAD THE WRONG IDEA OF THE POINT I WAS TRYING TO MAKE..... then sure... lets keep this up (*even though i just said i agree with u!!!!!!!*) What else do u want me to say!!! damn!

[Valik]

Why do we go on? Because we don't think you get it. Sure, you admit you "lost" but I'm not convinced you really understand why you are wrong and it appears that greenmachine isn't convinced, either. That last post you made in response to mine doesn't convey, "I get it now" to me. I'm not convinced you've learned anything from this experience or at least I'm not convinced that you learned the right things from it.

[cppman]

Why do we go on? Because we don't think you get it. Sure, you admit you "lost" but I'm not convinced you really understand why you are wrong and it appears that greenmachine isn't convinced, either. That last post you made in response to mine doesn't convey, "I get it now" to me. I'm not convinced you've learned anything from this experience or at least I'm not convinced that you learned the right things from it.

well valik...

their is nothing i can do to help u their now, is their?

so believe what u wish to believe.. i could care less whether or not u believe me.

[SmOke_N]

Who opened this can of worms?

[cppman]

probably me.. and i apologized quite a few times...

[Confuzzled]

A belated comment: A few years ago, when Y2K fever was at highest pitch, maintenance programmers made a killing on converting old stuff to have four digit years, etc.

Customers that had well documented source code, backups of original development tools, and had some style to their programs were first off the rank as the work was rather easy. Their work got done first, tended to cost far less, and was charged at standard industry hours. Business rules were expanded, the software modernised, and bells and whistles were added to integrate better with their current interfaces.

Customers with spaghetti code, patches that were never documented, poor senior staff retention, no clue as to how their programs matched their business needs, and just wanted to satisfy the regulators or insurance company were charged like a wounded bull, delayed until the last moment, and only the bare essentials to satisfy their bean counters were done.

I came across all types: Assembler, Cobol, Fortran, Basic, even CP/M stuff. Regardless of the language deployed, well structured and documented source code always made the job significantly easier.

Guess which type of customer is still in business and thriving seven years later?

Yes, I like to see my name in print - on happy, satisfied customer checks!

[jaenster]

Snippet from the AutoIt (c++) source code.

for (i=0; i<m_Array->nElements; i++)
            {
                if (vOp2.m_Array->Data[i] != NULL)
                {
                    m_Array->Data[i] = new Variant; 
                    *(m_Array->Data[i]) = *(vOp2.m_Array->Data[i]);
                }
            }

             m_Array = new VariantArrayDetails(*vOp2.m_Array); // bitcopy
             if (m_Array->nRefCount)
                 ++*m_Array->nRefCount;

Brackets don't necessarily make a program understandable.

Jon , how long do you take to create autoIT 3?

[THESCRIPTERIST]

ok

[jefhal]

Why do we go on?

And 2 more cents: I worked for software development firms from 1983 to 2001 in Marketing. Our engineering software was written in everything from Basic, C, C++, VC, to VC++. In all those years I many many attempts to pick up the current language in use at the time. I never succeeded in writing one useful line of code.

Last year I stumbled across AutoIT3 because I was trying to automate some software install functions. Since then I've written a couple thousand lines of code and am now working on an application that automatically finds the nearest printer to any computer that someone in my organization logs into (400+).

I personally could never have accomplished this in the other languages, including VC that I was exposed to over the years. Not because they couldn't handle the task, but because they were so convoluted and arcane to work with that I could never make any headway. I got an 800 on the Math SAT test, but just couldn't "get into" the more structured languages.

Thanks to Jon and his Merry Band, and this forum, I can actually accomplish something that had forever eluded me. As to AutoIT code, anything that I can read like a book I wouldn't call sloppy. Finally, other than tilde ~ there are no keys that I find harder to type than "{" and "}"...

[Richard Robertson]

Why is this thread still going? I think the main idea crashed weeks ago. I think the argument has gotten out of hand and off topic.

[Azu]

Uh.. C is ugly.. brackets FTL.. it runs fast though