The Development Of A Simple Spreadsheet Program

I'm shocked this has been cherried. Clearly the cherry-giver has never had to suffer the pain of debuging someone elses poorly formed c++. Not only was the code entirely unindented (a heinous crime), it was poorly commented, featured unstructured concepts such as 'goto' (shudder), doesn't handle error cases properly, and a quick glance revealed the very first function didn't check for null strings and was a seg-fault waiting to happen. And it won't compile due to lines like this: break; Inputting Information Into The Worksheet. case WM_CHAR: If I was code reviewing this for a colleague I'd tell them to go back and start again.

I apologise for this cherry - it has been given and won't be rescinded but it is clearly not merited and was given in a moment of madness by an editor who really should know better.

I think most of Salim's stuff verges on high art, personally. Lovely to look at; inaccessible to the masses.

Hmm. Not convinced. Give me the pared back elegance of the classics anyday: 10 PRINT "BUM" 20 GOTO 10

Thanks for your comments. If you're still interested another version of all the code source files including the resource script file, project file etc for Visual C++ 6.0 are available on Simtel.net. Search for Salim Meghani and download SPREAD10A.ZIP 1A. The article on abctales.com isn't designed to be compiled but is an illustration of my thought processes involved when creating my spreadsheet. It isn't simply code you see, it is an article describing a program. The .cpp file on simtel.net is indented very nicely. Hope this helps a little bit. regards, Salim.

"I work with brilliant genius software developers all day long, they're a dime a dozen" On the contrary, we're quite expensive.

I can't help wondering if the real question on this posting shouldn't be whether it deserved a cherry or not, clearly the editor who awarded the accolade understood and appreciated the content to the level that convinced him it was a worthy piece for a cherry! (I take my hat off him on that one). No! Having read it and totally failed to understand 99% of it, it seems to me that the question should be whether the piece should have been allowed on the site at all. Not that I'm suggesting censorship...heaven forbid, I would take the same view if the piece had been written in any other language. But surely the postings on this site should be in English. That piece, brilliant though it may be, is written in computerspeak and therefore is probably unintelligable to many readers....or writers either for that matter. I know it will sound daft but as I tried to read the piece I found myself thinking it could just as easily be a message to Guy Fawkes giving him instructions on how to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Hmmmm!

I can't help wondering if the real question on this posting shouldn't be whether it deserved a cherry or not, clearly the editor who awarded the accolade understood and appreciated the content to the level that convinced him it was a worthy piece for a cherry! (I take my hat off him on that one). I tried to read it, my first thought was that the copy had somehow managed to get itself scrambled in transit. Having realised that it perhaps hadn't I tried again and totally failed to understand 99% of it. I concluded that the debate should be whether the piece should have been allowed on the site at all. Not that I'm suggesting censorship...heaven forbid, but surely the postings on this site should be in English. That piece, brilliant though it may be, is written in computerspeak and therefore is probably unintelligable to many readers....or writers either for that matter.I would take the same view if the piece had been written in any other language. I know it will sound daft but as I tried to read the piece I found myself thinking it could just as easily be a message to Guy Fawkes giving him instructions on how to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Hmmmm!

I love Salim's pieces. I wouldn't call them literature in the conventional sense, unless you're talking about scientific literature. But it's their very abstractness in the midst of so much overweening 'literariness' that I find so funny. I especially like his pieces that only run to a paragraph or so; if he could cut the code down in this one maybe more people would appreciate it. Go, Salim, go! AG

Oh, the irony is the best part of them. Some of Salim's pieces are utter gems, IMO. Whereas with some poetry, I am left scratching my head because it's a rather crap poem, with Salim I'm left scratching my head for entirely different reasons. Like not understanding C++ code, for example. It's great. "Science As Art", and all that.

There is a 'Visual Studio 6.0.' which I believe is supported on the MSDN website. I develop (at present) on Visual Studio 2005, and my code will compile for it, albeit the debug version won't work because of assertions and things that this new compiler traps. But, the release version will work. Orginally my compiler was Visual C++ 6.0 and I upgraded to Visual Studio 2005 (a 64 bit compiler) last year. I am going to write a sci-fi novel and will post the chapters as I develop them.

Salim, Are you a Vulcan?