I have always thought Christmas in July was a dumb invention, right up there with fruitcake and vinyl sofas. It's hard to think about Christmas when sidewalks burn your toes, and kids are shooting bottle rockets over your house. And I've got a warning for Santa: you won't last ten minutes here in the Kansas heat, at least not in that funky flight suit. July is a month for good cheer, though, if you can get some vacation. Ye Merry Senior Ed, who brings new meaning to the word overloaded, is badly in need of a vacation, so I volunteered to write the editor's forum this month. Here's hoping you'll suffer it as gladly as the summer heat.
Just to be ornery, I want to bring you a managing editor's Christmas in July. Specifically, I have a Christmas wish list, complete with items I'd like to find under my elm tree some bright summer morn:
- A C++ Standard. This would make a great Christmas present for all of us. Alas, I fear we've been a bit too naughty. We've truly enjoyed this language; we've reveled in it, so much so that I think the C++ committees are afraid to let us have it. In fact, I had a nightmare last night. In the absence of a standard, everyone pretty much did their own thing and developed one, de facto. That left nothing for the committees to do but — shudder — codify existing practice. Okay, okay, I know that was not a nice thing to say. I suppose I won't be getting any ice cream tonight.
- Smart CPUs. We've heard that someday CPU design is going to hit the wall. There really is a limit to how fast those things will go. I find that comforting, because I've never really relished having a high-power microwave device on my desktop. I'd just as soon not be baked alive as I play DOOM. So, Intel, Motorola, DEC, what are you going to do? How about making 'em smarter, not faster? When are we going to see integrated associative memories in our CPUs? Hardware string search engines? Garbage collectors? Instead of pouring billions into atom-width circuit traces, pour them into giving us a standard software interface to universally needed hardware functionality. Yeah, I'm just dreaming, but hey, it's Christmas.
- C Articles. Where have all you C programmer/authors gone? Contrary to popular belief, we have no intention of forsaking our first love, C. It's true we've run precious few C articles in the past few months. How come? Well, not because C is dead. C is still a workhorse language; but for some reason lately we've not encountered many people using it in ways that would make for interesting articles. Notable exceptions are Dwayne Phillips, Marco Savard, Jerry Dwyer, and K.B. Williams. (Incidentally, due to logistical problems we've had to reschedule Dwyer and Williams' "Testing Random Number Generators, Part 2" to August — sorry guys.)
Programmers haven't stopped using C, but I'm guessing that most have stopped using it exclusively. And why not? Unless you have demanding performance or space constraints, as does an embedded systems developer, there's little to keep you from jumping the fence and using some of C++'s nifty features.
I could be wrong, of course, and I'm hoping one of you will prove me wrong, by submitting a killer C article. Even if I'm right, there are still a lot of great C topics begging to be covered: algorithms, embedded systems, multithreading, using C for performance, to name a few. Send a proposal to mbriand@mfi.com.
Well, that's my Christmas in July wish list. I hope Santa brings you what you want, and have a happy fiscal new year.
— Marc Briand
Managing Editor