10 replies to this topic

[JOSourcing]

Hello everyone. I developed a tool that might be of help to those who need a little function boost. It's called the Programmer's Lab, which is a compiled collection of over 490 functions that acts like a dynamic link library (DLL). A full description is available at Programmer's Lab.

To incorporate into your IDE, link to plab.exe via the tools menu. And please give me your feedback!

[dargueta]

Moderator note: Sorry it took so long for your post to appear. New members automatically get their posts blocked if they contain a link until a moderator approves it.

[JOSourcing]

That's perfectly fine, dargueta. I'm really thrilled that the post was approved. Thank you. :)

[WingedPanther]

I'm not sure I see the value of it. Most of the functions you mention are already part of most programming languages. The statistical functions are nice, but why the trig functions?

[JOSourcing]

Hi WingedPanther,

I developed this collection for one simple reason - and that's ease. As you said, a lot of the functions do exist in some languages, but not all of them -- especially limited languages. (Example: DOS batch, windows scripts, advanced ebook makers, etc.)

Couple that with the fact, some existing functions may take anywhere from 3 - 10 or more lines of code to create, my program reduces it to just one line. I'm not really sure which is worse -- racking my brain to organize software containing a bazillion lines of code, or writing software containing single lines of code which shell out to a 570KB exe. All I can guarantee at my age (a nasty dig at my own memory capacity) is that I need things to be as simple as they can get. ;) This program does that for me.

In regards to the trig functions, why not? :) I have a list of even more functions to add. I just have to weigh their importance and frequency of use. The last thing I want is for this tool to become bloated with stuff people rarely use.

Thanks for giving it some attention :)

[WingedPanther]

One other concern, though, is execution speed. For batch files, obviously, this isn't a huge concern, but I can see the startup/shutdown time for an executable being a significant performance bottleneck unless you keep it running while the main app runs.

[dargueta]

If you strip out all symbol information from it, it'll be smaller and have less loading overhead, I think.

[JOSourcing]

WingedPanther said:

One other concern, though, is execution speed. For batch files, obviously, this isn't a huge concern, but I can see the startup/shutdown time for an executable being a significant performance bottleneck unless you keep it running while the main app runs.

So far the exe runs pretty fast. It does run a bit slower when it uses excel and word, however, so I think your idea of keeping it running alongside the main app is a good idea. But I'm not sure how the process should be initiated. I.E. Should the exe load itself or should the main app load it... I think I'd better make that an option.

Thanks again!

---------- Post added at 04:02 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:01 AM ----------

dargueta said:

If you strip out all symbol information from it, it'll be smaller and have less loading overhead, I think.

Hi dargueta. Can you please tell me what you mean by "symbol" information?

[dargueta]

Function and variable names, macros, anything useful for debugging. If you open up an EXE in a hex editor, you'll see what I mean.
Here's a good explanation.

Symbol table - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[JOSourcing]

dargueta said:

Function and variable names, macros, anything useful for debugging. If you open up an EXE in a hex editor, you'll see what I mean.
Here's a good explanation.

Symbol table - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks for that, dargueta. I will definitely look at how I can use this!

[dargueta]

Glad I could help.