An Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup (by DDJ)

C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup discusses the evolving C++0x standard, the education of programmers, and the future of programming.

shared_ptr

I've just found a very nice presentation made by Stephan T. Lavavej about shared_ptr (TR1 version).
Here you get a direct link to PDF of the presentation (4Mb, 50 slides)

C++ Master

I am now officially a C++ Master :)
Recently I have gotten a hard copy of my C++ Master certificate issued by Brainbench. Of course, to get the certificate one should pass an online test. And I can admit, the test had a number of very nice questions. Anyway I don't think that was the best test I've ever participated in, but it was definitely a nice one. After the test I had to look into books to confirm some of my answers. Good job by Brainbench! I am looking for some other tests of them to pass. It is actually entertaining and helps to keep yourself fit.

Singularity RDK

MS has just freely opened Singularity RDK for academic non-commercial use.

About Singularity

Singularity is a research project focused on the construction of dependable systems through innovation in the areas of systems, languages, and tools. We are building a research operating system prototype (called Singularity), extending programming languages, and developing new techniques and tools for specifying and verifying program behavior.

Advances in languages, compilers, and tools open the possibility of significantly improving software. For example, Singularity uses type-safe languages and an abstract instruction set to enable what we call Software Isolated Processes (SIPs). SIPs provide the strong isolation guarantees of OS processes (isolated object space, separate GCs, separate runtimes) without the overhead of hardware-enforced protection domains. In the current Singularity prototype SIPs are extremely cheap; they run in ring 0 in the kernel’s address space.

Singularity uses these advances to build more reliable systems and applications. For example, because SIPs are so cheap to create and enforce, Singularity runs each program, device driver, or system extension in its own SIP. SIPs are not allowed to share memory or modify their own code. As a result, we can make strong reliability guarantees about the code running in a SIP. We can verify much broader properties about a SIP at compile or install time than can be done for code running in traditional OS processes. Broader application of static verification is critical to predicting system behavior and providing users with strong guarantees about reliability.

Video on Singularity:

• Singularity: A Research OS Written In C#
  
• Singularity Revisited
  
• Singulariy III: Revenge of the SIP
  
• Singularity IV: Return of the UI