———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Bin TAN (Victor) <tiger40490@gmail.com>
Date: 18 May 2013 00:19
Subject: Ubuntu laptop you set up for me – thanks

Hi XR,

I have now used “your” Ubuntu laptop a few times. I am grateful that you helped set it up in you Warren St home back in 2012. Before asking you I thought over and over for months. After the installation I was hoping that I could one day find the energy and motivation to practice linux programming on it, which was a big big dream given my unfamiliarity with linux dev tools and and with practical c++ dev. Finally i'm able to realize my big dream. I now feel a bit comfortable coding c++ on linux. A tiny step is a giant step!

I had previously hit so many hard times “taming” eclipse and Visual Studio in my last 15 years. Painful experience. A much nicer “fast-track” to get hands-on c++@linux practice would be a full time job, where all tools are already set up, and you have colleagues to help with those basic get-up-to-speed problems.  In fact, my recent c# work was such a fast-track. On my own, any one of these basic problem could kill my entire endeavor. But this endeavor is a strategic investment for me.

Conceptually, I divide my c++ “investment” between theory and practical-problem-solving (PPS). I always have a deep respect for practical problems – like permission-triggered misleading errors, IDE mis-config, connectivity, hangs, registry, jar/dll version issues, event log tracking … A problem is easy problem if you find the real error message in 30 minutes. Learning PPS takes a lot of time and frustration but isn't useful for interviews. Most interviews cover no PPS. The most I had was a 2-hour onsite coding, but it only involved “easy” problems.

However, for various reasons, to grow up as a c++ guy I have to allocate some “investment” (10%?) into PPS. Right now it's just 3% — i spend the other 97% of my c++ time reading and writing toy programs in a sandbox.

Most (perhaps 60-90 out of 100) of the c++ trading apps use linux.( Also 30 – 60% of them use windows. Some use both linux and windows.)

You are also right about visual studio being the dominant c++ IDE on windows. Earlier I was using eclipse and other IDEs on windows c++ but now I have also tried visual studio c++.