Guest Column in current IEEE Software

Some 18 months ago, Martin Fowler asked me if I'd be interested in
guest-writing his "Design" column in IEEE Software. I said that I would
once I figured out what I wanted to write about. I finally did, and you
can find the result in the July/August issue of the magazine. Thanks to
the kind people at IEEE Software, you can also view a PDF copy at:

http://www.aristeia.com/Papers/IEEE_Software_JulAug_2004.pdf

Scott

EC++ Errata Page Updated

I just got word that Effective C++ is due for another reprint, so I've
updated the book's errata page with the latest changes. None of the bugs
I fixed is technical in nature, but there they are, anyway:

DATE DATE
REPORTED WHO PAGES WHAT FIXED
-------- --- ----- ------------------------------------------------ --------
4/ 4/04 sdm xiii Bad line break in URL in footnote. 6/ 7/04

5/20/04 md 107 At end of 3rd para, "SHRT" is in wrong font. 6/ 7/04

6/ 1/04 md 203 In last line, "theName" ==> "name". 6/ 7/04

6/ 7/04 sdm 203 Bad line break in 2nd-to-last para in 6/ 7/04
"valueDelimOpen".

6/ 2/04 md 218 In 2nd to last line, "accidently" ==> 6/ 7/04
"accidentally". Both spellings are correct but
I use the "ally" form everywhere else in the
book, so I should use it here, too.

1/19/04 jyt 231 Arrow tail protrudes slightly into the oval 6/ 7/04
surrounding "overflow_error".

For those of you who like to keep track of such things, this will be the
book's 16th printing.

I also added this observation to the "Interesting Comments" part of the
book's web page:

DATE
REPORTED WHO PAGES WHAT
-------- --- ------- ----------------------------------------------------------
1/19/04 jyt Items There are several example base classes in the book that
16, declare nonvirtual destructors or that declare no
22, destructor at all, a violation of Item 14.
26,
40,43,
49,50

Scott

Recent Bogus Message and What I've Done About It

As many of you noticed, somebody recently spoofed my email address and sent out
a message with a subject of "Re: Hello" and a worm-laden attachment. Sigh.
I've since deleted the bogus message from the web site archives, and I've
reconfigured the mailing list so that all postings not only have to come from
me, they also have to be approved by me before they are propagated. I hope that
this will prevent further abuse of the mailing list.

As an aside, when I poked around the administrative portion of the mailing list,
I found that since starting the mailing list four years ago, I've sent out only
68 messages, but 2300 unauthorized messages have been automatically rejected.
In retrospect, I suppose I'm lucky that only one bogus message has been
propagated, but I still feel badly for wasting your time.

While I was housecleaning at Yahoo, I also deleted two bogus files in the
download area.

With luck, I won't need to bother you about this for another four years. I
apologize for the inconvenience of what has already happened.

Scott

New article in the current DDJ

Over the course of several months, Andrei Alexandrescu and I wrote what we
think is a nice article on why double-checked locking can't be made to work
portably in C++. Dr. Dobb's Journal agreed to publish it, but they decided
it was too long for a single article, so they broke it into two pieces.
The first piece just came out in the July issue. The second part will be
published in the August issue (which, in classic magazine publishing logic,
will be available around the beginning of July).

We hope you enjoy the article. If not, it'll clearly be Andrei's fault :-)

Scott