Genghis is a set of extensions built on top of .NET and integrated with WinForms to provide application-level services in the same flavor as the Microsoft Foundation Classes. Genghis gets its name as the functional heir to Attila, a similar set of functionality built on top of ATL.

Dear MFC::CString
You were such a beautiful thing
I miss you so much
CComBSTR is painful to touch
WTL may restore my churning (out string manipulating code).

Phil Beck
ATL Mailing List

There is no vacation when I am doing COM.
Some go through very well, but stuck are some.

I don’t go to parties, so I feel I am IUnknown.
People talking to me, those days are gone.

Brother has a complaint, that I don’t callback.
Which kind of apartment he has, I don’t check

Everyone stares me through those windows.
I live in ATL* and that is what I chose.

*(short for Atlanta)

Sandeep  Chawla
Private Email

Portland, OR, August 8, 2000 According to an article appearing in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, DevelopMentor has developed a new technology for creating software applications. Attached is a photo of this technology in beta test at DevelopMentor’s Portland Satellite office. DevelopMentor’s device is attached to a user and using the latest LFM technology it auto-generates complete software applications. Evil Genius, Chris Sells, DevelopMentor’s Senior Programmer, co-invented the technology with their Security Guru, the Prince of Darkness Keith Brown. Says Sells; “[our] new technology holds great promise for future generations of code warriors.”

Cal Caldwell
Private Email

Mon, 26 Jun 2000

To deal w/ the number of wrapped URLs I get in my email box, I built UrlRun. It checks the clipboard for an URL, no matter how broken, strips spaces, newlines and greater thans out of it and runs IE. To handle an URL as show above, select it, copy it to the clipboard and launch UrlRun.exe. I keep it on my QuickStart toolbar.

If you happen to be using Outlook 2000 or Outlook XP, Tim Tabor has built an UrlRun add-in that does the magic by simply right-clicking on a mangled URL that’s you’ve selected. It’s pure sex.

• The family pet dies. The best explanation you can give the children is “Fluffy’s reference count finally reached zero.”
• You’ve mailed more than three written petitions to the city council of Enumclaw, Washington requesting that the town prefix its name with an ‘I’.
• Your wife has a rather irritating habit of QI’ing you for IMowsTheLawn, despite the fact that for years you’ve been returning everything from E_NOINTERFACE to RPC_S_SERVER_TOO_BUSY.
• The best thing about the new generation of wireless internet devices is that you will be able to receive the DCOM and ATL mailing lists from almost anywhere.
• Part of your IPO research strategy involves calling the company’s engineering manager on the phone and demanding a detailed explanation of apartments and threading.
• The party you threw to celebrate the introduction of asynchronous RPC calls in Windows 2000 was significantly more expensive than your wedding reception.
• Last Summer’s family vacation to Redmond, Washington.
• All those emails you’ve sent to Chris Sells trying to convince him that “ATL Internals” would make a really great movie.
• Although it is humorous, there are a couple of items in the “Signs you’ve hired the wrong COM developer…” list that you can’t help but view as personally insulting.
• On your laptop there exists a half-completed manuscript entitled “The Tao of COM”.
• You refer to your Social Security Number as your GUID.

Tony Toivonen
DCOM Mailing List

Jeff Smith
Thu 2/10/2000 12:07 AM
Private Mail

> ––-Original Message––-
> From: Russ Huffman [mailto:russ@DEVAUTHORITY.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2000 8:39 AM
> To: ATL@DISCUSS.MICROSOFT.COM
>
> Don’t we already have a “bunch of programmers who have no
> idea about how the underlying systems work”? I think they
> are called VB programmers… ;)

I hate to break this to you, but I’ve met a lot of VB programmers trapped in the body of a C++ programmer. Unfortunately, many development shops place a lot of peer pressure on people to reject their yearnings to stop using semicolons and memory allocators. It’s sad, but VB programmers today are where US Blacks were in the 30′s and gays were in the 50′s. We have yet to see the “Rosa Parks” or “Stonewall Riots” for VB programmers.

BTW, I have been preparing a keynote address in case I am ever asked to keynote a VB-friendly conference. If you want to look at a draft, go to http://www.develop.com/dbox/dream.htm [ed: MLK’s “I have a dream” set to VB music]

…I have been to VB7. I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you…

DB

PS: Last time I checked, all programmers have selective ignorance. I know nothing about 3D graphics. I know a lot about COM. VB gets under people’s skin because one can be ignorant of computer architecture and ASM and still
get a lot done.

Don Box
ATL Mailing List