Blocks are perhaps the most significant new language feature introduced by Apple in years, and I've written a lot about them before. The new C++ standard, C++0x, introduces lambdas, a similar feature. Today, I want to discuss the two features and how they are alike and how they differ, a topic suggested by David Dunham.

Those who know me from a programming standpoint know that I am a big opponent of needless optimization. But sometimes optimization is necessary, and when that comes I'm a big proponent of examining algorithms over twiddling low-level code. I recently had a good opportunity to perform algorithmic optimizations in a somewhat unconventional scenario, and this post will describe what I did.

For a long time, LiveDictionary used deeply unwholesome methods to do its work. Version 1.2.5, just released, now uses nothing but public methods. This means vastly improved stability, but it also means that LiveDictionary's evil WebKit text grabber, once considered the app's crown jewels, is no longer useful. I'm going to use it as an object lesson on how to do evil things with C++ applications from pure C.

People who know me as a programmer probably know that I am a great hater of C++. As someone who does a lot of Cocoa, this extends naturally into hating Objective-C++. But I made good use of Objective-C++ in ChemicalBurn and I thought I'd share.