using c++

Posted by: @frogandtoad

Actually, I am aware of printf, but that wasn't the main objective of my example and comment - The main takeaway was the dynamic array, the range based for loop, and that doing that in C was much more difficult, and harder to learn - Do you disagree?

I was taking your bullets as individual, independent aspects.  As I have never used the cout versions of C++ because

• In windows C++, I was always use the debugger and any I/O was to/from database or Windows GUI elements.  There was never a need to use cout do a console.  And I tended to use C#:C++ about 90:10.
• In MPU's, I was used to bitching and moaning about printf and was comfortable in my ignorance. 😆 Especially since I wrap  printf only once in the code base.  

Posted by: @frogandtoad

No, I have never tried it for such duration, so I can't say that there are any issues in doing that. ISO C++ improves in every iterations, so it might be worth a new test

You know... I've never really looked into the C++ code base.  Not even sure it's possible.  As a corporate developer, we simply weren't allowed to even look at Open-Source code for legal/ethical reasons.  I'm so used to that, it stuck.  

But I'll take this opportunity to write a response to this as a instructional piece for this thread.

VBR,

Inq

For those interested in how things work... in our INO/C/C++/Python code development.

• Dynamic allocations:  new, malloc, delete, free and things like the String object, and these dynamic arrays that do malloc/free under the covers allocate small chunk of memory.  Also... Python does a butt-load of this ALL the time.
• Depending on the time and size of the allocations and freeing of memory, the limited space of the heap get peppered with used pieces of memory. 
• The holes in between are now not contiguous.  If even one memory allocation asks for a piece bigger than any available hole, it fails. 
• Most developers don't check for this failure... me include (most of the time). 
• This is probably the worst bug of all to find - mainly because the code doesn't have a bug.  It was just dumb, bad luck of the randomness of data being dynamically allocated and freed.
• What appears as a random reboot might happen days down the road if you use ANY of these "features" to a large extent.
• On big CPUs (Windows, etc) this is really never an issue.  
  1. They have a huge memory space to pepper.
  2. They have memory cleaning processes where it'll relocates these memory chunks to be contiguous.  IOW take out the holes and leave some big, clean space.
• For ages... MPU recommendations were to NOT use these dynamic features AT ALL!  (<32K heap days)
• Then later it was allocate at start-up and handle all the data usage down to the gnat's ass yourself within the allocated area.
• Now that we have near 1MB spaces, people have started treating them like CPU's (me included)
• To my knowledge, they do not have the CPU memory cleaning ability.
• There are several ways of avoiding the peppering/holes issue
  1. Don't care if your processor reboots occasionally - This is a main reason for the ESP having a Watch Dog process.  If YOU write bad code, the ESP, will re-boot your ass.  99.9% of all developers rely on this for their stability fallback.
  2. Don't use dynamic code instructions - That would rule out Python.
  3. Do excruciating detailed bookkeeping on your used dynamic memory allocations and implement your own memory cleaning algorithm. 
  4. Allocate and free systematically.  For instance a FIFO buffer (stand alone) allocates a new chunk at the end and deletes the first chunk.  The used memory space just moves through memory.  Holes are not created.  BUT if you have some other portion of your code using a String object it'll allocate the space potentially in the middle of your FIFO inch-worm.  As things get freed, a hole forms.

IOW this is not only an advanced topic, it is usually one that only keeps compiler developers and operating system developers up at night.

VBR,

Inq

Posted by: @frogandtoad

Yes, you can do everything you desire, and use the mouse to navigate through the 3D environment to your imagination - p5.js offers WebGL (OpenGL), directly in the browser, camera, lighting, textures, etc...

Would you happen to know... 

1. Can it be off-line?  For instance, I used Google Charts for a while till I found you could not pull it down and put it on a server.  You are required to just add the link to their server in your HTML/Scripts.  IOW, an Internet connection is required.
2. IF it and all its dependencies were legally pulled down to put on say and ESP8266 server, what would be the size of all that?  I guess I could always use the 15MB space on the ESP8266 Pro, but I'd prefer to avoid that restriction.

Don't go to any trouble... just if you have experimented with that aspect.  Sometime I'll get to the library and try pulling it down if I go that route.

As is my tendency, I may just fallback and use first principles and write my own 3D rendering library.  Sounds like a fun challenge.

VBR,

Inq

@frogandtoad 

For me the language is secondary to the algorithm which in theory could be written in any language.

Being able to quickly convert from one language to another was always an issue.  It used to be translating Z80 to 6502 to 68000 to x86. I would like to be able to write code in a way that makes it easy to produce a Python version and a Processing version.

The problem with using a language's special features is in translating to another language.

Sticking to the features standard to all languages makes the translation easier.

Posted by: @robotbuilder

Sticking to the features standard to all languages makes the translation easier.

And makes the code available to a much broader audience.

@inq

Posted by: @inq

Posted by: @frogandtoad

Actually, I am aware of printf, but that wasn't the main objective of my example and comment - The main takeaway was the dynamic array, the range based for loop, and that doing that in C was much more difficult, and harder to learn - Do you disagree?

I was taking your bullets as individual, independent aspects.  As I have never used the cout versions of C++ because

• In windows C++, I was always use the debugger and any I/O was to/from database or Windows GUI elements.  There was never a need to use cout do a console.  And I tended to use C#:C++ about 90:10.
• In MPU's, I was used to bitching and moaning about printf and was comfortable in my ignorance. 😆 Especially since I wrap  printf only once in the code base.  

Posted by: @frogandtoad

No, I have never tried it for such duration, so I can't say that there are any issues in doing that. ISO C++ improves in every iterations, so it might be worth a new test

You know... I've never really looked into the C++ code base.  Not even sure it's possible.  As a corporate developer, we simply weren't allowed to even look at Open-Source code for legal/ethical reasons.  I'm so used to that, it stuck.  

But I'll take this opportunity to write a response to this as a instructional piece for this thread.

VBR,

Inq

You can easily download a draft copy of the ISO C++ Standard for various versions in a google search.  No worries, I'll check it out, and you haven't answered my question either 😉

Cheers

@inq

Posted by: @inq

Posted by: @frogandtoad

Yes, you can do everything you desire, and use the mouse to navigate through the 3D environment to your imagination - p5.js offers WebGL (OpenGL), directly in the browser, camera, lighting, textures, etc...

Would you happen to know... 

1. Can it be off-line?  For instance, I used Google Charts for a while till I found you could not pull it down and put it on a server.  You are required to just add the link to their server in your HTML/Scripts.  IOW, an Internet connection is required.
2. IF it and all its dependencies were legally pulled down to put on say and ESP8266 server, what would be the size of all that?  I guess I could always use the 15MB space on the ESP8266 Pro, but I'd prefer to avoid that restriction.

Don't go to any trouble... just if you have experimented with that aspect.  Sometime I'll get to the library and try pulling it down if I go that route.

As is my tendency, I may just fallback and use first principles and write my own 3D rendering library.  Sounds like a fun challenge.

VBR,

Inq

Yes, it can be off-line - You can download the whole p5.js library script, or use it online via a CDN link.  The one I downloaded previously was just over 4MB - All you need to do is create a server on your ESP8266 for it to run.

Check out the orbit control under the 3D link for some interactive examples - The documentation is great, and the code is very simple.

Cheers

@inq

Posted by: @inq

For those interested in how things work... in our INO/C/C++/Python code development.

• Dynamic allocations:  new, malloc, delete, free and things like the String object, and these dynamic arrays that do malloc/free under the covers allocate small chunk of memory.  Also... Python does a butt-load of this ALL the time.
• Depending on the time and size of the allocations and freeing of memory, the limited space of the heap get peppered with used pieces of memory. 
• The holes in between are now not contiguous.  If even one memory allocation asks for a piece bigger than any available hole, it fails. 
• Most developers don't check for this failure... me include (most of the time). 
• This is probably the worst bug of all to find - mainly because the code doesn't have a bug.  It was just dumb, bad luck of the randomness of data being dynamically allocated and freed.
• What appears as a random reboot might happen days down the road if you use ANY of these "features" to a large extent.
• On big CPUs (Windows, etc) this is really never an issue.  
  1. They have a huge memory space to pepper.
  2. They have memory cleaning processes where it'll relocates these memory chunks to be contiguous.  IOW take out the holes and leave some big, clean space.
• For ages... MPU recommendations were to NOT use these dynamic features AT ALL!  (<32K heap days)
• Then later it was allocate at start-up and handle all the data usage down to the gnat's ass yourself within the allocated area.
• Now that we have near 1MB spaces, people have started treating them like CPU's (me included)
• To my knowledge, they do not have the CPU memory cleaning ability.
• There are several ways of avoiding the peppering/holes issue
  1. Don't care if your processor reboots occasionally - This is a main reason for the ESP having a Watch Dog process.  If YOU write bad code, the ESP, will re-boot your ass.  99.9% of all developers rely on this for their stability fallback.
  2. Don't use dynamic code instructions - That would rule out Python.
  3. Do excruciating detailed bookkeeping on your used dynamic memory allocations and implement your own memory cleaning algorithm. 
  4. Allocate and free systematically.  For instance a FIFO buffer (stand alone) allocates a new chunk at the end and deletes the first chunk.  The used memory space just moves through memory.  Holes are not created.  BUT if you have some other portion of your code using a String object it'll allocate the space potentially in the middle of your FIFO inch-worm.  As things get freed, a hole forms.

IOW this is not only an advanced topic, it is usually one that only keeps compiler developers and operating system developers up at night.

VBR,

Inq

 

Indeed, this is a very advanced topic, and you've highlighted a lot of critical points for those who want to delve deep into this stuff - I'll add one more thing you didn't directly mention, is that memory fragmentation of the heap is most likely a problem with interpreted languages, which use some form of garbage collection to address this issue.

Note: The ISO C++ is very careful with this kind of thing, and it uses special memory allocators in clever ways... as such, the ISO standard guarantees that a C++ vector's elements are contiguous.

Cheers

@robotbuilder 

Posted by: @robotbuilder

I will have to create an ESP32 folder

Copied your code to CODE::BLOCKS to try it out.
I am able to write console programs I just didn't have much success installing graphic libraries.

No problem,

All you have to do is update your library and compiler paths in the options/preferences, and ensure you also have a windows environment variable set to the compiler path.

Posted by: @robotbuilder

C++ programmers have made a lot of C++ stuff available to FreeBASIC programmers.

Implementation of dynamic data types for Freebasic. This implementation is built on the basis of templates (macros), which makes it possible to use it for almost any data type.

In stock:

1) MAP - dictionary (associative array), created on the basis of a balanced tree
2) VECTOR - dynamic array, with the ability to insert and delete any number of cells and much more useful opportunities
3) LIST - doubly linked list
4) QUEUE
5) STACK
6) HashTable - dictionary (unordered data).

Indeed, C++ also offers these containers and many more.
Using templates in C++ is on the advanced side of things, but they are not that hard if you really put your mind to it - They can cut your C code by a 3rd or more in many cases, and add a whole lot of flexibility, lending to creating some really advanced stuff, but too advanced for microcontroller programming.

Cheers

@robotbuilder

Posted by: @robotbuilder

@frogandtoad 

For me the language is secondary to the algorithm which in theory could be written in any language.

Being able to quickly convert from one language to another was always an issue.  It used to be translating Z80 to 6502 to 68000 to x86. I would like to be able to write code in a way that makes it easy to produce a Python version and a Processing version.

The problem with using a language's special features is in translating to another language.

Sticking to the features standard to all languages makes the translation easier.

 

That's true, and I believe that what you call algorithm, I call programming concepts and fundamental constructs - That's what makes a programmer, not the language, which is just the tool.

Anyway, this is a different topic in and of itself - All I'm trying to do is promote the use of more modern C++ features, for use in the more powerful microcontrollers, for those people who want to learn more and make their programming life easier.

Cheers

@robotbuilder 

Posted by: @robotbuilder

Sticking to the features standard to all languages makes the translation easier.

Quite true!

That's why everything in my code examples use standard built in features since C++11.

Cheers

Posted by: @frogandtoad

The main takeaway was the dynamic array, the range based for loop, and that doing that in C was much more difficult, and harder to learn - Do you disagree?

Well... if you expect everyone to answer every question you pose, you're just setting yourself to be disappointed.  I have no valid opinion is why I did not answer.  I used dynamic List, Dictionary, etc on Windows all the time but don't use it on MPU's... for the stated reasons I wrote in the above long winded post above.  Yes, it is easier.  Yes, I could get away with it any many of my projects, but I don't care to. 

Posted by: @frogandtoad

Yes, it can be off-line - You can download the whole p5.js library script, or use it online via a CDN link.  The one I downloaded previously was just over 4MB - All you need to do is create a server on your ESP8266 for it to run.

Check out the orbit control under the 3D link for some interactive examples - The documentation is great, and the code is very simple.

I will definitely take a look at it when I start getting the point cloud data pumping.  It sounds impressive.

VBR,

Inq

@inq

Posted by: @inq

Yes, it is easier.  Yes, I could get away with it any many of my projects, but I don't care to. 

Thanks for at least acknowledging that it was easier!

Cheers