A Fly-by-Wire Architecture for Multi-Threaded Windows Apps: How to Write Complex But Reliable Windows Applications Quickly

“A Fly-by-Wire Architecture for Multi-Threaded Windows Apps” demonstrates the power and beauty of multi-threading—and its necessity in complex applications that perform lengthy processing or that wait for stimulus from outside of the program. The book presents an architecture for structuring multi-threaded Windows applications, brings readers to an understanding of these techniques, and prepares them to employ the concepts in their own Windows apps. The architecture is “fly-by-wire” because it is modeled after systems whose components are interconnected not directly but by a network over which the components communicate using messages. The author makes use of the fly-by-wire organization within Windows applications themselves. Thus structured, a program comprises nuggets of functionality, which do most of their work in child-threads and communicate by messages over a “logical bus,” all within the program itself. Borrowing another feature of digital circuitry, the author equips his programs with a software clock; its ticks drive processing, synchronizing activity and communication among the various threads. To illustrate the concepts, the book presents the design and source code for a completely functioning Windows application to control a hypothetical robot, and makes the source code available on a companion website. Visit www.flybywirewinapps.com to learn more. The author draws on his 35 years in the industry to make potentially controversial observations about software development process, aimed at recognizing the difference between theory and practice, and incorporates his views on what constitutes elegance in software design.

《多線程Windows應用的飛控架構》展示了多線程的強大和美妙之處，以及在執行耗時處理或等待外部刺激的複雜應用中的必要性。本書介紹了一種結構化多線程Windows應用的架構，幫助讀者理解這些技術，並準備在自己的Windows應用中應用這些概念。該架構被稱為“飛控”，因為它模仿了組件之間不直接相連，而是通過消息通信的系統。作者在Windows應用程序本身中使用了飛控組織。因此，一個程序由功能塊組成，這些功能塊大部分在子線程中工作，通過“邏輯總線”上的消息進行通信，所有這些都在程序本身內部完成。作者借鑒了數字電路的另一個特點，為他的程序配備了一個軟件時鐘；時鐘的滴答驅動處理，同步各個線程之間的活動和通信。為了說明這些概念，本書提供了一個完全運作的Windows應用程序的設計和源代碼，用於控制一個假想機器人，並在附帶網站上提供源代碼。請訪問www.flybywirewinapps.com獲取更多信息。作者借助自己在該行業的35年經驗，對軟件開發過程提出了可能具有爭議性的觀察，旨在認識理論與實踐之間的差異，並融入了他對軟件設計優雅性的看法。