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November 20, 2003

Windows CE Reading

I love Foxtrot.

http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2003/11/20/

Posted by mikel at 06:50 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2003

Easiest source code control yet

I've recently started two projects on GotDotNet workspaces. One for my directed project (SWOOSH) and one for the StudentDev programming contest. So far it's been pretty nice. Here's what I like about it.

1. Free
2. Integrates into Visual Studio
3. Accessible from anywhere (also has a web interface)
4. I don't have to run my own version control server

My only issue has been a bit of trouble switching between the interfaces. I originally uploaded some files for SWOOSH from the web interface then tried to access it using VS.

Just for my own reference (you need to be a member to access the code), here's the location of SWOOSH and the student dev project


http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/swoosh
http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/purduestudentdev

Posted by mikel at 08:02 PM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2003

More VB humor

Some cool new features in VS for VB developers.

http://www16.brinkster.com/messydesk/db/refactvb.asp

Posted by mikel at 03:39 PM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2003

Test Driven Development

A page listing a lot of resources about test driven development. Software testing is probably my weakest area.

http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/darrell.norton/posts/3374.aspx

Posted by mikel at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2003

CLR Profiler

Reminder to myself to check out the CLR Profiler along with FxCop later in the dev cycle of SWOOSH.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=86CE6052-D7F4-4AEB-9B7A-94635BEEBDDA&displaylang=en

Posted by mikel at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

I AM A VB Programmer

OK, so I'm not much of a VB programmer anymore but that's what I started out in. So maybe that's why I think this and this are so funny.

http://www.panopticoncentral.net/PermaLink.aspx/0005f5df-7ebc-4f5b-a688-aa3064ce9250

I'm not a newbie or a script kiddie.
And I don’t get paid less than other programmers, or only work on UIs, or write email viruses.
And I don't know BillG, SteveB or EricR from Microsoft, although I'm certain they're really, really nice.

Posted by mikel at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

November 05, 2003

The Hundred-Year Language

Another interesting article by Paul Graham.

http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html

Posted by mikel at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

I have a dream

This is just downright funny.

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=388802a7%40BASICWORLD.COM&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

I have a dream that one day on the green hills of Redmond the sons of former
journalists and the sons of former computer scientists will be able to sit
down together at a table of brotherhood.

Posted by mikel at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2003

AppForge allows .NET development for Palm OS

http://www.appforge.com/corp/press/2003/102803-crossfire.html


AppForge continues to enhance and broaden their suite of mobile application development tools. This time they even have me, a die-hard cross platform non believer, interested. Check out Crossfire, a new add-on environment for Visual Studio .NET 2003 and [Feedster RSS Search Results for compact framework]

Posted by mikel at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2003

.NET cf versions

A lot of the new features in .NET cf 2.0 look pretty interesting. So when this comes out, I'll jump all over it and use all those awesome features.

The problem is this. I get all excited when I see these new devices coming out with the compact framework embedded in them. They (MS, hardware vendors) always point out how good this is because you don't take the > 1MB hit when deploying your app (the device has already been hit). But will that device with the compact framework be able to have the framework upgraded? If not, we're back to hitting the user with >1 MB of dependencies for my app. If it can be upgraded, I bet the user has to at least do a hard reset.

Posted by mikel at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

.NET cf 2.0 resources

Joe Bork points towards some ppts form PDC about upcoming features in .NET Compact Framework 2.0.

Some selected items I pulled from the Widbey features and performance PPTs.

notification balloon control.

Drawing features
Save Bitmaps
Direct access to bitmap data
Image rotation
Pen styles widths

Framework libraries for Cryptography and Sound

Performance

What triggers a GC?
Memory allocation failure
750KB of GC objects allocated
Application going to background

Throw exceptions in exceptional circumstances
Do not use exceptions for normal flow control

Be aware of APIs that use reflection as a side effect (for example: Object.ToString() ) ( I do this a lot, what is better, String.Format()??)

XML Serialization
Use XmlTextReader and XmlTextWriter
XmlDocument builds a generic, untyped object model using a tree
Type stored as string
Use XmlConvert to convert each element to appropriate managed type for efficiency
e.g. Int32
Design XML schema first, then code
Use elements for objects and arrays
Use attributes for simple properties and fields

With the PDC behind us, Whidbey is public, as are a lot of details about the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and the new Whidbey Smart Device development features.

As one of the testers on the Visual Studio for Devices team, I'm at least partially responsible for testing the following feature areas:

  • Data Designers (aka "You don't have to hand-code all your managed SQL CE apps now")
  • Setup and Deployment projects (aka "The 'Build CAB File' button on steroids)
  • consuming Web Services (aka "Add Web Reference," aka "You don't have to hand-edit typed DataSets")

Of course, there's some other stuff I test that's maybe not as interesting, but I'm pretty excited about the new data designer features, especially. Scott and Carlton (the Data PM and Dev, respectively) both gave some demos of these new features at the PDC. If you weren't there, you can at least check out the slides from some of the relevant talks:

If you have questions or feedback (espcially about the data-related features), email me at joebork@microsoft.com, or visit one of the mobility and embedded development newsgroups.

[Joe Bork]

Posted by mikel at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)