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December 31, 2003
New features in VS Whidbey
Some interesting stuff
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vs2004_intro.asp
Specifically exporting IDE settings. Prof. Lutes has talked about wanting something like that so beginning CPT students could reset the IDE back to a CPT "standard" if things got messed up. Another simple one I like is the temporary projects.
Sean "Early" Campbell & Scott "Adopter" Swigart lay out their top 10 new IDE features of Visual Studio .NET "Whidbey". [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News]
Posted by mikel at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
December 20, 2003
IsNumeric in .NET
In CPT 355 we've always shown students to us the try/catch method. I didn't even know that the TryParse method exists. Probably because TryParse isn't supported in the compact framework. Looks like exception handling really does carry quite an overhead. Makes sense why the guidelines state to not use exception handling for normal flow control too. But the char and regex methods seem to fragile, so I guess I'd still go with an exception handling method.
Here is a good article on the various techniques a developer can use to implement IsNumeric in C#:
http://aspalliance.com/articleViewer.aspx?aId=80&pId=2
[CJCraft's Blog]
Posted by mikel at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
Pacers Game
Jessica and I went to the Pacers game last night. They came from behind to beat the Pistons. Ended up being a pretty exciting game. The Caston Choir sang the nation anthem. I'm always willing to be there to support the kids and to get the group rate on Pacer tickets :)
Posted by mikel at 01:22 PM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2003
.NET cf performance article
Something to read over break and apply to SWOOSH
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetcomp/html/netcfperf.asp
Posted by mikel at 07:49 AM | Comments (0)
December 18, 2003
resources for starting a small tech business
A lot of the .NET bloggers I read are independant contracters or consultants and recently they've been discussing that career path. Good timing as I'm debating what I'll do after graduation. Just stashing a few links here for later.
http://www.techinsurance.com/
http://www.irs.gov/retirement/article/0,,id=111394,00.html
http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/2023.aspx#2035
http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/darrell.norton/posts/4621.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsoftware/html/software12292003.asp
Posted by mikel at 08:10 PM | Comments (1)
December 17, 2003
Google - the web's command line
You can now track packages using Google. There are a lot of features that I didn't know exist and I quite often run into people that don't know about the features I use frequently. That little box at www.google.com really is the command line for the web.
Posted by mikel at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2003
.NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 Redistributable (Re-release)
.NET Compact Framework SP 2 is available for download now.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=359EA6DA-FC5D-41CC-AC04-7BB50A134556&displaylang=en
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=10600643-09B3-46D8-BA28-BC494BC20D26&displaylang=en
This one fixes the problem where the SIP is up when the form closes and the lost focus event tries to lower the SIP.
Posted by mikel at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)
Microsoft Outlook blocks Microsoft Graphics
I am a big fan of the anti-spam, bandwidth saving feature of Outlook 2003 to not automatically download images in emails. But why does Microsoft send me HTML emails with links to images that looks so crappy? You'd think whoever was responsible for sending out the emails, or branding, or whatever would look at this stuff in their latest product.
Posted by mikel at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2003
Windows versus Unix Programmers
More goodness from Joel on Software
What are the cultural differences between Unix and Windows programmers? There are many details and subtleties, but for the most part it comes down to one thing: Unix culture values code which is useful to other programmers, while Windows culture values code which is useful to non-programmers.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Biculturalism.html
Posted by mikel at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)
December 10, 2003
reflector and a good quote
A new decompiler to check out http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/ Wish I had run across that when I talked about code obfuscation earlier in the semester to the CPT 355 class.
Found this on Scott Hanselman's page for his course. A good quote on there too. I think it applies to any decent technology, not just .NET
".NET is very powerful, but it can turn bad programmers into very bad programmers very quickly."
Garbage in garbage out. Rapid application development just speeds up the process. It means you can turn out good programs and bad programs quicker.
Posted by mikel at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)
December 09, 2003
generics in C# 2.0
A very long article but the beginning is pretty good at describing why generics are needed.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/csharp_generics.asp
"Generics allow you to define type-safe data structures, without committing to actual data types."
"However, there are two problems with Object-based solutions. The first issue is performance. When using value types, you have to box them in order to push and store them, and unbox the value types when popping them off the stack. Boxing and unboxing incurs a significant performance penalty in their own right, but it also increases the pressure on the managed heap, resulting in more garbage collections, which is not great for performance either. Even when using reference types instead of value types, there is still a performance penalty because you have to cast from an Object to the actual type you interact with and incur the casting cost:"
"The second (and often more severe) problem with the Object-based solution is type safety. Because the compiler lets you cast anything to and from Object, you lose compile-time type safety."
So if I'm thinking about this right and there is a generic version of ArrayList, I could do something like this in SWOOSH where I have a class called Stat:
ArrayListallStats = new ArrayList (); //tell the ArrayList to only work with Stats allStats.Add(myStat);
Stat newStat = allStats[0]; //no casting
Posted by mikel at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2003
Christmas at the Bergers'
It's Christmas time at the Bergers' (and of course more pictures of Kerby).
Posted by mikel at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)
efficient empty string check
This is what I normally do and it is bad (not the best performance-wise)
foreach (string s in someCollection)
{
if (s != "")
{
...
}
}
And this is bad because it creates a new instance of an empty string every time through the loop. The more efficient way is to do this
foreach (string s in someCollection)
{
if (s.Length != 0)
{
...
}
}
via MSDN TV
Posted by mikel at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)
December 06, 2003
a couple of useful tools
Mount ISOs
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/6/7b6abd84-7841-4978-96f5-bd58df02efa2/winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel_21.exe
via Scott Hanselman
A better CVS client
via Werner Vogels
Posted by mikel at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
December 03, 2003
audible.com
I got a subscription to audible.com for my birthday. Ender's Game is the first book I selected. So far I'm realling enjoying the book and the distraction from driving. It's difficult to not bring the CD in from the truck and listen more, but I'm holding out and only listening on the road. If anybody actually reads this and has some suggestions for books to listen too, let me know.
Posted by mikel at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)
Mobile software development hurdles
The only downside, says Patricia Nassour, was the glare problem for workers conducting the roadside surveys in bright sun. The light washed out the Tablet's LCD display so it was almost impossible to read.
Gram experimented with visors and screen overlays, but in the end solved the problem by changing background and text colors to ones that would show up well despite the problems with glare and wash-out.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3114441 via Scoble
Stuff like this is what makes writing mobile software a lot different than writing desktop PC apps. The .NET compact framework removes a lot of the technical hurdles (you can use the same programming language, IDE, framework as on the desktop) but it's not going to make all desktop developers into good mobile developers. I've seen to many Pocket PC apps already that are just a little version of their desktop counterparts. Pockets PCs (despite the name) are not just small PCs and though Tablet PCs can be used like tradiational desktops/laptops, you've got to expect that they won't be used that way at least part of the time.
Posted by mikel at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)
December 01, 2003
Search google in VS.NET
MS released an add in to Visual Studio to allow you to search online for help. This was an idea we had for the Student Dev programming contest. Guess we'll move onto a new idea now. But at least we know that the idea we were excited about was a good one.
http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/ide/
Posted by mikel at 04:53 PM | Comments (0)