Ben S. Stahlhood II's Blog

Application Scripting Support

I have read where Microsoft most likely will not be adding functionality or updating VSA.  The demand for dynamic scripting support for windows form apps is definitely out there.  I have got away with supporting something like this using Interop with the Microsoft Script Control.

Are there any open source initiatives out there to do something like this?  There is Rhino, which was written in Java by the mozilla team.  This could be turned into an open source project of converting it to C# / .NET Framework.  It is a very well written Java Script engine which you can embed in custom applications.

Before I got to far with deciding on what I am going to do, I wanted to get some feedback from the community and find out if there are other projects out there that to this or have the goal to do this.

C# or VB.NET

I have seen post and discussions around the net regarding using C# vs VB.NET.  Here are my .02 on the subject.

First I think a big part of making your decision on what language to choose depends on your background.  The learning curve involved is a big deal when it comes to migrating code.  Migrating to the CLR and .NET is a big enough task in it self to add the overhead of learning a new language.  If your background was VB then I say go VB.NET.  If your background is C syntax like languages (C, C++, Java, etc) then choose C#.  Each language has features the other one does not have.  With 2.0 of C# and VB.NET they are even getting closer to being alike with Generics, operator overloading, etc.  C# has the unsafe blocks so that you can drop down and do some lower level things if you choose.

I have seen and even for my self that if you take a couple programs and compare the IL, that in some cases VB.NET has more IL code generated.  In most cases it is not that much.  This has a lot to do with the compiler teams for each language I think too.  I have my own reasons for choosing C#.  I have a C/C++ background.  I like sticking with what what most of the Microsoft CLR and Framework teams use, which is C# and C++ AFAIK.

I may be way off base here, but what do most of you think out there?  Do you agree or disagree?  I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject.

.NET Framework / C# 2.0 Generic Dictionary

This is roughly about a week old, but none the less it is a great post from Brad Adams about the Dictionary issue where it throws an exception when a key does not exists...

He is looking for feedback on how it should be handled or if the current documented methods are satisfactory to us the developers, so go check it out.

http://weblogs.asp.net/brada/archive/2004/04/26/120438.aspx