Mr. Bad Example : Straight to /dev/null

Rocky, Mono and the future of the CLR.

ktegels — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 22:54:00 GMT

I love reading Rocky Lhotka's blog. You should read it too. Why? Because he's not afraid to call a spade a spade. Well, that, and he loves VB.NET.

Check this out:

"If you read the article you’ll find that the Longhorn OS will seriously change the way that .NET itself is versioned. In fact, it turns out that to a serious degree the whole idea of installing “side-by-side” versions of .NET itself will go away when Longhorn shows up. Oh sure, they have plans for a complex scheme by which assemblies can be categorized into different dependency levels. Some levels can be versioned more easily, while others can only be versioned with the OS itself. What this really means is that .NET is losing its independence from the OS. In the end, we’ll only get new versions of .NET when we get new versions of the OS – and we all know how often that happens… I’d say that this was inevitable, but frankly it was not. Java hasn’t fallen into this trap, and .NET doesn’t need to either. Not that it will be easy to avoid, but the end result of the current train of thought portrayed by Richter is devastating."

I so have to agree: not the future I signed-up for.

I agree with Rocky that there is good news too:

Fortunately there’s the mono project. As .NET becomes more brittle and stagnant due to its binding with Longhorn, we might find that mono on Windows becomes a very compelling story. mono will be able to innovate, change and adapt much faster than the .NET that inspired it.

And That's A Good Thing because, as Rocky so iconclastically puts it

"Hopefully Microsoft will realize what they are doing to themselves before all this comes to pass. Otherwise, I foresee a bright future for mono on Windows."

Personally, I already think there is one. This is just another reason to go learn more about Mono now.

Forget IsNot, I want IsSomething

ktegels — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 23:06:00 GMT

On my current main project, I'm stuck writing a lot of code like:

if not(x is nothing) then

Yes, it's VB.NET. And, no, I don't have choices.

You know what I really want? A function that looks at a object of any type and if its Nothing, dbNull.Value or String.Empty, return False, otherwise, return True.

At least

if IsSomething(x) then

would be less boring to write over and over and over again.

And no, I'm not in the mood to argue semantics about what nothing really means, either... unless you are Kiri-kin-Tha.

I started as an Altar boy...

ktegels — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 17:58:00 GMT

Hello, I'm Kent Tegels -- whom you may know from my blog over at SQLJunkies where I keep my main blog "Enjoy Every Sandwich." That's from quote from Warren Zevon not long before he passed way. This blog's title is taken from a Warren Zevon song that appeared on one his late 1990s albums.

I'll be using this blog to talk about the things I do and see with ASP.NET, the .NET community and our events, examples (where suitable) IIS FTP and W3SVC, some things SQL Server -- especially using the CLR and XML -- as they relate to ASP.NET applications. I'm definetly a proponent of XML, so you'll see stuff about that here too. Then, finally, there will be rants, jokes and other off-topic stuff in the channel "straight to /dev/null."

I suppose that last one gives away that I'm not totally a Windows Geek. Yes, I have a dark past working with Perl, Apache and MySQL. These days, though, my world revolves around IIS, FPSE, VB.NET, ASP.NET and SQL Server. I work for HDR, Inc., one of America's leading Architecture, Engineering and Consulting companies. We design things like hospitals, prisions and highways. I'm in the corporate IS group where I write ASP.NET applications, troubleshoot IIS problems and help others do the same. At the first of October, 2004, I was awarded MVP status for Windows System Server -- SQL Server. My main areas of interest are CLR integration and the use of XML technologies. I'm very active in the SQL Express newsgroup as well. Off the clock, I drink beer. Oh sure, I do more than drink beer, but you know, that usually involves drinking beer too, so its just easier to admit its mostly about drinking beer and get on with it.

And now you why they call Mister Bad Example...