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Wednesday, February 12, 2003 9:46 PM by Ivan Towlson

# At least one respected commentator has doubts

Bruce Schneier used Meganet and VME as a leading example of snake oil in a Crypto-Gram article three years back:

http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-9902.html

His comments include "This makes no sense, even to an expert ... takes the ridiculous a step further ... This is not a proof. It isn't even close."

Of course the fact that Meganet don't communicate their claims well doesn't mean they haven't come up with something good. It's just that there's little reason to feel much confidence.
Friday, February 14, 2003 12:59 AM by Wes Haggard

# Quick Code.Net

If you really would like to inscrease your productive by having "shortcut code" inserted you should check out QuickCode.Net (http://quickcode.dvxp.com/). You can setup code templates and insert them based on a pattern. For example I have simple pattern "{" and when I hit the Shift-Enter key(hotkey I gave the command) it will insert
{
(Cursor)
}
just like your macro. You can do the same thing for your try/catch blocks or any other shortcut code.

Wes
Tuesday, February 18, 2003 3:02 AM by Jason

# Check out this article

There was an article in the August issue of MSDN Mag, actually written by Chris Sells.. check it out here.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/02/08/VisualStudioforApplications/default.aspx
Tuesday, February 18, 2003 10:20 AM by Tim Marman

# He imported from Radio...

I think he was dealing with Scott and imported his posts from Radio, so now all were done since DotNetWebLogs opened :)
Tuesday, February 18, 2003 4:55 PM by Roy

# That would explain it... :)

That would explain it... :)
Saturday, February 22, 2003 8:20 AM by Jesse Ezell

# IConfigurationSectionHandler

Yah, but have you seen IConfigurationSectionHandler... definately a bit cooler. I'll never go back to appSettings.

--Jesse
Saturday, February 22, 2003 3:53 PM by Roy

# KISS principle applies

The way i see it: KISS principle applies (Keep it Simple)
if you dont need to go with IConfigurationSectionHandler , then don't. the reason this setting is better for me, is that it allows me to add settings with no coding. much simpler. :)
Sunday, February 23, 2003 5:17 PM by Royo

# Testing comment system....

Just testing out the new comment-to-email system...
Sunday, February 23, 2003 6:48 PM by Fleh

# re: About Syndirella


Isn't this where open source is going? i.e. how does one make a living if nobody is willing to pay for anything?
Sunday, February 23, 2003 10:35 PM by Richard Birkby

# re: Microsoft Download Center RSS feed

Hi,

The RSS aggregator was written by myself and John Bristowe. It uses Chris Lovett's excellent SGMLReader from gotdotnet to do the HTML parsing. The ASP.Net cache is set to 1 hour to keep processing overhead low.

Richard
rbirkby@hotmail.com
Monday, February 24, 2003 3:01 AM by TrackBack

# Open Source Vs. Commercial Aggregators - The NewsGator Dillema : ISerializable

Open Source Vs. Commercial Aggregators - The NewsGator Dillema : ISerializable
Monday, February 24, 2003 10:15 PM by TrackBack

# About me : ISerializable

About me : ISerializable
Monday, February 24, 2003 10:15 PM by TrackBack

# About me : Wibbleshanks - ASP.NET UK New Media

About me : Wibbleshanks - ASP.NET UK New Media
Tuesday, February 25, 2003 4:25 AM by Chris

# re: Wow!

Thanks! <blush> :O)
Tuesday, February 25, 2003 8:47 AM by Thom

# re: Unemployment

Thanks for the comments. You and I seem to be on parallel paths. I did almost everything that you mentioned. One of the things that hit me hardest was when I came home the day that I was laid off, and my oldest son said "Dad, that really sucks. You put your heart and soul into that company." And you know what? I did.

I agree that the tables have kinda turned, and as you said, managers have the upper hand. But as you said. morale goes down.

Again, thanks for the comments.
Tuesday, February 25, 2003 12:34 PM by David Stone

# I'm sure it does

Haven't downloaded it yet..but they did release that right after news got out about 3degrees.
Tuesday, February 25, 2003 2:42 PM by Thom

# re: Snow in Jerusalem - Beautiful pictures

Roy, have you ever seen snow before? I live in a state in the US where it snows all the time. I was wondering how your community handled the storm?
Tuesday, February 25, 2003 2:45 PM by Thom

# re: Snow in Jerusalem - Beautiful pictures

Actually, I meant have you ever been in a snow storm? I know it sounds like a stupid question, but there are many people who have never had a snow ball fight or tubbed down a hill side, or skied in powder as deep as your neck.
Thursday, February 27, 2003 8:38 AM by Jason Bock

# re: What the hell...?

What you referring to? Your image isn't showing up...
Thursday, February 27, 2003 9:24 AM by Ben Richardson

# re: What the hell...?

To use the add an image to your blog you need to upload the file somewhere, the app (winform or web) won't upload the file from your local hard drive.

So the rest of us are seeing a broken image in your post.
Friday, February 28, 2003 1:34 AM by Paul Laudeman

# re: What the hell...?

This is a bug within the IDE that we've come across many times. The fix that has worked for us in most cases was to simply select all the code, cut it, save the file, and paste it back in and recompile. Odd, eh?
Friday, February 28, 2003 2:09 AM by Paul

# re: What the hell...?

Try just doing a full rebuild... Might be a problem in the incremental compiler (I never trust incremental compilers!) :)
Friday, February 28, 2003 8:47 AM by Roy

# re: Snow in Jerusalem - Beautiful pictures

Well, Thom, I have been in a snow storm. Israel has mt. "Hermon" which is just on the border between israel and syria up north. that place is usually snowing every winter, and it has slides and ski routes. However, israel is a pretty warm climate country, so any time it snows near the center, it's makes for a celebration.
Friday, February 28, 2003 9:43 AM by David Stone

# Re: "Is there such a name?"

How about "Blogging"?
Friday, February 28, 2003 6:55 PM by Ziv Caspi

# re: RSS is not mature

RSS-SMTP has been done several times (see, for example, http://bitworking.org/Aggie.html). RSS-NNTP has also been done several times (search for HEP, and there are many others). So you see, we're not as backwards as you might think, although we still have a long way to go.
Friday, February 28, 2003 7:15 PM by TrackBack

# Bin Drinkin : Phil Scott's WebLog

Bin Drinkin : Phil Scott's WebLog
Friday, February 28, 2003 7:55 PM by Roy

# re: RSS is not mature

"How about "Blogging"? "
Naa. Blogging is something that uses this technology, but how do we name the whole technology behind it..?
Saturday, March 01, 2003 2:11 AM by Phil Scott

# re: RSS is not mature - continued

Err, think mostly 10 beers talking there :) Mostly I've gotten pretty sick and Tired of Dave (www.scripting.com) acting all high and mighty about Radio, RSS and the such.

He seems to forget that the vast majority of people simply can't afford to get their voices out there.

I guess everything is kinda cool, but I don't see what the big deal is. Sure everything is XML and people can parse it, but you still need something smart to go through the posts to try to figure out what they mean, how to categorize them, or even figure out if it isn't someone just sitting at their computer banging away intoxicated.

Maybe I just don't get it. I've drank the kool-aid, but the only difference from the Kool-aid I already had is that they've pre-added the sugar instead of me having to mix it myself.
Wednesday, March 05, 2003 1:23 AM by Jason

# re: Tips and tricks for the keyboard junkie


For the WinXP users out there, WinKey+L locks your machine up for you.

WinKey + F == Find.



Wednesday, March 05, 2003 2:12 AM by Jesse Ezell

# re: Tips and tricks for the keyboard junkie

Win + D is much better than Win + M for seeing the desktop, because pressing it again reverts back. :-)

--Jesse
Wednesday, March 05, 2003 1:34 PM by Sanjay

# re: Tips and tricks for the keyboard junkie

My favorite file manager which may be even more of a relic is ZTreeWin (a Windows port of the old XTree program). It still uses a character mode interface but it is very powerful and quick to use for many common file management tasks.
Thursday, March 06, 2003 5:35 PM by Epaminondas Pantulis

# re: Tips and tricks for the keyboard junkie

Like total desktop customization, including -but not limited to- keyboard shortcuts, virtual desktops, scheduler, timers, popup notes, etc.? Then Windows Powerpro is for you: http://www.windowspowerpro.com

Thursday, March 06, 2003 5:36 PM by Epaminondas Pantulis

# re: Tips and tricks for the keyboard junkie

Forgot to mention: it's freeware!
Monday, March 10, 2003 1:01 AM by Anonymous

# re: .NET show: "Tell us about yourself, because we Care(TM)"

Agreed!
Monday, March 10, 2003 1:19 AM by Greg

# re: .NET show: "Tell us about yourself, because we Care(TM)"

I have watched a lot of these shows, and, for the most part they are good. I watch the 2nd and 3rd party only though, the techy stuff. Why? Well, why do you think Erika Wiechers was hired? For her interviewing skills? For her IT skills? Nope, cause she looks good and she can read!

I could not agree with you more. I think they are trying to make MS folks look 'just like us'. Well, they are 'just like us'.

Monday, March 10, 2003 1:32 AM by Anil John

# re: Compact framework resources needed

http://www.learnMobile.NET/MobileClient/

If I don't link to it, it does not exist (and I have an RSS feed on the home page) :-)

The following is linked to from above, but I would especially recommend

.NET Compact Framework QuickStart Tutorial
http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart/CompactFramework/
Monday, March 10, 2003 1:36 AM by Anil John

# re: Compact framework resources needed

OK.. now I feel like an idiot as I just pointed you to one of the resources that you'd already found on your own :-)

To make up for that, I would point you to this article which lays out the Mobile development options that are available in .NET and when you should choose what

http://www.learnmobile.net/MobileWeb/Articles/DotNetDev.aspx

Monday, March 10, 2003 2:47 AM by Roy

# re: Compact framework resources needed

Thanks for the input! I'll be sure to check this out and put whatever i can find in a seperate post :)
Monday, March 10, 2003 5:23 AM by TrackBack

# Roogle - RSS search engine : Fabrice's weblog

Roogle - RSS search engine : Fabrice's weblog
Monday, March 10, 2003 5:59 AM by TrackBack

# Last night in brief : David Stone's Blog

Last night in brief : David Stone's Blog
Monday, March 10, 2003 8:45 AM by SLK

# Where is Q810007 ?

By the way, i can not get it !

Anyone got link ?
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:13 PM by TrackBack

# Debugging tips-n-hints : ShowUsYour-Blog!

Debugging tips-n-hints : ShowUsYour-Blog!
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:13 PM by TrackBack

# Article: Resolving Debugger problems : ISerializable

Article: Resolving Debugger problems : ISerializable
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:13 PM by TrackBack

# .NET Debugging FAQ : Mitch Rupp's .NET Blog

.NET Debugging FAQ : Mitch Rupp's .NET Blog
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:13 PM by TrackBack

# Yikes! people sure have problems debugging! : ISerializable

Yikes! people sure have problems debugging! : ISerializable
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:13 PM by TrackBack

# Resolving Debugger Problems in VS.NET : ISerializable

Resolving Debugger Problems in VS.NET : ISerializable
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:13 PM by TrackBack

# Debugging Problem : ISerializable

Debugging Problem : ISerializable
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:13 PM by TrackBack

# More Debugger Problems: aspnet_regiis does not work on Windows 2003 Server : ISerializable

More Debugger Problems: aspnet_regiis does not work on Windows 2003 Server : ISerializable
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:13 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:13 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:13 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 10:36 PM by Greg

# re: Article: Resolving Debugger problems

This is linked as a WORD doc too.
Wednesday, March 12, 2003 1:44 AM by Roy

# re: Article: Resolving Debugger problems

How do you mean?
I see no link to it as a .doc file anywhere..
Wednesday, March 12, 2003 11:38 AM by TrackBack

# System.Windows.Forms.PropertyGrid 2 : ISerializable

System.Windows.Forms.PropertyGrid 2 : ISerializable
Thursday, March 13, 2003 2:50 AM by Mike Gunderloy

# re: Helpful .Net Common tasks "Howto" page

If you've installed the Framework SDK, you also have that content locally: Start, Programs, Microsoft .NET Framework SDK, Samples and QuickStart Tutorials.
Thursday, March 13, 2003 4:04 AM by Roy

# re: Helpful .Net Common tasks "Howto" page

Thanks! I guess i should dig in to my hard drive first huh? ;)
Thursday, March 13, 2003 6:42 AM by TrackBack

# Is there a big "Escape" button somewhere? : Blogadocious

Is there a big "Escape" button somewhere? : Blogadocious
Thursday, March 13, 2003 9:38 AM by Chad Brockman

# re: Drag 'n Drop Performance Counters!

Is there a built in UI?
Thursday, March 13, 2003 9:57 AM by Roy

# re: Drag 'n Drop Performance Counters!

What do you mean by UI? Dragging into the designer surface adds the componenets to eh lower design tray of the componenet (they are invisible at runtime) and lets you manipulate them programmatically..
Thursday, March 13, 2003 10:28 AM by Chad Brockman

# re: Drag 'n Drop Performance Counters!

I mean a UI to visualize the counters... like in perfmon? I thought maybe there was a built in graphing control.
Sunday, March 16, 2003 1:45 AM by TrackBack

# SQL Injection Article : Robert McLaws

SQL Injection Article : Robert McLaws
Sunday, March 16, 2003 4:25 AM by TrackBack

# Security? : Jesse Ezell Blog

Security? : Jesse Ezell Blog
Thursday, March 20, 2003 2:03 AM by Addys

# re: I want to start a .Net user group


Contact MS Israel. They are well connected to the dev community and can tell you if there is a need for such a group and if so who to contact for lectures, etc. With any luck they might even give you official/unofficial support such as mailing or a lecture room.

-Addy

P.S. If you need me to introduce you to some of the people there don't hesitate to ask.

Thursday, March 20, 2003 5:45 AM by TrackBack

# .NET User Groups : Chad Osgood's Blog

.NET User Groups : Chad Osgood's Blog
Thursday, March 20, 2003 6:39 AM by Addys

# re: Are you into YOYOing?

Dude,

that is ancient... I saw it on sale in England last year...
Thursday, March 20, 2003 7:55 AM by Roy

# re: Are you into YOYOing?

Well, it just got to israel a month ago. Man we are such a province.....
Thursday, March 20, 2003 9:29 AM by Addys

# re: My own user group & INETA - continued


Some thoughts:

1. Developers have limited time for visiting user groups. More isn't necessarily merrier, since most can't attend more than 1-2 a month.

2. Quality speakers are tough to come by. Opening another group probably won't improve anything - the existing experts will just be spread out thinner.

3. IMHO you can forget help from INETA, I don't know of any active INETA members in Israel. And it is very rare to get foreign speakers unless it is for a BIG event.

4. As someone who has spoken at many such user user groups, I can give you my take on them:

A. It will be a HUGE investment of time on your part to manage such a group.
B. It will be a HUGE, ONGOING investment.
C. Unless you can join up with someone well known (MS, John-Bryce, ANASHIM-MACHSEVIM, etc) it will take many months for you to build an audience.

In short, unless you have some ulterior motive, it is probably not worth the trouble. Want to manage a group? Join up with someone who has a commercial interest in such a group, and have them support you.

- just my 2 cents
Thursday, March 20, 2003 10:03 AM by Roy

# re: My own user group & INETA - continued

Actually, both IVBUG and IVCUG are supported by INETA, but other then that i get your point. "Don't force it". OK. I'll admit i have my own motives in this (is it possible not to?) but it's all for good , not evil (Extending my knowladge + Networking + A nice little line on the Ol' resume....) . As for time investment , i reall y don't think i will mind it. Hell ,i think i'll love evey minute of it (except the dul ones i guess..).
- Quality speakers : Everyone has to start somewhere. how did everyone else start? besides, i think MSFT has an interest in seeing more and more of us..
- Developers have limited time : yep. that's true. however, your assuming that only existing user group goers will attend, which i suspect will be only partially true. i know more then a few people who will join the group who are not actively participating in anything else.
besides, if it comes to a point where people need to choose where to go, it means the group is in a good place :)


Thursday, March 20, 2003 10:35 AM by Chad Osgood

# re: My own user group & INETA - continued

Roy, I commented a little more verbosely in my blog. If you have any questions that I could possibly help answer, let me know.
Thursday, March 20, 2003 6:01 PM by TrackBack

# .NET User Groups : Chad Osgood's Blog

.NET User Groups : Chad Osgood's Blog
Thursday, March 20, 2003 6:01 PM by TrackBack

# We're so Lucky!! (INETA Speakers in Vermont...) : Julia Lerman Blog

We're so Lucky!! (INETA Speakers in Vermont...) : Julia Lerman Blog
Thursday, March 20, 2003 6:01 PM by TrackBack

# My own user group & INETA - the next generation : ISerializable

My own user group & INETA - the next generation : ISerializable
Sunday, March 23, 2003 3:44 PM by TrackBack

# Job Interviews : ISerializable

Job Interviews : ISerializable
Sunday, March 23, 2003 3:44 PM by TrackBack

# A letter : ISerializable

A letter : ISerializable
Monday, March 24, 2003 2:38 AM by Julie Lerman

# re: My own user group & INETA - continued

Roy- impatiently awaiting the trackback to hit your site but see my blog march 24
Monday, March 24, 2003 8:09 AM by Datagrid Girl

# re: My own user group & INETA - the next generation

Hi Roy,
I would definitely join the VB User Group first, if nothing else, you'll find some like-minded folks there who can help you with your new group. And I wouldn't worry about registering and then it not working out. Go ahead and register, and give it your best shot, and if it doesn't work out--too bad! And especially if you're working with INETA, you'll have people to advise you and help you, and make sure it *does* work out. Good luck!!!
Monday, March 24, 2003 10:58 AM by Julie

# re: My own user group & INETA - the next generation

Roy-
Two more suggestions - talk to the other u.g. leaders and see what there communication with INETA Europe has been. If that isn't fulfilling, contact Christian Nagel who is heading up user group relations for INETA in Europe.
Actually, email ugrelations@ineta.org and Christian or maybe Dave Noderer will have better info that I do.
Monday, March 24, 2003 11:22 AM by Brad More

# re: Job Interviews

I don't get a vote, but if I did I'd vote for "C". They have a dog. What more do you need to know?!
Monday, March 24, 2003 1:09 PM by Datagrid Girl

# re: DataGrid Girl rules

Monday, March 24, 2003 1:10 PM by Datagrid Girl

# re: DataGrid Girl rules

Hey, I'm glad people are listening to the show :)
Monday, March 24, 2003 4:55 PM by TrackBack

# Ineta : heLP .Net Blog

Ineta : heLP .Net Blog
Monday, March 24, 2003 4:55 PM by TrackBack

# DataGrid Girl rules : ISerializable

DataGrid Girl rules : ISerializable
Monday, March 24, 2003 6:07 PM by TrackBack

# Datagrid girl : heLP .Net Blog

Datagrid girl : heLP .Net Blog
Monday, March 24, 2003 6:07 PM by TrackBack

# Specialization : Datagrid Girl

Specialization : Datagrid Girl
Monday, March 24, 2003 11:03 PM by Greg Robinson

# re: Job Interviews

I got into the IT industry in 98' with a large company. I did a total career change and they took a chance on me. I worked my arse off and did well. So well, a local 'start-up' consulting company offered me a job. I was developer #3, plus 3 owners. I again worked my arse off and, after 2 years, 20 developers later, I resigned. I am now with a company of 6 and I LOVE it!

So, what to do? really depends on your personality and your goals. I cannot work for a 'corporate' company...I am too independent and too motivated. That said, I would take the start-up position.

I just finished interviewing for a .net position I have here. I was truly amazed at how many great developers were concerend with our size and they needed the comfort of a large company. If this is you, go for the large company and let them take care of you. If this is nto you, go for the start-up.
Tuesday, March 25, 2003 12:38 PM by Also looking

# re: Job Interviews

I haven't had much luck with the MS Careers page. Spent a few hours there creating a resume, submitted a few of them, and nothing. Oh well. Good luck on the job hunt!
Tuesday, March 25, 2003 4:13 PM by Chris Pirillo

# re: Acceptance Test

Yay! ;)
Tuesday, March 25, 2003 7:24 PM by Jan Tielens

# re: ArrrrgggH!

Hi

You can use the StringBuilder to create a stream.

I use it with CodeDom too, like this:
Private Function GetVBCode(ByVal code As CodeTypeDeclaration) As String
Dim gen As New VBCodeProvider

Dim sb As New System.Text.StringBuilder
Dim stream As New IO.StringWriter(sb)
gen.CreateGenerator().GenerateCodeFromType(code, stream, Nothing)
stream.Close()

Return sb.ToString
End Function

Greetz
Jan
Tuesday, March 25, 2003 7:28 PM by Christian Weyer

# re: ArrrrgggH!

This works for me:

[...]
string xmlString = @"<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' ?><TestType><Number>42</Number><Value>Christian</Value></TestType>";

System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();
System.IO.TextWriter writer = new System.IO.StreamWriter( ms );
writer.Write(xmlString);
writer.Flush();

ms.Seek(0, System.IO.SeekOrigin.Begin);
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(TestType));
TestType tt = (TestType)serializer.Deserialize(ms);
[...]

public class TestType
{
public int Number;
public string Value;
}


Cheers,
Christian
Tuesday, March 25, 2003 7:33 PM by Royo

# re: ArrrrgggH!

Thanks for the input guys!
That was darn quick :)
I new it was something as easy as a memoryStream, but i just couldn't find the damn thing !
Tuesday, March 25, 2003 7:34 PM by Royo

# re: ArrrrgggH!

Thanks Jen! that looks like a marvelous way do do lotas of stuff!
Tuesday, March 25, 2003 10:20 PM by Wes Haggard

# re: Outlook bugs me

I had a similar problem and its if it doesn't load the rules in time. I fixed the problem by installing SP1 and then SP2 for Office XP.

Wes
Tuesday, March 25, 2003 10:35 PM by Royo

# re: Outlook bugs me

Nope. I already have SP2 installed on my Office XP.... :(
Tuesday, March 25, 2003 10:59 PM by Edward

# re: Outlook bugs me

I had the exact same problem. Apparently the inspection of the sender-field is the problem. Changed my rules to inspect the subject-field instead (the lists I'm subscribed to, all modify the subject), works like a charm ever since.
Wednesday, March 26, 2003 2:33 AM by TrackBack

# Shared Source CLI Essentials Book is out + more about specialization : ISerializable

Shared Source CLI Essentials Book is out + more about specialization : ISerializable
Thursday, March 27, 2003 11:24 AM by Tim Marman

# re: A thought

Huh? :)
Thursday, March 27, 2003 7:27 PM by TrackBack

# Hit Count : ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog

Hit Count : ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog
Thursday, March 27, 2003 10:06 PM by Roy

# re: A thought

Don't my me, just rambling... ;)
Saturday, March 29, 2003 5:34 PM by Ben Richardson

# re: Code Express - Freeware code sharing client

Here is a link to the site.
Sunday, March 30, 2003 1:10 PM by Roy

# re: Code Express - Freeware code sharing client

err. thanks ;)
Monday, March 31, 2003 6:39 AM by Datagrid Girl

# re: ASP.NET is cool + DataGrid Designer Tips

Of course a true DataGridder would type it all out :) Just kidding!
Monday, March 31, 2003 7:00 AM by Roy

# re: ASP.NET is cool + DataGrid Designer Tips

hehe.. But i can really see how far one could get in to this grid. it sure is a world in itself!
Monday, March 31, 2003 7:18 AM by Datagrid Girl

# re: ASP.NET is cool + DataGrid Designer Tips

A pink world...
Monday, March 31, 2003 8:27 AM by Drew Marsh

# re: Err.. Is there a way to put custom HTML in the Blog Header

Yeah, just paste that HTML into the editor for a post. :)
Thursday, April 03, 2003 3:43 AM by Kirk Allen Evans

# re: Avoiding DB_SEC_E_AUTH_FAILED exception on connection string

You could have used \" to escape the quotes, had the "@" not preceded the string:

"Password=\"\""

However, this would not work with "@" in the beginning of the string, because "@" signifies that escape sequences are not processed. This is why the "\" characters in your string did not cause odd errors for unrecognized escape sequences. If you intend on using "@" with a string that contains double-quotes, you have to double-up the quotation marks:

@"Data Source=C:\Documents and Settings\royo\My Documents\WOZ.mdb;Password=""""";

Note that this is also explained in the C# Programmer's Reference:

ms-help://MS.VSCC/MS.MSDNQTR.2002APR.1033/csref/html/vclrfString.htm
Saturday, April 05, 2003 6:06 PM by TrackBack

# .NET Weblogs Feed : Jesse Ezell Blog

.NET Weblogs Feed : Jesse Ezell Blog
Sunday, April 06, 2003 5:46 PM by Matt Berther

# re: Config Hell

The main reason for having config files read only, IMHO, is due to permissions issues. Applications are typically installed to Program Files/*. On a locked down system, its very possible for a user not to have rights to that directory.

http://staff.develop.com/candera/weblog/2003/02/06.html

One alternative may be to use IsolatedStorage...
Sunday, April 06, 2003 10:58 PM by Thomas Tomiczek

# re: Config Hell

::its very possible for a user not to have rights to that
::directory.

Understatement. It is NORMAL for a user not to be able to modify files there.
Monday, April 07, 2003 12:22 AM by Scott Watermasysk

# re: Config Hell


Just create your own Config object and implement serialization.

Or even easier, create a class that dirives from SelfSerializer

-Scott
Monday, April 07, 2003 2:56 AM by TrackBack

# Hell Shmell : ISerializable

Hell Shmell : ISerializable
Monday, April 07, 2003 6:07 PM by TrackBack

# BCL Types Debate : .Avery Blog

BCL Types Debate : .Avery Blog
Monday, April 07, 2003 11:04 PM by Dan F

# re: Joining The BCL Types Wagon + Confession

1) yes. gimme readability any day. just call me mort
2) why worry about the rest of the world when there's perfectly good religious coding debates going on?
3) just me and that wierd guy over in the corner with the raincoat on
Friday, April 11, 2003 9:44 AM by Keith Pleas

# re: I'm A Mort!

That works! You're number 3. Send me your mailing address (keithp@guideddesign.com).
Friday, April 11, 2003 11:12 AM by Roy

# re: I'm A Mort!

Yoohoo!
Friday, April 11, 2003 10:16 PM by TrackBack

# DNWL future continued : ISerializable

DNWL future continued : ISerializable
Friday, April 11, 2003 10:16 PM by TrackBack

# Future of .NET Weblogs : Fabrice's weblog

Future of .NET Weblogs : Fabrice's weblog
Saturday, April 12, 2003 1:44 AM by Dan F

# re: Typed Datasets - Can You Get Much Cooler?

wow. double wow. thank you! i've been wondering about typed datasets for a while now, your blog entry (article?) has prompted me to go read some more about them. thank you again!
Saturday, April 12, 2003 2:14 AM by Roy

# re: Typed Datasets - Can You Get Much Cooler?

Thanks :) Glad to know what I write actually makes a difference sometimes ... ;)
Saturday, April 12, 2003 4:43 AM by TrackBack

# Article: Introduction to Typed Datasets : ISerializable

Article: Introduction to Typed Datasets : ISerializable
Saturday, April 12, 2003 4:43 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Saturday, April 12, 2003 4:43 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Saturday, April 12, 2003 4:43 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, April 14, 2003 10:28 PM by Dan F

# re: Categories

Nice, splitting original and quoted. I hope more people take up that idea. Quoted is good if I manage to miss it elsewhere, but original is the money shot thats gotta be read :)
Tuesday, April 15, 2003 1:31 PM by Jack Hammond

# re: how do you make your .NET application scriptable?

Check out http://dotnetweblogs.com/ahoffman/posts/3589.aspx for an interesting blog on .Net scripting.
Thursday, April 17, 2003 4:32 PM by Phil Weber

# re: Accented Blogging

Accent: California ;-)

Sounds good to me!
Friday, April 18, 2003 4:07 AM by Chak

# re: About Roy Osherove

Hey ! All the best man. Best wishes to you, your wife, Zion the cat, and Israel too - i am an Indian who hopes there will be a peaceful end to the Israel crisis (just as we hope for India and Kashmir !).

I am still at the shallow end of Dot Net and hope that one day i will reach the deep end.

Bye.
Sunday, April 27, 2003 8:08 AM by Don Box

# re: Envy - Cursed be thy name!

Why not apply? SujayS is still has openings in JLamb's org (SDE/T in XML messaging).
Sunday, April 27, 2003 8:14 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Envy - Cursed be thy name!

hrm. Even from Israel? That is usually a showstopper :(
Sunday, April 27, 2003 8:45 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Envy - Cursed be thy name!

ok. I Applied :) here goes ... ;)
Sunday, April 27, 2003 9:28 AM by Marc LaFleur

# re: Windows Server 2003 Rocks

Check out http://www.msfn.org/win2k3/. They have a lot of information on Games, DirectX, and Windows2k3 as a workstation.
Sunday, April 27, 2003 9:28 AM by Marc LaFleur

# re: Windows Server 2003 Rocks

Check out http://www.msfn.org/win2k3/. They have a lot of information on Games, DirectX, and Windows2k3 as a workstation.
Sunday, April 27, 2003 9:41 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Windows Server 2003 Rocks

Thanks!
Sunday, April 27, 2003 11:21 PM by Scott Watermasysk

# re: Testing from w.blogger

Categories are not supported (yet?) :D
Monday, April 28, 2003 7:54 AM by TrackBack

# wbloggar : heLP .Net Blog

wbloggar : heLP .Net Blog
Monday, April 28, 2003 8:54 AM by TrackBack

# wbloggar : heLP .Net Blog

wbloggar : heLP .Net Blog
Monday, April 28, 2003 10:41 AM by TrackBack

# ASP.NET Authentication Question : heLP .Net Blog

ASP.NET Authentication Question : heLP .Net Blog
Monday, April 28, 2003 10:41 AM by TrackBack

# ASP.NET Authentication Question : Fabrice's weblog

ASP.NET Authentication Question : Fabrice's weblog
Tuesday, April 29, 2003 10:05 AM by HumanCompiler

# re: A Quick VS.NET Tweak

Yes, yes you should! ;)
Wednesday, April 30, 2003 2:20 AM by Aaron

# re: Regular Expressions And Log Parsing

Probably just a dumb question, but if ASCII is 'old-style' what is 'new style'?

(Obviously not up-to-date on modern logging techniques)
Wednesday, April 30, 2003 4:53 AM by what up

# re: Code monkeys are people too

thank you for every thing and i whis that you were here to enjoy the fun that i enjoyed last night with you
Wednesday, April 30, 2003 10:31 PM by Wes Haggard

# re: More VS.NET Tips & Tricks

I'm a keyboard junkie. I usually use SHIFT-DEL to cut a line of text. Thanks for the tip about the outlining standard files I hadn't come acrossed that one yet. Maybe we should make a list of all the hotkeys that we use because I know a ton of them, but I'm you know some I don't and I know some you don't. Let me know. I doesn't just have to be Visual Studio shortcuts either I know alot of windows shortcuts as well.
Wednesday, April 30, 2003 11:13 PM by Royo

# re: More VS.NET Tips & Tricks

Sounds Great! Your page or mine..? ;)
Wednesday, April 30, 2003 11:16 PM by Royo

# re: More VS.NET Tips & Tricks

btw, there was a good 'vs.net fun facts' page at chris sells' site somewhere, but i can;t find it. Perhpas everything should go in there...
Wednesday, April 30, 2003 11:43 PM by Royo

# re: About Roy Osherove

Thanks for your kind words!
Thursday, May 01, 2003 1:42 AM by Samer Ibrahim

# re: How to Pass A Microsoft Interview - SDE/T Edition

There is actually this book coming out or is out....

http://www.twbookmark.com/books/36/0316919160/index.html
Thursday, May 01, 2003 1:50 AM by Wes Haggard

# re: More VS.NET Tips & Tricks

Chris' VS Fun Facts I have seen these before and he just has them as a post. I was thinking that I could create a story for it and call it "VS Tips and Tricks". We could break it into some sections like: Shortcut keys, Enviroment setups, Addins, External tools, etc.
I will try to start a story tonight with a simple layout.
Thursday, May 01, 2003 2:19 AM by Sean Gerety

# re: The Mouse I Want(And So Will You)

I got a TouchStream LP about 2 weeks ago and the gestrues are very cool. The touch typing takes a little to get used to, but it rocks not having to move back and forth between a mouse and keyboard.
Thursday, May 01, 2003 2:58 AM by Royo

# re: How to Pass A Microsoft Interview - SDE/T Edition

I knew it!! ;)
Thursday, May 01, 2003 3:06 AM by Royo

# re: More VS.NET Tips & Tricks

Cool. I'm sure eveyone would love to chip in :)
Thursday, May 01, 2003 3:07 AM by Royo

# re: The Mouse I Want(And So Will You)

Ouch! That Hurt. Now I HAVE to have it! ;)
Thursday, May 01, 2003 7:35 AM by TrackBack

# VS.Net Tip/Trick : Jason Tucker's Blog

VS.Net Tip/Trick : Jason Tucker's Blog
Saturday, May 03, 2003 9:40 PM by Nathen

# re: Typed Datasets Are Not Always The Answer

I don't know if I necessarily agree with the fact that typed-datasets should only be used for small applications. Generic datasets do not provide the type safety that a typed dataset provides and I view this a very important need for a large application. True that you have to regenerate your typed datasets when the database schema changes but 99% of the changes in your code that have to be made will be made at compile time and you won't have to manually hunt down where to make those changes. On the other hand, if you're using generic datasets and your database schema changes then you have to search for changed fields in your code to make the change and resort to runtime errors to know that you missed something. So, in my opinion, it seems that typed datasets are better suited for large applications and generic datasets are better suited for small applications.

Sounds like the previous poster had a Domain Model design for his application and typically that type of design does not have a huge dependency on datasets since domain objects tend to be row oriented vs table oriented. Typed datases apply more to a Table Module design where the data needs to be more table oriented.
Saturday, May 03, 2003 10:06 PM by Royo

# re: Typed Datasets Are Not Always The Answer

Nathen: Type Safety is important. But In order to keep the Presentation layer seperate from the data layer, you can't have a direct reference to the typed datasets (IMO). The only way to incroporate them into an enterprise application is stated in this post(See the ending paragraph - It essentially implies what you are suggesting). Also, If TD's are god for enterprise apps, why wouldn;t ehy be good for small apps?
Sunday, May 04, 2003 3:55 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Sunday, May 04, 2003 3:55 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Sunday, May 04, 2003 3:55 AM by TrackBack

# Clemens Vasters: Enterprise Development & Alien Abductions

Clemens Vasters: Enterprise Development & Alien Abductions
Sunday, May 04, 2003 3:55 AM by TrackBack

# Andres Aguiar's Weblog

Andres Aguiar's Weblog
Sunday, May 04, 2003 4:00 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Sunday, May 04, 2003 4:00 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Sunday, May 04, 2003 7:07 PM by Duncan Mackenzie

# re: MSDN staff

Are you referring to this phrase: "the groundbreaking SOAP Toolkit 1.0" ?

;)
Sunday, May 04, 2003 7:36 PM by Royo

# re: MSDN staff

You said it, not me ;)
Sunday, May 04, 2003 11:28 PM by Nathen

# re: Typed Datasets Are Not Always The Answer

I guess I'm coming from the point of view that I tend to consider a dataset more as a data transfer object for moving data between layers as opposed to just a member of the data layer. I'm a big fan of keeping things as simple as possible and to add complexity iteratively if needed. The advantage of the approach that you mentioned in your article is you isolate the typed dataset in the data layer which would make updating the code easier given a db schema change. You still have to contend with how you are transferring data between layers in distributed and non-distributed physical architectures. If I'm not using a dataset then I'll have to create custom serializable data transfer objects that are passed to and from each layer, but this begins adding additional complexity that could be kept simple just by using a dataset to move data between layers instead. Again, this is just my opinion on design and there are many very good ways to go about it and what you described in your article is one.

The answer to your last question goes back to my "keep things simple" approach. If the app is small enough with very little business rules and data requirements I would bypass using typed datasets because there may be so few touch points between the data layer and the business layer that using a typed dataset would be an example of over-engineering the solution. If the app continues to grow in size and complexity then I would dedicate a few iterations for refactoring the design to handle the additional complexity.
Sunday, May 04, 2003 11:39 PM by James Avery

# re: OneNote Is Cool But...

They are not going to include it with the release version of Office anyway, so better to not get attached in the first place. :)

-James
Sunday, May 04, 2003 11:52 PM by Mike Gray

# re: Explorer Tips and tricks for the keyboard junkie

WinKey+E - opens Explorer

Alt+F4 - close most windows
Ctrl+F4 - close MDI windows
Monday, May 05, 2003 1:17 AM by Addy Santo

# re: You guy are missing several crucial points

Hi Roy,

I'm currently working on a large enterprise app which is heavily based on typed-datasets. I used to be from the "typed-datasets-are-for-newbies-only" camp but I must admit that *when used correctly* they are an incredibly powerful tool.

Several key things to keep in mind when architecturing around typed datasets:

1. Equating TDSes to the data layer is like limiting XSLT to the presentation layer - that is only one use among the many existing possibilities.

2. Since TDSes are based on XSD schemas, you can load any arbitrary XML block (which matches your schema) and programmatically work against it with a HIGHLY-PERFORMANT object model. XPath queries over the same XML aren't even in the same ballpark.

3. Since TDSes are typed, you get compile time validation, as compared to XML/XPath which is a pain to debug.

4. TDSes come with built-in serialization capabilities and funky webservice related optimizations.

I don't have the bandwidth to describe my architecture in detail, but I am using datasets in several different capacities in my app and in every case they improved performance, reduced the amount of hand-written code and simplified the data structures.

-Addy
Monday, May 05, 2003 12:12 PM by TrackBack

# mads studentblog

mads studentblog
Monday, May 05, 2003 12:12 PM by TrackBack

# mads studentblog

mads studentblog
Monday, May 05, 2003 12:12 PM by TrackBack

# mads studentblog

mads studentblog
Monday, May 05, 2003 12:12 PM by TrackBack

# Eric J. Smith's Weblog

Eric J. Smith's Weblog
Monday, May 05, 2003 12:20 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, May 05, 2003 12:20 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, May 05, 2003 12:20 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, May 05, 2003 4:39 PM by Darren Neimke

# re: Regular Expression Library

Check out the new CheatSheet that Steve added last night --> get to it via the CheatSheet link on the side menu.
Monday, May 05, 2003 9:39 PM by Dan F

# re: Free Book: Software Testing and Internationalization

Any good?
Monday, May 05, 2003 9:52 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Free Book: Software Testing and Internationalization

Just browsing through, It looks promising (Or I wouldn't have posted this..:)
Monday, May 05, 2003 10:13 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Hacking My Blog

Fixed. Thanks for the tip!
Monday, May 05, 2003 11:09 PM by Michael Arnoldus

# re: UI Threading *<b>Might</b>* Sucks

Beware - I've spend quite a lot of time on this problem. We are building a client application fetching information from a server (using SOAP) in the background, and displaying the information in the windows UI when it arrives. Unfortunately it arrives in another thread. On top of this we have implemented a cache the UI components should be reading from (the cache could also be viewed as the "model" part of the MVC pattern). The problem is that it is insufficient to call Control.Invoke() when changing information in f.ex a listbox. We also need to make sure the underlying data to be displayed does not change while the UI thread reads it. And simple synchronization is not enough as this will only give atomic access to a single element, when we need to block the entire array while updating the control.
The best solution I've found until now is to model an UI thread and background threads as two separate processes (implemented as .NET threads) that only communicates through messages and has NO shared memory. The messages are modeled through a homebuild "mailbox" interface. The modeled is inspired by the language Erlang.
I'm looking forward to hear if find something smarter ...
Monday, May 05, 2003 11:43 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: UI Threading *<b>Might</b>* Suck

Hmm. I hear ya. I had a feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg. I was thinking that perhaps a generic class could be created that would handle synchronyzation issues between UI threads and others. I can see it taking in A Thread, A Thread Target (A control? A Delegate?) and another set of options and perhaps shared memory Objects (Through interfaces). Then it would handle the incoming streams of events from each thread, making sure each behaves correctly according to the options specified. I bet there is a pattern in here somewhere that someone has written about But i just don't know about it. MVC seems less relevant here, although i suspect it is part of the solution. Oh well. It's the hard(a.k.a cool) stuff that is the most fun, isn't it? ;)
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 1:42 AM by paul robichaux

# re: Chris Pirillo Sells His Mind

Lots of people have tried to make a business model out of what Chris is doing. The problem is that the degree of difficulty isn't transparent. What I see as a hard problem to solve may seem easy to the person who's handed a solution on a platter. ExpertsExchange has a pretty workable approach, and I'm sure there are other ways to handle it, but Chris' flat-rate approach seems like a fair start.
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 2:17 AM by Chris Pirillo

# re: Chris Pirillo Sells His Mind

I hate to tell ya, but I've already inspired two other gurus.

http://onlinetonight.net/ask/
http://dibona.com/faq/#Q0

And I've already made $100 without putting forth a serious effort.
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 4:54 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Chris Pirillo Sells His Mind

Well, I'll eat my words then! ;)
That's great to hear :)
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 5:33 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 5:33 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 5:33 AM by TrackBack

# Code/Tea/Etc...

Code/Tea/Etc...
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 5:33 AM by TrackBack

# Datagrid Girl

Datagrid Girl
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 6:06 AM by TrackBack

# Julia Lerman Blog

Julia Lerman Blog
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 6:06 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, May 06, 2003 6:06 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Wednesday, May 07, 2003 6:58 AM by Christophe Lauer

# re: Another Free Book + Maybe You Can Help

Hi Roy,

My guess is that it's a question of budget affectation. Promotional operations like this are driven from the US, with US (MS Corp.) budgets and other countries have to rely on subsidiaries operations and budgets. Simplistic, but I think that the answer is not very far from this.

Cheers,
/Christophe
Wednesday, May 07, 2003 7:20 AM by me

# re: Another Free Book + Maybe You Can Help

You can download it from their site for free. It's in pdf.
Wednesday, May 07, 2003 7:21 AM by me again

# re: Another Free Book + Maybe You Can Help

Here is the URL.
http://microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A08E4A09-7AE3-4942-B466-CC778A3BAB34&displaylang=en
Wednesday, May 07, 2003 7:24 AM by Royo

# re: Another Free Book- Application Architecture for .NET: Designing Applications and Services .

Thanks! Already got an email from Jan on this issue. Still, The print version is always preferable..
Wednesday, May 07, 2003 10:56 AM by SBC

# re: Another Free Book

Let me know and I'll try and arrange to get you a print version (legit of course!).

SBC
Wednesday, May 07, 2003 7:23 PM by Frans Bouma

# re: 3D Cynicism

Hey, I like databases :) I truely do. It's just that after fighting with algorithms how to determine if 2 tables with a multi-field PK, have an m:n relation or not, it suddenly loses it's coolness factor for a few minutes, sometimes :)
Wednesday, May 07, 2003 7:26 PM by Royo

# re: 3D Cynicism

I think I and most others here can relate ;)
Wednesday, May 07, 2003 10:56 PM by Scott Prugh

# re: How Access 2003 Helped Me Out

Did you ever think of using SQL Server and the SQL XML import for this??

Also, there are several SQL Comparison tools out there:

www.redgate.com
www.lockwoodtech.com
Wednesday, May 07, 2003 11:03 PM by Royo

# re: How Access 2003 Helped Me Out

Thanks for your time!

A: SQL server was not an option in this case.. I'm aware of the XML import functionality in there, but we had to use MDB...

B: I can't find anything related to MDB comparison in Redgate.com, and LockWoodTech.com only has SQL server related comparison tools...

Perhaps you know of some tools pertaning to MDB files exclusively...?
Thursday, May 08, 2003 12:26 AM by rick

# MDB Diff tool

I haven't tried it personally, but here's a diff tool for Access MDBs:

http://www.matpie.drw.net/PBSystems/products/retired/MDBDiff.html
Thursday, May 08, 2003 1:16 AM by Adam Hill

# re: How Access 2003 Helped Me Out

Don't forget about MSDE. It is functionaly equivalent to SQL Server modulo the 10 "concurrent SQL processes" limit.

I use it for a client side app and it is very stable (since it is the SQL Server code base) and you get the bonus of being able to use Ent. Manager on it.

A very good DB Compare tool is SQL Data compare from http://www.red-gate.com/SQL_Data_Compare.htm

adam...
Thursday, May 08, 2003 1:40 AM by Royo

# re: How Access 2003 Helped Me Out

Thanks for all the great Info guys. I've found MDBDiff to work, thankfully.
As for MSDE, I always found it a bit cumbersome to work with, havinf to install it and the Ent. Manager with a seperate install.
I say, Either go full with SQL Server or Keep it simple with MDB. We have no need for more the 3 users for this project anyway...
Thursday, May 08, 2003 4:46 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Thursday, May 08, 2003 4:46 AM by TrackBack

# Jimski's Blog

Jimski's Blog
Thursday, May 08, 2003 6:44 AM by G. Andrew Duthie

# re: A Better RegEdit

Great tool! Thanks for the tip, Roy!
Thursday, May 08, 2003 6:46 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: System Tweaks & Tricks

One hell of a tip, Roy! Some of them were handy but one was a very nice one, the Speed up Internet Explorer tweak. I switched the max amount of connections from 3 to 15 and suddenly the html editor on this site loads with an amazing speed. I think tweaking it even higher will bring even more speed, but that will probably result in a lot of hammering the webserver might not like. ;) Good one!
Thursday, May 08, 2003 6:50 AM by Royo

# re: System Tweaks & Tricks

Hmm. Havn't even noticed that one! I'll highlight it! Thanks :)
Thursday, May 08, 2003 7:01 AM by Royo

# re: A Better RegEdit

Glad I could help! (It's always fun to hear this stuff... ;))
Thursday, May 08, 2003 7:05 AM by Rachel Reese

# re: System Tweaks & Tricks

These are awesome Roy! Thank you!
Thursday, May 08, 2003 7:19 AM by Wes Haggard

# re: System Tweaks & Tricks

Some more tweaks and my favorite registry site is Regedit.com

This is where I learned to tweak the registry.

Wes
Thursday, May 08, 2003 7:31 AM by Royo

# re: System Tweaks & Tricks

Thanks for all the feedback guys/gals! ;)
Thursday, May 08, 2003 10:57 AM by TrackBack

# Frans Bouma's blog

Frans Bouma's blog
Thursday, May 08, 2003 11:03 AM by David Stone

# re: A Better RegEdit

Favorites have been in RegEdit for a long time. But having regedit embedded in my Explorer window is cool. :)
Thursday, May 08, 2003 4:03 PM by TrackBack

# Jan Tielens' Bloggings

Jan Tielens' Bloggings
Thursday, May 08, 2003 4:06 PM by TrackBack

# Rachel Reese's Blog

Rachel Reese's Blog
Thursday, May 08, 2003 6:02 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Thursday, May 08, 2003 6:02 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Thursday, May 08, 2003 6:02 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Friday, May 09, 2003 2:11 AM by Philip Rieck

# re: Welcome Philip , Interviews, "as" Vs. Casting

Yes, I do. I live with this all the time. It's bad enough that my name is a homonym for "a really bad smell", but my first initial / last name combo looks like a common slang term for the male genetailia. I'll be watching that on my kids (thier names, not genetailia) , to make sure the standard computer user name they'll be assigned for life will not be quite so bad as mine.
Friday, May 09, 2003 3:18 AM by Dan F

# re: The Unofficial "Mort" Logo Is Available

You're right, it *is* ugly! :D

I whipped one up in photoshop, how would I go about getting it to you? You can get me at realfnad at yahoo dot com dot au if you want.
Friday, May 09, 2003 7:04 AM by Royo

# re: Welcome Philip , Interviews, "as" Vs. Casting

hehe.. Better late then never ;)
Friday, May 09, 2003 7:25 AM by Royo

# re: The Unofficial "Mort" Logo Is Available

Hope you got my email then!
For anyone else that would like to contact me, I can be reached either through the "contact" link on the weblog, or at this address:
Royo at Iserializable dot com
Friday, May 09, 2003 11:42 AM by Wes Haggard

# re: Enlightenment

Enlightening indeed, I can't believe I never really looked into this before. I have seen the little blue icon on plenty of websites but I have never really looked into it. But I got one now. I actually have a webservice that I was working on to collect stats but I think I will let Nedstat do the job instead. Yes one less thing I have todo to finish my website.

Thanks for the enlightenment.
Wes
Friday, May 09, 2003 4:07 PM by Jeff Julian

# re: Chris Pirillo Sells His Mind

I hope no one with their MVP is pulling this pay for knowledge deal. I don't like the idea. I will try to help you if you have a problem again, just email. Free!!!

Hide your source, don't hide your knowledge.
Friday, May 09, 2003 6:36 PM by Dan F

# re: Mort Banner - Revised

w00t! immortalised for ever :)
Friday, May 09, 2003 7:42 PM by TrackBack

# Wes' Puzzling Blog

Wes' Puzzling Blog
Friday, May 09, 2003 8:36 PM by TrackBack

# heLP .Net Blog

heLP .Net Blog
Friday, May 09, 2003 8:37 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Friday, May 09, 2003 8:37 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Friday, May 09, 2003 8:54 PM by TrackBack

# Emitter

Emitter
Friday, May 09, 2003 9:04 PM by Frans Bouma

# re: Enlightenment

Be aware of the fact that Nedstat isn't as secure as it should be. Sometimes the nedstat servers are pretty slow and then the image isn't loaded (the connection between the client and the nedstat server is slow, I mean) or way too late and you will not receive a hit. So I'd add 15% to the average number to get a correct measurement.

It's easy to setup your own counter if you have an online system yourself. Nedstat just checks when an image is loaded from their servers, checks the requester and increases the counter belonging to that requester. You can create such a counter within an hour. :)
Saturday, May 10, 2003 1:13 AM by Royo

# re: Enlightenment

Frans: Yes, I've noticed this myself, but am willing to live with this. Besides, there are some other factors that are not mentioned here. For example, The amount of people who download the direct RSS feed is unknown, so lets add 15% right there. Also, I use a redirecting service from Iseiralizable.com which is also not counted with NedStat.
I kind of like the fact that the stats that I see are known to be just a part of the real stats. It gives me a fuzzy feling knowing this is just part of a bigger crowd out there :)
Saturday, May 10, 2003 2:20 AM by Wes Haggard

# re: Mort Banner - Revised

Ok I have seen references to mort but I don't really know what exactly its all about. Can you explain it or point me to an explaination of it.

Thanks,
Wes
Saturday, May 10, 2003 2:26 AM by Royo

# re: Mort Banner - Revised

Have you tried clicking the banner ? It links to a story about Morts. A "Mort" is what VS.Net team call VB.Net programmers.
Saturday, May 10, 2003 7:58 AM by randy

# re: Writing Articles Is Hard!

Get your ideas down on paper first, then let them sit for a period of time before you come back to them (could be a day, could be weeks in some cases). If the ideas don't seem solid, do a little more work and let them sit again. If they still seem valid, proceed by starting an outline to lay out the structure of your article. Depending on your comfort level with writing, it may need to be a detailed outline. If the article involves code though, have the code ready before you move past the outline. As things go in software development, sometimes the end result isn't exactly what you had imagined when you started.

Once you start writing, force yourself to complete it in sections that correlate to the original outline. Then review them as they are finished to ensure that you're comfortable. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Once you have the article completely written, review it several times in the same manner that you reviewed the individual sections.

Good luck.
Saturday, May 10, 2003 1:07 PM by TrackBack

# heLP .Net Blog

heLP .Net Blog
Saturday, May 10, 2003 4:08 PM by Royo

# re: Writing Articles Is Hard!

Thanks for the input :)
Saturday, May 10, 2003 5:44 PM by Duncan Mackenzie

# re: Mind Rates

It wasn't actually your comments I was talking about, but some of the responses to that post.

Your point about the flat rate is certainly a good one, but difficulty of a problem is hard to track. I was a consultant for many years and I charged by the hour... but Chris wants people to pay up front, and hourly would be difficult to do in that way. Providing an estimate takes time too. Perhaps he could charge $27 for the estimate and count that amount towards the answer if it is harder... I actually think more people would complain about that scenario, even if it is more rational.

Just try to sneak hard questions in and you'll be getting a lot out of your $27 :)
Saturday, May 10, 2003 5:47 PM by TrackBack

# heLP .Net Blog

heLP .Net Blog
Saturday, May 10, 2003 7:49 PM by Matt Berther

# re: Geek Book

Grr... Link didnt work properly... How about this one... Beginning ATL 3 COM Programming
Saturday, May 10, 2003 8:00 PM by Royo

# re: Geek Book

You win!!
Sunday, May 11, 2003 3:25 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Sunday, May 11, 2003 3:25 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Sunday, May 11, 2003 3:40 AM by Wes Haggard

# re: How I Learn New Technologies

I don't know if I would describe my process of learning in "Circles" but I can see where someone could. I'm completely on par with you as far as the motivation to complete projects that aren't needed by someone. When I start working on a project myself I usually figure out the "cool part" of the project but then I don't usually finish the project. I will usually either find something else that interests me and start working on that or I will just get bored or distracted. I do find myself comming back to projects that I haven't worked on for a while when the need arrises. I'm trying to get better about completing things I start. In fact starting my weblog here has helped me complete more projects because when I discover something I like to clean it a little and post it on my weblog.

Wes
Monday, May 12, 2003 12:12 AM by Dan F

# re: Blindfolded

you're kidding! wow...
[i'd never noticed it before either]
Monday, May 12, 2003 12:30 AM by Royo

# re: Blindfolded

Weird, huh?
Monday, May 12, 2003 2:16 AM by Addy Santo

# re: A Spoiler


Correction: 11 days, not 10. I got tickets for the 14th :)

Na-na Na-na-na....
Monday, May 12, 2003 7:39 AM by Eric J. Smith

# re: Implementing A Data Layer

CodeSmith is a template based code generator. Meaning that you have 100% control over the code that is generated. If nothing else, you should look at using it for generating your stored procedures. Take a look and let me know if you have questions.

http://www.ericjsmith.net/codesmith/
Monday, May 12, 2003 7:50 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Implementing A Data Layer

I think I've tried it before. I think it's a great tool. I couldn;t figure out though if it can run as a VS.Net addin or not. I was only able to run it in StandAlone...
Anyway - is definitely one that is on my toolbox, however, I don't see myself using it for more then relatively small tasks such as SP generation and such...
Anyway - I'll check out the new version :)
Monday, May 12, 2003 7:51 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: A Spoiler

Boy, You sure know how to cheer up a guy ... ;)
Monday, May 12, 2003 8:15 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: Implementing A Data Layer

The problem with the approach you use, Roy, is that it uses datasets. The concept of datasets sucks. I'll try to describe it in a blog tomorrow.
Monday, May 12, 2003 8:18 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Implementing A Data Layer

Frans: Actually - Datasets are only part of it. You can use IDataReader with all your method calls as well...
Monday, May 12, 2003 10:38 AM by Paschal

# re: New Article: Practical Parsing Using Groups in Regular Expressions

Roy maybe you can help me with this question

http://dotnetweblogs.com/pleloup/posts/5611.aspx

Thanks
Monday, May 12, 2003 10:48 AM by Jeff Julian

# re: June Is Officially here

It has been official in my cubical for a little over a week now :).
Monday, May 12, 2003 11:03 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: June Is Officially here

Some of us are not so lucky as to subscribe to it.... :(
Monday, May 12, 2003 11:15 AM by Royo

# re: New Article: Practical Parsing Using Groups in Regular Expressions

I'll have a go at it tommorow when I get the time :)
Monday, May 12, 2003 12:35 PM by Jeff Julian

# re: June Is Officially here

Universal Subscription!!!!

I love my company!

Next month, I will give you the scoop so you don't have to wait so long.
Monday, May 12, 2003 2:16 PM by Royo

# re: June Is Officially here

You mean you get a subscruption if you have a msdn universal subscription?
Monday, May 12, 2003 6:05 PM by Joe

# re: Typed Datasets Are Not Always The Answer

Don't agree with the answers above.
1. A typed dataset can appear in any assembly in any project. Referencing the typedataset is the same as referencing custom classes - there's no difference.

2. Do you want your business objects holding your business rules. This is not scalabale because you are combining state with logic which means that it's more difficult to distribute your logic across servers. Also you don't have a clear visibility on the dependencies between the logic in your code and the data that drives the logic. The public interface on the data container provides this if you keep your functions outside the business objects.

3. Your schema should evolve independently of the database. The database schema is there to cope with the physical contraints of the database and is used to populate your logical schema - which is the XSD file in your project.
Monday, May 12, 2003 7:08 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Typed Datasets Are Not Always The Answer

Joe:
Thanks for your comment, however, before coming to any conclusions, read the following article:
"Oops, Datasets *Are* Scalable!*"
http://dotnetweblogs.com/rosherove/story/6434.aspx

which I wrote later after writing this article.
In it I explain why I was mistaken in this article, and how Datasets *can* be used as scalabale objects.
Even so, The sentence "Do you want your business objects holding your business rules" bugs me. Yes, they are business objects. That's their purpose. As for Holding State and rules togather - That's not always the design decision. I can have business objects that return datasets or data readers. All they do is take care of the logic. They do not have to return TYPED datasets though, just plain datasets.... but that's all explained inthe other article..
Monday, May 12, 2003 7:40 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, May 12, 2003 7:40 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, May 12, 2003 8:01 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: New Article: Practical Parsing Using Groups in Regular Expressions

Your answer is here:
http://dotnetweblogs.com/rosherove/posts/6963.aspx
Monday, May 12, 2003 8:22 PM by Paschal

# re: Strip HTML tags from a string using regular expressions

Thanks Roy for this but what I want is to keep some tags like <p><br>, etc...
Monday, May 12, 2003 9:41 PM by DD

# re: MSDN Hands-On Labs

Cool! I finally took the leap a few weeks back towards upgrading my MCSD to dotnet - first step towards changing jobs as my company is now officially SAP and I refuse to work with that piece of crap.

So far I dished out the bucks for a P4 laptop and MSDN Universal DVD (amazing how quickly that paid for itself). Now I'm building my library while playing around with VS 2003 (amazing how much smaller the footprint is).

Now I get some free labs too. Next up is signing up for that free Viewsonic! Between that PocketPC and the $300 rebate I can actually say MSDN cost me just over $400.
Tuesday, May 13, 2003 2:08 AM by Oisin

# re: Strip HTML tags from a string using regular expressions

This is probably not the best regular expression for stripping HTML either. A RegEx parser that performs greedy matching (e.g. try to match as much characters as possible) will match \1 in '<(.*)>' to 'i>important info</i' in '<i>important info</i>'.

I would suggest either use non-greedy matching via '<.*?>' (e.g. match the first '>' you find, not the last possible one) or use a more specific pattern like '<[^>]+>' -- e.g. match a '<' than match one or more sequential characters that are not '>' up until the first '>' you find.

Regex is a dark and deep hole that once you fall in, it's hard to get out; but like a big hole, there's light at one end of it ;)

Tuesday, May 13, 2003 2:51 AM by Hugh Brown

# re: Strip HTML tags from a string using regular expressions

Your regex eliminates everything in this HTML:

string html = "<html><head><title>asasdasd</title></head><body><h1>qweqweqwe</h1><div>This is the content</div></body></html>";
string modified = StripHTML(html);
Console.WriteLine (modified);

I typically use patterns more like this to find html tags:

private static string linkPattern = @"(\<link[^\>]+\>)";

Lots of bath water left when I'm done with that baby.
Tuesday, May 13, 2003 3:19 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Strip HTML tags from a string using regular expressions

Thanks for the great tips guys! I'll look in to it and fix the samples. :)
Tuesday, May 13, 2003 5:01 AM by Dumky

# re: Blindfolded

Hi,

You might have noticed this too, but there is this weird behavior on W2k with regedit:
if you open it with "Start->Run->regedit" you get the favorites menu, but if you type "start regedit" in a command prompt, then you don't!

Makes you wonder how the thing was coded ;-)
See you,
Dumky
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 5:28 AM by Anonymous

# re: Practical Parsing Using Groups in Regular Expressions

This won't work.

First, anyone viewing this on the web can't see your named groups, because they're enclosed in less-than and greater-than signs. All people see is the question-mark if they're looking at it in a browser. You need to use the ampersand-representations, &lt; and &gt; .

Secondly, you say the group name is case-sensitive, but in your expression you use "DAY" and in your group index you use "Day". If they are indeed case-sensitive, this example won't work.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 5:55 AM by Cory Smith

# re: A Long Day!

You are aware that most of the file functions in VB6 are available in Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll? They are just slightly renamed (Get->FileGet, etc.). Albiet, they aren't nearly as high performance as FileStream, there is a lot of things that can be done with them "natively" than are a nightmare to do using FileStream. For an example, take a look at:

http://www.addressof.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx/8c13fd58-4091-46e2-8a77-22e79b08f8fb

and

http://www.addressof.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx/fa9dd4e8-b849-4d57-8620-5be4cca9b88e

Needless to say, I can relate to your frustration ;-)
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 7:22 AM by hughes.tv

# re: A Long Day!

"19:45 - 20:15 head to head with something that you thought you could do in an hour".

By my reckoning, 7:45pm to 8:15pm is 30 minutes and you thought it'd take an hour. That's great performance ;-)
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 8:14 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: A Long Day!

Hughes: DOH! ;)
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 8:22 AM by Royo

# re: A Long Day!

Also, About Using VisualBasic.DLL - I knew about this possiblity, Didn;t think of using it though. Besides. Not sure if it would have helped with the problems I faced, But I'm not sure. So i'll check it out and blog it out!
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 8:32 AM by Royo

# re: Practical Parsing Using Groups in Regular Expressions

Thanks for the comment! I fixed it (Doh,How did I not notice??)
Hopefully it makes more sense now :)
Sorry if this confused anyone...
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 8:42 AM by Jamie Cansdale

# re: A Long Day!

On a similar graphic theme... ;)
http://www.mutantdesign.co.uk
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 9:11 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: A Long Day!

Heh. Good one! :)
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 10:50 AM by SBC

# re: About Design


Have a small mirror next to your alarm clock
;-)
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 6:27 PM by Christian Weyer

# re: Oops! Typed Datasets ARE scalable!

OK, after having gone to nearly all of the articles & posts related to this very interesting topic: I find TDS an extreme powerful and also scalable programming model, absolutely. Therefore, the comments I have here are mostly from a comment I posted on Clemens' weblog ...
If I now want to share the data inside an TDS across boundaries - e.g. through a Web Services interface - I have several options. 1) Just pass back an instance of the TDS schema-based class back from your WebMethod. That is easy but always emits the Schema embedded. Is this bad? Well, there might be some cases ... 2) Just serialize the TDS to stream without any schema, just the data (serialized InfoSet) and return this one. Is this bad? Well, in some cases ... Additionally, the thing with interoperability is homehow a weak argument. The WSDL of a TDS-enabled Web Service always exposes the schema - so it is just not my fault that Axis or any other SOAP toolkit currently does not have a magic wizard DataSet class, but they are definitely able to understand me and work with me and my data.
Actually, when exposing TDSes through a Web Services interface I do not have to care about supplying the client with the TDS class - they get generated from the WSDL.

To come to a conclusion, I just want to say that there might not be *the* way for using and passing TDS. I like them because they ease the programming with databases and smoothly fit into the Web Services picture, IMHO.

Cheers,
Christian
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 11:42 PM by Dan F

# re: About Design

I can honestly say I've never looked at a steering wheel and wondered why its got holes in it.
You're wierd :P
Thursday, May 15, 2003 12:04 AM by Paschal

# re: One Cool Menu

Roy this is cool but what's about Usability ;-)

A dropdown in a menu, a bit useless no?
Thursday, May 15, 2003 12:31 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: One Cool Menu

Useless? Maybe, but cool! :)
Thursday, May 15, 2003 1:32 AM by Damit

# re: Please don't spoil it for us

I couldn't agree more! Especially since it opens here (Singapore) on the 25th. =(
Thursday, May 15, 2003 1:46 AM by Jeff Julian

# re: Please don't spoil it for us

Totally agree. I get to see it tonight at 11:10 but I wont say a word to anyone who hasnt seen it, except my boss who always ruins movies for me.
Thursday, May 15, 2003 1:47 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Please don't spoil it for us

Singapore! cool :)
* I like the idea of reaching out ;)*
Thursday, May 15, 2003 1:51 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Please don't spoil it for us

Jeff: heh, Isn't revenge sweet? ;)
Thursday, May 15, 2003 7:46 PM by Yosi Taguri

# re: Blog style change

how did u edit the css??
Thursday, May 15, 2003 9:44 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Blog style change

Blog Admin->Configuration->Skin combo
Thursday, May 15, 2003 11:58 PM by Cengiz

# re: Please don't spoil it for us

i agree!
i am from Turkey and saloons is full
Saturday, May 17, 2003 11:34 AM by julie

# re: UI Threading Helper Classes

first: I'm "Julia" on paper - my birth certificate, my business card, etc. But I've always been called "Julie"
second: this looks like the right approach. Cool!
julie
Saturday, May 17, 2003 8:35 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Saturday, May 17, 2003 8:35 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Sunday, May 18, 2003 4:37 PM by Chris Pirillo

# re: When Blogs Go Commercial

That's Lockergnome. ;)
Sunday, May 18, 2003 8:21 PM by AsbjornM

# re: Editor's Choice Awards

How hard is it to enter <ALT>+C ?
I uses block-mode alot, and find it wery handy.
UltraEdit is my editor of choice these days, before it was Qedit (semware?)
Sunday, May 18, 2003 8:48 PM by Royo

# re: Editor's Choice Awards

erm. ALT+Select is easier :) Even visual studio has it !
Sunday, May 18, 2003 9:21 PM by Royo

# re: When Blogs Go Commercial

What are you referring to? I'll replace :)
Sunday, May 18, 2003 9:50 PM by Dan F

# re: Editor's Choice Awards

of the free editors, I've found ConTEXT to be pretty snazzy. Its missing a *lot* of the UE functionality, but its still bucketloads better than notepad for general purpose colour coded editing. http://www.fixedsys.com/context/
One thing I miss about UE is the column mode. That is a fantastic feature :)
Monday, May 19, 2003 12:08 AM by Don

# re: Editor's Choice Awards

Ok, I know that editors are like religion for ppl, but I'd be remiss if I didn't plug my favorite editor of all time: EditPlus (http://www.editplus.com). I've used this editor for ~5 years now and I know it inside and out. If anyone is searching for a new editor, check it out...
Monday, May 19, 2003 3:26 AM by Jason Bock

# re: UI Threading Helper Classes

One suggestion. While some people may know the code that it takes to set up the handler properly, it may be cool to show what it takes without your class and how your class reduces the code base significantly.

BTW cool idea.

Regards,

Jason
Monday, May 19, 2003 4:08 AM by Oisin

# re: About Productivity

This is so true. Until I met someone like that, the thought never entered my head that someone could be a developer and not be a "power user". I am working with some people like that right now: I once asked one of the developers what he thought of a particular topic and his reply was "You're asking the wrong person, I'm not technical". Unbelievable.

It really astounds me. There _really_ are developers who are not technical. I mean, how can you be a developer and not be passionate about technical things? It's like having an mechanical engineer be completely disinterested in physics. I just don't understand.

Anyone out there shed some light on this?
Monday, May 19, 2003 6:30 AM by TrackBack

# Yosi Taguri's WebLog

Yosi Taguri's WebLog
Monday, May 19, 2003 12:14 PM by Damit

# RE: Please don't spoil it for us

Apparently it opens earlier than I thought. =) Will try to get tickets to go for it..
Monday, May 19, 2003 1:14 PM by chadb

# re: Articles, Articles, Articles!

LOL -

Server Error in '/' Application.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".


<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="Off"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>


Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.


<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>


Monday, May 19, 2003 8:19 PM by SBC

# re: UI Threading - A Very Simple Solution

Good one Roy. Will check it out with an example.
Monday, May 19, 2003 8:21 PM by SBC

# re: Articles, Articles, Articles!

There's no C# in the drop-down list...
;-(
Monday, May 19, 2003 9:20 PM by Yosi Taguri

# re: I'm In!

I'm in for 8:00 am.. ;)
Monday, May 19, 2003 10:17 PM by Rob Cannon

# re: UI Threading - A Very Simple Solution

It seems like this bit of code would be an ideal thing to be hidden via a custom attribute. There was an MSDN article about writing interceptors a couple of issues ago. I'll have to look it up and see what is possible.
Monday, May 19, 2003 10:23 PM by Royo

# re: UI Threading - A Very Simple Solution

Exactly my thoughts! We'll see who gets there first ... ;)
Monday, May 19, 2003 10:31 PM by Tim Marman

# re: I'm In!

How do I get on that list? :)
Monday, May 19, 2003 10:56 PM by Royo

# re: I'm In!

Erm, I suppose I registered at some conference I attended or something. other than that, I have no idea how they got to me..
Tuesday, May 20, 2003 6:08 AM by TrackBack

# Julia Lerman Blog

Julia Lerman Blog
Tuesday, May 20, 2003 8:46 AM by Addy Santo

# re: UI Threading - A Very Simple Solution

Before diving too deep into interceptors and ContextObjects (and their related side effects such as insanity) take a look at this, it might be close to what you had in mind:

http://www.fawcette.com/vsm/2002_09/magazine/columns/blackbelt/default_pf.asp

-Addy

Wednesday, May 21, 2003 6:12 PM by Andrew Stopford

# re: The Books I Really Really Want

I have 6 of the 13 books listed, not bad :D
Friday, May 23, 2003 2:12 AM by Addy Santo

# re: The Right People For The Right Job

Sounds like a company I know... ;)
Friday, May 23, 2003 2:23 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: The Right People For The Right Job

Sounds like A LOT of companies I know, Addy :)
Friday, May 23, 2003 2:41 AM by Greg Robinson

# re: The Right People For The Right Job

For the most part I agree with you. One thing to remember though, unless given the chance, how will you know if you can succeed? I am with a VERY small group now and we all wear many hats. I am learning and having a lot of fun and it is opening other doors for me. I just wish i could close this DBA door and take it this DBA hat!
Friday, May 23, 2003 2:51 AM by Chad Osgood

# re: The Right People For The Right Job

I left a large company with a large development team because of exactly what makes you queasy. I worked in a team that had a dedicated group/individual for every task, some granular enough to be performed by a single individual. I was rather tired of the "assembly line development" strategy, so I left for a smaller company where I could indeed wear multiple hats. I of course agree with the developers->marketing reference, but in consulting you HAVE to do almost everything.

I prefer it this way. Nothing was more frustrating to me than limiting my abilities by making me sit through developer tedium each day.
Friday, May 23, 2003 9:25 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: The Right People For The Right Job

I'm not saying that a person can't own more than one hat, I'm saying not *everyone* is up to the task , yet companies accept an employee to a specific task based only on who's available, and not based on that person's skill set or lack there of...
Friday, May 23, 2003 10:57 PM by Mads Nissen

# re: The Right People For The Right Job

Note that these observations are always done by people below the people in question, in the organization. Otherwise you'd get rid of them right?<br><br>And although I totally agree with you on this one (and feel veery familiar), it can sometimes be necissary for a PM to make unpopular choices.. just another aspect of it all.. But indeed, lousy people are really annoying, especially when they're your boss:)
Friday, May 23, 2003 11:12 PM by Mads Nissen

# re: The Books I Really Really Want

I just bought Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler. Can't wait to get through it.. Looks great!
Saturday, May 24, 2003 2:38 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: The Books I Really Really Want

Ahh. I'll need to get that one....
Sunday, May 25, 2003 1:09 AM by Kenneth LeFebvre

# re: The Right People For The Right Job

Sounds like you would really enjoy this article:

http://crystalmethodologies.org/articles/panlc/peopleasnonlinearcomponents.html

Sunday, May 25, 2003 9:16 PM by Dave

# re: Microsoft Internet Controls Life Saver

Is there a link to the article?
Sunday, May 25, 2003 9:17 PM by Royo

# re: Microsoft Internet Controls Life Saver

oops! fixed :)
Monday, May 26, 2003 1:53 AM by SBC

# re: .Net Debugging Resources

Good one Roy. I had a 'debugging' posting recently - http://dotnetweblogs.com/sbchatterjee/posts/7189.aspx. John Robbins 'BugSlayer' column is another good source - for e.g., http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/02/Bugslayer/default.aspx
Monday, May 26, 2003 2:10 AM by SBC

# re: Microsoft Internet Controls Life Saver

http://dotnetweblogs.com/sbchatterjee/posts/7583.aspx
Monday, May 26, 2003 6:45 AM by TrackBack

# SBC DotNet Weblog

SBC DotNet Weblog
Monday, May 26, 2003 8:42 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, May 26, 2003 8:42 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, May 26, 2003 8:42 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, May 26, 2003 8:42 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, May 26, 2003 8:42 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, May 26, 2003 8:42 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 12:13 AM by Jeff Julian

# re: BlogWear

I ordered mine :)
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 4:35 AM by Robert Scoble

# re: PeopleWare

Weird, my mentor here gave that book and I read most of it last night. Totally agree with you, though.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 4:47 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: PeopleWare

It's cool to hear that MS is using this book in its culture. It says a lot. Of all of the people I've met in various companies (in israel) only 1 or 2 knew about this book. Sad.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 6:30 AM by Paul Gielens

# re: PeopleWare

Thnx for the tip.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 6:38 AM by Sam Gentile

# re: PeopleWare

This is a must-read for all software people. I read the first edition aboutb 10 years ago and read it time and time again.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 6:56 AM by Nino Benvenuti

# re: PeopleWare

I whole-heartedly agree, Roy. I first read this a few years ago, it changed my perspective on some things. A must-read for any developer.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:30 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:30 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:30 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:30 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:30 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 6:03 PM by Frans Bouma

# re: About Dynamic Plug-in Discovery And AppDomains

Good post. Thanks for the info :)
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:32 PM by SBC

# re: .Net Developer Journal May Issue PDF download

Most of the stuff from Fawcette is pretty much free (but the content is a bit dry at times). http://www.fawcette.com/
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 9:36 PM by Royo

# re: .Net Developer Journal May Issue PDF download

Yeah. But the good thing that there's A LOT of it :)
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 10:59 PM by Fabrice

# Chris Brumme

The following post has a high value to understand what happens:
http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/cbrumme/PermaLink.aspx/2fad6a65-3ced-49b4-ae8b-c4068bad25fc
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 11:09 PM by Royo

# re: Create More Readable Code By Interface Prefixes

Yes, I've read this article once, but could link it to this behavior.
At thought I thought there were some performance implications using this notation, but Chris's post says nothing about that.
It *does* mention performance implications when implicitly implementing an interface Vs. *explicitly* implementing it(i.e declaring ":IMyInterface" Vs. no declaration)
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 11:40 PM by Uwe Thomas

# re: Create More Readable Code By Interface Prefixes

I more like the feature of VS 2003:
When you type the ':IConfigurationSectionHandler' behind the class name, there is a little tooltip saying 'Press tab to implememnt stubs'. This way you get the complete implementaion within a #region

For your method be aware that the explicit interface implementation is not syntactic shuggar of C#.
The resulting IL is different and you even can have both versions (with and without explicit mention of the interface) at the same time.

The disadvantage from the handling point of view is, that you can call these functions only if you have an pointer of interface type. A pointer of the class type is not sufficient and you often have to cast to the interface first.

Wednesday, May 28, 2003 1:22 AM by Mike Gunderloy

# re: .Net Developer Journal May Issue PDF download

You can also get MCP Magazine as a PDF; signup at http://subscribe.101com.com/mcpmag/digsub/?p=enews , sample issue at http://101offer.com/de/?e=ptsang@101com.com&i=0305_mcp&m=mcp&D=4/23/2003 (full disclosure: I'm a contributing editor for MCP Magazine).

SD Times is also available for download, and if you go through their subscription qualification process, you can get them via e-mail. http://www.sdtimes.com/
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 3:29 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Create More Readable Code By Interface Prefixes

Thanks for the good tip, Uwe.
It's a keeper :)
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 6:17 AM by Richard

# re: Paper Prototyping

I really like some of the things you have to say in your blog, but why bother putting references to stuff Joel recommends in yours (other than to get the Amazon commission). If I want to know what Joel recommends, I'll subscribe to his blog (which I do)?

Wednesday, May 28, 2003 6:27 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Paper Prototyping

Hey Richard.
First, Thanks for your comment.

Second,
Not all the people that read my blog read Joel. I quote lots of stuff by lots of people, taking into account that if it's cool enough for me to email my work mates about, it's cool enough to blog about.

Third,
If I see a good book that I can heartily recommend, I'll recommend it, even though it's a quote.
That's excatly the reason I have a post category named "original .Net content" and another named ".Net quotations".
This way you can just concentrate on the original stuff. (You can even have an RSS feed to just that category!)
Plus - If I can get a commission on someone buying it through me, all the better. Since I'll only recommend stuff I believe in, I have no problem promoting books through my blog.
as a developer I'd sure as hell pay a lot more credibilty to what another developer like me recommends than some book site. If that developer gets a commission when I buy the book - good for him/her.

hope this helps clear things :)
Roy
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 2:25 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 6:34 PM by Shawn A. Van Ness

# How to enumerate the named capturing groups in a regex?

Hi Roy,

First off, if you were using the regex-based C# colorizer that Wes H and I have been working on, that anglebracket bug was my fault. Sorry! ;)

But that's not why I'm writing... or actually yes, it is. I was trying to add a feature to that same product, one which would ultimately require "reflecting" on a user-entered regex to get a list of named capturing groups.

Short of scanning a regex pattern with a regex (ugh!) I can't seem to find a way to do that.

IOW, it looks like although GroupCollection allows us to index by string, it doesn not allow us to enumerate by string.

You may have more experience than me, in this area -- am I missing something?

Wednesday, May 28, 2003 6:59 PM by Royo

# re: Practical Parsing Using Groups in Regular Expressions

Hey Shawn.
Actually, I Copy-Pasting from VS.NET into the editor.
Second, As for your question, It seems a pretty complicated case, and off the top of my head, I can't think of a better way than parsing Regex patterns with Regex patterns :)

However, If i'll come up with something , I'll let you know about it :)
I suggest, If you havn't yet, Trying to post on the Regex Mailing list from ASPAlliance.com
The folks there might help...
They have more experience than me on this subject.
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 9:38 PM by Leonard

# re: Using Memory Errors to Attack a Virtual Machine

Knowing that Smartcards have serious security features incorporated into them, I find it hard to believe that this type of attack would be sucessfull against a smart card. Take into consideration that most JAVA cards have current sensors built into them that automaticaly reset the card if 'unnatural' conditions occur on the card's circuitry. Heck they even have light sensors that erase the secure storage locations on the card, if the device is tampered with and exposed to light. I think that seeing is believing when it comes to this type of attack...
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 9:57 PM by Dave

# re: About Blogging Etiquette and Inline Product Promotions

I must be missing something here. Weblogs are definitely NOT professional-for-profit endeavors, right? So exactly what does this imply?

IMHO it means everything you post has a personal slant. Code of conduct? None needed. Okay, since this weblog is part of dotnetweblogs.com you may have some rules, but that's about it. If you want to plug your latest book, software release or MP3 you have every right to.

Trust me, if you end up just talking sales pitches, the traffic to your weblog will fall off dramatically.

I subscibed to your RSS feed weeks ago and will continue to. I read Joel's too. WHen you posted about his last rant I basically skipped over it because I already knew about it. Just like any other reader is able to.

Keep blogging like you have been. You're doing a great job.
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 10:35 PM by Royo

# re: About Blogging Etiquette and Inline Product Promotions

Hey Dave.
Thanks for the positive feedback :).
However, I still think there should be such a thing as an code of conduct , even an unspoken one (Which I think most of us adhere to anyway).
I know that when I read (developer) blogs I like to know that they are "authentic" and without hidden agendas.
I want it all on the table. If i ever discover that someone is "working" me about something I'm reading, I'll never go back.
A good example would be those semi-news articles in the papers that are actually ads that look like articles.
You really have to look closely to find out if what you're reading is legit. That toally annoys me.
I don't want that happening to me in BlogLand.
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 11:38 PM by Jason

# re: About Blogging Etiquette and Inline Product Promotions

I agree with most of what you're saying, Roy, and I think you've got a great site that usually adds a ton of value to my reading for the day. Dave makes an excellent point as well that blogs by definition are a reflection of your own ideas and opinions.

"I only recommend books I would buy myself, hence I feel I lose no credibility when I get commissions from books I refer to"

A statement like that, though, isn't in keeping with the spirit of personal expression though. If you were recommending a paper, application, MP3 or book that you'd actually bought/read/used, and were offering insight into its value and application that would be one thing. If you haven't, though, then cross posting something like Joel's recommendation isn't adding much value to anyone other than changing the affiliate ID in the link.

I realize I'm free to skip over it...but with the flurry of posts recently about how to handle signal-to-noise in arenas like this, I think it's something to try and keep top of mind when making a fresh post.

Keep up the great work...and if the statement I quoted was simply misstated and you have read the work then feel free to ignore this mini-rant :)
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 11:58 PM by Kenneth LeFebvre

# re: About Blogging Etiquette and Inline Product Promotions

I agree with Dave. Blogs are about people expressing themselves and there's no way to formulate guidelines to constrain such free expression.

What would composing a Code of Conduct accomplish? I'll read the blogs I'm interested in because of the content, not because of any particular association with a Code of Conduct.

On the other hand, your desire to formulate such a Code is a very legitimate aspect of your own personal expression... ;) I'm sure, sooner or later, someone will write one. And someone else will write another. And someone will try to organize all bloggers into an empire. And all of this will be part of the nature of people expressing themselves...

...and it will all be fun to watch!
Thursday, May 29, 2003 1:27 AM by Royo

# re: .Net Developer Journal May Issue PDF download

Thanks for the good info guys :)
The question now lies in whether I'll get enough time to read it all ;)
Thursday, May 29, 2003 1:43 AM by Jesse Ezell

# re: About Blogging Etiquette and Inline Product Promotions

Putting affiliate links in your posts is kind of cheezy if you ask me. I don't mind if you get a few bucks if I like the book, but I would bypass it all together, simply because of the potential for someone misunderstanding my intentions. Remember, connotation is just as important as denotation, if not more.
Thursday, May 29, 2003 2:37 AM by Tim Marman

# re: About Blogging Etiquette and Inline Product Promotions

I agree with most things said here.

I have no problems putting affiliate codes on Amazon on weblogs, and when making personal recommendations that's more than fine. It's not like you're making a significant amount of money even if a lot do buy it, and more often than not it's just going to go to yet another book you can review, in which case you're again helping the community by providing another opinion before I/we go out and buy it ourselves.

That being said - did you actually read Paper Prototyping? :)
Thursday, May 29, 2003 2:38 AM by Chad Osgood

# re: About Knowledge Blocks

I completely empathize man; I'm a bibliophile. Knowledge is empowering, and there's no greater feeling of empowerment for inquisitive people than acquiring new knowledge, imo. My only trouble is that I have a tendency to read only the "interesting" parts of a book. I actually very rarely read a book front->back, but then again, a lot of technical books have chapters better suited for a JITKA (JIT knowledge acquisition) reference.
Thursday, May 29, 2003 2:46 AM by Royo

# re: About Blogging Etiquette and Inline Product Promotions

Tim: No I havn't read it, But as I said - I wouldn;t have recommended it if I would not have wanted this book on my bookshelf.
Still, I'm trying not to cross the thin line of credibility here. Perhaps from now on I'll think more before I put referrer links in a post. Maybe that will even give more credibility to my book recommendations..?
I'm saying "perhaps" here because maybe I won't be able to live up to my promise on this one. If I see something I like, I feel a need to post about it. And while I'm alaredy posting about an amazon book, why not put a referrer link on it?
Oh well, My head is starting to spin about this whole issue.
Maybe I shouldn;t be this concerend with what everyone else thinks about me?
I find that almost impossible to do...
Thursday, May 29, 2003 4:30 AM by TrackBack

# Loosely Coupled

Loosely Coupled
Thursday, May 29, 2003 4:48 AM by Dave

# re: About Blogging Etiquette and Inline Product Promotions

Roy, it sounds like you DO have an implicit code. Believe me, it shines through. No need to be explicit for just that reason. As you said yourself, if you feel that hidden agenda shining through on someone's weblog you - and many more like you - will simply never come back. That is exactly the point of my initial comment.

Now, for me there is something implicit also. My lack of a URL due to a lack of a weblog. What this results in is my comment name lacks that 'link' flavor. DO I sometimes wonder if that hurts me? That people wonder about my hidden agenda? Certainly. Unfortunately I learned a while back that I lack the discipline and subject focus to really commit to a weblog. But you see, just like you, I also am concerned with what everyone else thinks of me!
Thursday, May 29, 2003 7:21 AM by Adam Hill

# re: About Knowledge Blocks

Its cool to know there are other people in the world that can *enjoy* going to a book store with other people.

I was in downtown Austin Texas a few weeks ago at a Starbucks and thought to myself - "Wouldn't it be cool to go back to school." What triggered this you may ask - All the people in the store were *reading* I dont get that up here in Dallas.

I really hate (as my friend put it) "filling up all available silence with structured noise".

adam...
Thursday, May 29, 2003 11:31 PM by Dave

# re: Congratulations ScottW

Just commented on Scott's weblog. Roy, my RSS feed from you is borken. SHarpReader 0.9.0.3 only got half the changes, and your's wasn't one of them.

Thank goodness the dotnetweblogs RSS feed still works. That's how I knew you posted some after the change. I had hoped the ones that broke were blogs with no new posts, but yours proves otherwise.

Sorry for spamming the comments, but I think yours is one of the best weblogs I subscribe to - and thought I'd try a second way to get the message to Scott.
Thursday, May 29, 2003 11:34 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Congratulations ScottW

Hey Dave.
Hopefully, Scott is already aware of the problem, and is working on it :)
p.s
Thanks :)
Friday, May 30, 2003 12:38 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Congratulations ScottW

Plus, You can just change the link to the rss feed in sharpreader -
DotnetWeblobg.Com/ - >Weblogs.Asp.Net/
And you should be in the clear
Friday, May 30, 2003 2:11 AM by Marc

# re: Rent My ... What??

I fear. Much.
Friday, May 30, 2003 2:18 AM by crowdozer

# spellcheck... FreeTextBox

FreeTextBox (http://www.revjon.com/ftb/) is a .NET web control that integrates with a free Internet Explorer component called ieSpell. (http://www.iespell.com/)
Friday, May 30, 2003 3:10 AM by Royo

# re: Donny Mack Reveals Hidden Developer Secrets

Cool! Thanks for the tip :)
Maybe we can get Scott to use it..?
Friday, May 30, 2003 4:10 AM by John Porcaro

# re: About "Personal" Blogging

Funny story I’ll post someday. I had an informational interview with someone where we got into a pretty heated debate about how to go about the job, and there couldn’t have been more of a disconnect. I immediately blogged about it, of course with a self-righteous rant.

I wanted to send a link to the blog to a blogging co-worker and friend. She happened to have the same first name as the person I interviewed with, and Outlook picked the interviewer’s email name instead of my co-worker. Luckily, it was late at night, and I caught it before it was read, but if I hadn’t, it would have been a mini-disaster. As it happened, I went back in and edited the entry: (http://johnporcaro.blogspot.com/2003_04_01_johnporcaro_archive.html#92461579).

And I got mail from the interviewer the next day saying she saw my blog and thought it was interesting…
Friday, May 30, 2003 4:18 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About "Personal" Blogging

Heh. Good one :)
Friday, May 30, 2003 6:02 AM by Alex Lowe

# re: Congratulations ScottW

Scott should be an MVP and I'm sure he will be awarded one in the future. The way the MVP program works is a bit dumb/odd in that they only choose MVPs once a year (and of course they've already picked them for this year (2003). I'm confident he will attain MVP status for next year.
Friday, May 30, 2003 10:39 AM by TrackBack

# mads studentblog

mads studentblog
Friday, May 30, 2003 2:34 PM by Jesse Ezell

# re: New Skin, New Host...

Working on getting this working with mozilla... a little different script and an external CSS file (view source for the changes).
Friday, May 30, 2003 2:39 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: New Skin, New Host...

Ah. This is much better!!! Good work :) Thanks Dan for your help , and jesse for the great Idea.
Friday, May 30, 2003 2:53 PM by Scott Watermasysk

# re: New Skin, New Host...

yes, please use an external style sheet. :)
Friday, May 30, 2003 7:32 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Friday, May 30, 2003 7:32 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Saturday, May 31, 2003 10:12 AM by Dan

# re: SxS War Story

What does SxS stand for? :)
Saturday, May 31, 2003 10:16 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: SxS War Story

Side-By-Side (both 1.0 and 1.1 of the .net framework on the same machine)
Sunday, June 01, 2003 5:02 AM by DonXML

# re: I'm a Configuration Manager... I Think.

Roy,
I’m currently helping a large pharma do the exact same thing. You can contact me offline if you have any questions. The first thing I recommended was creating a Architecture Portal using Sharepoint Team Services. If your company has a MSDN Universal subscription, a license is included in that. This becomes your home, and all projects, and reusable parts (whether that be a component or a class) need to be documented here. Once you and the teams get use to working thru the portal, things become self documenting (for the most part). The biggest obstacle I’ve found is figuring out how to fund development of reusable components. Usually it takes more time to develop a component with reusability in mind, and time is the one thing most projects don’t have. They usually don’t mind donating code to the cause of reusability, but not at the cost of time on their project. Then you also have the cost of support for the components. The question is “Where do you get that money?” If you have a strong architectural group, which has final say on if a project goes into production, then you can at least twist some arms to get them to build the reusable components, but someone still needs to support them.

DonXML
Sunday, June 01, 2003 8:09 AM by SBC

# re: .Net Developer Journal May Issue PDF download

http://weblogs.asp.net/sbchatterjee/posts/8105.aspx
Sunday, June 01, 2003 1:35 PM by SBC

# re: Performance Tuning and Optimizing ASP.NET Application

I use 'Performance Testing .NET Web Apps'. It has a good chapter on perf analysis of managed code - http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/5788.asp
Monday, June 02, 2003 4:22 AM by Tim Marman

# re: In-Your-Face

Marketing, man :) "Teasers" help build the hype.
Monday, June 02, 2003 4:23 AM by Marc

# re: In-Your-Face

The downside of bloggin is that techies keep things to selves about as well as sieves hold water....

And his posting drop me nuts too.
Monday, June 02, 2003 4:24 AM by Tim Marman

# re: In-Your-Face

And btw - I'm getting a JScript error on line 96 when I try to load your page, which looks like some code for your stats stuff.

I'm on a fairly locked down IE6 browser now on XP Pro.
Monday, June 02, 2003 1:24 PM by SBC

# re: I'm a Configuration Manager... I Think.

This may interest you - http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1065920,00.asp
Tuesday, June 03, 2003 2:33 AM by Oisin

# re: About "Personal" Blogging

A great reason to set up a rule in Outlook to delay delivery by 1 or 2 minutes, like I have. I have too many similar names in my address book to let my instincts take over (click click click, ctrl+enter, d'oh).

1 Tools > Rules Wizard...
2 click New...
3 choose "Start with blank Rule", select "Apply this rule after sending"
4 click Next... do not choose a rule at this step
5 click Next... click "yes" to prompt
6 choose "defer delivery by a number of minutes" rule, click "a number of", enter delay time
Tuesday, June 03, 2003 5:13 AM by julie

# re: Medieval Times

Roy-
Not on my sharpreader my battery died and I forgot my power supply so I didn't see the link to this. But I have found it!! I will definitely respond another time. Chaos ensues today. I'm so incredibly flattered and grateful for you comment about the vtdotnet site. I have done the entire thing myself from design to code to content. It's almost another form of blogging for me because I just put whatever content I want on there.
Tuesday, June 03, 2003 5:54 AM by Nino Benvenuti

# re: About "Personal" Blogging

A little late to the party here, but...

Roy, I agree with you and Scoble. Especially now that my company has been acquired , I find myself more and more hesitant to blog... :/
Wednesday, June 04, 2003 1:57 AM by Greg R

# re: About Blogging Patterns

stick with the smootj jazz stations! :-)...I do!
Wednesday, June 04, 2003 1:58 AM by Greg R

# re: About Blogging Patterns

BTW, Blogger has voice blogging capability.
Wednesday, June 04, 2003 2:32 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Blogging Patterns

Neat! I haven't heard (of) anyone using it though. Have you?
Wednesday, June 04, 2003 7:17 AM by Phil Weber

# re: About Blogging Patterns


"An analogous structure to the blogging world would be that each caller had their own talk show..."

Gee, do you think why UserLand calls its blogging software "Radio?" ;-)
Wednesday, June 04, 2003 7:21 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Blogging Patterns

huh. That makes sense. DOH
Wednesday, June 04, 2003 11:03 AM by Chad Osgood

# re: IVBUG meeting went well

I've done the same type of thing for my user group in the past, although it wasn't due to lack of electricity :) We have discussion sessions with SIGs that are directed by user group leaders (architecture, ASP.NET, whatever). I too enjoy these more interactive sessions.

I also believe that networking with everyone in the group has proved valuable for all. Many of our members acquired jobs, friends, and resources through our group. Even if I didn't have to be there each month, I'd attend for this reason alone.
Sunday, June 08, 2003 1:48 AM by Mads

# re: Medieval Times

This is why you need to go to the US as I am planning this fall:) Norway is equally "un-cool" on this..
Monday, June 09, 2003 7:33 PM by Darren Neimke

# re: [New Article] Using Regex and The XML Classes To Parse Your Log Files

Nice one Roy :-) Bookmarked!
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 12:14 AM by kpako@yahoo.com (Dare Obasanjo)

# Dare Obasanjo

Roy,
I keep wondering why developers choose to use the DataSet which is a relational data structure which kind off understands XML for their XML processing needs instead of using the XmlDocument which is actually an XML data structure. I'd never think of using the DataSet if I wanted to load and store XML but it seems a lot of developers such as yourself believe this is the way to go.
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 12:29 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: [New Article] Using Regex and The XML Classes To Parse Your Log Files

Dare: The reason I use the Dataset, is to be able to give the user an "SQL like" way of searching, instead of using XPath queris syntax. SQL is a bit more natural. That's the only reason, though. I agree, XMLDocument is the way to go when you want to just load up and search XML stuff..
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 1:49 AM by SBC

# re: Here I Am

You must be a busy guy! I can see that long task list from the MS Project print out on your bulletin board!
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 2:18 AM by Paschal

# re: Here I Am

Roy we know you;re the One ;-)
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 2:19 AM by Paschal

# re: Here I Am

Roy the mechanical old switch that's not really geeky ;-))
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 3:39 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Here I Am

heh, That task list - I have *plenty* of stories about that... :)
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 3:43 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Here I Am

Are the pictures showing OK? I have them flagged as "X"'s for some reason..
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 4:04 AM by Paschal

# re: Here I Am

Roy the pictures are not showing ok
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 4:25 AM by TrackBack

# Datagrid Girl

Datagrid Girl
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 4:25 AM by TrackBack

# Datagrid Girl

Datagrid Girl
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 6:29 AM by Rachel

# re: Here I Am

Pictures aren't showing, but if ya click 'em, the originals load up.
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 6:15 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, June 10, 2003 6:15 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 4:07 AM by Phil Scott

# re: Women Rule

I think you are onto something with the requiring military service for everyone, especially about being less shy about getting into the careers.

Over here in the US, many girls are still pushed towards more away from things like computers by parents, teachers and worse of all: television.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 6:56 AM by Carl Franklin

# re: .Net Rocks Show Do's And Don't's

Just to set the record straight, I think you are referring to the previous week's show with Jorge Oblitas.

He is from Peru, and doesn't speak English very well. The show with Chris Sells was great, I thought.

Carl Franklin
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 6:59 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: .Net Rocks Show Do's And Don't's

Carl, Yeah. That's the one I meant.
I think that show was the only one I didn't enjoy as much as the others.
The one with Chris was excellent :)
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:15 AM by Paschal

# re: Living in a Bubble

I like the tone of your writing, because I feel, excuse me If I am wrong, that like many of people living in Israel, you look forward to find a peaceful solution.
Myself, I am not good too at politics, but I hate people who strongly affirm an opinion without searching a right balance between the truth and the propaganda.
In our virtual (and irreal world) it's like the pointless language 'war' between each camp.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:37 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:37 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:37 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:37 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:37 AM by TrackBack

# Rob Chartier's Excogitation

Rob Chartier's Excogitation
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:37 AM by TrackBack

# Robert McLaws

Robert McLaws
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:43 AM by Jesse Ezell

# re: .Net Rocks Show Do's And Don't's

I thought that Jorge was great (one of my favorite episodes)! It was very interesting to hear a developer's perspective from a place where IT services are a completely different ball game. Please don't discriminate against guests because they have an accent! Some of the most interesting speakers have accents (take Clemens and Ingo, for example, or if we are talking about heavy accents, the guy that did the ObjectSpaces preview at the last TechEd... very entertaining speaker, but he had a heavy french accent).

By the way Carl, you should definately get Clemens on the show! He is one of the best speakers out there and very knowledgable.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 8:09 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: .Net Rocks Show Do's And Don't's

Jesse: I have nothing against heavy accents. I enjoyed greatly the show with Ingo, for example. I just couldn't understand half the show we are currently talking about. From what I got from that episode, Carl coudn't get some of the stuff that guy was saying as well.
I'm sure he's a great guy, and from what I *did* get, he had some cool ideas, but sometimes, you need to make sure that your listeners actually *get* what your guest is talking about.
Please don't make me out as a guy who dislikes accents. I have an accent myself. This is *supposed* to be constructive criticism.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 10:10 AM by JesseEzell

# re: .Net Rocks Show Do's And Don't's

I've heard a lot worse. IMO, his accent wasn't that hard to understand. I don't remember missing anything or having to back up the stream. I thought he spoke English very well (definately a lot better than I speak Spanish). I do remember that there was one or two places where word choice caused a little miscommunication, but that had nothing to do with his accent and really isn't all that uncommon when speaking to people whose native language is not English, and, regarless, two instances of incorrect word choice definately don't make the entire show a lowsy one.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 11:18 AM by Alex

# re: Geek News

I guess I'll join you in geekdom - I had printed it out and taken it to bed too!
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 5:51 PM by Bruce

# re: Women Rule

I do work for Microsoft, and I'm the same way! I have no idea how my wife can watch TV and do work at the same time...
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:51 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: .Net Rocks Show Do's And Don't's

Well, I guess this is where people differ. Some people I'm sure perfectly enjoyed that show, and some didn't as was I. The fact is, that show was harder to understand than most, and that flawed it severely for me.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:57 PM by Enav

# re: Living in a Bubble

What a nice way to put things. Your writing is beatuiful and very touching.
Enav
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 10:20 PM by coacoacoa

# re: BillG Joke

J'adore!
Thursday, June 12, 2003 2:24 AM by Phil Scott

# re: 101 Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Applications

Amazon is saying 3-5 weeks for me before it would ship, but if you go to www.microsoft.com/mspress and find their book you can download the programs and play around with them.

I'm more interesting in seeing what Sean and Scott have about the code than the actual code, but the programs are still kinda fun to fiddle with.
Thursday, June 12, 2003 5:20 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: 101 Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Applications

erm, I found the book, but no code download :(
Friday, June 13, 2003 8:00 PM by Stephane

# re: About Reflector, Encoding, And an Article Error

What about either of these :

1) derive the StringWriter class

public class StringWriterWithEncoding : StringWriter
{
Encoding encoding;

public StringWriterWithEncoding (Encoding encoding)
{
this.encoding = encoding;
}

public override Encoding Encoding
{
get { return encoding; }
}
}


with this class you can specify whatever encoding you like.


2) or use an appropriate memory buffer :

using System.IO;
using System.Xml;

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(); XmlTextWriter tw = new XmlTextWriter(ms,new System.Text.UTF8Encoding());
// -- your xml stuff begins here --tw.WriteStartDocument();
tw.WriteStartElement("...");
tw.WriteEndElement();
tw.WriteEndDocument();
tw.Flush();
tw.Close();
// -- your xml stuff ends here

// convert byte[] to String
String s = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString( ms.GetBuffer() );
MessageBox.Show( s );
Friday, June 13, 2003 10:54 PM by Ziv Caspi

# re: About Reflector, Encoding, And an Article Error

StringWriter writes to strings, whose underlying memory representation is always UTF-16 in the CLR (let's not get into the surrogate pair issue here...).

Thus, if you have StringWriter write to a string, it *will* be UTF-16 whether the first line in the string claims so or not. This is also how MSXML behaves, by the way.

Of course, when you take the string and convert it into a memory buffer in another encoding you need to take care of converting the encoding-providing header, which means extra work to you. Whether this is actually a good design or not is another issue...
Friday, June 13, 2003 10:56 PM by Morten Abrahamsen

# re: About Reflector, Encoding, And an Article Error

I would expect the fact that System.String is unicode has something to do with it :) So, it just won't support another format.

If you want another encoding you should probably use something along the lines of a binary stream.

An UTF8 encoded xml document stored in a UTF16 string doesn't really make much sence now does it :)

Just my 2c!
Saturday, June 14, 2003 12:47 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Reflector, Encoding, And an Article Error

Thanks for all the input guys. Like I said, It seems to just reaffirm what I wrote - You can't make you XML document's header UTF-8 encoded without going through some hoops.
Perhaps this is something that would best be solved using a method of the XMLTextWriter, something like 'SetEncodingHeader(Encoding encoding)' that would allow this without too much hassle..
Saturday, June 14, 2003 4:46 AM by David Pickett

# re: About Reflector, Encoding, And an Article Error

"I would expect the fact that System.String is unicode has something to do with it :)"

Technically, UTF-8 is also Unicode--just a different encoding for it ;).
Saturday, June 14, 2003 5:23 AM by Morten Abrahamsen

# re: About Reflector, Encoding, And an Article Error

I know that UTF-8 is unicode as well.

It's just that in the BCL UTF-16 is referred to as Encoding.Unicode... which is why I wrote that statement.

Anyways, the System.String class is an UTF16 string, so an XmlTextWriter with SetEncodingHeader would only enable you to have an encoding mismatch...

Morty :)
Saturday, June 14, 2003 3:08 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Saturday, June 14, 2003 5:03 PM by TrackBack

# Emitter

Emitter
Saturday, June 14, 2003 11:19 PM by Dave Sussman

# re: Winforms Data Binding Woes

Yeah, you're right, you are missing something 8)

What you do is bind the sub-grid to the relation, and then just set the CurrencyManager.Position to the current index of the list. For example (based on Northwind), assume you have a DataSet (_ds) with two tables (Orders and OrderDetails), and a relationship (CustOrders). The ListBox is bound to Orders, showing the OrderID only (not hugely useful, but it suffices for this example). The set the grid (dgOrderDetails) bindings like so:

dgOrderDetails.SetDataBinding(_ds, "Orders.CustOrders");

In the SelectedIndexChanged event for the list then do this:

CurrencyManager mgr = (CurrencyManager)this.BindingContext[_ds, "Orders"];
mgr.Position = lstOrders.SelectedIndex;

You just set the Position of the CurrencyManager for the parent table, and since there is a table relation (which is tracked by the binding), the sub grid changes, reflecting only the sub-rows for the selected parent row.

Mail me (contact details on daveandal dot net) if you want a full sample.

Dave
Sunday, June 15, 2003 4:55 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Winforms Data Binding Woes

Thanks for the great answer. It does simplify work a lot when working with a listbox.
however, what about when I want to use a TreeView as the Parent Data Source?
I have no way to data bind a treeview, so I use the Tag property of each node to hold a DataRow object. Now, once I have a clicked node, How do i find the correct Index to set the position to?
Sunday, June 15, 2003 7:08 PM by Robert Scoble

# re: Family Vs. Technology

I was. We had a great weekend. Thanks!
Monday, June 16, 2003 3:28 AM by WildHeart'2k3

# re: Funny Behaviour

Easy: 20.45 cannot be represented as a finite power of 2. Therefore the result can only be approximate. I am surprised it's the first time you see this in all your long years of computing...
Monday, June 16, 2003 3:34 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Funny Behaviour

Cool! Thanks fot the quick reply.
As for your surprise - You shouldn't be. There are lots of people with years of experience in software development(much more than me) that have never crossed path with this thing. It's all about the projects you did. There's always a little tidbit that someone would know that another person wouldn't.
Monday, June 16, 2003 3:39 AM by Chad Osgood

# re: Funny Behaviour

It's also worthwhile to note that the expressions "21 - 5.45" and "21 - 20.45" are evaluated at compile-time and emitted into the IL as constants. The constants look like the following:

15.550000000000001
0.55000000000000071
Monday, June 16, 2003 3:49 AM by Phil Scott

# re: Funny Behaviour

More fun with floats:

dim i as single
dim counter as integer
for counter = 1 to 10
i += .1
Console.WriteLine(i)
next

good times.
Monday, June 16, 2003 9:27 AM by Darren Neimke

# re: Funny Behaviour

I *learnt* this a couple of years ago when I was messing around with the following snippet of Javascript:


var openingBalance = parseFloat(1234.00)
var closingBalance = parseFloat(openingBalance - 1)

// now add 10 lots of .1 to bring our closing
// balance back up to our opening balance
for(var i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
closingBalance += 0.1
}

// What will it be?
// Are they equivalent or not??
alert(openingBalance == closingBalance) ;

return true ;
Monday, June 16, 2003 10:31 AM by Chad Osgood

# re: My Baby Hits The Road Tomorrow

Really nice UI man!
Monday, June 16, 2003 1:20 PM by Mathematician

# re: Funny Behaviour

It is just not right to use any comparison operation between float type figures the mentioned way.
In computer world it has to be
(floatValue1 - floatValue2)< Epsilon
where Epsilon is some small quantity, for ex. 0.00000001 - it will be your calculation accuracy.

The very first "21 - 20.45" problem is the typical in computer mathematics.

For the similar reason it is sometimes not possible, believe me or not, to calculate a determinant of a 3d matrix on a computer, but it would take just 3 minutes to find it by a human brain.

That problems in math is called "error of a method".
Monday, June 16, 2003 9:24 PM by Tim Howard

# re: My Baby Hits The Road Tomorrow

Sweetness. Good luck, man!

Also, I was wondering if you could help me out a bit... I'm a poor college student living in the middle of nowhere... I know a bit of Java, a lot of HTML, and I've got the gist of XML... I was wondering, what should I focus on if I wanted to get a real job in the tech industry? (Not something that any fool with an A+ can do, something where I don't have to wear shoes to work, where the caffine's free, and a life is optional)

My problem is that my local college doesn't teach anything, programming-wise. And quite simply, I don't know where to start. No car, no job, and not knowing anyone in the business is kinda putting me in a corner.

Thanks in advance, and good luck on your tracer!
Monday, June 16, 2003 9:29 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: My Baby Hits The Road Tomorrow

Hey Tim. Thanks for the compliment!
As for your question, it's a pity you didn't leave your email. It would be easier to contact me directly to ask. I'll post an answer as a blog post later in the day.
Monday, June 16, 2003 9:56 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: My Baby Hits The Road Tomorrow

Thanks chad! :)
Monday, June 16, 2003 10:47 PM by Robert Hurlbut

# re: "How Do I Get From Here To There?"

Great advice!
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 12:32 AM by M M

# re: "How Do I Get There From Here?"


Quote
--
"o I want to experience working with [specific field of expertise such as hardware, software,real-time,embedded,web…]"
--

In my opinion, one of the major problems with most college fresh graduates is a lack of direction in the above context. Internship in tech/dev positions matters a lot (from what I've seen), particularly if one can demonstrate a high level of responsibility given at that point.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 2:45 AM by Ashok

# re: More About Desktops

just saw your desktop on http://pnavy.com/royo/desktops showing reflector as a plugin to VS.NET. i was able to setup reflector as an external tool for vs.net

how to set it up as a plugin?
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 3:12 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: More About Desktops

There's a Reflector Add-in that you can download somewhere...
install it and voila!
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 9:43 AM by Robert Scoble

# re: Scoble, Come Back!

Heh!

My wife will get you for that.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 12:33 PM by Marcus

# re: "How Do I Get There From Here?"

I will use this a my guide to a better life ;)

I never tought it would be this many steps to get a job these days but i guessed wrong!

Thanks for execellent advices!

Best regards
Marcus
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 12:39 PM by Marcus

# re: "How Do I Get There From Here?"

One thing, You said "Start a blog about what your going through(if you'll learn .Net – start a blog here!)" ..

But a person that is learning .net doesn't have really that much to write or do you mean it is a excellent place to put out questions and get excellent answers to them? ;)

Sorry for filling your comments..

Best regards
Marcus
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 7:53 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: "How Do I Get There From Here?"

Hey Marcus. What I meant is that if you're learning .Net, a blog is a great way to share with people about new stuff that you learn, not just ask questions. So, if you've just learned how to make something witha DataGrid, for example, and you think somebody else might benefit from that knowledge, or if you've overcome some difficult problem. If you encountered it, someone else probably has too, and would love to hear how you overcame it, without going through all the hoops you had to go through...
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 9:10 PM by Frans Bouma

# re: About Interfaces

In a slashdot thread a year or so ago a lot of these things were discussed, particularly about software interfaces. Someone in that thread suddenly said: "Why do I have to click 'save' in a wordprocessor? Isn't it obvious I'm typing the text in to store it?" Excellent thinking, which totally makes todays solutions worthless crap. That remark was about the core of what is truly useful: do not worry about the obvious.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 9:20 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Interfaces

Huh. Nice thought :)
Tuesday, June 17, 2003 11:39 PM by Dave

# re: About Interfaces

Actually your Excel quirk isn't entirely correct. If you CTRL-C then RETURN (copy and paste?) you only get one time. But if you CTRL-C then CTRL-V (copy and insert?) you can do it as many times as you wish. I'm not sure where I picked this up from, but it's been a major time saver for me.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 12:05 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Interfaces

Dave: What I'm talking about is that you *can * multiple paste as long as the cell you CTRL+C'ed is highlighted with that blinking rectangle thingie. What if you COpy a cell, then go to another cell and press DELETE on that cell? can you still paste that cell you copied?
nope. gone forever....
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 2:07 AM by Kenneth LeFebvre

# re: About Interfaces

Another thing that really bothers me, and Microsoft does this too much, too-- when you get a dialog box that asks you "Do you want to do this or that?" and then you get YES/NO or OK/CANCEL buttons... The buttons should be the actual answer to the question!
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 2:46 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Interfaces

Kenneth - Yeah I know what you mean. You *know* you're doing something wring when you have to explain which button does what...
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 2:53 AM by Jayme

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Maybe this will help?
http://beta.experts-exchange.com/Databases/Microsoft_SQL_Server/Q_10350313.html
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:09 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

If you have to rely on the next value in a sequence, you are in serious trouble. The sequences 'NextVal' is to store a new value in a column which values are retrieved from a sequence, it shouldn't be used for something else. 'CurrentVal' or 'Curr' is then used like 'SCOPE_IDENTITY()' (sqlserver2000) or '@@IDENTITY' (sqlserver 7).

Sequences are nice, but if possible you always should rely on unique data that is semantically part of the entity, i.e. already in an attribute.

You can simulate sequences using functions (sqlserver 2000) which update a table with a serialized transaction. Thus your table contains 1 row per sequence, and the function uses a serialized transaction (thus has unique access guaranteed) to retrieve and update the sequence number. When the sequence function fails, the insert will then also fail.

It's a tricky business and when doing it by yourself it can be slower than when the RDBMS does it. How especially does your code rely on the NExtVal function?
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:13 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Frans: Not using it to INSERT or anything, i AM using unique IDENTITY columns. This ID is used by some of our C++ code to map unique objects in memory. I know, it's not the best design, but that's how it is with legacy code. Too ugly to change now ....
btw, Jayme: Your solution seems to be the one. We'll try it and see what happens.
Thanks !:)
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:20 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

the MAX(id) doesn't work in a multi-user environment. If after the SELECT MAX(field)... another insert is done in the same table, you have double keys. The only solution is a separate table with own counters and a function which uses a serialized transaction.

There are also issues with DBCC statements in stored procedures. I'd not use these statements in production code, since they are ment for DBA's.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:26 AM by Jesse Ezell

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

MAX(id)+1 isn't exactly the best idea, because what if the last row was deleted? Now your id generation is off. Additionally, you can't be gaurenteed that ID. What happens if between the query and the update someone inserts a new record? I guess you could make sure the table was locked down until you update, but performance is sucky that way.

A much better idea is not to rely on having to know the identity until after it has been placed in the DB and you can query it with a SQL statement, or to use GUIDs or something that you can calculate ahead of time (or event a GetID function that pulls IDs out of a DB table or from some other source...seen that done before for this type of thing). Of course, if it is legacy code, then I guess you are stuck...
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:27 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Frans: Yeah, I'm aware of the GetMax()+1 issue with multi user scenarios. But from what I gather it looks like it's impossible to do it withoug going through a million hoops. That's toatlly annoying. Why is this basic functionality not implemented in SQL server? boo.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:28 AM by Jesse Ezell

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Looks like Frans beat me to it. Great minds think alike I guess ;-)
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:31 AM by Jesse Ezell

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

It isn't there, because you should never do such things.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:35 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Jesse: So I guess ORACLE got it all wrong when they added this feature? Better yet: They Added a Multi-Column Sequence, allowing you to have multiple tables implementing one unique sequence.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:37 AM by Eric Kepes

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

"Why is this basic functionality not implemented in SQL server?" Because its not supportable in a multi-user environment. Its not really a very simple operation, when you think about it. IDENTITY works because it is easy (?) to implement - all you need to do is lock the table, look at the previous record, add one, insert, and then unlock the table. It easily passes the ACID test, while what you are proposing does not.

If you don't like it, you can always port to Oracle. I hear they are selling db licenses cheap. :)
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:37 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Jesse :)

Roy: it's not that big of a deal I think. I get the feeling it's more of a scheduling problem in your code: which does what first. The row inserted gets a key which is also the id of an object? but the object has to get the id first before the row does?

Isn't it better to indeed just drop the 'identity' flag from the column and implement the sequence then from code? (f.e. by calling a serialized transaction-based stored proc which returns a new unique key. That key is used for the column and is guaranteed unique in hte database, plus is used in the object. You can keep your db format then.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:42 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Eric: It *should* be supportable, that's my point. No, I *don't* want to move to oracle just because I don;t have this functionality.

Frans: We were trying not to change the legacy code... But it seems like this is what we'll do.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:43 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Eric: Oracle's sequencename.NextVal works also in a multi-user environment (If I may believe the Oracle docs :) . Calling that function will update the current value of the central stored sequence. However NextVal is not a 'peek' function, it's an increase. So when another thread calls nextval again, the value is incremented again. If you use it wrong, then indeed the multi-user aspect is killing you :)
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:48 AM by TrackBack

# heLP .Net Blog

heLP .Net Blog
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:48 AM by TrackBack

# heLP .Net Blog

heLP .Net Blog
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:56 AM by Darrell

# re: About Interfaces

The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465067107/qid=1055948001/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-3407400-8481610?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:58 AM by Eric Kepes

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Frans: That was the point I guess I failed to make. I have to agree with you, if its important that the application have a value before the data is inserted, then the application should accept the responsibility for generating this value and ensuring uniqueness.

Roy: When you get down to it, there are many ways to implement Identity/Sequence, MS chose to integrate it into the table itself, while Oracle chose to set it up as a standalone entity. In most cases, it probably doesn't make a difference, but in your case, it obviously does. I wouldn't say that it makes Microsoft's implementation wrong or lacking, just different. In theory, you could build a mechanism to do this as an external DLL, but that would probably take a lot of time.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 3:58 AM by Paul Nicholls

# re: Free Full Tech Books

Wow, that's great... but it can't be legal, surely? I've just bought Programming C# by Jesse Liberty...
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 4:14 AM by Chad Brockman

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Why not use GUID's? You get a reduction on database load because you don't have to go to the database to generate new keys...

To get the same type of quid string on each system I do:

.net : System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString("N")
SQL Server : (replace(convert(varchar(50),newid()),'-',''))
Oracle: sys_quid()

imho, sequences are awful... I’d much rather have a distributed key generation mechanism…


Wednesday, June 18, 2003 4:16 AM by Marcus

# re: "How Do I Get There From Here?"

Hey Roy.

Thanks. I am still to far away to be blogging about my .net skills. i can do simple things like a guestbook or a simple login but it doesn't follow any patterns or anything.

But reading your blog and a lot of others blogs keeps motivating me to get skilled and get my 5 minute of blogfame ;)

/Marcus
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 5:04 AM by dennis

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

if you have Sql2k then use scope_identity() instead of @@identity...if the table has a trigger, which inserts to another table with an identity column, then @@identity will return the value inserted by the trigger, while scope_identity() returns the ident you inserted yourself.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 5:11 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Free Full Tech Books

erm.... Have'nt considred that possibility...
darn!
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 5:15 AM by David

# re: About Interfaces

As for the door, no handle is ok if the closer works at an acceptable speed, otherwise how do you close it behind you if you're going out?
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 5:33 AM by jeff@consultutah.com

# re: Free Full Tech Books

Just in time! Orrin Hatch was about to destroy your computer... ;-)

PS. Yes, I am from Utah...
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 5:59 AM by Dave

# re: About Interfaces

Okay, no problem. I was in agreement and just wan't sure by how you wrote it whether you realized this behavior in Excel existed.

While I am in agreement, I'm curious how you feel MS stacks up relative to other widely-used 'integrated' software. I've often thought their fairly consistant used of menu shortcuts/text and toolbar icons/placements were a reason nobody has really jumped on the Linux desktop much. I'm certainly not going to deal with the retraining issues and frustrated power users that have to learn different keystrokes for the same function in various 'integrated' packages.

I too am constantly amazed at how so-called visual programmers have no clue how to program a usable interface.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 7:08 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About Interfaces

Darrell: Yeah. Great Book. I think it's even on my "purchased and recommended" book list :)

Funny Amazon story about that book:

I was in amazon preparing to order the book, when suddenly I see that amazon was having a "sale" .You know, they have this little title saying "Buy this book along with *that* book and get a discount.
well that title was saying "Get 'the design of everyday things' along with 'The Psychology of everyday things" and get a discount'.
well, natuarally, I went ahead and bought both of these books, only to later realize that they are both the same book with different titles!.
I was so convinced that the two books compliment each other, that I didn;t even bother checking it out first. Impulse buys suck!

Heh. Norman even says in the opening of his 'new' book that he wanted to change the title to 'the design of...' because 'the psychology of...' was scaring people away, except for psychologists , that is...

I was totally fooled, but that's a sign amazon has a good marketing design... :)
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 7:54 AM by Kenneth LeFebvre

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

check out the [autoval] column in the [syscolumns] table. that's where this value is stored, i believe...
Wednesday, June 18, 2003 8:07 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: SQL Server is Missing NextVal Functionality

Kenneth: Yeah . Jayme(first comment) posted a link to a post about how to use that column. Nice trick there...
Thursday, June 19, 2003 3:23 AM by Duncan

# re: Winforms DataBiding Bliss

You're not kidding - I added IBindableList to my printer monitor component and hey-presto, a data grid of print jobs that is updated as the queue changes...can you imagine how difficult it would have been to do that in VB.Classic.
Thursday, June 19, 2003 3:46 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Winforms DataBiding Bliss

Duncan: That totally rocks :)
Thursday, June 19, 2003 4:13 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: Winforms DataBiding Bliss

Try this with a datagrid:
- autoresize all columns to the longest string in the column. (requires pixel counting in custom dirty code relying on hwnd)
- bind a custom collection with custom classes and make the collection sortable. (get geared up for some serious ITypedList implementation and creation of property descriptor classes)
- include versioning in your custom classes in your custom collection when editing is enabled through a binded datagrid.

I'm pretty sure you're not having fun then :) For basic bindings, like binding a dataset or a simple readonly list, it's ok. For every job that requires more, it's horrible.
Thursday, June 19, 2003 4:20 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Winforms DataBiding Bliss

Frans: I agree. Some things are better left alone, but I would use it a lot for read-only situations...
Thursday, June 19, 2003 4:25 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: Winforms DataBiding Bliss

Agreed, for read-only viewing it can be very helpful. I wished it was more usable though. Ah well... perhaps some day.. :)
Thursday, June 19, 2003 4:31 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Winforms DataBiding Bliss

Hey Duncan: just realized your company was the one who released EventVB and the lobalHotKey control. Cool stuff!
Thursday, June 19, 2003 4:47 AM by Cadmium

# re: How To Know When An External Application Exits

Cool tip, this might come in handy for a project I'm thinking about. Thanks!
Thursday, June 19, 2003 5:39 AM by Duncan

# re: Winforms DataBinding Bliss

There's a .NET global hotkey component up there - but there is no need for EventVB in the .NET world (thank goodness - it was taking over my life).

Do you know of an intuitive way to indicate that items in a grid can be moved up or down the ordering? I want to allow reordering of the print queue (subject to access rights, natch) but can't think how to visually represent it.


Thursday, June 19, 2003 6:17 AM by Marc

# re: Kudos to MSFT

I was thinking the exact that thing. I only wish I had a team for him to talk with.
Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:11 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Winforms DataBinding Bliss

huh. Tough one. How about:

*If some of the rows are movable and some arn't how about using an icon column to represend a 'locked' row and an 'unlocked' row?

* actually, I'm not sure I'd use the datagrid for that, but something like a listview, since I can then use Drag-drop features. I'm not sure if you can imple,ent that functionality with a datagrid, but drag-drop is the most natural form of moving thing for a user...

* how about, for rows that are movable, the mouse cursor changes to a special 'drag' icon, like a hand or something?

*Maybe have two up/down arrow buttons on the side that only show when a movable row is selected...

* use tooltips to indicate the hovered on row that you can move it

*Movable rows are colored differently...

I can think of lots of things, it all depends on the look and feel of the app in question and what fits best with the overall design....
Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:13 AM by julie

# re: Winforms DataBinding Bliss

yeah - binding's great but I gave up on that control when I was trying to do "simple" things like implement a check box in the columns (you have to write a major workaround) or better yet, identify when the user has clicked on that check box. Can't be done! I am now a HUGE fan of Janus Gridex!!! I think everyone that uses it loves it.
Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:17 AM by Greg Robinson

# re: Winforms DataBinding Bliss

Beyond rocks, it rules. We are using the heck out of it and it has saved tons of time. Lots to learn but once you understand the internals, baby it rules!
Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:34 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Winforms DataBinding Bliss

Julie: Have you tried looking at the DataGrid FAQ? It has some tips on diong CHeckBoxes on DataGrids:
http://www.syncfusion.com/FAQ/WinForms/FAQ_c44c.asp
Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:38 AM by julie

# re: Winforms DataBinding Bliss

In fact, that was where I finally read that it "can't be done" which was the last straw that pushed me to Janus! btw: www.janusys.com :-) I believe Greg is also referring to GridEx in his rave review since someone named Greg also just emailed me (excellent use of the contact form, there Greg!!) to say how much he loves GridEx also.
Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:53 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Winforms DataBinding Bliss

Julie: Is it pure managed code or is it the good ol' interop grid I know and love from my VB days?
Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:54 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Winforms DataBinding Bliss

nevermind, just went to the site :) looks cool!
Thursday, June 19, 2003 10:36 AM by TrackBack

# Wallace B. McClure

Wallace B. McClure
Thursday, June 19, 2003 10:36 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Thursday, June 19, 2003 1:26 PM by Mike Gunderloy

# re: Book Gripes, Safari Bookshelf, And a .Net Desktops Prize

Heck, why not more than one prize? I'll throw in a copy of MCAD/MCSD TRAINING GUIDE 70-310 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0789728206). Just let me know where to send it.
Thursday, June 19, 2003 6:17 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Book Gripes, Safari Bookshelf, And a .Net Desktops Prize

Mike: Alright! :)
Friday, June 20, 2003 3:22 PM by SBC

# re: How To Know When An External Application Exits

Cool example - any thoughts on multiple instances of the app? May be I should be try out the code...
Friday, June 20, 2003 4:03 PM by Samer Ibrahim

# re: Funny Behaviour

This might be similar to my story.... http://weblogs.asp.net/sibrahim/posts/5846.aspx
Saturday, June 21, 2003 9:17 AM by Steven Smith

# re: More Free Chapters On CodeProject

There are a bunch here too:
http://aspalliance.com/chapters/

Steve
Saturday, June 21, 2003 3:50 PM by Dave Burke

# re: Winforms Data Binding Lessons Learned

Roy, this post is in my "Gold" folder and I will definitely be going back to it. Thanks.
Saturday, June 21, 2003 6:12 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Saturday, June 21, 2003 7:50 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: How To Know When An External Application Exits

This article shows handling multiple instances:
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/restricting_instances.asp
Saturday, June 21, 2003 8:10 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Winforms Data Binding Lessons Learned

:)
Saturday, June 21, 2003 9:17 PM by Paul Gielens

# re: Winforms Data Binding Lessons Learned

Nice share Roy, appreciate it!
Sunday, June 22, 2003 12:18 PM by James Avery

# re: Disabling Connection Pooling

Why would you want to disable connection pooling? I can't think of a reason and was curious why you are disabling it.

Thanks,
James
Sunday, June 22, 2003 7:22 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Disabling Connection Pooling

Connection pooling will hold a connection open even though you specifically opted to close it, for X amount of seconds, then it closes it. There might be situations when you might want to have an "always-connected" application, in which case you would want to have complete control over your connections, and usually one that is open at all times.
Persoanlly I never needed diasbling yet, but , being the control freak that I am, When I see an "On by default" flag, it annoys me to not know hot to turn it off... :)
Sunday, June 22, 2003 9:09 PM by Jonne Kats

# re: A Little Macro To Automate Creating Connection Strings

Thanks man,

I am definetly going to use this...
Monday, June 23, 2003 6:39 AM by Scott Watermasysk

# re: Stop The Silliness

i probably won't do a 1.0 build. These kind of projects are done in my spare time. If I was planning on selling blogert, then yes, a 1.0 build might be a good idea...but considering the fact you can quite easily download the 1.1 Framework...why make it any more work.

-Scott
Monday, June 23, 2003 10:39 AM by John Badda

# re: Stop The Silliness

I'm a student and I think that guys article is relevant. I'm about his age too.
Monday, June 23, 2003 6:36 PM by Tim Howard

# Fish cheese

Hey there, it's me again! I just had a question to ask, and you seem to be a pretty tech-type-guy...

Would it be possible to display current bandwidth usage, (Up/downstream) on the desktop, simular to what bginfo does? I've got some small Java experience, but I've never really dealt with anything in this area...

I know it'd be a pretty useless little waste of time, but the question's been bugging me for quite some time now, and I'd love to be able to see my total bandwidth in one small place.

Also, in that desktop contest thingie... What does that guy use to display the matrix of his C drive on his background?

Thanks in advance, and thanks again for the info on the tech market these days!
Monday, June 23, 2003 8:42 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Stop The Silliness

Tim: I don't have a solution to your question, you'd be better off checking out CodeProject.COM or search the news groups for this topic..

As for the desktop contest: You can leave comments on each screenshot right on the site, and hopefully, you'll get an answer from the owner of the desktop...
cheers.
Wednesday, June 25, 2003 4:01 AM by Phil Weber

# re: .Net Rocks Rocks, INETA, and Starting A User Group


"Hey Carl, How about getting some music-only MP3's our way?"

Roy: http://www.pwop.com/fbros.aspx
Friday, June 27, 2003 12:14 PM by Jason McInerny

# re: Still Alive

Maybe you should keep busy. Give some others the chance to say something actually useful.
Friday, June 27, 2003 12:21 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Still Alive

Jason: I wasn't aware that I'm keeping others from talking about 'useful' things. However, If you think you have something you'd like me to write about that would be of some 'use' to you, I'd like to know.
Friday, June 27, 2003 6:40 PM by TrackBack

# Dan's .NET Wasteland

Dan's .NET Wasteland
Saturday, June 28, 2003 2:08 AM by SBC

# re: Still Alive

MCP? do you mean MCSD?
Saturday, June 28, 2003 4:33 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Still Alive

SBC: Yeah.
Saturday, June 28, 2003 12:07 PM by Dave Burke

# re: Quick & Easy ADO.NET Speed Improvements

Good tip on the EnforceConstants = false tip! Thanks!
Sunday, June 29, 2003 2:49 AM by SBC

# re: More Free Chapters

Free chapters on Regular Expressions (OReilly pub) -
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex2/chapter/index.html
Sunday, June 29, 2003 8:58 AM by Datagrid Girl

# re: FeedDemon Likes And Dislikes

Is it just me, or is your font shrinking Roy?
Sunday, June 29, 2003 9:00 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: FeedDemon Likes And Dislikes

Heh. Pasting from word will to that to ya it seems...
Sunday, June 29, 2003 9:09 AM by Datagrid Girl

# re: FeedDemon Likes And Dislikes

Ah yes, that explains it :)
Sunday, June 29, 2003 11:27 AM by Wesley Mason

# re: FeedDemon Likes And Dislikes

My #1 wish for FeedDemon: ability to have links launch in my system's default browser, so I'm not tied MSIE for actual browsing (this is fine for FeedDemon internally, as it's just using MSIE to render a UI and display data, but crossing over to external sites *in* MSIE breaks functionality for me when I dislike the browser, just a matter of personal taste).
Sunday, June 29, 2003 1:11 PM by Don

# re: Me Too!

Is having McDonalds something to actually admit to - let alone boast about? :)
Sunday, June 29, 2003 3:12 PM by Jack Baty

# re: FeedDemon Likes And Dislikes

Wesley,

The latest beta will open *external* links in your default browser. File -> Options -> Open external links in default browser instead of inside FeedDemon.

I'm having tourble getting it to work with Mozilla Firebird, but it's *supposed* to work.
Sunday, June 29, 2003 3:19 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Sunday, June 29, 2003 3:29 PM by Byron

# re: Quick & Easy ADO.NET Speed Improvements

I'm not sure what you mean by creating a 'Dataset in code', can you enlighten me? Are you refering to typed Datasets as opposed to non-typed Datasets? I use the later since I prefer "soft-coding" over "hard-coding".
Sunday, June 29, 2003 4:01 PM by Tim Marman

# re: FeedDemon Likes And Dislikes

I also like the synchronize with OPML bit. It seems that each "listing" is treated as a separate OPML file.

I just wish the read/unread/flag status would sync as well :)
Sunday, June 29, 2003 4:42 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Sunday, June 29, 2003 4:42 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Sunday, June 29, 2003 5:01 PM by TrackBack

# Robert McLaws

Robert McLaws
Sunday, June 29, 2003 8:09 PM by Darshan Singh

# re: FeedDemon Likes And Dislikes

I've been working on a RSS Feed reader using C# .NET. The project RSSConnect with complete source code is available at http://www.PerfectXML.com/RSSConnect. Some of the unique/salient features include ability to export to database and search (phase 1, improvements coming in next release), XSLT skins, check for new feeds, check for RSSConnect application update, Favorites list, OPML import/export, and many other options.

Be sure to check it out: http://www.PerfectXML.com/RSSConnect .

Any comments/suggestions: Please email me at darshan@PerfectXML.com. Thanks.
Monday, June 30, 2003 8:08 AM by EliezerG

# re: .Net Deep Dive Recap

Just came in from the deep dive event myself; I can still taste the coffee from the event and I can already read your impressions from the event - I wish I had you energy levels.
Great capture of the event !!! (If you think the COM+ lecture was boring try spending 2 weeks in the lecturer company learning .Net and attending 1-2 oh his lectures each day!)

ps: you are right about Israeli server hits, I wasn't aware of this website before.
Monday, June 30, 2003 9:32 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: .Net Deep Dive Recap

Glad to see you! Welcome aboard :)
Monday, June 30, 2003 1:20 PM by TrackBack

# Yosi Taguri's WebLog

Yosi Taguri's WebLog
Monday, June 30, 2003 8:39 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Quick & Easy ADO.NET Speed Improvements

Byron: I'm not referring to Typed Datasets, I'm referring to the actual code lines to the DataTable Collection of the dataset, instead of specifying tableName for the dataadapter, and letting it automatically create a table by that name if it does not exist..
Monday, June 30, 2003 9:32 PM by Yosi Taguri

# re: .Net Deep Dive Recap

thnx for review ;)
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 2:26 AM by Yaron ben shalom

# re: FillSchema and AddWithKey Don't Operate As Promised?

Just to affirm your recent update, here is an excerpt from http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q313483:

The DataAdapter does not have any information about the database that it is reading from and writing to; the DataAdapter only runs the commands that it manages. Therefore, the DataAdapter does not create DataRelation objects in the DataSet. To create DataRelation objects in the DataSet, you must use one of the following methods:
Create the objects programmatically at run time.
Load the schema from an XML Schema Definition (XSD) file.
Build the objects into the design-time DataSet schema.
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 2:28 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: FillSchema and AddWithKey Don't Operate As Promised?

Yaron: Yeah. I found that out the hard way. Take a look here for my solution:
http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/posts/9542.aspx
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 3:54 AM by LondonGeek

# re: Wasted Years

I don't think it all comes down to "companies not willing to spend the extra buck on the more experienced programmer". I hire programmers with little/no experience, but make sure that they are paired with a more experienced programmer who can guide them. As a manager myseld I also review code from time to time myself as even I can see if something is a mess :)

I started out in the industry the same way myself so I know it works. Just needs to be managed correctly (i.e. if it goes wrong then managment got it wrong).
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 5:49 AM by Yosi Taguri

# re: Automatically Create DataRelations Based On OleDB Schema

why not write it in c#
;)
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 10:24 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Wasted Years

It does if you all the programmers you'll ever hire are ones with no experience. you'll end up with beginners mentoring beginners, teaching them excatly what they have not learned themselves...
If you have a good coder base, that's a different story. But if you keep up with an "Coders are 10 for a buck today" attitude long enough, you'll eventually be left with nothing but first timers, trying to do the right thing, but completely clueless as to what they are actually doing.
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 10:27 AM by Lawrence Oluyede

# re: Why I write in Both C# and VB.NET

Very nice post. I use only C# but when I'll have enough time I'll check VB.NET seriously. The only thing to notice is that in my job place everybody use C# and VB.NET is forbidden :P and so I'll have to learn it in my spare time. Surely I'll do. Bye
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 11:21 AM by Chad Osgood

# re: Why I write in Both C# and VB.NET

Intellisense with enums in C# would be nice, but the consistency of the framework largely obviates any need for it. If I encounter a propery that's an enum, I can usually just pluralize the name of the property to find my enum. Worse case, I'll just hover over the property to find out what type it is.

e.g.:
Foo.FooState = FooStates.Unknown;
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 12:00 PM by Duncan

# re: Why I write in Both C# and VB.NET

C# seems to be shading it in the job ads. Pity though, as VB.Net is more readable (and therefore more maintainable) IMO...
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 5:09 PM by TrackBack

# Darrell Norton's Blog

Darrell Norton's Blog
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 5:09 PM by TrackBack

# Darrell Norton's Blog

Darrell Norton's Blog
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 6:14 PM by Chris Szurgot

# re: Why I write in Both C# and VB.NET

Even though I prefer C# to VB.NET, I have to use it for some of the programs at my job (1/2 in VB.NET and 1/2 in C#) so I use both languages frequently, and yes, I think the Intellisense on the Enums is quite a time saver, and quite a bit quicker that typing it out, or ghosting over to find out what type it is.
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 10:46 PM by Vijay

# re: What's Up With That?

hmm.. well said and infact rightly put !
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 10:48 PM by Graeme Foster

# re: What's Up With That?

"I swear that the next time I get a salad recipe from 3 different sources I'll... I'll..."

...Make a salad?
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 12:40 AM by LondonGeek

# re: Wasted Years

Yes I agree with your follow up comment. The company will not get away with it long term. Even if they do, they will be half the company they could have been. Quality, not quantity. You get good code, tight team, less management overhead and more importantly more effective management (as they can focus on new directions and business).
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 1:36 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: What's Up With That?

Heh. "If you can't beat them, join them!"
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 3:59 AM by TrackBack

# Datagrid Girl

Datagrid Girl
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 8:43 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 10:42 AM by Marc LaFleur

# re: What's Up With That?

Almond Mandarin Salad

1/2 pound bacon
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons honey
1/2 teaspoon dry hot mustard
1/2 teaspoon celery salt
1/2 teaspoon ground paprika
1/4 cup olive oil
1 head red leaf lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces
1 (15 ounce) can mandarin oranges, drained
1 bunch green onion, diced
3/4 cup slivered almonds

In a medium skillet over medium-high heat, cook bacon until evenly brown. Drain, cool, and crumble.To make the dressing, thoroughly blend the vinegar, honey, dry mustard, celery salt, paprika, and olive oil. Place lettuce, oranges, green onion, bacon, and almonds in a serving bowl. Toss with dressing and serve.
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 2:38 PM by SBC

# re: Why I write in Both C# and VB.NET

"The ability to keep two contrasting thoughts in the mind at the same time and think about it is a sign of fine intelligence" - Donald Rumsfeld... 8-)
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 10:46 PM by why

# re: Copy MsgBox Text

do so many people on weblogs@asp.net feel the need to post things someone else on weblogs@asp.net has just posted?

If you've got nothing new to say, please don't say it, as it really clutters up my aggregator.

(No offence intended, normally good stuff.)
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 10:54 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Copy MsgBox Text

Although the posts I make go into the main feed, they are mostly posted for my personal blog readers, some of which do *not* read the main feed, or are not subscribed to some of the stuff I link too.
That's why my feed has post categories, which allow you to filter out the "non essentials".

Ever run into a link or a quote from a site you've never seen and discovered it for the first time because of it? Well, I wouldn't deny my readers that oppertunity (although I do use discretion when posting)

Sorry to clutter up your aggergator, but I could have replied this to you personally if only you had left some kind of identifying marks...
Thursday, July 03, 2003 12:56 AM by londonGeek

# re: About maintainable code

I'm totally down with the self-describing code vibe. However, I disagree about some of your comment comments :) particularly "Comments get stale".

Many programmers don't comment, they annotate their code. For example the say "Create an XML DOM and load it with the text file cust.xml" when they should actually say "Retrieve a list of my customers". The second version enables someone to understand the intent rather than the implementation.

This kind of comment will rarely get stale, in-fact it will only get stale when you completely change the intent of the code.

Further discussion of this can be found in "Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction" by Steve C McConnell."

Cheers LG
Thursday, July 03, 2003 1:02 AM by Duncan

# re: About maintainable code

Comments only get "stale" because the compiler is seen as the final arbitrator of the developer's work rather than a code review. In my apps I comment often but make sure that the comments are updated with the code...

Other language neutral coding techniques are in: http://www.merrioncomputing.com/Programming/7Secrets.htm

One of the problems with self describing code is that if the code is wrong the description is also wrong. Sometimes it helps to have a description of what the code is supposed to do so that you can look at it and see what it is doing and correct any inconsistency.
Thursday, July 03, 2003 1:09 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About maintainable code

Duncan: I see your point - but i think if you get wrong code, comments won;t help there - you'll only get more confused since you won;t know which is right(or is more recent) - the code or the description. Which one would you trust blindly?
Thursday, July 03, 2003 1:35 AM by hmm

# re: Copy MsgBox Text

dunno, I just subscribe to the full asp.net rss feed (i.e. everyone on weblogs @asp.net), and it's really annoying when I get things three or four times from the same feed..... (In other words I don't subscribe to any of your feeds, main or otherwise, I just get you as part of the big subscription. Maybe .net weblogs should do META posts, which would allow duplicates to be filtered out of the main feed.)
Thursday, July 03, 2003 1:47 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Copy MsgBox Text

I do wish you would have written your name, then I wouldn't feel like I'm talking to a ghost.
As for your "annoyance" - You'll probably have to live with double posts, as the asp.net feed is just a bunch of private blogs put together - and you can;t help residual information from slipping in. Hopefully in the next generation aggregators we'll get full filtering abilities, but until then its unfair to ask of a person to censor their blog just because it "annoys" you. The point of an aggergator is that the posts you get are kept on your disk, and you can just hop over the ones that do not interest you. That's not too much of a hassle, is it?
I mean, this isn;t a paid service. People spill theire thoughts and musings here, and if other people happen to like them and use them - all the better, but they are, in the end, personal blogs and each blogger must be able to post as they see fit(within the rules of the blogsphere in which they operate, in our case .NetWeblogs). As such, this blogspace does infact take into account the fact that there will be some noise ratio, but that is expected. Coming in and asking that people only blog about that which interests *you* or that does not annoy *you* is kinda not seeing the bigger picture here - "Hey , I get great content from people who live this stuff and are willing to share, should I tell them how to share these thoughts?"
Thursday, July 03, 2003 2:01 AM by Duncan

# re: About maintainable code

If you have a quality control on the code itself (probably by code reviews) then you should be able to trus the comments. This is because a business analyst (or in a really scary set-up, a customer) can read and understand the comments and correct misunderstandings....

Basically it boils down to the fact that developers do not set out to write bugs but they also do not neccessarily have a number of years experience in the business for which the code was written. Therefore they may make assumptions or misunderstand the specification and these gaps in understanding will become bugs in the final code. If there are no comments then these misunderstandings can only be spotted by another developer who is working through the code to fix an error caught in system testing.
Thursday, July 03, 2003 2:06 AM by Duncan

# re: About maintainable code

Ideally what is needed is a hard link between the specification documents and the source code with configuration management warnings issued if they get out of step....hmm - I see a potential project here.

Thursday, July 03, 2003 2:14 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About maintainable code

I see where you're going and I like it :)
Thursday, July 03, 2003 2:15 AM by LondonGeek

# re: About maintainable code

A method name like RetrieveCustomerList() is spot on. And if it only contains a few lines of code then that is all that is needed. However, if it does 3 different steps you may wish to comment the intent of each step. We haven't all re-factored mercilessly :)

I actually write my comments before I write my code (as suggested in Code Complete) because it helps you spot logic errors before you've spent the minutes cranking the code.

LG
Thursday, July 03, 2003 2:20 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About maintainable code

LG: Well, in that case (of a method with 3 actions) I would go further and call three different methods within that methods - that's how easy it is; each named appropriately scuh as:
ConnectToDB()
GetSuctomerData()
FillXMLFromCustomerData()

and so on...
totally self describing and not one comment to be confused about...

as for writing commments first, I take a different approach. Say I'd start writing such a method - Much like what you do ,only instead of a comment for each action - I write a method call, to something that may or may not already exist. I then proceed to write out the code in the 'ghost' methods. I find it much clearer...
Thursday, July 03, 2003 2:46 AM by LondonGeek

# re: About maintainable code

OK I give up :) but I'd still like a comment so I know what "GetSuctomerData()" is doing!!

Thursday, July 03, 2003 3:36 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: About maintainable code

Heh. You're right. It's not a good method name.
Thursday, July 03, 2003 3:37 AM by Paul Nicholls

# re: Copy MsgBox Text

Speaking personally, I don't subscribe to Yosi Taguri's blog, and found this interesting.

I used to subscribe to the main feed, at the beginning. I then worked my roll down to about 25 bloggers that interest me, and rely on them to point out other cool blogs that might be worth subscribing to - it's just not efficient to read every single blog myself ;)
Thursday, July 03, 2003 5:39 AM by Oisin Grehan

# re: Nice MS Word shortcut

Also known as "box" selection versus the normal "stream" mode. To do this with a mouse, just hold down ALT and drag as normal.

- Oisin
Thursday, July 03, 2003 6:26 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Nice MS Word shortcut

nope. pressing ALT and selecting with the mouse lets me do block selection, but that's not what I'm talking about here.
When you do what I wrote, it moves the selected rows up and down, replacing them with the rows before them or after them(depending on the arrow direction) without hurting your precious document. So you can easily move that set of bullet points up to the first headline instead of the second one with nor copy-pasting work..
Thursday, July 03, 2003 6:46 AM by Hugh Brown

# re: Nice MS Word shortcut

...and Alt-Shift-LeftArrow and Alt-Shift-RighttArrow cycle the selected text through available heading settings.
Thursday, July 03, 2003 7:35 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Thursday, July 03, 2003 1:12 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Thursday, July 03, 2003 3:29 PM by George Doubinski

# re: Wasted Years

I think the article misses my favorite naming convention which I call "life reflection" (adapted from Fortran code from 16 years ago):

if(girl.age >= eighteen) {
yourPlace.clean();
Restaurant r = new Restaurant();
r.book();
r.visit(this, girl);
this.saySomethingNice(r, girl);
Taxi.Call();
takeToYourHome(girl);
}
else {
callitoff(girl);
doUsualStuff(backupGirlfriend);
}

You may need to adjust variable names for a consensus age in your area :-)
Friday, July 04, 2003 5:09 AM by Paschal

# re: I’ve just learned that a friend of mine is looking for a job.

Will he consider the country of the green shamrock ;-)

I'm sure we have some opportunities in Ireland.
Friday, July 04, 2003 5:30 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: I’ve just learned that a friend of mine is looking for a job.

Paschal - I have no idea... Sounds a bit too far.. :)
Friday, July 04, 2003 6:13 AM by Paschal

# re: I’ve just learned that a friend of mine is looking for a job.

You must be joking... too far from London ;-)
Friday, July 04, 2003 12:16 PM by Paschal

# re: I’ve just learned that a friend of mine is looking for a job.

Roy a lot of people commute daily between London and Dublin... by plane.

It's not that far, I know also some people living in London and working in Dublin, back home every week.
Friday, July 04, 2003 12:27 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: I’ve just learned that a friend of mine is looking for a job.

Cool. Than I'm sure its a possibility
Friday, July 04, 2003 3:23 PM by Tarz

# re: How's this for less eye strain

Roy,

Are you trying to make VS.NET look a little like VI, EMACs etc.?

- Tarz
Friday, July 04, 2003 3:35 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: How's this for less eye strain

Not really. I just played around till I got what delt ok. Never got to work with UNIX style editors...
Friday, July 04, 2003 4:15 PM by ClearType!

# re: How's this for less eye strain

I know I'll get my programmer card pulled for this, but since I tried Verdana 12pt on a laptop panel with ClearType enabled I've never switched it back. Clearer, more code on the screen, bling-bling, who needs mono-spaced fonts.
Friday, July 04, 2003 4:59 PM by Brian Desmond

# re: Export and import VS.NET's text editor's color and font settings

If I'm not mistaken, one of the GDN VS.Net [pwertoys does this: www.gotdotnet.com/team/ide.
Friday, July 04, 2003 7:59 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Export and import VS.NET's text editor's color and font settings

nah, it looks as if it will import/export key bindings ,but that's it...
but havnt reaslly tried it, just from reading the features list, it seems missing from that.
Friday, July 04, 2003 8:34 PM by TrackBack

# Roland Weigelt

Roland Weigelt
Friday, July 04, 2003 9:40 PM by Yosi Taguri

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

can't agree on some of the stuff:
c# case insensitivity - it's fine as it is, it comes from c and c++ , if you have only one way to write a variable name ,you can enfoce coding conventions while compiling.
Automatic creation of "()" braces - that's beacuse you are coming from vb ;) - it makes no sense to write methods calls without braces it looks ugly.
With - it an ugly construct , I hate it it doesn't look readable. and besides if your code calls many properities at the same time maybe you need to design your classes again.

Friday, July 04, 2003 9:51 PM by Jan Tielens

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

Check out my post (linked to yours): http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/posts/9727.aspx

Greetz
Jan
Saturday, July 05, 2003 12:19 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

Yosi:
- Insensitivity: Why should I be able to write basically the same variable name with only case differences? That's just giving us enough rope to hang ourselvss with.. and you *know* that its a common practice in a lot of places, although its not a good one.. Hell, even I used it at times, because its more convenient than readable..

braces - Not saying that no braces is good, just saying that saving me the trouble to write them wil save me about 20% of coding time... hows that for a productivity increase?

With - Ugly? now *that's* because you came from a non-VB background ;) its one of the most useful, time saving, readable, productivity enhancing code constructs I've met, and I can't think of how I could totally get rid of the need for it no matter how good I design my copmonents. sometimes you just *have* code that calls or sets multiple properties on a componenet in one method.
Saturday, July 05, 2003 12:51 AM by dave

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

I think case sensitivity is a huge strength! It makes your code much cleaner, and naming conventions much cleaner.

For example, in C#
you can declare

MyClass myClass = new MyClass();

while in VB you would have to do something like
Dim [myClass] as New MyClass()

I consider it to be a strength, much more than a weakness.
Saturday, July 05, 2003 2:56 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

dave: that's exactly the kind of code that I believe should be avoided. It's much more confusing to readf by a 3rd party, and although easy to create and looks cleaner- but is harder to maintain.
Saturday, July 05, 2003 3:29 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Saturday, July 05, 2003 3:29 AM by TrackBack

# Jan Tielens' Bloggings

Jan Tielens' Bloggings
Saturday, July 05, 2003 4:14 AM by Jeff Julian

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

If all those things were in both languages, why would you need to. I think they are great the way they are and PLEASE LEAVE THE CASE-SENSITIVITY in C#.
Saturday, July 05, 2003 4:58 AM by Sam Gentile

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

From Jan's topic:
#
re: What's missing in VB.NET and C#?
Sam Gentile
Posted @ 7/5/2003 11:55 AM
Let me the first of hopefully many to correct you both in that C# has Edit and Continue in VS.NET 2003 (which has been out for some months).
#
re: What's missing in VB.NET and C#?
Sam Gentile
Posted @ 7/5/2003 11:56 AM
And Visual Assist.NET (http://www.wholetomato.com) adds #1, #3, #4 among many other things. I find it a must have.
Saturday, July 05, 2003 4:59 AM by Sam Gentile

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

That was #1, 3, and 4 on "his" list...
Saturday, July 05, 2003 5:48 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

I had vs 2003 installed, but the only "edit & continue " like feature was that once you edited, you couldn't continue...
Saturday, July 05, 2003 5:51 AM by Wes Haggard

# re: How's this for less eye strain

I have been using a black background in VS.net for a while now, it is so much better on my eyes. I'm using slightly different other colors for the other types.

Here is a tip for you as well(if you didn't already know this) If you ever have to reinstall or change computers you can save these color settings by exporting the following key in the registry.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.0\FontAndColors
(or 7.1 if you are using vs 2003)

Wes
Saturday, July 05, 2003 5:54 AM by Wes Haggard

# re: How's this for less eye strain

crap I should have keep reading your posts anyway I gave you another way to do it this is how I usually do it.

Wes
Saturday, July 05, 2003 6:20 AM by Sam Gentile

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

You're telling me that "Tools-> Options-> Edit and Continue-> Changes in VB and C# Code-> Allow me to Edit C# Files While Editing" does not work for you?
Saturday, July 05, 2003 6:30 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

Doesn;t that feature only change the source file but make the program continue as if you hadn't changed anything?
I'm talking edit & continue like in Vb6 - where changing something at run time actually changed run-time behaviour - I don;t think they have that. I could be wrong but i'm 99% sure... (I dont have it installed anymore so I can't check it out)
Saturday, July 05, 2003 6:35 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: How's this for less eye strain

cool. I wan't aware of that registry key, but my soon to be released add-in should make that whole process a lot simpler...
Saturday, July 05, 2003 9:53 AM by SBC

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

hmm... getting rid of case insensitivity in C# may make a lot of sensitive C# programmers insensitive...
sorry had to put that one in 8-)
Saturday, July 05, 2003 12:47 PM by Tim Marman

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

What does case insensitivity buy you other than less maintainable code? :)
Saturday, July 05, 2003 1:52 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Saturday, July 05, 2003 5:56 PM by Chad Osgood

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

Not to be pedantic, but it's wortwhile to point out that many of your wishes for both VB.NET and C# are not for the languages themselves, but for the IDE that facilitates their use. Keep in mind that there are many people who don't use VS.NET. I myself didn't use VS.NET for quite some time, and if the cross-platform story of .NET becomes longer this will only increase.

If you really want the autocreation of the surrounding parens of a method call for C# in VS.NET, you should try QuickCode.NET.

Saturday, July 05, 2003 8:40 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

Tim: I would think just the opposite - insensitivity "blocks" the same variable name from appearing twice in the same scope with different casing. Allowing *that* could lead to harder to maintain code...

Chad: I agree. It should have said "Missing IDE enhancements for language 'X'"
As for QuickCode - It's pretty cool, I just wanted to air out the fact that I shhouldn't need to use such a tool to get that sort of functionality from the world's most advanced IDE to date..
Saturday, July 05, 2003 9:03 PM by Roland Weigelt

# re: Settings Add-in ver. 1.0 released on GotDotNet

Hi Roy,

Hmm, the download won't work (D/L takes ages to start, but then only a 0k file is saved). The whole gotdotnet site seems to be pretty slow... Maybe they're doing maintenance work (taking the time zones into account, this would be a typical time for a US site).
I'll try later.
Saturday, July 05, 2003 9:07 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Settings Add-in ver. 1.0 released on GotDotNet

Yeah its slow on my end as well....
Saturday, July 05, 2003 10:51 PM by Frans Bouma

# re: There goes an hour or two

You're not alone when it comes to hardware misery :( Yesterday (saturday) I thought, I install SP4 on my co-located win2k server (remote via VNC). It didn't work very well, so it deinstalled and then I thought, maybe the webserver process is not shutting down correctly (it had errors there) so I rebooted the thing... however it didn't seem to get back up, no network connection. SO I thought: the sp4 installation has messed up the system, and it has now jumped in a BSOD or something. I went over to the datacenter where the server is (a 70KM drive (the hague - amsterdam)), go to the rack where my dell server is, hook up a monitor and expect to see "STOP .... ". However what do I see?

A post BIOS screen which congratulates me with the correct boot of the RAID controllers, and it politely asks me to hit F1 to continue...

So I hit F1 and it boots flawlessly. AAAARG. Who builds that kind of crap into a server bios.... Ah well.. :)
Sunday, July 06, 2003 12:04 AM by IUnknown

# re: There goes an hour or two

Good Idea, why dont you start a workspaceo on GotDotNet
Sunday, July 06, 2003 12:08 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: There goes an hour or two

huh. I may just do that, though I wouldn't know where to begin...
Sunday, July 06, 2003 12:11 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: There goes an hour or two

Although, .Net applications have very low security out of the box - so tweaking windows systens from .net may prove to be a bigger problem...
however - some of the easier stuff - like tweaking registry entries - that could be done easily(I think)
Sunday, July 06, 2003 1:05 PM by Aaron Vance

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

You can replicate the "With" functionality in C# with the "using" statement.

using(obj) {
// use obj to do stuff here
}

As long as it supports the IDisposable interface, the instance of obj will be disposed of at the end of the using scope.
Sunday, July 06, 2003 6:16 PM by Tim Marman

# re: There goes an hour or two

There is software that does that (and again, more than just the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard), though I can't remember the name off the top of my head. I'll see if I can remember it over the next few days.

Actually, I'm sure there's more than one package that does it.
Sunday, July 06, 2003 8:33 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

Aaron: 'using' not does allow me to write something like this:
using(thins)
{
.MyProperty= "something";
}
Monday, July 07, 2003 12:43 AM by Roland Weigelt

# re: Settings Add-in ver. 1.0 released on GotDotNet

Hi Roy,

I tried it with both VS.NET 2002 and 2003. The addin doesn't appear in VS.NET 2003. In VS.NET 2002 I only tried the export, but that went fine.

Suggestions for future versions (yeah, it's always the same... people see a new program and the first thing they say is "it's nice, but could you please add X and change Y" ;-):

- use of an XML file for the settings
- colors as hex numbers
- only ship the MSI of the setup to reduce the download size


Roland
Monday, July 07, 2003 1:11 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Settings Add-in ver. 1.0 released on GotDotNet

Rolang: Thanks for the input! :)
Monday, July 07, 2003 3:50 AM by Mike Gunderloy

# re: Settings Add-in ver. 1.0 released on GotDotNet

Pretty easy to get running in 2003, actually. It's just a matter of making the right registry settings. Find the keys that the setup creates at

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.0\AddIns\SettingsAddin.Connect]

and make a copy of them at

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\AddIns\SettingsAddin.Connect]

(The easy way to do this is to export a .reg file from regedit, edit it to change the location, and then import the changed file).

After this, it will show up on the 2003 menu as well.

Be nice if it at least warned you before overwriting an existing file.
Monday, July 07, 2003 9:34 PM by Oisin Grehan

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

Roy, if there ever was a stereotypical VB programmer to be singled out as an example, it would be you. Absolutely no understanding of why things aren't all like VB. This post was enough to put me off reading your blog for good. Unsubscribed.



Monday, July 07, 2003 9:38 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: What's missing in today's hottest languages?

Oisin: Ouch. Sorry you feel that way.I have lots to say about that , so I'll write a post about it.
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 2:30 AM by matthew

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

Your post just shows how each person gets used to something and then dislikes anything different, regardless of whether it's better or not.

I've never done any VB-like programming, and on the rare occasion I've even had to extract (ripoff!) six lines of code from VB code from a VB project it has pissed me off no end.

Firing up a VB project for 2 minutes, here's what pisses me off:

Intellisense: I want to access Me.myVariable.

In C#, I type this.myV until it comes to the member I want, I press enter - it autocompletes the rest of the variable.

In VB, I type this.myV, press enter - it gives me the variable and adds the new line!

Why would I want a new line? I'm just about to say Me.myVariable = x, so why do I have to go back and do this?

Why do you need all those redundant words like End If?


On your complaints, case-sensitivity is a fundamental language feature, and unlike some of your other complaints cannot be changed as it's part of the standard.

It's also very cool

public class myClass {

private bool myBool;

public MyBool {

set {
myBool = value
}
get {
return myBool
}
}

two different variables there....

Automatic creation of "()" braces:

Since I've never had this I don't miss it.....

It really doesn't take me too long to go MyFunction(.... Plus the ( gives me the intellisense to remind me of the parameters the function is expecting.

I guess VB programmers don't have to type many brackets, but in C# you get used to it, and I don't think I would want or use this feature

With. I'm sure there's an article I read about why this is bad, but it's really hard to google for 'with', so I can't post the link..... I did use it once in JavaScript, and I felt it tended to obfuscate things a little though.
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 2:30 AM by Martin Spedding

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

Hi Roy,
I liked your list of potential improvements to the IDE and I have to say I agree with all of them. Case sensitivity seems to be one of those annoying things that seems to a feature of C syntax languages and operating systems and I agree with you it is a pain. You should never have two variables with same name except for case.

As for the with statement I remember having this discussion at the PDC in 2000 and seems that the developers did not seem to see a need for it.

I surprised the person who complained that you are looking at everything from a VB point of view did not complain at your mention of "edit and continue" for C#. I remember seeing a comment in MSDN chat where Eric Rudder was asked about adding "Edit and Continue" for C# and he said he did not think there was the demand for it from C# developers.

I developed in about 10 different programming languages over time, including Java, vb and C# and really want all the productivity aids that come with VB and especially "Edit and Continue".

You are definitely on the right track.

Martin Spedding
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 2:35 AM by Paul Nicholls

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

Case sensitivity is important to me, because it makes my code cleaner. It stops me (and other people) from writing

MySpecialMethod()

as

myspecialmethod()

or

MYSPECIALMETHOD()

It forces code to be uniform. I understand that not every VB programmer is this sloppy, but I've run into quite a lot of hard-to-read code because case was used inconsistantly.

(I'm speaking from when I used to be a VBScript programmer, I haven't touched VB at all.)

I don't think it's vital to the language, I just like the constraint. :)
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 2:41 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

matthew:
Pressing TAB instead of Enter fixes your issue :)
as for "wordy" - I agree. I think VB.Net can sometimes be too wordy for its own good - but it sure is self-documenting - the wording fo access modifiers might seem redundant - but it is much more self documenting than curly braces...
I still like curly braces better(I'm a VB traitor..)
as for naming variables - I don;think it's cool to have two variables named exactly the same with only casing diffrentiating them. It makes for less understandable code. The fact that you had to mention "two variables there" in your code shows exactly that - It should be easy to spot and read two different variables without getting confused between them.

Paul:
That's what I'm talking about - In VB you can write MYVARIABLE but you'll get automatically formatted text to the name of the variable, so if it was named "MyVariable" - your text will automatically turn into that casing... how easy is that? :)
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 2:44 AM by Jeff Julian

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

Leave case-sensitivity alone. It will never change, nor do most C# developers want it to.
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 3:17 AM by Duncan

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

Case sensitivity leads to bugs.
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 3:32 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

"That's what I'm talking about - In VB you can write MYVARIABLE but you'll get automatically formatted text to the name of the variable, so if it was named "MyVariable" - your text will automatically turn into that casing... how easy is that? :) "
Not always. If you are typing some code and realize you have to declare a variable, you type in the statement using hte variable and then you type the declaration above it. AFAIK, the statement will not change based on another casing.

Personally I think code which relies on case sensitivity to run properly is not that good and it shows lazyness, because coming up with a new good name is not that hard but takes a little time and the shortest way out is to simpy use the same name with another casing...
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 5:00 AM by Oisin Grehan

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

Oh dear -- what have I started? I didn't mean to word my original comment so personally, apologies are due, please accept them Roy.

I've a lot of pent up anger to disperse on VB programmers in general, yes I used to be one, until I discovered the light about ten years ago, along with curly braces and square bracket indexers. It's only fair that if I flame you for your post, I give you (and many others) the chance to do likewise for my reasons.

My biggest problem with VB in general is that something that can be so "self-documentating" as you put it can be simultaneously so woefully inelegant. In general Roy, I disagree with your principals for suggesting changes to the language, not really the changes themselves. To put it simply, I believe there to be two broad camps of programming methodologies, the VB way, and the C way -- the languages may have changed over the years, but the developers' frames of mind remain the same. I'll rant about the VB way:

The 'VB' way.

I'm sure you're aware of the history of Visual Basic, it was originally built as a application prototyping environment, for quick turnaround of concepts into working code. Every single feature that has been added to the language and the dev ide have tried to accomodate this scenario. Every little thing seems to be designed around the lazy programmer. Just spit out grammar as it comes into your head and let the background-compile process draw little squiggley red lines underneath your code -- you can fix it later. Your pinky has slapped the capslock key? Never mind, let's code the rest of this module entirely in UPPER case, the compiler doesn't care. Option Strict? what's that? -- "lets not bother declaring any variables, I'll just make them up when I need them." Option Base 1? "I can't get my head around zero-based indexes, let's all start at 1, except for this module over here". "I think I'll use zero based indexes there. I'm not sure why". It's syntactical verbosity is just astounding, the amount of syntactic sugar is enough to induce programmatic diabetes. Edit and continue is more pandering to this hack up a demo ethic, IMO. Used correctly, it can be a help, but in my experience it caused me to think less and brainfart more.

You see where I'm going with this? There was no discipline in VB. Yes, you could argue that VB.NET changes all this, but giving a VB programmer a copy of VB.net doesn't change their habits. We have several VB programmers here, and our shop is moving to .NET. I've insisted that the VBers start afresh with c#. My reasoning behind this is that if they were to learn VB.NET properly, they should treat it as a completely new language. But, coming from VB 6, they will see all these things and keywords that are familiar to them and they'll never really mentally shake off the connection (and the bad habits). I strongly believe that they'll take to OO programming faster and with a better attitude if they go with a new language, a perceived blank sheet per-se. I may be wrong.

I think this endless pursuit of making it easier for the programmer has gone beyond aiding creativity. It is positively eroding it.

Back to your points:

- Background compile
(discourages discipline: see above rant)

- Case insensitivity
(discourages discipline: see above rant)

- '[]' instead of '()' for array indices
Sounds like you're getting confused between languages Roy.

- VB.NET-like Intellisense for enums and namespaces writing
Sounds like a good idea to me. I'd imagine it awaits us in the next rollout of the IDE.

- Automatic creation of "()" braces on method calls
This sounds like more help for VB programmers used to typing function calls without parentheses. It had never occurred to me. How much productivity are you going to save with the s
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 5:02 AM by Oisin Grehan

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

(continuation)

- Automatic creation of "()" braces on method calls
This sounds like more help for VB programmers used to typing function calls without parentheses. It had never occurred to me. How much productivity are you going to save with the saving of two characters?

- With like functionality VB.NET
As pointed out in various forms to you:
using (q = Namespace.Object.Object) {
q.property1 = "a";
q.property2 = "b";
}

Admittedly, you've had to type an extra four characters, but hey, life is tough. VB and C# are different for a reason. That reason is so they are different -- it's that simple. VB.NET has underscore line continuation, a 'With' keyword, parentheses for array etc because it is Visual Basic. I believe that VB has been put together to enable speedy mock ups for a broad spectrum of applications, with an emphasis on strong visualisation and good readability for the lay coder. C-syntax to me has always been about the embodiment of abstract concepts, its concise grammar lends itself especially well to this IMO. I'd like to think I'm not a C-syntax snob, but it appears I am.


And last, but not least, I am currently involved in porting a large multitier app from VB to C#. This has been the source of countless rage fits. Again, apologies for getting a little too personal on the rant.

Subscribed.
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 5:23 AM by Dave Burke

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

Roy, I liked your list. I agree with all except Case Sensitivity. It should be smarter and automatically adjust like VB, but then it wouldn't be C# anymore. I like using VB primarily because the VS.NET editor seems much smarter and supportive than C# (though I have coded almost exclusively in C# for the last year.) Keep on doing what you're doing, whether its "stereotypical" or not!
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 6:56 AM by Marc LaFleur

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

I'm with you Roy.
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 6:59 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Am I the stereotypical VB programmer?

Thanks for the feedback guys(especially Oisin). I've learned a lot :)
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 9:03 AM by TrackBack

# heLP .Net Blog

heLP .Net Blog
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 9:03 AM by TrackBack

# Frans Bouma's blog

Frans Bouma's blog
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 11:44 PM by SBC

# re: Speed up Internet Explorer

From:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]

shouldn't it be -

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Connections]
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 11:49 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Speed up Internet Explorer

Nope. it works great as is :)
Wednesday, July 09, 2003 1:03 AM by s

# re: Word 2003 CodeBehind using VS.NET sample video

sdfgsd
Wednesday, July 09, 2003 1:04 AM by ghsg

# re: Word 2003 CodeBehind using VS.NET sample video

rttrterty
Wednesday, July 09, 2003 1:10 AM by Kenneth LeFebvre

# re: Israel .net web developers group meeting

I didn't know you're in Israel. I have some friends over there... I hope all is well for you, in the midst of the troubles brewing in the area.
Wednesday, July 09, 2003 3:01 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Israel .net web developers group meeting

Thanks :)
Wednesday, July 09, 2003 5:42 AM by Joerg Hilger

# re: Add Plugins to Your App 2: Search dynamically for plugins without Config Files

Nice Articel -
Can you provide the source for that too?
Wednesday, July 09, 2003 2:53 PM by TrackBack

# Yosi Taguri's WebLog

Yosi Taguri's WebLog
Wednesday, July 09, 2003 2:53 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Wednesday, July 09, 2003 7:07 PM by vikey

# re: Downloadable MSDN magazine

vikey
Wednesday, July 09, 2003 7:32 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Downloadable MSDN magazine

Hey, thanks for the insightful comment, Vikey ;)
Thursday, July 10, 2003 9:47 AM by Paul Vick

# re: Microsoft does, but can do even more

Thanks for the kind words! (I'd also add that I, too, like C# quite a lot... I just like VB even better! No surprise, I guess...)

I think you bring up two excellent things for Microsoft to be doing. The first is definitely starting to take shape - I don't know as much about the broader company, but the VB team is very much focusing on how to better engage with the community. As for the second, I have very little to do with external events, unfortunately, but will pass along what I can to those who might be able to do something about it!
Thursday, July 10, 2003 1:03 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Microsoft does, but can do even more

That's wonderful to hear :)
Friday, July 11, 2003 2:40 AM by Sebastien Lambla

# re: Geek encounters

Trackback
Friday, July 11, 2003 5:59 AM by Greg

# re: DirectCast

DirectCast is our best friend...or one of them
Friday, July 11, 2003 8:28 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Friday, July 11, 2003 12:24 PM by Robert McLaws

# re: Patterns

The GoF themselves helped write it... cool :)
Friday, July 11, 2003 10:30 PM by Ziv Caspi

# re: Geek encounters

If working at MS means so much to you, you might increase your chances considerably by applying for a job in our R&D center at Haifa. If you send me your resume, I'll make sure to pass it along to our recruiter.
Monday, July 14, 2003 1:54 AM by Oisin Grehan

# re: Command line life saver - LinkD

Mark Russinovich has a similiar tool, junction.exe, over on www.sysinternals.com. He also has a whole suite of other amazing gui and cmdline tools available, some of which I could not live without. Completely free.

- Oisin
Monday, July 14, 2003 2:45 PM by Darrell

# re: A C# programmer's VB.Net starter kit

Cool! I was linked to by Roy Osherove! Sweet!
Monday, July 14, 2003 5:34 PM by TrackBack

# HumanCompiler

HumanCompiler
Monday, July 14, 2003 5:52 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Monday, July 14, 2003 6:45 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: A C# programmer's VB.Net starter kit

Cool! Someone thinks its cool that I linked to them ;)
Monday, July 14, 2003 9:21 PM by Duncan

# re: More maintainable code(and others) lessons

I did the database documentation in HTML help - and it was a revalation. You can - for instance - click on a table name in a stored proc and it will take you to the table def, and on each table there are links to the stored procs that use it, triggers, indexes etc.
Am thinking of expanding this to include the VB code that calls the stored procs by integrating with Document!X...(which is such a great product. Pity I haven't got purchase approval for the .NET version yet)
Monday, July 14, 2003 9:23 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: More maintainable code(and others) lessons

SOuds really coo! How did you do it in HTML help? manually? sounds like a difficult task. then again, I did practically the same only in word format...
Monday, July 14, 2003 9:53 PM by Duncan

# re: More maintainable code(and others) lessons

Did it with a quick-and-dirty VB program.
Basically create a HTML file for each table named "TABLE_[tablename].HTM", one for each stored proc "SP_[procname].HTM" and so on.

e.g.
'--------------------------------------------
Public Sub DocumentTable(ByVal Tablename As String)

Dim nFile As Long
nFile = FreeFile

Open "TABLE_" & LCase(Tablename) & ".htm" For Output As nFile

'\\ Print the html header bit
Print #nFile, "<html>"
Print #nFile, "<head>"
Print #nFile, "<TITLE>GOALD Table Def : " & Tablename & " </TITLE>"
Print #nFile, "<META HTTP-EQUIV=" & Quote("Content-Type") & " CONTENT=" & Quote("text/html; charset=windows-1252") & ">"
Print #nFile, "<meta name=" & Quote("GENERATOR") & " content=" & Quote("Notepad and Chardonnay") & ">"
Print #nFile, "<link REL=" & Quote("stylesheet") & " type=" & Quote("text/css") & " href=" & Quote("stylesheet.css") & ">"
Print #nFile, "</head>"
Print #nFile, "<body>"
Print #nFile, "<TABLE id=Header height=100 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=" & Quote("100%") & " border=0>"
Print #nFile, " <TR bgcolor=#0b02aa >"
Print #nFile, " <TD>"
Print #nFile, " <P class=" & Quote("titlebar") & ">Table definition: " & Tablename & "</P>"
Print #nFile, " </TD>"
Print #nFile, " </TR>"
Print #nFile, "</TABLE>"
Print #nFile, "<HR>"
Print #nFile, "&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=" & Quote("tables.htm") & ">All Tables</a>"
Print #nFile, "<HR>"
Print #nFile, "<H1> Fields </H1>"

'\\ Do the fields....
Print #nFile, "<TABLE id=" & Quote("Fields") & " class=" & Quote("sourcecode") & " align=" & Quote("center") & ">"
Print #nFile, " <TR bgcolor=#ccffff >"
Print #nFile, " <TD width=" & Quote("30%") & ">"
Print #nFile, " <P class=" & Quote("comment") & "> Name </P>"
Print #nFile, " </TD>"
Print #nFile, " <TD width=" & Quote("30%") & ">"
Print #nFile, " <P class=" & Quote("comment") & "> Data Type </P>"
Print #nFile, " </TD>"
Print #nFile, " <TD width=" & Quote("30%") & ">"
Print #nFile, " <P class=" & Quote("comment") & "> Size </P>"
Print #nFile, " </TD>"
Print #nFile, " </TR>"

Dim fldThis As rdoColumn
For Each fldThis In gRDOConnection.rdoTables(Tablename).rdoColumns
Call DocumentField(nFile, fldThis)
Next fldThis

Print #nFile, "</TABLE>"

'\\ Close the html text...
Print #nFile, "</body>"
Print #nFile, "<html>"

Close nFile

End Sub
'--------------------------------------------

Then use the MS HTML Help workshop t
Monday, July 14, 2003 11:20 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: More maintainable code(and others) lessons

Which just goes to show - sometimes you just can't beat VB for fast and simple stuff. I love it.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 3:44 AM by Duncan

# re: The PDC is missing its target audience

Consider yourself lucky...Microsoft Ireland has the following on their events page:

"There are currently no events for Microsoft Ireland."

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 3:47 AM by A little weird

# re: The PDC is missing its target audience

I'm not sure what the goal is for this event, but I'm surprised that making money is one of them. I would have thought that it would make sense to pack people in at a lower cost and spread the word that bit more.

The price is not exactly steep though. I don't know about where you live, but around here $2000 (£1243) would buy you a 3-day IT training course with a third-rate instructor. Corporate events are not cheap.

I'll think you'll find though that for Chief Information Architects of corporates, and for most software companies of a decent size, there will be enough insightful lectures, inspiration discussions (like 'Microsoft are delivering this technology tomorrow, our company needs to bet its future on that'), to make it excellent value.

I don't think you'll find any empty seats.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 3:51 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: The PDC is missing its target audience

Little Weird:
My poit was that the amount of added value from the PDC is nowhere near the amount of added value you can get at a 3 day IT course.
As for CTO's - nothing there they won't be able to get a day later using all the media at their disposale. The only thing left - parties ,networking and clearing up your head a little bit from work matters. It's like summer camp for programmers.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 3:52 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: The PDC is missing its target audience

Well said, Roy!
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 4:22 AM by Doug Thews

# re: The PDC is missing its target audience

I couldn't agree more, but it's all conferences that are overpriced. I think they charge so much because that's what they CAN get. Like some people who suggest having a more techie COMDEX (which was originally for the techies), maybe it's time for a more techie Dev conference. Get rid of all the keynotes and all but the best booths, and start a dev conferences just for developers - no CIOs, CTO's or business guys. Just talks from developers to developers. I wonder what that would cost?
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 4:37 AM by cost of a developer conference

# re: The PDC is missing its target audience

is still going to be big, because the sites that host these things expect to rake it in on these events.

Business events and corporate hospitality are huge margin events. (Somewhat prosaic example) We had a small barbeque at our company, food cooked by staff. Excellent, good choice of food, cost very low.

We had a professionally catered barbeque. Food inferior (beef burgers and no more), cost much higher.

Business events make the money, just like the business-class airplane tickets subsidize the cost of the plebs sitting in economy. Overall it's good for the little man, because it makes consumer stuff cheaper.

Bottom line: good speakers, halls, hotels, caterers are not going to drop their rates for you.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 4:49 AM by Martin Spedding

# re: The PDC is missing its target audience

Hi Roy,

I agree that the conference is expensive but it is not $2000 it is $1695 if you register early. Also the cost of the flight and the hotel will be greater than the cost of the conference.

So why have attended the PDC in the past and probably will do this year is :
(a) In a tight job market anything which gives you an advantage over the next guy is of value. If I can know about Yukon, Longhorn in detail now I have an advantage even if the implementation is a few years later.
(2) The PDC's are technical conferences where you actually get to meet the engineers. It is usually much deeper than a Teched and you get real answers not PR answers.
(3) I can probably read blogs and download a lot of information for free but you cannot beat hearing someone explaining it live to you. Using the Hands on Lab being supervised by people who know the stuff inside out also gives you a leg up.
(4) At conferences you can guage where the industry is going which if you do some consulting can be very important.

My main complaint about the PDC is that is always held in the US.

Really you could say why go to any conference but the conferences I have been to the PDC has usually given the best value.

Martin Spedding
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 6:30 AM by Mike Gunderloy

# re: The PDC is missing its target audience

My own feeling is that these conferences are on the way out. Before the pervasive Internet, something like Tech Ed or PDC made sense as a way to get a ton of info I couldn't get elsewhere. Now by the second day I can download everything, so why bother? They're just corporate vacations. Fine for the Fortune 1000, but irrelevant to most of us.

I'd rather read ASP.NET weblogs for a week than go to the PDC. Much better return on my investment of time and money.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 6:33 AM by Bill Booth

# re: The PDC is missing its target audience

Good job Roy. I went to one of these conferences once and it was a bunch of hype with very little subsistence.
It would have been a better investment for me to buy a copy of MSDN magazine. Never again.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 8:08 AM by ENAV

# WOW MAZAL TOV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wish you all the success in the world.
Many Friday nights taught me that you're the ultimate number one, and Microsoft sure must start an investigation to understand how could it be that the've lost you...
Your brother (in law),
Enav
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 8:44 AM by Jeff Julian

# re: New job

Wow, you get a job and I get laid off. How did that work out? :) Good luck and congrats.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 9:06 AM by Yosi Taguri

# re: New job

Mazal tov
;)

still w8ing for the dinner
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:31 AM by TrackBack

# heLP .Net Blog

heLP .Net Blog
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:31 AM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:31 AM by TrackBack

# Eric J. Smith's Weblog

Eric J. Smith's Weblog
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:31 AM by TrackBack

# Slightly Bent Archives

Slightly Bent Archives
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:31 AM by TrackBack

# Santomania

Santomania
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:35 AM by Rob Chartier

# re: Vote for your favorite desktop at the .Net Desktops Contest


Any way to see the current standings?
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 11:19 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Vote for your favorite desktop at the .Net Desktops Contest

I've blocked it until the voting is finished. It's a surprise :) plus - seeing the results early on might influence future voting.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 11:47 AM by Lawrence Oluyede

# re: New job

congrats Roy :)
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 2:35 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 3:43 PM by Anon

# re: Cheer up Jeff. Here's how you'll get the job of your dreams.

You really are full of yourself are't you?
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 4:29 PM by Allen Edwards

# re: Death to the double-click (a lesson in design)

Logitech (!) has an iTouch Wireless Optical Mouse with a dedicated "double clicker" on the left side (thumb side, for us righties)... and it's just labeled "Double Click".

It also supports the redefined scroll-button as a double click, but I've hated that for several years on all mice, because it never seems to work reliably.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 5:40 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Cheer up Jeff. Here's how you'll get the job of your dreams.

Anon: I'll take that as a complement :)
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 5:43 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Death to the double-click (a lesson in design)

Allen: I didn't know that! Do you not have to configure anything for it to work?
Actually my point was that regular mice (like the stadard 3-button from microsoft should support an 'actiavte' button by default(maybe at the scroller click?). An iTouch is usually for power users only I would think
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 2:55 AM by Duncan

# We will ship s#!*t

(Posted here because the original authore requires registration...)

We will ship s#!t
-because we do not have any minimum training or entrance exams before you can take the profession of "programmer"
-because our work is not subject to observation and criticism by our professional peers at the code level
-because independent standards are either missing or not enforced

Consider the difference in perception if you are introduced to someone who is a "Doctor" and someone who is a "Developer". The former word evokes ideas about professionalism and competence in 95% of people. I'm afraid that the latter does not.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 3:50 AM by Adam Kinney

# re: Cheer up Jeff. You can get the job you want

Weird. You must have deleted the "I *might* be full of myself" post. Still showed up in SharpReader, though :p

Well they looked like good points to me. I guess the only thing I would add would be to advertise some type of speciality. It seems like people are trying to advertise that they are good at everything; and to figure out what they specialize in you have to sift through all of their content.

So if you are looking to use a blog as a resume, I think it would be nice to have some type of objective, or even like a sub-title which shows up on weblogs.asp.net blogs.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 3:59 AM by TrackBack

# The Bleeding Edge

The Bleeding Edge
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 3:59 AM by TrackBack

# Steve Eichert's Blog

Steve Eichert's Blog
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 4:14 AM by Jorge Oblitas

# re: .Net Rocks Show Do's And Don't's

Well, I am better at writing than speaking (I think) Yes, I thin sometimes I push the topic to a dead ends because my english, but the point I would like to remark is that in here, business necesities are like USA, but enterprises perception of developers role is different, and worse... developers perception of themselves in their companies is very wrong in many many cases. the point is that this "globalization" thing, will have to carry most than code to everybody i the world, but a better perception of what is the role of developers in this information society

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 6:44 AM by Robert Scoble

# re: The PDC is missing its target audience

See my comments here:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2003/07/15.html#a3796
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 7:00 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Cheer up Jeff. You can get the job you want

Good point! Yes I did delete that post. It served no purpose other than to take space.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:29 AM by Alex Lowe

# re: PDC pricing continued

Just because a company can afford to do something does not mean that it makes sound business sense. I'm not necessarily saying it doesn't make business sense in this case but your post seems to disregard the fact that this costs millions of dollars to put this shindig on. I would probably argue that the local sales force is a much better investment for Microsoft than this big show. So, as an investor, I want them to keep charging so the expense is low and the yield is still fairly high.

I also think you are missing the fact that the PDC is much like a technical conference (check the agenda - http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/agenda.aspx) so it serves as more than just a marketing blitz and thus should not be free. I mean, vendors are at TechEd and every other technical conference in the world and people don't complain about paying for those.



Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:34 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: PDC pricing continued

Let me clear up some things:
1) I sholudn't be free, but it should have a human price tag
2) Becuase this *is* Microsoft, this is a special case. I'm not saying this applies to *any* company.

As for TechEd - I can see a real added value here, its mainly about teaching some stuff. This conference(just look at scobles post on the subject) is mostly networking and cool stuff.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:35 AM by Alex Lowe

# re: PDC pricing continued

I'm also curious to know if you have ever been to a PDC, Roy?
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:39 AM by Alex Lowe

# re: PDC pricing continued

Ok, so what would the human price tag be? How would you calculate that?

No, it's not just networking and cool stuff. While that is certainly a value add to the conference it is not just that (IMHO, Scoble's response appears to be more of an informative response to let everyone know it's not *just* a Microsoft marketing blitz - just my interpretation though). Read the agenda - it is very technical and covers a great deal of the concepts in the "cool stuff".

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:47 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: PDC pricing continued

No. I've never been to the PDC, not does it look like I will get to attend it anytime soon. The price tag drives away most companies who are small.
Human price tag? 500$ max.
Sure it's not *just* marketing, but its a confernece of which its main marketing angle(which I can see) is longhorn and future products. I'll check out the schedule more closely though.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 9:00 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: PDC pricing continued

Looking more into the agenda, all I can see is sessions for the future versions of products,longhorn and whidbey. Yeah, its cool to see how one can develop for these, but the information there is of no real value to products being built and deployed today.
Less added value IMHO (not that I wouldn't like to be there and learn, but I don't think it's worth 2k$).
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 9:02 AM by Martin Spedding

# re: PDC pricing continued

I decided to write a blog entry(http://weblogs.asp.net/mspedding) as a reply. I have been to a few PDC's and apart from the Hailstorm (.Net my services) they have all been excellent. Also knowing what is coming in future helps you plan. By the time they discuss something at Teched it almost yesterday's news.

Have fun and I like the way you always provoke discussion.

Martin
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 9:07 AM by Alex Lowe

# re: PDC pricing continued

My last comment on the subject is that I agree that it would be great if the conference was much cheaper (although it would cost even more to put on then because the venue would have to be absolutely gigantic to accomodate the number of attendees - which would be a reason not to attend IMHO). I think that the PDC and some of the other conferences are things that every developer should get to do at least once in their career.

I do think that everyone is missing the financial boat here though - again, the local sales (that's account managers, evangelist, MCS architects) are a better investment because they can reach a much larger audience and in fact can provide many of these same presentations on a smaller (think user group) scale for a fraction of the cost.

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 9:39 AM by Justin

# re: PDC pricing continued

I think Alex hit on an excellent point. If you lower the price and get three times as many attendees you need a venue three times as big, three times as many demo booths, three times as much food and swag. The cost goes up quite a bit, with economies of scale does it balance out? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. For $500 bucks I may consider going but even then its a tough call because I, despite my desire to be, can't be an early adopter of everything. I'm also an independent contractor, so I have little enough time as it is staying on top of the current and next 6 months technologies let alone something two years down the line. The PDC isn't for me, I'll catch the cool stuff on blogs and power point presentations. To be perfectly honest I'd feel like I was in a geek's Disney Land but really I'd probably just be taking up space.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 10:08 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: PDC pricing continued

No. What I want to see is the price dropped to 500$ but the amount of people staying the same. Yeah, I think Microsoft can afford it. They are doing it no less for themselves as they are for us. Well, again, its all about making developers want to use the technology at the end of the day. How much is that worth to Microsoft?
How do you calculate money loss on something as intangible as this? It only happens once a year, so make it big and loud as possible, and let people pay low prices to get in. Microsoft will only benefit from this. Let's see. 5,000 people , each paying 2000$ - that amounts to 10,000,000$. How crazy is that? Now, if everyone pays only 500$, MS only racks in 2,500,000$. You think that will *just* cover the conference? and what if it isn't? We are still dealing with the biggest richest company in the world.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 10:52 AM by Robert Scoble

# re: PDC pricing continued

Interesting opinions Roy. Unfortunately, how do you decide which 5000 developers are the right ones? We chose the capitalistic system instead of just inviting our friends. That way you vote with your dollars.

Make no mistake about it, the PDC is highly technical. If you're just learning to program, it will be over your head.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 2:24 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 2:24 PM by TrackBack

# Martin Spedding's Blog

Martin Spedding's Blog
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 2:54 PM by Allen Edwards

# re: Death to the double-click (a lesson in design)

Straight out of the box (after losing my temper over the execrable polyvinyl plastic wrap!). It is specifically labeled "Double Click", and doesn't appear to have any configurability at all.

Power user? I'm a programmer by profession, but not really a hardware-oriented kind of guy (makes me nervous to crack the case of my machine). I just wanted a wireless keyboard and mouse, and (IIRC) the Microsoft version was $10 or $20 more.

I agree on the "out of the box" configuration for std mice with a scroller. I've forgotten what the default is now, setting it to double click is second nature for new devices, I never look at the original setting.

BTW, as an aside, I like your blog, and I'm ambivalent about PDC pricing. I'm in the US, and my company/division usually pays for 2 or 3 of us to attend PDC, and at least one VSLive a year, which of course (?) includes travel and lodging. This is not my year for PDC (Oct. 2001 in LA was, and coming after 9/11, that was a TRIP!).
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 6:18 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: PDC pricing continued

You don't. The first 5000 win. It's that simple and that's how it usually works.
Once its full, no one else can join.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 6:38 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: PDC pricing continued

Plus, It's not like your friends don't have 2k$ to pay up. Usually, they'll be the first to pay to get in. Having a lower price tag won't change that.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:52 PM by Duncan

# re: Vs.Net for presentations

There's also a /nologo switch if you don't want the VS splash screen to be shown. Can be useful in "MS hostile" groups.

Thursday, July 17, 2003 2:43 AM by Slobodan

# re: A C# programmer's VB.Net starter kit

Cool Links !!!
Maybe is better title is C# to VB.NET Translator

Only Crazy people can go for VB.NET if they know C#!!!
Thursday, July 17, 2003 1:53 PM by Here there be dragons

# re: Touch typing hell

Hahah, great comments... and don't forget the classic: "There is a bug in this next part that noone can find, good luck fixing your problem if you traced it here"
Thursday, July 17, 2003 2:22 PM by Chad Osgood

# re: Touch typing hell

I don't believe I could function without knowing how to touch-type. I, like you, was pretty fast until I took an intro typing class back in high school. All I really needed was the concept of "home row" keys and my typing speed went over 150wpm.

If you don't currently type with your fingers on the "home row keys", that will afford you the ability to tough-type, imo.
Thursday, July 17, 2003 6:02 PM by Here there be dragons

# re: Touch typing hell

Over 150wpm just by movin' to the home keys eh? I call shenanigans :)
Thursday, July 17, 2003 9:51 PM by what for?

# re: Touch typing hell

I've been typing for 12 years with two fingers and my thumb for the spacebar, and I do around 70wpm. Retraining would slow me down for months. I can touch type in that I don't need to look at the keyboard.

Practice makes perfect...
Thursday, July 17, 2003 9:56 PM by Julien C.

# re: Yet another new tabbed browser? This one has some new features

Wow ! Seems I gonna switch from IE to this iRider browser !! This is much more intelligent than tabbed browser, which are in fact totally useless !
Friday, July 18, 2003 12:29 AM by Paschal

# re: PDC pricing continued

I wonder how MS consider also the media too. It's good value to have a press pass those days, to attend any kind of conferences ! It's like be a VIP.
Friday, July 18, 2003 4:19 AM by TrackBack

# Jim Meeker

Jim Meeker
Friday, July 18, 2003 4:19 AM by TrackBack

# Dewayne Mikkelson and his Radio WebDog, Shadow: Friday, July 18, 2003

Dewayne Mikkelson and his Radio WebDog, Shadow: Friday, July 18, 2003
Friday, July 18, 2003 4:39 AM by TrackBack

# heLP .Net Blog

heLP .Net Blog
Friday, July 18, 2003 6:56 AM by Chad Osgood

# re: Touch typing hell

Well, I was already over 100wpm before switching to home row. Switching to home row allows you to touch-type which allows you to type faster due to the fact that you're not looking at your hands...

70wpm with two fingers is impressive!
Friday, July 18, 2003 12:58 PM by John R. Lewis

# re: BitVector32 in the real world

Chris did not write the article, he wrote a blog entry pointing to my article. :-)
Friday, July 18, 2003 1:15 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: BitVector32 in the real world

jeez! I'm so sorry, scrwed a little bit there. *fixed*
Friday, July 18, 2003 1:54 PM by Anon

# re: Must-have books for my new job

You forgot:
Mr. Bunny's Guide to Activex
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201485362/002-5293248-8007210?vi=glance
Friday, July 18, 2003 2:16 PM by Mattias Sjögren

# re: BitVector32 in the real world

FYI, the BitVector32 has a bug in that the indexer always returns false for bit #31, even if it's set. The following code should reproduce it.

class BitVectorBugDemo
{
static void Main()
{
BitVector32 bv = new BitVector32( unchecked((int)0xFFFFFFFF) );
int mask = BitVector32.CreateMask();

for ( int bit = 0; bit < 32; bit++ ) {
Console.WriteLine( "Bit: {0}, Mask: {1:X}, value: {2}", bit, mask, bv[mask] );
if ( bit < 31 ) mask = BitVector32.CreateMask( mask );
}
}
}
Friday, July 18, 2003 2:18 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: BitVector32 in the real world

Is this a known bug? as in MS is aware of this?
Friday, July 18, 2003 2:31 PM by Doug Thews

# re: Must-have books for my new job

I was always partial to Introducing .NET (Platt) and Programming .NET (Prosise). The 1st rev of the Platt book came out at a time when we were getting dumped on by a bunch of intro books - I think it was the first book to discuss the guts of .NET (which is why it's one of my favorites).
Friday, July 18, 2003 4:18 PM by Philip Rieck

# re: Must-have books for my new job

You must have Richter's "Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming" as well.

[ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735614229/qid=1058584423/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-5504154-8164800 ]
Friday, July 18, 2003 7:35 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Friday, July 18, 2003 7:35 PM by TrackBack

# Matthew ".NET" Reynolds

Matthew ".NET" Reynolds
Friday, July 18, 2003 9:55 PM by SBC

# re: Must-have books for my new job

Any good book on the C# language - Archer, Liberty or Lipmann.
Friday, July 18, 2003 9:57 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Must-have books for my new job

"Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming" is one of my favorites, yeah, but I think they have that already.
Friday, July 18, 2003 10:57 PM by Mattias Sjögren

# re: BitVector32 in the real world

Yes, it was reported to them during the Everett beta.
Saturday, July 19, 2003 3:59 AM by Mehran Nikoo

# re: Must-have books for my new job

I also liked Essential ASP.NET by Fritz Onion. Very good insight into ASP.NET, talks about the similarities and differences between rendering model in Web and Win applications.

Sunday, July 20, 2003 9:20 AM by OmegaSupreme

# re: Add run-time functionality to your application by providing a plug-in mechanism

Great article , 5 stars :D
Sunday, July 20, 2003 9:38 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Add run-time functionality to your application by providing a plug-in mechanism

Thank you! :)
Monday, July 21, 2003 6:28 AM by Kit George

# re: BitVector32 in the real world

Just a note all: we are tracking this issue at Microsoft, and we do appreciate you taking the time to let us know about it. We didn't get a chance to fix this during Everett, but you can expect this to be fixed in the next release.

Thanks,
Kit
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 4:00 AM by Christian Romney

# re: [New Article] Using Regex and The XML Classes To Parse Your Log Files

I like the combining datasets and the XmlDataDocument class for flexibility. This lets you use compact T-SQL in the stored procs for pulling data out of the database instead of writing 500+ line convoluted FOR XML EXPLICIT queries. You can then use the XmlDataDocument class to get an XML representation for XSLT transformations quite easily. Any performance hit could be easily justified by the increase in maintainability, although the XML processing in SQL is unlikely to perform as well as the XMLDataDocument when all is said and done.
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 5:40 AM by Addy Santo

# re: My article on MSDNAA

Congrats! It looks good...
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 8:42 AM by Steve

# re: Do what you love

Very true. I remember back when I was coming out of school many of the interviewers asking why I went into the CS field and each was happy to hear it was because I enjoyed it and not becuase I thought I could get rich. Apparently many of the other canidates were after the money. I got offers from each place I interviewed so apparently the "love" is what employers are looking for.
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 8:43 AM by SBC

# re: My article on MSDNAA

Great article. I think I read it earlier at OReilly's site a few weeks ago.
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 8:54 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Do what you love

Steve: Yeah, I agree. Sadly, I think today it's mostly for the wrong reasons. A programmer who does what he does out of *love* , would usually take a pay cut more easily because "it's not about the money", or is willing to do interesting technical work for initial less pay. Sad but true.
When people say "I can't believe they pay me to do this" an employer just might take that literally!
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 8:56 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: My article on MSDNAA

SBC: Yeah, MSDNAA has an agreeement with OnDotNet.com that they can re-post any articles they like, given permission from the author. Cool.
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 9:14 AM by Addy Santo

# re: Do what you love

It all depends on the situation - take Bill Clinton for instance :)
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 9:36 AM by Steve

# re: Do what you love

Absolutely, I do what I do becuase I really do enjoy it. At the same time I'll fight to make sure I get paid what I deserve. Does that make me a money grubber and void my "I do it for the love" claim?
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 9:56 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Do what you love

Steve: No it does not, but it *will*,sadly, make you less attractive as an employee to a lot of short-sighted employers. Not that I don't fight for my pay as well, I just fight less :(
Wednesday, July 23, 2003 12:02 AM by Bart B

# re: Avoiding DB_SEC_E_AUTH_FAILED exception on connection string

I got the DB_SEC ... error as well. And the double quotes solved it indeed. Thanks a lot !
Wednesday, July 23, 2003 10:25 AM by Andrew Stopford

# re: Must-have books for my new job

Jason Bocks Programming IL book is a great book to go with Serges. I also recommend the Rotor book as well, always handy.
Wednesday, July 23, 2003 11:41 AM by GeheimnisNacht

# re: Add Plugins to Your App 2: Search dynamically for plugins without Config Files

Great, this is some good stuff. I am totally new to progamming in the .NET-environment, and I needed some plugin stuff.

Well written article, all is clear. You seem like a bright fellow :)


Cheers,
GeheimnisNacht
Wednesday, July 23, 2003 12:54 PM by TrackBack

# Rob Chartier's Excogitation

Rob Chartier's Excogitation
Wednesday, July 23, 2003 9:17 PM by Duncan

# re: Faster typing achived slowly

I take it the missing 'e' in achieved is ironic? ;-)
Thursday, July 24, 2003 2:43 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Faster typing achieved slowly

Doh!
Friday, July 25, 2003 10:04 AM by Lauri

# re: My article on MSDNAA

Roy, You should become a regular. You have really sent me some great ideas, and I appreciate it! Be sure and let me know if I can do anything for you as far as MSDNAA is concerned! I look forward to reading these blogs and other blogger's as well - but I can honestly say that you got me started in blogging! Keep on writing!
Sunday, July 27, 2003 1:55 AM by julie

# re: MSDN VB blog section

Awesome Roy. Well earned too. You have TONS of great technical content and pointers. Certainly this will be more than a "15 minutes of fame" deal!
Sunday, July 27, 2003 2:30 AM by Kyle Cordes

# re: Using XPath to find objects in your object model

The article linked to above is titled "Producing Multiple Outputs from an XSL Transformation", which is interesting, but unrelated to the topic at hand. The actual URL of the article about querying objects with XPath is

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnexxml/html/xml03172003.asp
Sunday, July 27, 2003 2:40 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Using XPath to find objects in your object model

Doh! Miss-Paste :) Fixed. Thanks Kyle!
Sunday, July 27, 2003 2:42 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: MSDN VB blog section

Thanks Julie. :)
Sunday, July 27, 2003 11:47 AM by Scott Mitchell

# re: The Imposter Syndrome: Feeling Like A Fraud

I've never suffered from Imposter Syndrome. Overly Conceited Demigod Syndrome, perhaps, but not Imposter Syndrome. :-)
Sunday, July 27, 2003 1:03 PM by SBC

# re: The Imposter Syndrome: Feeling Like A Fraud

Good posting Roy. The article is from an Indian journal & that was a pleasant surprise. I imagine the "syndrome" has no country or culture barriers. That also includes the "Overly Conceited Demigod Syndrome... ;)
Sunday, July 27, 2003 1:07 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: The Imposter Syndrome: Feeling Like A Fraud

It was actually pretty hard to post this. I kept being afraid that I would be "exposed" for my fears. I think it's too important for me to keep inside , though. plus, it's another way for me to deal with my feelings.
Sunday, July 27, 2003 1:09 PM by SBC

# re: C++ for programmers

Another notable C++ book is Andrei Alexandrescu's Modern C++ Design - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201704315/ref=pd_sxp_elt_l1/103-0239326-5711818

I also recall Jim Coplien's Advanced C++ Programming Styles & Idioms - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201548550/qid=1059350676/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-0239326-5711818
Sunday, July 27, 2003 9:09 PM by Dana

# re: C++ for programmers

from experience it is not so simple or even posiable to improt big workspaces to VS .NET.
There are some problems to compile the code
compiled in VS 6.
Sunday, July 27, 2003 10:37 PM by Mehran Nikoo

# re: The Imposter Syndrome: Feeling Like A Fraud

You are not alone Roy :)

And I think the Internet has made this syndrome even more popular. But as the study shows, no one wants to appraise someone else for nothing. If someone does that, s/he has seen something positive in you, if if many people do that, then it means that you really have something to say!
Monday, July 28, 2003 12:00 AM by SBC

# re: Geekier than thou

It helps to take a few days off from work that demands intense concentration (like programming). The side-effects, at times, may cause anxiety - I think the shrinks call it 'withdrawal symptoms'.. 8-)
Monday, July 28, 2003 12:36 AM by Paschal

# re: Checking for NULL values

Another solution, if you have a huge quantity of fields, is to do a concatenation with an empty string.

It works for me well in VB.

( I know it's not the 'cleanest' way :-))

myPhone = myDatareader("FieldPhone") + ""
Monday, July 28, 2003 2:30 AM by Tim Marman

# re: Geekier than thou

While it's healthy to enjoy other endeavours on occasion, it's good to see your passion is that strong. I think I've become jaded lately and I'm starting to lose it... D'oh!

See, I can get away from the computer, but what REALLY drives me insane is when I HAVE a computer but no connectivity :)
Monday, July 28, 2003 2:49 AM by Josh Baltzell

# re: Geekier than thou

I agree with the computer with no connectivity comment. I would rather have a GBA instead of that.

I only skip using computers for a day about twice or so a year. Usually those are flukes that just have to do with me having a busy day. I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting to have time on the computer. Many people seem to see it as a single activity, but there really are hundreds of different things you can do at the computer. Try to get work done on the TV sometime.
Monday, July 28, 2003 3:10 AM by Doug Thews

# re: What's up with BlogShares?

I'm not sure. I checked my status, and it was last updated on the 27th. Although I have issues with how the calculate incoming links (they list that I only have 1), and I know for a fact from my trackback database that I have quite a few.
Monday, July 28, 2003 3:11 AM by micho

# re: Checking for NULL values

sometimes i use "if typeof myDBNullObject is dbnull then"
Monday, July 28, 2003 3:13 AM by Doug Thews

# re: What's up with BlogShares?

Notice that your share price has been updated, but the spider hasn't run for awhile. Also, notice that your Blogshares image doesn't resolve (mine does this too). If you try to just bring up the image, you'll get some kind of CGI error stating that the site database is having problems. This may be related to the spider issue.
Monday, July 28, 2003 6:08 AM by Mark Brown

# re: Filling typed datasets using Data Access Application Block v.2.0

Roy, I found a bug in version 2 of the applicaion block. Check out http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/markbrown/posts/454.aspx for details. I notified MS but havn't checked to see if the change is in the latest bits.
Monday, July 28, 2003 9:16 AM by Robert Scoble

# re: The Imposter Syndrome: Feeling Like A Fraud

One problem: I really AM fooling all of you.
Monday, July 28, 2003 10:04 AM by brad more

# re: Geekier than thou

Just back from 2 weeks holiday in Northern U. S. (think cabin in the woods) with trusty laptop in tow. Even did some nice coding sitting by the lake. My wife thinks I'm insane (big sigh).

With regard to your choice of vacation destination, I've been to both Antalya, Turkey and Corfu in Greece. Both were fab. Either is highly recommended.
Monday, July 28, 2003 12:14 PM by Steve Hiner

# re: Geekier than thou

I'm not alone. You're certainly no geekier than I am.

I have a vacation coming up and I have NO intention of not programing while I'm gone. My boss thinks I'm crazy (he's a coder too) but then again, he probably thinks I "work" for him rather than him giving me a chance to get paid for my hobby. I always feared that working as a programmer would burn me out on coding for fun but it's just given me access to better toys. I should come out of this vacation with my first PocketPC application. Even better, my wife WANTS me to write it, she's encouraging my obsession.

We recently figured out that it would save us a bunch of money if my wife and kids leave 2 weeks ahead of me for the vacation and I only have 2 thoughts:
1) Can I survive without seeing them for that long
2) Wow, I can get a ton of coding time if I have every evening free for 2 weeks

Thou geekier than me? Perhaps not.
Monday, July 28, 2003 5:10 PM by TrackBack

# ISerializable

ISerializable
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 2:54 AM by TrackBack

# Personal VS.Net Editor Color/Font Settings

Tuesday, July 29, 2003 2:56 AM by TrackBack

# VS.Net and the FontSize Parameter

Tuesday, July 29, 2003 4:31 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Geekier than thou

Steve: You win :) but not by much!
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 9:49 AM by TrackBack

# <br> Darrell Norton's Blog


Darrell Norton's Blog
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 10:57 AM by fgh fgh

# re: System.Text.Encoding.Tip

j gfj gfj dfgh hgh gfh
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 12:31 PM by Phil Weber

# re: Nice quote


With all due respect to Mr. Simmons, the correct quote is: "The LOVE of money is the root of all evil." (1 Tim. 6:10) A person may love money whether or not he has any. :-)
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 12:50 PM by Jason

# re: Nasty bug in Data Access Block Ver. 2.0

Good overview. This bug is also described in detail on the GotDotNet workspace for Data Access. Anyone interested in discussing the DAAB is more than welcome to join.

Thanks

Jason
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 7:36 PM by Addy Santo

# re: As years go by

The unavoidable conclusion from those pictures: DON'T HAVE CHILDREN! Not only do they look like monkeys until age 12, observe the father's appearance- he seems to instantly age 10 years whenever another child is born :)

Tuesday, July 29, 2003 9:05 PM by Scott Mitchell

# re: As years go by

Speaking of children, I heard that a study concluded that for each male child, the mother's life expectancy is shortened by three months, or something to that effect.

The father did seem to age quickly with each new little bundle of joy, eh? :-)
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 1:05 AM by TrackBack

# An imposter? Who, me?

Wednesday, July 30, 2003 11:44 AM by Mehran Nikoo

# re: Visual Studio .Net tips page on MSDN

The link crashes my browser, I don't know whether there is a problem with IE on my machine or with the page.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 1:52 PM by Dave Burke

# re: Filling typed datasets using Data Access Application Block v.2.0

Roy, I continue to appreciate you sharing your experience with the Data Access App Block and ADO.NET in general. I was ready to implement your 3-line Getdataset method approach, but you're right, Lior's one-pass approach is even better. Keep up the great work! btw, thanks for posting a separate blog entry on the bug Mark discovered. I wouldn't have found it otherwise.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 4:30 PM by TrackBack

# Data Access Application Block, Part 2 (Halfa bug)

Wednesday, July 30, 2003 4:30 PM by Dave Burke

# re: Filling typed datasets using Data Access Application Block v.2.0

Roy,

The following post describes my experience with your Filldataset() advice focusing on the fix reported by Mark Brown, which to me didn't appear to be a fix at all. I'd be interested in any comments you might have (strictly optional, of course.) Thanks!

http://weblogs.asp.net/dburke/posts/21931.aspx
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 4:54 PM by HumanCompiler

# re: Out on vacation

Have fun and enjoy! :)
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 5:14 PM by HumanCompiler

# re: Count anything in your open Word document

It exists in Office XP for sure (not sure if it was in 2000 or 97
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 5:23 PM by Scott Mitchell

# re: Count anything in your open Word document

Does this 2003 toolbar offer any features different than the Tools/Word Count in Word 2000?
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 5:24 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Count anything in your open Word document

Scott: I really don't know. It was a first for me to find out about it a few days ago...
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 5:42 PM by Rob Chartier

# re: Out on vacation

If this is correct...

Ka-Lo Tea-He

(Good Luck)
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 5:43 PM by Anon

# re: Out on vacation

I will miss you and your brilliant posts.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 6:16 PM by Eric

# re: Count anything in your open Word document

It also works in Office XP.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 8:11 PM by Dave

# re: Count anything in your open Word document

I heard about this - thanks to our resident Word power user - a few years back in Word 2000.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 11:02 PM by Tariq

# re: Count anything in your open Word document

Oh Gosh Roy,
I think its been there since Word 97.
Its been my biggest friend through high school, and university, specially when all your assignments have a number of words restriction.

Regards,
Tariq
Thursday, July 31, 2003 9:17 AM by Mel Grubb II

# re: Nasty bug in Data Access Block Ver. 2.0

I would argue that the line should also be moved before the actual fill. As the code stands (after the modification above), the table names will be Table, Table1, Table2

The first table is not named consistently with the others. Moving the tablename concatenation before the fill would provide more consistent results:
tableName = "Table" & (index + 1).ToString()
dataAdapter.TableMappings.Add(tableName, tableNames(index))

This would result in Table1, Table2, Table3, which in my opinion is better. Others may disagree.
Thursday, July 31, 2003 11:17 AM by TrackBack

# XmlTextWriter StringWriter = Headache

Saturday, August 02, 2003 1:51 AM by Mano Mangaldas

# re: HOWTO: Create an XMLSerializer from a given XML string

Thank U very much.

small unexpected requirements are very rare to find
Saturday, August 02, 2003 12:32 PM by Fabrice

# re: Silly quote of the day

Why is this silly?
Sunday, August 03, 2003 11:38 AM by Omer

# re: Checking for NULL values

With typed DataSets you can just use Is[Field]Null. e.g.: If you have a column named PersonId, you can use myRow.IsPersonIdNull.

Remember, this only works in typed DataSets.
Monday, August 04, 2003 1:19 AM by Russ

# re: Remoting Events May Break in V1.1

Greetings,

It should be noted that I merely EDITED the article mentioned in this post. It was the author himself who raised the issues about the differences in 1.1.

Thanks,
Russ
Wednesday, August 06, 2003 5:25 AM by Vasudha

# re: About coding standards

Hiya!!!
I am searching for VB.NET/ASP.NET coding standards, Can u please help me out with that?

Warm regards,
Vasu
Thursday, August 07, 2003 5:05 PM by TrackBack

# Framework Compatibility Graphics initiative

Thursday, August 07, 2003 5:05 PM by TrackBack

# Speed up Internet Explorer

Friday, August 08, 2003 12:50 AM by Yosi Taguri

# re: Short and sweet - I'm back

welcome back
Friday, August 08, 2003 6:57 PM by David Stone

# re: Can I please have my keyboard and mouse talking to my Win3k server?

Windows Update doesn't recognize it?
Friday, August 08, 2003 7:31 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Can I please have my keyboard and mouse talking to my Win3k server?

David: sure, they both "work", but only the basic native features that can be configured using the control panel's "Mouse" applet.
The real power of these tools lies inside their bundled software, which sadly, does not install :(
Friday, August 08, 2003 7:32 PM by Rachel Reese

# re: Can I please have my keyboard and mouse talking to my Win3k server?

Take the mouse back -- the Cordless Optical TrackMan® works on 2003. (http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm?page=products/details&CRID=6&CONTENTID=5006&countryid=19&languageid=1) I got one last week. :)
Friday, August 08, 2003 7:47 PM by Chris Martin

# re: Can I please have my keyboard and mouse talking to my Win3k server?

You can emulate probably just about every feature of the software with Girder. I use it for just about everything anymore. I even bought a IR device so I could teach my computer remote-control commands(for TV and DVD veiwing mostly).

http://www.girder.nl/
Friday, August 08, 2003 9:03 PM by Brian Desmond

# re: Can I please have my keyboard and mouse talking to my Win3k server?

I have caught word from Redmond that there may be updates for MS hardware to work with 2003 this fall. ;) I heard this a while ago, though.

--Brian
Friday, August 08, 2003 9:05 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Can I please have my keyboard and mouse talking to my Win3k server?

Rachel: were you able to also install the mouseware software bundled with it?
Saturday, August 09, 2003 9:30 PM by SBC

# re: Short and sweet - I'm back

welcome back & g'luck with your new job.
Sunday, August 10, 2003 6:19 PM by TrackBack

# OurNotepad

Monday, August 11, 2003 6:09 AM by SBC

# re: OurNotepad

Tried it. Looks cool and am awaiting a (collab) response.
Monday, August 11, 2003 11:06 AM by Diego Gonzalez

# re: Server.Transfer vs. Response.Redirect

Redirect, issues a 304 (http code) to the browser and the broser navigates to the next page.

Tansfer, changes the server processing of the HTTP reguest and start ejecuting anothe page without sending anything to the browser.
Monday, August 11, 2003 11:22 AM by Diego Gonzalez

# re: Nasty bug in Data Access Block Ver. 2.0

Hey i'm guilty for that bug... I have solved this one and there will be a new version of the DAAB which supports an abstract factory so you can use the same code to call different ADO.NET providers... it will be available on the workspace this week.

Your solution is not totally correct because the tables must be named Table, Table1, Table2, and so on. So the correct code is:
In C#:
<pre>
dataAdapter.TableMappings.Add(
tableName + (index == 0 ? "" : index.ToString()),
tableNames[index] );
</pre>

In VB.NET
<pre>
dataAdapter.TableMappings.Add(tableName + CType(IIf(index = 0, "", index.ToString()), String), tableNames(index))
</pre>
Monday, August 11, 2003 6:31 PM by Scott Mitchell

# re: OurNotepad

Roy, the links in the quote appear a bit funny and when I click on them I get an error re: MSN Messenger, which is weird, since I don't have that installed. :-)
Monday, August 11, 2003 11:31 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: OurNotepad

for some reason the links got corrupted. I don't knw why, but it's fixed now...
Tuesday, August 12, 2003 3:05 AM by Blair Stephenson

# re: Server.Transfer vs. Response.Redirect

Cool, I hadn't seen the context.items before.

I've just used querystrings in the past.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003 11:45 AM by sergio

# re: Server.Transfer vs. Response.Redirect

One important difference : redirect emits a silent exception.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003 11:46 AM by Jason Best

# re: Why I write in Both C# and VB.NET

I do my DLL's - Classes in C# For the XML Comment features. :-)
Tuesday, August 12, 2003 3:56 PM by Addy Santo

# re: Caching in WinForms


"Just-in-time invalidation" gives best performance and is simplest to implement. Just imagine what would happen if you tried to implement realtime invalidation of a cache with thousands of items, each with varying expiration criteria... the expiration management would probably drain more resources than the actual data being cached!

Implementing a *simple* determistic invalidation mechanism should be fairly simple - just spawn a thread which periodically accesses the cache object to remove/refresh items.

And GL!
Tuesday, August 12, 2003 5:11 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Caching in WinForms

Addy - I agree. I do think that there should be an API that allows this, as well as how it works now. Let me decide if I want to sacrifice performance in specific cases.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003 8:22 PM by Mattias Sjögren

# re: Catch ex As Exception When...

I too thought it was pretty cool when I first saw it, but frankly I've never found a use for it in real code, so I'm not sure how useful it actually is.

There's no equivalent in C#.

You don't get a DivideByZeroException because you're using the floating point division operator (/) and not the integer division one (\). Only integer division by zero throws, floating point generates NAN or infinity or something like that.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003 8:33 PM by Paul Vick

# re: Catch ex As Exception When...

Bah, Mattias beat me to it! Something to talk about in the blog at some point, I guess...
Tuesday, August 12, 2003 9:59 PM by Dave Rothgery

# re: Catch ex As Exception When...

0/0 is NaN (Not a Number). If x>0, then x/0 is Infinity ; if x<0, then x/0 is -Infinity. It's defined in the rules of IEEE (some number which I definitely don't know off the top of my head) floating point numbers somewhere.

Incidentally, you can definitely get the same behavior in C#, as per...

private void button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
int x = int.Parse(textBox1.Text);
try
{
MessageBox.Show(((double) x/ (double) x).ToString());
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
this.Text = ex.Message;
}
}
Wednesday, August 13, 2003 3:20 AM by TrackBack

# Catch ex As Exception (sometimes)

Wednesday, August 13, 2003 4:10 AM by Darren Neimke

# re: Announcing: .Net Desktops Contest

Show us your desktop eh? I'll sue you Roy Osherove ;-)
Wednesday, August 13, 2003 5:39 AM by Derek Stone

# re: Catch ex As Exception When...

I think the bigger picture is you shouldn't be using exception handling to catch divide by zero errors. Logic! Logic! Logic! :)
Wednesday, August 13, 2003 2:34 PM by Josh Baltzell

# re: Google Calc

That is freaking sweet. You can type in "30 degrees C in F" to convert temp too, there are all kinds of cool things.
Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:08 AM by Sudhakar

# re: Google Calc

I did it for 2 Kilometers in Miles :)
Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:14 AM by Sudhakar

# re: Can I please have my keyboard and mouse talking to my Win2k3 server?

I got the same problem with my TV Capture card and GeForceGx video card, hence : Welcome back windows XP :(
Friday, August 15, 2003 1:01 PM by Addy Santo

# re: PDC: Show me the bits

Well, if you worked for one of the right companies you could have those bits weeks ago, long before the PDC ;)

Of course working for any of those companies would probably also mean that you would be so busy that you wouldn't have time to even install them!

Sunday, August 17, 2003 3:32 AM by HumanCompiler

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Hope you're having a good one! :)
Sunday, August 17, 2003 3:52 AM by Lorenzo Barbieri

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday!!!
Sunday, August 17, 2003 3:54 AM by Tosh Meston

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Yeah, happy birthday man.
Sunday, August 17, 2003 4:51 AM by Paul Gielens

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Congrats!
Sunday, August 17, 2003 5:04 AM by Jan Tielens

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Enjoy it! Congratulations!
Sunday, August 17, 2003 6:29 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Thanks guys! :)
Sunday, August 17, 2003 7:45 AM by Jamie Cansdale

# re: WMI mind blower

I've had a look at this before and never quite got it. I think I'm missing some vital piece of the puzzle...

Okay, say I want to monitor things being added and removed to IE's favorites list. There's something under 'Management Events' that looks promising. I right clock on 'Management Events' and 'Add Event Query...'. I then open the 'root\RSOP\User' node in the tree and select 'RSOP_IEFavoriteItem'. I enable 'Object creation, modification and deletion' in the drop down. After I select 'OK' a new node appears under 'Management Events'. I can look at the properties for this event and 'Refresh' but nothing seems to happen (even after addin a new favorite). Where does one view these events?

I'm confused. Please help me out...

Thanks, Jamie.
Sunday, August 17, 2003 8:09 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: WMI mind blower

Jamie - Drag and drop this event query node onto any open component designer (i.e on any form in your application) and voila - you have an object that represents the event you wish to work with. (I'm simplifying this of course. You need to know how to work with a WMI object and understand what it represents in order to go through with this)
Sunday, August 17, 2003 8:22 AM by Damit

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday! =)
Sunday, August 17, 2003 8:48 AM by Dan Bright

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Happy belated birthday. Hope it was fun.
Sunday, August 17, 2003 9:35 AM by MIke Gunderloy

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Many happy returns of the day, youngster (as Eeyore would say).
Sunday, August 17, 2003 10:13 AM by Thomas Johansen

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday mate! Have a cold one for me (Can't drink now, too busy working :C )
Sunday, August 17, 2003 2:15 PM by Paschal

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday Roy ! 28 no way you're a kid ;-)
Sunday, August 17, 2003 5:30 PM by Ryan

# re: Winforms Data Binding Woes

Can you write an article about how to bind a dataset to a datagrid with lookup tables? It is impossible to find this on the internet.

For example: I have a customer table that has a 2 digit code that represents the country they live in. That 2 digit code coorespondes to another table that has a list of all the countries.

Sunday, August 17, 2003 6:38 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Winforms Data Binding Woes

Ryan: look here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/story/9088.aspx
Sunday, August 17, 2003 6:58 PM by SBC

# re: Happy birthday to me!

a happy birthday and other assorted good wishes.
Monday, August 18, 2003 7:33 AM by OmegaSupreme

# re: Happy birthday to me!

Happy birhday man :D
Monday, August 18, 2003 8:26 AM by Phil Weber

# re: Google binding


Roy: You could have included a link to the Google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=winforms+data+binding ;-)
Monday, August 18, 2003 10:55 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Google binding

Done! :)
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 9:37 AM by Ruebs

# re: Winforms Data Binding Lessons Learned

Excellent stuff on the delete cancellation in a datagrid. i have been searching for info for many days now. Thanks.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 5:11 PM by TrackBack

# I give up - Career Calculus

Wednesday, August 20, 2003 5:21 PM by Robert Scoble

# re: I give up - Career Calculus

I don't know about that. My wife moved from Iran to America because America offered her greater opportunities than Iran did. I notice that Silicon Valley keeps getting more and more crowded. Why? Because of the career opportunities offered there. Same up here in Redmond.

Going to the PDC is the same kind of thing. By not being there, you've decided to turn down some economic activity. How much, I'm not sure. I spoke at a user group six years ago and got a new job there and a $10,000 a year raise. Had I decided not to go, I would have turned down $60,000 (and growing).

But, I can't guarantee the same thing will happen to you. We'll never know.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 6:06 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: I give up - Career Calculus

One can't always rely on this for their survival. There's no way I'd have 4k to put in this thing. Life is just not that easy. Now tell me, would you go to a conference in Iran, spending all your savings, blowing off your job responsibilities, just for the chance that somehow someone will hook you up? I'd say that unless I'd know theres a definite possiblity that something like will happen, I'd be reluctant. Plenty of oppertunities closer to home (although much less, which is part of the "suckiness" of it all)
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 6:29 PM by Lauri

# re: Commandments for a publishable article

Roy - I think if I took credit for "managing" the .NET group, all the other people who work really hard, might schedule next month's meeting for my untimely demise!


Everyone who reads this should send me an article for MSDNAA!
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 6:39 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Commandments for a publishable article

oops! I'll change it.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 8:02 PM by Dave

# re: I give up - Career Calculus

I'm one who ranted - both at (1) those who have (and still IMHO) overhyped the "need" to attend the PDC in order to get a sneak peek and decidedly alpha bits of products that won't be available for true solution providing for 1-2 more years at best, and (2) those who speak of "responsibility" of directing their own careers like this is some sort of divine revelation that puts them in some advantageious position.

Each of these points of view are simply untrue.

To the former I say decide for yourself if the PDC is cost effective, both in money AND time. Decide if getting the beta releases that will most likely be offered through MSDN Universal is a better route. Decide if using alternative resource venues (including the overwhelming amount of blogging from the PDC) can give you the edge you need. Decide if formal training using handson of pre-release software cuts it.

To the latter I say... well, if you already asked the above questions in a honest and objective manner, you've already accomplished everything that Eric Sink wrote so eloquently. And if you have, then nothing he wrote should strike you as revelatory.

If you haven't asked these questions, then take his words to heart, and add one more question too: do you honestly believe YOUR worth to YOUR clients (remember, as an employee of some company you are really offering your services to your employer)... do you really believe you are worth much at all if you haven't been taking responsibility all along? You aren't! Remember, rule #1 for anyone in their job is to know what value you provide to your client/customer/employer. If you don't understand where the value lies and do whatever you MUST to keep providing that value you WILL eventually LOSE that value to someone who comes by and yields much better value.

In my case, I spend maybe 10% of my year learning new things. This is enough to stay ahead of the curve on what I need to use. I spend about 60% of my year developing brand new solutions that are needed to address needs today. About 30% of my time is spent working on enhancements and maintenance of existing solutions. When I add in that we still haven't eliminated all Win2k clients nor MSSQL7 servers, I objectively assess that (1) Whidbey is something to consider but I won't be able to gain from it's unique benefits for 12 months, (2) Yukon is not going to be in use until Q4 2005 or Q1 2006 for us and (3) Longhorn is definitely not going to be on clients until sometime in 2007. For me, the time and money is simply not worth it. Both are better spent in other ways today. And both will be spent on these unreleased products in the next few years - just not now.

The PDC is a great thing for some. It is completely worthless for me. I have no fear - sorry Robert - of "losing my job to someone in India". (Yeah, that comment still rubs me the wrong way. You made it directly to me Robert. You made it such an absolute too. No only did you assume to know my career needs by saying this, you also assumed I didn't do the thorough assessment I spoke of above. How dare you? PS: I mean this with all due respect. I just ask that you pay me the same respect.)
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 9:13 PM by Douglas Reilly

# re: I give up - Career Calculus

Clearly, Roy, the PDC is not the thing. Doing any of the things that improve your L, Learning, is the issue.

How many developers do you know who do nothing to continue learning and growing as developers? I can tell you that at one client site, there were perhaps half a dozen developers who did not read *a single development related book* in the last year.

PDC may not be essential for you in your situation, however, I am sure there are other things you can do to add value to what you offer in the employment/consulting marketplace, and I expect you do. However, there are lots of folks who do not. And many of these same folks will be very upset when they find themselves mostly unemployable because what they learned a decade or so in school has very little revelance to the work that needs to be done.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 9:25 PM by SBC

# re: User Group notes: WMI, CLR hosting and AppDomains

I just picked up Golomshtok's 'NET System Management Services' book as I plan to do some WMI development soon. There is an introductory chapter on WMI Mgmnt at the APress website - http://www.apress.com/book/supplementDownload.html?bID=120&sID=971
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 10:17 PM by Eric Sink

# re: I give up - Career Calculus

Many readers of my piece saw more PDC hype than I intended to convey.

I agree with Roy. Attending PDC is just one example of grabbing the reins of your own career. There are lots other examples, many of which don't cost so darn much. Nobody should feel like a slug just because they skip PDC.

The point was not about PDC. The point was that we need to grab opportunities to learn new stuff, all kinds of stuff. If we don't, we've got nobody to blame but ourselves.

BTW, Roy, thanks for the link, but let's try to move a little quicker next time, okay? You were the last blogger on earth who had not linked my article, and I was just getting ready to send the blog police after you. :-)

Wednesday, August 20, 2003 11:09 PM by Dave

# re: I give up - Career Calculus

Eric, I'll comment here only because you did. I didn't take your piece as PDC related at all. The only connection to it was that the PDC initiated some talk about how one handles their career throughout their life. Like you and your piece, I agree that one should always be proactive. Proactive also includes saying "no" or having no interest in something too, just in a conscious thought-out way. Your piece was only conveying like thoughts in a well-written way (like alot of what you have to say).
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 11:42 PM by Vijay

# re: It's so hardcore you could say it's CLR Porn

Beautifully put !
Thursday, August 21, 2003 2:44 AM by Paul Gielens

# re: I give up - Career Calculus

The "about commitment guy" could have been me 2 years back. Only then saving all the goodies on a 100 mb zip disk ;)

Roy do yourself a favor, buy (or lend) the book I recently blogged about.

ps: Great post, was feeling the same about the PDC horror (for those that aren't going).
Thursday, August 21, 2003 5:32 AM by Jamie Cansdale

# re: WMI mind blower

Thanks. I'll also read that sample book chapter you just posted about. Hopefully that will give me more of a clue.

BTW, how good a fit do you think WMI would be for unit testing results? I'm finding getting test results back difficult in multi process applications. I'm wondering it this is the way to go. At the moment I'm using .NET Remoting to cummunicate with the test runner. This problem with this is it has side effects if you're writing certain types of applications (i.e. ones that use remoting or context themselves). It's also a problem if the tests are running in a process that the test runner spins up.
Thursday, August 21, 2003 5:59 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: WMI mind blower

I'm not sure how one would use WMI for unit testing. Perhaps only to check physical results on disk or stuff like that? I'm not sure what WMI ability your referring to..
Thursday, August 21, 2003 7:59 AM by Jamie Cansdale

# re: WMI mind blower

As an out of band way of getting events out of an application (ie one that doesn't involve .NET Remoting side effects). Each assertion and test result could be an event. I think there's also a way of making an object accessable vier WMI. The test runner could be made available this way.

At the moment in process unit tests are very well catored for (ie of libraries). I'm thinking more about out of proc testing.
Thursday, August 21, 2003 8:19 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: WMI mind blower

Cool idea. I don't know how feasible it is though. I have not worked with event on the WMI front. Mainly done more "manual" labor or so...
Thursday, August 21, 2003 10:39 AM by Lauri

# re: Commandments for a publishable article

Send articles to: ltravis@msdnaa.net
Thursday, August 21, 2003 1:04 PM by Jeff Key

# re: Free WMI book chapter

Thanks, Roy. I could've used this a few months ago, but better late than never!
Thursday, August 21, 2003 2:27 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Add Plugins to Your App 2: Search dynamically for plugins without Config Files

Here's the direct link to the zip file with the code to this article :
http://msdnaa.net/Legacy/Download.asp?Filename=Plugins_Dynamic_srcII.zip&ResID=2197&FileID=585
Friday, August 22, 2003 7:20 PM by Dana

# re: User Group notes: WMI, CLR hosting and AppDomains

Thanks Roy for the meeting summary i could not attend ! :-)

Dana
Saturday, August 23, 2003 6:11 PM by sirshannon

# re: MSN Messenger upgrade blocks Trillian

because those networks do not want one program to access them all.
Saturday, August 23, 2003 6:13 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: MSN Messenger upgrade blocks Trillian

Exactly. It's going against the user instead of towards them. Sucks.
Saturday, August 23, 2003 7:21 PM by Luci

# re: MSN Messenger upgrade blocks Trillian

I think AOL patended its sooo special protocol and were trying to get on court with Trilian.
They also have non-aggression pacts, the one obvious being AOL-MS.
Saturday, August 23, 2003 8:07 PM by sirshannon

# re: MSN Messenger upgrade blocks Trillian

I guess I misunderstood your question, I thought you were asking why MS didn't make a tool to communicate with IM networks that do not want MS to have access to (like AIM). Yes, it would be nice if there were an open universal IM protocol but there is not. The companies who made the protocols made the decision and it is not MS's place to decide if AIM should be open to everyone. That is AOL's decision and they have made it.
MS can not simply say "users want MSN to talk to AIM so we're going to h4X0r your protocol". Trillian (with nothing to lose) can and did. MS can't set a precident like that because turn-about is fair play. MS did the right thing in trying to get that universal protocol started with AOL a few years ago, AOL said no (and for good reason, it's close to the only thing they have that keeps people in the AOL circle).
Saturday, August 23, 2003 10:02 PM by G. Andrew Duthie

# re: Finally some helpful code!

Who needs code? Just add a rule in Outlook that filters on the body text:

"Please see the attached file for details" or:

"See the attached file for details"

Didn't miss a single one for me. Alternatively, since all of the emails seemed to have a faked successful virus-scan header, you could filter on that basis as well.

Besides, filtering on the subject field is a bad idea, IMO. It's way too easy to end up deleting a valid email that happens to use the same subject as the worm, such as "thank you!" or "your details". Better to filter on something that's a little longer, and/or less likely to appear in a valid email.

Sunday, August 24, 2003 12:20 AM by Brian Desmond

# re: Screensaver from hell

That screensaver happens to be one of my all time favorite group policy objects to assign to users.
Sunday, August 24, 2003 12:21 AM by Brian Desmond

# re: MSN Messenger upgrade blocks Trillian

Works for me.
Sunday, August 24, 2003 12:27 AM by Matt Hawley

# re: MSN Messenger upgrade blocks Trillian

I read on Trillian's website, that the "required upgrade for MSN Messenger Users" is primarily for security reasons...ie: get them using the new protocol that newer version of MSN Messenger relies on. Trillian Pro v2.0 (beta) currently is using this newer protocol, but the free version (and pro 1.0) currently do not. Its still unsure if MS will be not enabling Trillian (or any other 3rd party software) to connect until Oct. 15 actually rolls around, though ... so don't hold me to this comment. The possibility that Trillian Pro 2.0 beta will still function, is pretty good, since its using the newer security protocol.
Sunday, August 24, 2003 2:03 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Finally some helpful code!

Well, still. I posted because the code is that cool and simple. :)
Sunday, August 24, 2003 7:51 AM by Jamie Cansdale

# re: Some debugging tips

This certainly opens up some interesting posabilities. I would like to see a set of attributes that act as breakpoint hints. i.e...

[PreCondition("x!=null")]
void method(string x)
{
int length = x.Length;
// blar blar
}

A tool (dare I say it, add-in) could be asked to enable breakpoint hints. It would go through the code and set conditional breakpoints wherever it sees these hint attributes.

The same could be done for method enter, leave, exception style tracing.

Just a thought... ;)
Sunday, August 24, 2003 5:16 PM by SBC

# re: Was that a shout out?

Carl & his .NET Rocks! show is quite a hit in this neck of the woods - http://weblogs.asp.net/sbchatterjee/posts/9263.aspx

Monday, August 25, 2003 4:34 PM by Scott Watermasysk

# re: The ultimate connection string reference

Its a really small world or you are on the .Text mailing list :)

-Scott
Monday, August 25, 2003 4:37 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: The ultimate connection string reference

It must be pretty small, cause I'm not registered for that mailing list :)
Monday, August 25, 2003 4:49 PM by Yosi Taguri

# re: Combobox binding trouble - with a solution

had it too last week..
Monday, August 25, 2003 5:29 PM by TrackBack

# A meeting with Udi, and a talk about performance Do's and Don'ts

Monday, August 25, 2003 8:57 PM by SBC

# re: The ultimate connection string reference

I thought it was a dating agency ;-)
Tuesday, August 26, 2003 10:50 AM by Addy Santo

# re: MSFT.Opml

Oh shit, there goes my last hour of sleep tonight ;)
Tuesday, August 26, 2003 11:57 AM by TrackBack

# MSFT Bloggers..

Tuesday, August 26, 2003 8:10 PM by TrackBack

# Trillian disconnected?

Tuesday, August 26, 2003 9:55 PM by SBC

# re: Advice for article writers - part II

You don't need any more advice to publish - just keep'em coming at your blogs, MSDNAA & OReilly.
Tuesday, August 26, 2003 11:23 PM by Ray Jezek

# re: Typed Datasets Are Not Always The Answer

Roy, your right about it being a design decision. We decided to treat out TDS's as DTO's as opposed to business objects, which i think works great and allows you to pass your object "through" business logic instead of being coupled with it. But again it depends on your ultimate architecture... there a lots of ways to solve the same problems. Also, i think updating a TDS is very trivial and shouldn't be seen as a challenge in terms of maint. as compared to custom business entities.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2:02 PM by Jason

# re: No smiling! We're Canadian

Hey...don't laugh :) My sister had to have her picture taken three times because there was "inadequate lighting". In plain speak...it was a small shadow on her nose.
Thursday, August 28, 2003 5:16 AM by Frans Bouma

# re: "Could not open in Design view. Quote values differently..." solved!

It's still one of the crappy bugs in the ASP.NET editor IMHO. Also when you include databinding statements in the strings of a html tag, it can't show the designer. MS should have solved this years ago.
Thursday, August 28, 2003 5:19 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: "Could not open in Design view. Quote values differently..." solved!

Yep. It does suck :)
Friday, August 29, 2003 10:49 AM by bt

# re: A .Net weblogger business card?

I think it would be very useful to have your blog on your business card (like a company having their URL).

I'm not convinced about the universal business card idea. Sounds a little less community and a little more cliquey.
Friday, August 29, 2003 10:49 AM by Lorenzo Barbieri

# re: A .Net weblogger business card?

I don't think it's too "out there"...
And I like the idea of the universal business card too...
Perhaps someone can make a template...
But what logo do you want to use... the asp.net logo? the .net logo? or a fresh new logo?

Friday, August 29, 2003 11:15 AM by Shannon J Hager

# re: A .Net weblogger business card?

Having a business card for your website isn't "out there" at all. I got mine in 1999.
Friday, August 29, 2003 12:10 PM by Ron Green

# re: A .Net weblogger business card?

Been thinking about that too.
Saturday, August 30, 2003 2:23 AM by Simon Phipps

# re: A 'softie at a linux show

It was interesting how many Microsoft staff were at LinuxWorld. Both in my talk and in the one where Sterling Ball was presenting, a show of hands was requested and in each case there was a whole row! There's actually always been an openness to the technival staff, so I'm pleased it carries on.

I'll mention on Josh's site too, but I was never a Microsoft employee (did my Word testing as an end user back in more liberal days).
Saturday, August 30, 2003 1:24 PM by TrackBack

# MS Offers Licensing to Trillian

Monday, September 01, 2003 4:39 AM by TrackBack

# Hosting the CLR - the native approach

Monday, September 01, 2003 6:12 AM by Dave

# re: Asynchronous ASP.Net actions suck?

Just like you say the browser was never meant to be a 'real' application platform, let me add this: .NET WinForms were never meant to be a real 'universal' solution.

At least a browser guarantees you some standard kind of exporsure on Linux and Mac. At least a browser guarantess you exposure on that Win98 box with only a 56k connection to the web.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that each arena has it's pros and cons. Yes, you have no easy nor simple way to make an intelligent progress bar in a browser app. On the other hand, this forces you to develop disciplines you might not otherwise hone. Do you really want create web apps that force a 20 meg download just ot run them? One that really needs that intelligent progress bar? Because if you do then you probably have WAY too much happening... a download that would be a complete dog over a dirty phone connection.

Personally I think the greatest way to challenge a WinForm developer to hone their skills is to ask them to develop in .NET CF. If you can get your app to work with the limitations of that subset, you've probably made something that will not only scale well, but also has a simple interface and blazing performance to boot!

Now, in answer to your original problem, I've used two solutions in my ASP apps. (This is already assuming you rethought why you must force the user to wait long enough to need that progress bar - and have no other recourse.) First off, make a 'dumb' progress bar. Some simple DHTML will do the trick. Second off, provide 'intelligent' feedback.... "Step x of x...." or give them numbers and figures, but stream it line by line to the browser. The user doesn't have to understand it, they just have to know things haven't grounded to a standstill.

I had a finance system load. Intranet app. Lots of number crunching. Couldn't tell the user no. In that case I opted to have the web server make one call to get back the calculated data and then make several sequential calls to update the database one account at a time. That way I was able to tell the user - account by account - exactly what I was writing to the database. When finance 'pulled' the data in several departments at a time (a process that took about 10 minutes) they were left not only with frequent feedback - but relevant feedback also. Yes, it was a hack. Yes, I could have asked WHY THE HELL IT IS SO MUCH MORE DIFFICULT. Instead I took it as a challenge to be creative - and unexpectedly developed a much appreciated 'feature' of my app. (Not only from a finance standpoint, but a debugging one too!)
Monday, September 01, 2003 7:48 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Asynchronous ASP.Net actions suck?

Dave: Thanks for the relevant feedback. I agree with most of what you said. Perhaps I should have re-labled this post: "Rant:".
Yes, I love these kinds of challenges. But consider a different view:
If everyone who has ever encountered a problem would just say "Great , a challenge" and tried to find a workaround, and noone ever bothered to say "why is it so hard? let's make things better/easier/faster" we wouldn't get where we are now. We would still have ASP, not ASP.Net. Actually, we still might be in the COBOL days.

Still I see what you mean. Thanks.
Monday, September 01, 2003 4:54 PM by Derek Stone

# re: Hosting the CLR - the native approach

Thanks for the plug Roy. I'll see if I can work in one of your articles (or your blog altogether) in on of my upcoming pieces. ;)
Monday, September 01, 2003 4:58 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Hosting the CLR - the native approach

Hey Derek. It wasn't a plug. You simply wrote a fine article, and it was really worth posting about. Keep up the great work!
Monday, September 01, 2003 6:28 PM by Duncan Godwin

# re: Asynchronous ASP.Net actions suck?

I've had to integrate something quite recently that could potentially take a long time to run, and I wanted to give the user feedback, the solution I opted for was to utilies MSMQ and a Windows Service to listen for events on the queue. The ASPX page after submitting checks every 3 seconds to see if the job is complete. This solution works if you have full server access.

Monday, September 01, 2003 7:10 PM by Duncan Mackenzie (MSDN)

# re: Showing the "Browse For Folder" dialog

Of course, in 1.1 you can just use the FolderBrowser component included in Windows Forms
Monday, September 01, 2003 7:22 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Showing the "Browse For Folder" dialog

Duncan, For the life of me I can't find any reference to a class or component named "FolderBrowser" in winforms using Vs.Net 2003 (other than the one mentioned in this post). How can I reach it?
Monday, September 01, 2003 8:47 PM by Husein Choroomi

# re: Showing the "Browse For Folder" dialog

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfSystemWindowsFormsFolderBrowserDialogClassTopic.asp
Monday, September 01, 2003 11:54 PM by JE

# re: Asynchronous ASP.Net actions suck?

HTTP is a pull only mechanism, that's something you have to deal with when you code for it. You can get your client to query you several time but you can only answer to a client request, not push anything back to the client. This is a limitation of the protocol that was never meant for anything else than pulling data from a server. Honestly there is no point in complaining that it sucks, especially more than 10 years after is was first invented, thats just the way the protocol was meant to work and what we have to deal with. Any protocol has it's limitations and drawbacks and are meant to solve a specific set of tasks that evolves, slowly becoming more and more difficult to adapt... That's the way things goes in computer science, and honestly more than 10 years and still a long life ahead of it is a VERY impressive achievment for HTTP.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003 1:20 AM by Derek Stone

# re: Showing the "Browse For Folder" dialog

I mention in the discussion portion of the article that .NET 1.1 contains a preferred class called FolderBrowserDialog, located in System.Windows.Forms of course. Apologies for the confusion. I've emended the article and added in an editors note.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003 4:11 AM by Julien CHEYSSIAL

# re: A better disposable email

Yep ! That's a French website !
Tuesday, September 02, 2003 4:11 AM by Michel

# re: A better disposable email

On dit :
- Très cool !
- Super génial !
- Trop bien !
etc...
Tuesday, September 02, 2003 9:06 AM by Marc Shiker

# re: Showing the "Browse For Folder" dialog

I remember the Microsoft discouragement as well and I believe it was in v 1.0 of the framework. It drove me crazya that that class wasn't available for use since it seems like it is one of the more common tasks that a Windows forms programmer performs. I was glad to see that discouamgement is no longer present.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003 10:33 AM by Monsur

# re: Asynchronous ASP.Net actions suck?

Microsoft just recently came out with an Asynchronous Application Block, which could provide some good info on this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpag/html/PAIBlock.asp
Tuesday, September 02, 2003 10:50 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Showing the "Browse For Folder" dialog

Anyone know of any reason why my home copy of VS.Net does not show this class as part of the framework, while my work copy does? Perhaps its due to the fact that I have win2k3 at home or something?
Tuesday, September 02, 2003 2:35 PM by Scott Watermasysk

# re: .NetWeblogs chosen for site of the week on ASPExperts

Ha :) That's not me...that is all of you posting great stuff. Keep it up!

-Scott
Tuesday, September 02, 2003 6:11 PM by Anon

# re: Windows Forms Programming in C# Sample Chapter

> Do I?)
Yes
Wednesday, September 03, 2003 1:03 AM by Bruce

# re: Communication is key

I'm sitting here blogging next to my wife in bed, and totally agreeing with you. Yet, I seem to still be blogging?
Wednesday, September 03, 2003 5:00 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Communication is key

Heh. I could never do that. Not that I don't won't to. I *could't*.
Wednesday, September 03, 2003 1:54 PM by satish

# re: Free ADO.NET book chapter

it is good
Wednesday, September 03, 2003 9:14 PM by Sam Gentile

# re: Israel Visual Basic User Group today - on ADO.Net

> You don't have to be a VB programmer to learn about .Net. It's about the framework anyway
>

Yes! Bravo! I wish more people would grok this...
Thursday, September 04, 2003 4:24 AM by Mahesh

# re: Books to buy

May I suggest Essential ASP.NET, or is it that you are not into Web based apps?
Thursday, September 04, 2003 4:36 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Books to buy

I'll have to check. If we don't have it I'll recommend it.
Thursday, September 04, 2003 6:34 AM by Duncan

# re: Books to buy

That's a lot of books - opening a library?

Other books you might find useful are "Code complete" (MS Press), "Professional VB.Net" (Wrox) and "Data structures and algorithms" (?Prentice Hall?)
Thursday, September 04, 2003 7:21 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Books to buy

Dancan - no just refreshing the current stock. We have code complete. I'll check out the third book you mentioned though. thanks.
Thursday, September 04, 2003 7:32 AM by Slavomir Furman

# re: Books to buy

Hi!

few more tips:

"Refactoring" by Martin Fowler

"The Unified Modeling Language User Guide"
by Grady Booch,James Rumbaugh,Ivar Jacobson

"Writing Secure Code"
by Michael Howard, David LeBlanc

regards,
Slavo.
Thursday, September 04, 2003 8:13 AM by Sam Gentile

# re: Books to buy

Nice list Roy. I agree with all of them and if you are assembling a complete software development lib, I echo "Code Complete" and "Refactoring" as absolute must-haves. I echo "Essential ASP.NET" as a must-have. A must-have I didn't see is "Design Patterns" by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides (the GOF book).
Thursday, September 04, 2003 10:47 AM by Yosi Taguri

# re: Congratulations Lior!

don't forget you're invited
Thursday, September 04, 2003 10:55 AM by Jesse Ezell

# re: Books to buy

GOF

Modern Structed Analysis (Edward Yourdon)
Thursday, September 04, 2003 3:10 PM by Jamie Cansdale

# re: Books to buy

Microsoft .NET Remoting - Scott McLean

If you ever do stuff with Remoting/Contexts this is a must (even if you've got Ingo's book).
Thursday, September 04, 2003 7:10 PM by Shannon J Hager

# re: MSDN could have had me

you have a blog, hit up Scoble!
Friday, September 05, 2003 1:52 AM by Duncan Mackenzie (MSDN)

# re: MSDN could have had me

Scoble has nothing to do with MSDN, but feel free to email Kent Sharkey (http://weblogs.asp.net/ksharkey) who is the Content Strategist for ASP.NET and Visual Studio... myself (Visual Basic and Visual C#)...

Friday, September 05, 2003 6:23 AM by Paul Gielens

# re: Unit testing links, and NUnit Add-in rocks

Roy get yourself this book:

Beck. Test Driven Development: By Example. Addison Wesley, 2003

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321146530/104-6118467-1794354?v=glance

Good initiative a study group within your company. I’m certainly at the wrong place atm cause I would not get anyone motivated besides myself to do anything like that.

Share your findings will ya.
Friday, September 05, 2003 8:27 AM by Jamie Cansdale

# re: Unit testing links, and NUnit Add-in rocks

Wow, thanks for the recomendation. You've made me feel guilty for neglecting NUnit Add-In. I've got plenty of ideas for improvements. I'll get back into it as soon as the new Managed Add-Ins is out the door. Hopefully by then writing add-ins will be painless enough so that other people will want to join the project... ;)
Friday, September 05, 2003 6:57 PM by the querier

# re: The Imposter Syndrome: Feeling Like A Fraud

The ( perfectly correct) belief that you're 'fooling' others comes from a surfeit of intelligence. If you're sufficiently dumb, you'll just think you're rather clever.
Friday, September 05, 2003 11:56 PM by Dave Burke

# re: Pics from the new office

Hey, Roy. I'm not seeing the pics, dude. When I go directly to the jpg. URLs I'm getting: Forbidden You don't have permission to access /royo/albums/Identify/view1.thumb.jpg on this server....
Saturday, September 06, 2003 2:42 AM by Julien CHEYSSIAL

# re: Pics from the new office

Hi Roy, pics are not displayed !
Saturday, September 06, 2003 6:32 PM by Dave

# re: Usability vs. Beauty

Couldn't have said it better myself Roy. A major component of usability is keeping to standards.

You can have the most beautiful marketing website in the world - many come to mind - but if nobody can figure out what you are selling and how to buy it in 2 minutes and 3 pageclicks you are toast. Granted, product usability is different, but the same does hold true from version-to-version.
Sunday, September 07, 2003 1:20 AM by Korby Parnell

# re: MSDN could have had me

And if you can't get in through the front door, give me a holler.
Sunday, September 07, 2003 10:00 AM by Paschal

# re: Israel .NET web User Group meeting at September 10th - Performance & Caching

It's a pity that teleportation doesn't exist yet, I will be so happy to be there ;-)

Beam it up Roy !
Sunday, September 07, 2003 1:47 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Israel .NET web User Group meeting at September 10th - Performance & Caching

Heh Paschal. Yeah - no teleportation sucks ;-)
Sunday, September 07, 2003 7:17 PM by ICE COLD KILLERS

# re: Drag 'n Drop Performance Counters!

hi there
Sunday, September 07, 2003 7:43 PM by John Watson

# re: Can we have this for the PDC as well?

Roy, they are making them available but this is America, remember? You can purchase the entire PDC conference on DVD for $199 :-/
Sunday, September 07, 2003 8:34 PM by Marc LaFleur

# re: Can we have this for the PDC as well?

Wow, very cool.
Monday, September 08, 2003 4:40 AM by TrackBack

# The OLE syndrom

Monday, September 08, 2003 10:03 AM by G. Andrew Duthie

# re: The OLE syndrom

Y'know...I was thinking something similar. It's one thing to be humble, but to suggest that one's own writing wasn't "created by my own power" goes a little beyond humility.

I used to speak similarly of my writing, saying that I was just lucky to have been given the opportunities that I was. Then a good friend responded with "lots of people have opportunities...you acted on them."

Life is part opportunity, part luck, part timing, and a big part...hard work. It's kind of a shame that Brockschmidt seems reluctant to credit himself with the hard work that was doubtless necessary to get him where he was. I sincerely doubt that it all "just happened" to him, but that's the impression one gets from reading that passage.
Monday, September 08, 2003 12:05 PM by Brenton House

# re: Why people are not into RSS readers

Maybe microsoft will purchase NewsGator and integrate the features into Outlook...
Monday, September 08, 2003 12:18 PM by Addy Santo

# re: BuildIt

Nant is probably the best known and most flexible. Personally I really don't like Build-IT since it uses VS solutions to compile. Be aware that in order to really benefit from a good build tool you will need to invest a suprising amount of time and effort integrating it in your dev org.
Monday, September 08, 2003 12:32 PM by Kenny Lamoot

# re: Why people are not into RSS readers

Feed-Me.Info is a web based news reader, that isn't talking about RSS.

You have one or more 'Views'

You add 'News Feeds' to a 'View'.

'News Feeds' contain News Items.

A user can create his own view on the web, where the source is not that important, but the content is.

Putting these News Feeds into categories, which is called the 'News Directory', and I believe we getting closer to non-tech people.

I try to ban the word RSS from the site, which is not always easy.

Maybe you should try it out, and start creating your view on the web!
Monday, September 08, 2003 3:22 PM by Peter Provost

# re: BuildIt

Just use CruiseControl.NET and you'll be happy.

http://www.continuousintegration.net

--Peter
Monday, September 08, 2003 6:33 PM by Joe Grossberg

# re: Why people are not into RSS readers

"Actually all this will happen when we stop talking about “RSS” and start calling it a more people friendly name."

A people-friendly name for the format ... like, um, "mp3"?

Yeah, that sh*t's going nowhere until they come up with a marketable name. ;)

I would also take your analogy further and say RSS readers are the <i>circa-1999 Linuxes</i> of today's data clients.
Tuesday, September 09, 2003 4:32 AM by TrackBack

# Issues and solutions with Process and Request Identity in ASP.NET

Tuesday, September 09, 2003 7:54 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: BuildIt

Will do!
Tuesday, September 09, 2003 9:27 AM by Dustin Mihalik

# re: X1 is cool

You might try forcing it to "index all new files" in the options menu. I found that it did not index all my files at first. I set it up to index files overnight, and all my files were there the next day. You can also set how much it indexes in different directories, so if you dont need full-text search on some stuff you can turn it off.
Tuesday, September 09, 2003 9:44 AM by TrackBack

# Geek TV and more

Tuesday, September 09, 2003 9:50 AM by TrackBack

# Paired Programming

Tuesday, September 09, 2003 12:21 PM by Michael Favro

# re: NerdTV

Then you'll love the Multi-University/Research Laboratory Seminar Series at http://murl.microsoft.com/default.asp. It contains the UW CSE Colloquia Series from past years, as well as other research and lecture series.
Tuesday, September 09, 2003 1:27 PM by Dave Burke

# re: Issues and solutions with Process and Request Identity in ASP.NET

You're right, as usual, Roy. This is an excellent KB article. Thanks!
Tuesday, September 09, 2003 2:08 PM by TrackBack

# What do I subscribe to? Get the OPML

Wednesday, September 10, 2003 4:59 AM by TrackBack

# More geeky streaming lectures

Wednesday, September 10, 2003 9:04 AM by Paschal

# re: Issue and solution: Web custom control not showing in designer with "Security Error" tooltip

Roy your wife seems also to be smarter than you he he ;-))) (just joking)
She should have her own weblog here ;-)
BTW your picture on the left column doesn't show up maybe a problem with the link ?!?
Wednesday, September 10, 2003 9:30 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Issue and solution: Web custom control not showing in designer with "Security Error" tooltip

The picture shows fine at some places and disappears in other places. I have no idea why :(
Wednesday, September 10, 2003 9:52 AM by TrackBack

# Israeli .Net web casts

Wednesday, September 10, 2003 10:24 AM by Paschal

# re: Issue and solution: Web custom control not showing in designer with "Security Error" tooltip

I checked the link. I think you should try this link instead

http://pnavy.com/royo/albums/Me/Office2.jpg

This one seems to be perfect ;-)

It's probably because on the current link some access privileges are not properly setup on the folder itself.

BTW don't you have some shame to have your pictures on a Apache server rather than a good Windows server ? ;-))
Wednesday, September 10, 2003 7:00 PM by Dumky

# Some more links to streaming video

I have aggregated a bunch of similar links a couple of weeks back. http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000099.html
Thursday, September 11, 2003 12:09 PM by tom

# re: X1 is cool

test
Thursday, September 11, 2003 1:35 PM by SeanB

# re: Document outline

Hey Thanks! I never noticed the script outline before.
Thursday, September 11, 2003 2:17 PM by Rai Umair

# re: Geeky lectures - part III

Check Rai Umair's Blog = <a href="http://dotnetrai.blogspot.com">Managed|Core</a>
Thursday, September 11, 2003 2:22 PM by Rai Umair

# re: Geeky lectures - part III

Check Rai Umair's Blog = <a href="http://dotnetrai.blogspot.com">Managed|Core</a>
Friday, September 12, 2003 4:42 AM by dfg

# re: UML Tutorial

dfg
Saturday, September 13, 2003 11:25 AM by Carl Franklin

# re: .Net Rocks Rocks, INETA, and Starting A User Group

Hey, I have some Music only MP3s at http://www.pwop.com !

Check em out, and thanks for the kind words!

Carl
Saturday, September 13, 2003 1:01 PM by Jonathan Cogley

# re: Asynchronous ASP.Net actions suck?

I like to use Remote Scripting in these situations which allows you to call back (poll) to the server to track progress without refreshing the page. Then I simply update a DHTML progress bar with the results.
I have done this in ASP
http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/remotescripting/default.htm
and continue to do it in ASP.NET
http://www.thycotic.com/dotnet_remotescripting.html

Another alternative which would be a little tedious would be to write an applet that connects back to the server and listens for "push" updates regarding the status. This obviously would have scalability implications though due to the persistent connection.
Saturday, September 13, 2003 8:51 PM by SBC

# re: Happy Anniversary, honey. I love you.

Congrats Roy... wishing you many more...
Sunday, September 14, 2003 7:17 AM by x

# re: Interesting research

wow, i could read that as fast as a normal sentence :)
Sunday, September 14, 2003 8:13 AM by Yosi Taguri

# re: Interesting research

amazing !!!!
Sunday, September 14, 2003 10:48 AM by Scott Galloway

# re: Interesting research

Pretty remarkable...maybe my bad spelling isn't so much of a problem as I've always thought :-)
Sunday, September 14, 2003 10:50 AM by TrackBack

# This is very interesting - maybe bad speling doesn't matter!

Sunday, September 14, 2003 10:59 AM by Duane Mohney

# re: Interesting research

Wow, that is remarkable. I didn't even slow down to read that.
Sunday, September 14, 2003 2:32 PM by Dumky

# re: Interesting research

This thing must be a social engineered virus, it gets forwarded by email like crazy and blogged too ;-)
Sunday, September 14, 2003 5:37 PM by Martin Liversage

# Let's have some fun

Wll, hw abt wtht an wvls excpt if th frst lttr is a wvl? Lk arbc nd ivrt.

Let's try this again...

Wlel, how aoubt wthiout any wvoles ecxpet if the frist lteter is a woevl? Lkie arbaic and ivirt.

Was that better?
Sunday, September 14, 2003 7:26 PM by Alper

# re: Interesting research

Eevn i am not ntavie Elingsh sepaikng preosn i culod raed!

but it is no easy to write words by changing order :-)
Sunday, September 14, 2003 7:40 PM by TrackBack

# tihs is azamnig!

Sunday, September 14, 2003 8:13 PM by SBC

# re: Interesting research

hmm... doesn't work in Scrabble though...
;-)

(New England Region College Scrabble Champion '83 '84)
Sunday, September 14, 2003 8:18 PM by Doug Ferguson

# re: IsNumeric() hell

In the .NET Framework you can do a lot of string operations with RegEx.

A Google search on "isnumeric regex" turned up an example at:

http://www.aspalliance.com/olson/methods/IsNumeric.aspx
Monday, September 15, 2003 1:22 AM by Rajesh

# re: Interesting research

Very interesting .. I could read with same pace.
Monday, September 15, 2003 1:23 AM by Paul Gielens

# re: Interesting research

Welcome to a technique used in speed reading.
Monday, September 15, 2003 4:14 AM by Emad

# re: About Roy Osherove

Hi
Best Wishes to You and your family,and all people in the world who have bright heart .
I am Iranian programmer and Muslim but not fundmental .
i wishes a world full fill peace.
Monday, September 15, 2003 6:38 AM by kalpesh soni

# re: Interesting research

thismiz wasmoz a rismeal fusmun
Monday, September 15, 2003 9:25 AM by Uwe Thomas

# re: Interesting research

This could be a new simple kind of cryptography. The text is readable by every person but not by machines. E.G. Google would'nt index these texts approprately and spam filters couldn't filter appropriately.
Interesting
Monday, September 15, 2003 9:47 AM by TrackBack

# WatchmanCole's Watch Tower Archives

WatchmanCole's Watch Tower Archives
Monday, September 15, 2003 11:39 AM by Mike

# re: Interesting research

Great news for dyslexics!
Monday, September 15, 2003 12:34 PM by Xavier Lazard

# re: IsNumeric() hell

I was going to say that many of the methods listed in the discussion would not take into account numbers written in an exponential format. However the methods listed in Doug Ferguson's link would.
Monday, September 15, 2003 2:45 PM by Phil

# re: IsNumeric() hell

I just reference the MS.VB dll, or you can use Double.TryParse().
Monday, September 15, 2003 3:31 PM by Raj

# re: "Could not open in Design view. Quote values differently..." solved!

Thanks Guys , the above change from " to ' on an image tag helped me get back to the design view.

Thanks again,

Raj
Monday, September 15, 2003 4:02 PM by Chad Osgood

# re: IsNumeric() hell

I'm Chad from the Tulsa DNUG (also the recently enigmatic blogger), so I extend my appreciation for any value you derived from the discussion :)
Monday, September 15, 2003 4:29 PM by Jeff Julian

# re: I'm in the "contributor spotlight" on MSDNAA

Congrats! My DNJ articles will be up on MSDNAA in a week or so. Give you a little competition.
Monday, September 15, 2003 4:40 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: I'm in the "contributor spotlight" on MSDNAA

Heh. You know what they say about a writer's competition.... :)
Monday, September 15, 2003 5:42 PM by Xavier Lazard

# re: IsNumeric() hell

a possible Hybrid implementation:

public bool IsNumeric(object s)
{
if ( s is decimal )
{
return true;
}
if ( s is int )
{
return true;
}
if ( s is short )
{
return true;
}
if ( s is long )
{
return true;
}
if ( s is uint )
{
return true;
}
if ( s is float )
{
return true;
}
if ( s is ulong )
{
return true;
}
if ( s is ushort )
{
return true;
}
if ( s is char )
{
return (((char)s > 57 || (char)s < 48));
}
if (s is string)
{
System.Double OutputValue;
return System.Double.TryParse((string) s,
NumberStyles.Any | NumberStyles.AllowHexSpecifier | NumberStyles.AllowHexSpecifier,
CultureInfo.CurrentCulture , out OutputValue );
}

return false;

}
Monday, September 15, 2003 6:06 PM by Billy

# re: Interesting research

cool.
'though I think its a scam that 1, 2, and 3-letter words by default get to remain the same. :-p
Monday, September 15, 2003 9:08 PM by TrackBack

# Word letter order

Monday, September 15, 2003 9:18 PM by Frank Boumphrey

# re: Interesting research

It even works if you only read the top half of the letters (if the font is serifed)

This also semi works
a*******g to a r********h at an E*****h u********y, it d****'t m****r in w**t o***r the l****rs in a w**d are, the o**y i*******t t***g is t**t f***t and l**t l****r is at the r***t p***e.
Monday, September 15, 2003 11:23 PM by Jesse Ezell

# re: Interesting research

Which makes something like this:

https://www.fcukfragrance.com/retail2002/main.htm

a very interestingly named product...
Tuesday, September 16, 2003 1:43 AM by Ryan Cromwell

# re: Interesting research

Thatis by far the coolest thing I've seen in 2003. And it's almost the end of the year. You've easily overtaken the Anything into Oil article from discover... http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html
Tuesday, September 16, 2003 2:28 AM by Yura2000

# re: I'm in the "contributor spotlight" on MSDNAA

Great!
The article is really worth.
Cnogratluatoins! :-)
Tuesday, September 16, 2003 2:59 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Interesting research

Ugh. That's one gory picture in that article!
Tuesday, September 16, 2003 7:40 AM by Richard

# re: Interesting research

totally amazing
Tuesday, September 16, 2003 11:57 AM by IM

# re: VB.Net Whidbey Nuggets

As an ex-VB3/5/6 programmer (hallelujah for .NET!), I can assure you that nothing will coax me back into using good ol VB, now that excellent nu C# is an option.
Not even job-saving productivity :-)
Tuesday, September 16, 2003 1:03 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: VB.Net Whidbey Nuggets

You'll come around. I did. I used C# almost solely for a year and then "re-discovered" VB.Net for it's coolness and ease of use.
It's about knowing what to use at the right time. You'll find that a lot of things have changed. It's safe to return :)
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 4:11 AM by Gary Brewer

# re: Interesting research

Here's a very hack and slash program to do it (it doesn't like punctuation) -



using System;
using System.IO;


class go {
public go(string file) {
StreamReader sr=File.OpenText(file);
string[] v=sr.ReadToEnd().Replace("\n","").Replace("\r","").Split(new char[]{' '});

Random r=new Random();

foreach(string str in v) {
// jumble the letters
char[] chars=str.ToCharArray();

for(int x=1;x<str.Length-1;x++) {
int rindex=r.Next(str.Length-2)+1;
char temp=chars[rindex];
chars[rindex]=chars[x];
chars[x]=temp;
}
Console.Write(chars);
Console.Write(" ");
}

}


public static void Main(string[] args) {
new go(args[0]);
}
}
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 6:47 PM by Darren Neimke

# re: Feeds of interest

Hi Roy... don't forget the regexlib.com feed ;-)

http://www.regexlib.com/Rss.aspx
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 6:57 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Feeds of interest

Done! (notice the suggestion..)
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 10:28 PM by TrackBack

# Have you even done unit testing?

Wednesday, September 17, 2003 11:03 PM by Devdutt Dave

# re: Interesting research

Wow....what a beauty.....in future no teacher to mark the spelling mistakes with red pen ink.
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 11:14 PM by Ray Jezek

# re: XP is still widely unknown black magic

You're view of XP has to be flexible though. For instance we could never do pairs programming because there are only 3 of us... hard to justify in that case.. but you can still follow the other principles of XP (such as work environment, interaction, and delivery schedule).
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 11:42 PM by Darren Neimke

# re: Feeds of interest

Thanks Roy - I'll take a look at that tonight. FYI, Steve (Smith) and I also plan to add a feed for the comments that are received too :-)
Thursday, September 18, 2003 3:53 AM by Chris Martin

# re: XP is still widely unknown black magic

The first thing to write in a method body is something to make your test FAIL! ;)
Thursday, September 18, 2003 3:55 AM by TrackBack

# <br> UnknownReference


UnknownReference
Thursday, September 18, 2003 4:58 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: XP is still widely unknown black magic

Chris - I agree. That's why ASSERTs and Exception throwers are the first thing:)

Ray: I agree. Pair programming is better suited to somewhat bigger teams. But I'm a supporter of even partial implementations, so PP would not have to be THE thing to keep, although it's a great technique for bug proofing and speed coding.
Thursday, September 18, 2003 7:09 AM by Sam Gentile

# re: Happy Anniversary, honey. I love you.

Congrats Roy. Many more to come.
Thursday, September 18, 2003 9:15 AM by TrackBack

# RegexLib.com RSS feeds

Thursday, September 18, 2003 9:27 AM by Dave Burke

# re: RegexLib RSS now even cooler

Wow, Roy. You know how nerdy that sounds? "Now I can sit back and watch for new and cool regexs from the comfort of my aggregator.." Good one!
Thursday, September 18, 2003 10:15 AM by Don

# re: Interesting research

Unbeleavable... I read that post with NO problem...
Thursday, September 18, 2003 10:59 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: RegexLib RSS now even cooler

Yeah. I just realized that. <g>
Thursday, September 18, 2003 5:06 PM by Addy Santo

# re: XmlUnit

Is XmlUnit really necessary? NUnit makes sense since there is no inclusive way to verify code validity other than running it with known input. However XML was specifically designed to be verifiable using DTDs, and later extended to schemas. If your XML doesn't match the schema, it is't valid. period. So what does XmlUnit bring to the table that a validatingReader doesn't do?
Friday, September 19, 2003 6:47 AM by Benjamin Mitchell

# re: XP is still widely unknown black magic

Roy, good to see you pushing the XP approaches in the .NET community. I'm a C# developer in London and there's a great XP community here with meetings every Tuesday in a pub (it's great to drink beer and talk code). Most of the people here are Java/Smalltalk guys. Hardly any Microsoft developers seem to be into ideas like this about how you code, rather than what you code. It's good to see you out in the blog world pushing the case.

It's good to take a critical approach to XP like you're doing (e.g. defensive programming isn't strictly an XP idea but it's still a fundamentally good thing to do). There's a new book on the 'case against XP' which I think is useful at redressing the balance between the hype of the methodology and the benefits of the specific practices. See http://benjaminm.net for more.
Friday, September 19, 2003 8:17 AM by Wenderson Teixeira

# re: Interesting research

By the way, when the word is too big and you scramble it to much, sometimes it doesn't work, for example:
uiilgntebinlle
uaedabrnle
ispbnpeahnierle
icmpesinborhenle
Friday, September 19, 2003 9:46 AM by Nino

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Congrats, Roy!
Friday, September 19, 2003 9:47 AM by Sean Wilkins

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

How did you find your numeric score? I never got it when I took my 316.

swilkins@volcorp.org
Friday, September 19, 2003 9:51 AM by Sean Wilkins

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Congrats nontheless!
Friday, September 19, 2003 9:52 AM by Lorenzo Barbieri

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Congratulations Roy!!!

Sean, from this month they've restarted to show the score on the test report, with all the area of weakness/excellence...
Friday, September 19, 2003 9:53 AM by Phil Scott

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Congrats! Soon you'll too be a TitleBitch :)
Friday, September 19, 2003 9:56 AM by Lorenzo Barbieri

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Roy, the Web Service and Components one is harder than the Web Apps test, but all of them can be passed with experience and study...

I liked all the .NET exams because they've forced me to study also parts of the framework that I didn't know...
Friday, September 19, 2003 9:58 AM by Sean Wilkins

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Lorenzo, thanks - I took my 70-316 in Jan of 2003, thats why, I rem the article now! Roy, I am about to take the web-apps aspect of the MCSD and I have practiced with the Transcenders and it seems to be the best prep for me!

Sean
Friday, September 19, 2003 10:20 AM by Jeff Julian

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Good Job!
Friday, September 19, 2003 10:39 AM by Eric Kepes

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Congrats!
Friday, September 19, 2003 1:05 PM by TrackBack

# Hvad skal vi med folkeskolen ?

Friday, September 19, 2003 2:05 PM by Chris Frazier

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Hellz yeah! (er, congrats:)
Friday, September 19, 2003 3:08 PM by David McNamee

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Congrats, Roy!!
Friday, September 19, 2003 3:22 PM by Datagrid Girl

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Congratulations Roy, that must give you a good feeling :) I'm also glad that they're bringing back the numeric scores!

Marcie
Friday, September 19, 2003 6:29 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Thanks alot you guys(and gals). :)
Friday, September 19, 2003 7:14 PM by Mathew Nolton

# re: Data Access application block v3.0 has some good stuff

This is good news. I wrote a version of it for the Oracle Data Provider. It worked fine, but I wasn't impressed with my own design. Given the time, I would have wanted to make a version such as this. No I won't have to.
Saturday, September 20, 2003 11:39 AM by Annoyed Blog Subscriber

# re: Ed has returned to the building

Rather than waste my time telling me you're going to get back to blogging, why don't you write up something that might at least be of some value to your subscribers?

Too many blog posts these days are about people getting back to blogging or who they went to dinner with.
Saturday, September 20, 2003 5:54 PM by Addy Santo

# re: Making a decision in 4 seconds (or: How to know what you *really* want to do)

When I'm not sure what I really want to do, I usually ask my wife... "Of course you want to wash the dishes now!" ;)
Saturday, September 20, 2003 7:08 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Ed has returned to the building

Too bad you feel you need to hide behind a nick name to speak your mind. You have to remember that these are personal blogs, and people here (and there) write out of their own time and pocket. If you don't like some of the posts, leaping to the next post is not that time consuming. Instead of bitching about how annoyin this is, why don't you start a blog and make a promise to yourself to awlays write things that you *know* your readers would like to hear?
Sunday, September 21, 2003 4:59 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: XmlUnit

It's not "necessary", but it's easier to test with it. It's just an abstraction on the kind of checks you and I would do anyhow with a validating reader or other things. Nothing wrong with making stuff easier, is there?
Sunday, September 21, 2003 8:48 AM by Marc LaFleur

# re: Looking for a reporting solution for .Net

What do you mean by it "sucks payment wise"?

I have to select a reporting solution next week as well, but I didn't see anything with Crystal that I needed other than the one time price to purchase Crystal Developer. But I'm assuming I missed something in the fine print.
Sunday, September 21, 2003 9:01 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Looking for a reporting solution for .Net

From what I understand, you have royalty payments for each distribution of your product that contains reports. So, you pay for each customer you have as well.
http://www.crystaldecisions.com/products/crystalreports/popups/licensing.htm
Sunday, September 21, 2003 9:50 AM by Yura2000

# re: Passed MCP 70-316

Mazal Tov!
Sunday, September 21, 2003 9:57 AM by Paul Wilson

# re: Looking for a reporting solution for .Net

We just chose Active Reports for .NET (from Data Dynamics). It was definitely cheaper than Crystal in the long run, but it also had some features we liked better, like Xml report definitions and the ability to "brand" the end-user report designer. Other options that were considered were a reporting package from ComponentOne and report add-in for SQL Server. The report add-in for SQL is still in beta, so it wasn't even a possible factor for us, and Active Reports simply has a great history with lots of success stories that the one from ComponentOne couldn't match. I also saw a few others, but they failed obvious criteria and were not considered any further, so I don't even recall their names now.
Sunday, September 21, 2003 10:04 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Looking for a reporting solution for .Net

Excellent! Thanks Paul. You certainly eased my mind in this issue. It's very strange that so few solutiong exist...
Sunday, September 21, 2003 10:31 AM by SBC

# re: Looking for a reporting solution for .Net

Hang in there Roy - SQL2K Reporting Services is coming soon. :)
I'd go with ActiveReports (it also has better support than Crystal).
Sunday, September 21, 2003 10:33 AM by SBC

# re: Looking for a reporting solution for .Net

There's a list at ComponentSource:
http://www.componentsource.com/Catalog/DatabaseReportingComponents.htm
Sunday, September 21, 2003 2:35 PM by TrackBack

# [Article] Introduction to Test-driven development with NUnit and the NUnit-Add-in

Sunday, September 21, 2003 2:39 PM by TrackBack

# Asp.Net Error Handling Part Deux

Sunday, September 21, 2003 5:21 PM by Peter Provost

# re: Introduction to Test-driven development with NUnit and the NUnit-Add-in

Nice article Roy. You really covered this in a nice introductory way. I especially like how you didn't start with NUnit, but showed how to do it without a harness. Nice.

One thing that you missed is the refactoring phase that really should happen after getting a test to go green. That is the point at which you can feel safe about aggressively refactoring because you have tests to prevent you from messing anything up.

Looking ahead, I'm interested in how you intend to address "Testing abstract classes". From a pure TDD standpoint, you don't test abstract classes directly. Abstract classes come into existence due to a refactoring phase. Typically when you find some duplication between two classes that you wish to refactor out, introducing a common base (abstract) class is one choice.

If your tests of the concrete classes were complete enough, then you will get coverage of the base class for free.

Nice work,

Peter
Sunday, September 21, 2003 5:35 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Introduction to Test-driven development with NUnit and the NUnit-Add-in

Peter. Thanks for reading. I didn't show refactoring explicitly because refactoring is a process which has its place in more complex examples. I do intened to show the benefits of TDD and how refactoring fits into this nicely in the next article.
As for testing the abstract classes, it really depened on the situation. Sometimes abstract classes are introduced early in the design phase and not after refactoring. This comes into play mostly when you design and implement frameworks for others to build on. That article will show, among other things, how using Mock objects, derived from the abstract class can help test inner workings and assumptions, but I don't want to give it all away now, do I? :)
Sunday, September 21, 2003 7:40 PM by SBC

# re: Where did the desktops disappear?

Sorry to hear that Roy. Not to be taken aback - let's have another desktop contest! (This time let's make the gallery more secure).
Sunday, September 21, 2003 10:42 PM by Dave Burke

# re: Where did the desktops disappear?

Dude, this is mission critical as it gets. I LOVED those desktops!
Sunday, September 21, 2003 10:51 PM by Jesse Ezell

# re: Where did the desktops disappear?

"DUE TO OUR POPULARITY, PNAVY NEEDS A NEW SERVER, MORE HARD DRIVES, AND MORE BANDWIDTH. I APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE & DELAY! WE HAVE OUTGROWN SERVERS TWICE ALREADY. WE WILL GET A MONSTER SERVER IN THE NEXT COUPLE WEEKS. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DONATE, IT WOULD BE VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!! THANKS!! RANGER :)"

They probably deleted your stuff...
Monday, September 22, 2003 5:00 AM by Lorenzo Barbieri

# re: Introduction to Test-driven development with NUnit and the NUnit-Add-in

Great article Roy! I'm starting to use NUnit and TDD and I've found a lot of interesting starting points. I'll wait the others!!!
Monday, September 22, 2003 7:52 AM by Mathew Nolton

# re: HOW TO: Encrypt the settings in your web.config

Interesting article. I will have to look into it more.

We took a slightly different approach. We are using the Configuration Block. Since another group owns the credentials for the connection strings to production databases, we just agreed on the keys to use to get into the block. The operations group controls where the data is actually stored and the underlying values.

But I will have to look at this. It looks like something I will have to keep in my backpocket for later use.
-Mathew Nolton
Monday, September 22, 2003 10:40 AM by Ray Jezek

# re: Sharing ASP.NET user controls accross projects

I have seen this article before but never found the solution to be adequate since it adds a whole new application with different session, config, etc.. to the mix... so sharing the control becomes tricky if your doing something more than squiring out html.
Monday, September 22, 2003 12:03 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Sharing ASP.NET user controls across projects

I agree, but I like the notion of it. Perhaps something more useful could be derived out of it.
Maybe using it in conjunction with the caching application block would solve some of these problems as it provides the ability to share state between AppDomains, Processes and even separate machines (but that last one is a real bitch to setup)
Monday, September 22, 2003 1:03 PM by TrackBack

# Securing ASP.NET: use a checklist

Monday, September 22, 2003 1:16 PM by TrackBack

# New blog (to me at least)...Roy Osherove does it again!

Monday, September 22, 2003 2:39 PM by Chris Frazier

# re: Looking for a reporting solution for .Net

+1 for ActiveReports. Support is great, and the reports are highly customizeable - you can make 'em purty.
Monday, September 22, 2003 3:27 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Looking for a reporting solution for .Net

Done! I've recommended it today to my boss. Thanks for all your help guys :)
Monday, September 22, 2003 5:49 PM by Brian Jackson

# re: Nice blog

Roy,

Thanks for the kind words. I've been subscribed to your blog for quite a while, so your encouragement is.... well, encouraging!

Regards,

Brian
Monday, September 22, 2003 6:47 PM by Joon

# re: What the hell...?

the cut, save, and re-paste trick didn't work for me

selecting "rebuild solution" option instead of my usual shift+ctrl+'b' shortcut did fix things though
Monday, September 22, 2003 8:48 PM by TrackBack

# Microsoft Patterns and Practices: Hosting

Monday, September 22, 2003 10:13 PM by SBC

# re: Free chapter from "Essential .Net" by Don Box

Download Ch 2 (Components) here - http://www.aw-bc.com/samplechapter/0201734117.pdf
Certainly a good book.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 9:39 AM by TrackBack

# I'm available

Tuesday, September 23, 2003 9:39 AM by TrackBack

# I'm available

Tuesday, September 23, 2003 9:59 AM by TrackBack

# I'm available

Tuesday, September 23, 2003 9:59 AM by TrackBack

# I'm available

Tuesday, September 23, 2003 10:29 AM by Scott Galloway

# re: I'm available

My company is hiring...umm...would Edinburgh be too far to commute?
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 10:48 AM by Dave Burke

# re: I'm available

How could you not be the guy this company was looking for?????
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 11:41 AM by Mehran Nikoo

# re: I'm available

I think you should be thinking of celebrating your new year at the moment :)

PS: I am really sorry for that company...
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 3:25 PM by Patrick Steele

# re: I'm available

Sorry to here the new job didn't work out. Good luck on the job hunt!
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 3:27 PM by SBC

# re: I'm available

Roy - you are very talented so hang in there. Think of this as one event that happened for the best. Have a Happy ROSH HASHANAH!
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 3:28 PM by OmegaSupreme

# re: I'm available

Sorry to hear about this Roy, just by reading your blog its obvious you know your stuff. Their loss. Good luck for the future :D
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 3:34 PM by Sam Gentile

# re: I'm available

Sorry to hear that. Here's hoping you can find somethinng real soon now.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 6:19 PM by Robert Scoble

# re: PDC hype and real actions

It would be, but I looked into doing it, and just ran out of time (doing a contest requires quite a bit of behind the scenes legal work). Our staff here is getting slammed with tasks. Sorry.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 7:47 PM by Jeffrey E. Moeller

# re: Getting the list of installed programs on the local machine

Hi, you inspired me to try my first windows application.

I created a C# windows application, dragged a button on the form and put your function guts in the button click function.

There were a number of errors in 1.1

the first being:
Cannot implicitly convert type '<error>' to 'System.IDisposable'

Any ideas?
thanks, Jeff
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 8:01 PM by foreigner

# re: Interesting research

I had no problem with 3 of 4.
uilgntebinlle - unintelligible
uaedabrnle - unreadable
ispbnpeahnierle - ???
icmpesinborhenle - incomprehensible
Not a naitve Elgnish skaeper, nor was I eevr good at sbrabcle ;)
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 8:35 PM by Jamie Cansdale

# re: Getting the list of installed programs on the local machine

I'll show you mine, if you show me yours... ;)
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 10:55 PM by SBC

# re: Getting the list of installed programs on the local machine

Note the following in the code (it's a console app)

using Microsoft.Win32; // needed namespace

Call Class1.GetInstalled() in the Main as it's a static call

Put Console.ReadLine() at the end so that the console window stays stationary to read output.

Good little app...
Wednesday, September 24, 2003 8:58 AM by Alexandre Rocco

# re: Getting the list of installed programs on the local machine

Nice snippet, just added a check to see if sk.GetValue("DisplayName") is null so I do not display some entries that is not related to the list! :)

--Alexandre
Wednesday, September 24, 2003 12:04 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Getting the list of installed programs on the local machine

Good thinking, Alexandre!
Wednesday, September 24, 2003 1:46 PM by Carl Franklin

# re: .Net rocks show wants a blog search engine? they got it!

I found out about feedster.com after the show was recorded. I should put a note up there or something...

Carl
Wednesday, September 24, 2003 1:52 PM by The Jeff

# re: The perfect birthday gift

Yeah, that $7,800 does not include the monitor, so we gotta tack on another $3000 for a monitor. Not a bad machine for $10,000.
Wednesday, September 24, 2003 2:41 PM by TrackBack

# Carl and Mark Get Wasted

Thursday, September 25, 2003 7:17 AM by SBC

# re: [Article] Fun with Unit Tests – Testing abstract classes

This may be of interest, I saw this article by Mike Gunderloy - http://www.mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=598
Thursday, September 25, 2003 7:19 AM by SBC

# re: Nothing like the smell of new books!

Yup... next to smell of a new car, it's the best! 8-)
I finally picked up Fowler's Refactoring for myself (and gave the borrowed book back).
Thursday, September 25, 2003 7:25 AM by Darren Neimke

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically



{snip}
Thanks Roy!

Thursday, September 25, 2003 7:41 AM by SBC

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

Good one Roy. Is there a code chunk in there that invisibly appends 'ISerializable' as a referer (& credits accordingly)?
;-)
Thursday, September 25, 2003 8:26 AM by TrackBack

# <br> Peter Marshall


Peter Marshall
Thursday, September 25, 2003 8:38 AM by TrackBack

# MachL 3.8 Desktop

Thursday, September 25, 2003 9:56 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

SBC - my own little trojan? Heh. No but seriously - the source is all these so you can change it.
Thursday, September 25, 2003 10:03 AM by SBC

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

Just kiddin' Roy! You need a dose of Dilbert! Send me your mailing address & I'll send you a Dilbert Cartoon book (I get them at a tremendous discount)...
Regards & keep up the good postings.
Thursday, September 25, 2003 11:25 AM by Scott Galloway

# re: Expresso up to version 1.2 already

Roy, tried to send you an email...never got through (no idea why)...did you receive the other one I sent?(Feel free to delete this comment! - decidedly off topic!)
Thursday, September 25, 2003 11:26 AM by Peter Provost

# re: Introduction to Test-driven development with NUnit and the NUnit-Add-in

RE: Refactoring

I guess my point was that if you do TDD without refactoring, you are only doing half of the process. Sure, refactoring is a large concept but the 5th step of TDD is "Remove Duplication"... i.e. Refactoring. If you only do the first two, you will leave duplication all over the place.

RE: Abstract Classes and Mocks

Sure, I suppose that you need to introduce mocks if it is your expressed purpose to expose abstract classes in a framework for other developers. But if you have implemented a basic concrete class that extends the abstract class, then thorough testing of the concrete class should equal thorough testing of the abstract class.

Also, a number of authors have been noting on the TDD Mailing List lately, that in general the use of mocks should be considered a code smell. If you HAVE to use mocks, perhaps the code isn't clear enough. I'm not sure how I stand on that particular issue, but it certainly makes you think.

Again... excellent work.

Thanks.
Thursday, September 25, 2003 11:31 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: Expresso up to version 1.2 already

Just sent you a reply :)
Thursday, September 25, 2003 12:01 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

Dilbert huh? I happen to subscribe to the dilbert RSS feed:
http://dwlt.net/tapestry/dilbert.rdf
Thursday, September 25, 2003 12:35 PM by Hugh Brown

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

FWIW, you can shorten
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/...
to
http://www.amazon.com/o/...
Thursday, September 25, 2003 12:42 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

Thanks Hugh! :)
Thursday, September 25, 2003 3:06 PM by Scott Mitchell

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

FYI, I'm getting server timeout error messages when trying to download...
Thursday, September 25, 2003 3:54 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

Scott: Yeah. I'm having some sort of DNS problem I think :(
Thursday, September 25, 2003 4:17 PM by Peter Provost

# re: Expresso up to version 1.2 already

Looks like your post crushed their Brinkster account. :)

I guess I'll have to wait for a day or so to get it, eh?
Thursday, September 25, 2003 4:24 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Expresso up to version 1.2 already

Huh! Who would have known :)
I can mail it to ya if you like.
it's only 200 k or so.
Thursday, September 25, 2003 4:47 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

Ok I fixed it. The download works now :)
Thursday, September 25, 2003 4:57 PM by Rachel Reese

# re: The perfect birthday gift

I think I'm adding "will work for mach L 3.8 Desktop" to my business cards. I so have to get one.

Thursday, September 25, 2003 5:20 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: The perfect birthday gift

Heh. Good one Rachel :)
Let me know if it works. I'll try it myself.
Thursday, September 25, 2003 5:53 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Expresso up to version 1.2 already

Ok. You can download it from my server. Here's the direct link:
http://royo.is-a-geek.com/files/tools/Expresso12.zip

I'll delete this in 24 hours
Thursday, September 25, 2003 6:51 PM by Andres Aguiar

# re: Nothing like the smell of new books!

The COM+ one is baaad, cancel it if you can and change it for something more interesting ;)
Thursday, September 25, 2003 7:11 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Nothing like the smell of new books!

Really? I heard very good things about it!
Thursday, September 25, 2003 9:37 PM by SBC

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

Subscribed! Thanks for RSS Feed.
Friday, September 26, 2003 4:43 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

Rss feed?
Friday, September 26, 2003 9:28 AM by SBC

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

The Dilbert feed mentioned by you above - http://dwlt.net/tapestry/dilbert.rdf
'A Dilbert a day, .....'
8-)
Friday, September 26, 2003 9:30 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

Boy I'm getting old. Forgot about that..
Friday, September 26, 2003 11:35 AM by Hugh Brown

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

Your HTML markup is missing some of the actual code because the code contains characters that should be escaped. For example, book.Groups["book"] refers to a section in the regular expression named 'book'. However, the code aboove does not show any <book> section.

The code in your ZIP file looks like this:
const string pattern = @".*(ASIN|tg/detail/-)/(?<book>.\d*)/.*";
Your code above reads like this:
const string pattern = .*(ASIN|tg/detail/-)/(?.\d*)/.*";

I'm not sure why your leading @ and " are missing, but I think you just have to escape the < and > to get <book> back.


Friday, September 26, 2003 12:52 PM by Josh Ledgard

# re: Testing nirvana

Thanks for the positive feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed my entry. Just one clarification: The book is not at testing book or specific to any discipline. It's more about the process of understanding how to identify the strengths needed to be succesfull and managing towards those strengths. I just think you can apply the formulas well towards the problems space of running a test team. Thanks, again,
josh
Friday, September 26, 2003 4:18 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: Testing nirvana

Thanks for the clarification, josh :)
Friday, September 26, 2003 4:54 PM by Roy Osherove

# re: AmazReplacer - Convert Amazon's URL into your referrer URL automatically

My fault for changing stuff manually inside the post istead of copy-pasting..
Will fix it. Thanks :)
Friday, September 26, 2003 6:14 PM by Dave

# re: Pay for my PDC?

I found this insulting actually. Okay, Phillip says Dave is one of the best developers he's ever worked with. Yet the guy is so destitute he can swing paying for himself? And exactly what does he do when his 'donations' total only US$1000? Rebate everyone? Take a long weekend in the Bahamas?

Very very few attendees at this PDC really belong there. The only ones that do are those who are involved with developing products with release dates coinciding with releases of the MS products. To all others they can learn just as much - and more - by reading up on all the blogging being done by those attendees and having hands-on with the betas (which BTW are likely not being given out as most are just alpha bits). Obviously Dave's employer made a strategic decision that their developers belong in the group of us who do not need to attend.

I made a personal prediction the other day. Wave one of blogging will be ecstatic in nature over the "cool" things being presented. Wave two will be the inevitable backlash of postings from many who discover they were misled and are previewing some very UNREADY software. Wave three will be postings that realize the biggest reason one should attend is really unrelated to the "cool" things... instead the networking potential and realization.

Problem is, way too many are going for the "cool" things only. They don't realize previewing early alpha bits is relatively meaningless to one's career compared to concrete development of solutions.
Friday, September 26, 2003 6:27 PM by Darren Neimke

# re: Pay for my PDC?

Roy, I agree 100% with Dave. The long and short of it is that there will be more shows like this and, if this guy cannot afford to go to this years big event then, he should start saving up for next years.

I'm in pretty much the same boat as you are - I live in Australia. As you know, many of the really cool shows are in the US; which costs people like us "an arm and a leg" to attend. I was lucky enough to have saved enough money to