February 2003 - Posts
Ok so I finished reading this one about 2 mins ago, so I thought I would give you a run down of what I thought of the book. Well as you might expect the book was very good. I definitely learned a lot from the book however I don't recommend this book to someone just starting out in .NET. Some of the material gets kind of heavy.
Reading the Preface really gives you true insight on the book so do yourself a favor and read it to determine whether this book is for you. Don Box tells you it's going to get heavy and it's not a beginners book. He also tells you a reread maybe necessary to get the most out of the book. I whole heartedly agree with Don Box's recommendation for a reread but there isn't enough time in the day for me to read all the stuff I need to so once around is going to be it for me.
I found Chapters 1-6,8 to be relatively easy to understand after having read Jeffrey Richter's Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming. There is definitely a lot to be gained from reading these chapters even if you thought you knew the CLR pretty well after getting through another book. Chapters 7,9-10 however are very heavy in my opinion. These chapters cover remoting/security/interop among other things. I think my lack of COM experience may have something to do with it but I feel the need to pick up books on each of these topics to fill the void. I think they just might have been over my head.
People bust on Microsoft for having bugs in their code but after reading this book I have a new found respect for Microsoft programmers. Don Box does an excellent job exposing a lot of the details that Microsoft took care not to overlook. The flexibility and power of the CLR is simply amazing.
All and all I would recommend reading this book but the way I feel thus far in my .NET programming career is this book may not an essential read for everyday programmers. I feel that Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming is however and essential read and that if you are going to read only one book on the CLR that would be it. If you are going to read two or more definitely pick up the Don Box book, especially if you are going to do some hardcore programming.
Each time I read a new book I feel the need to pick up another because I realize how truly complex and monsterous .NET really is. That being said, on to Fritz Onion's Essential ASP.NET....
PS I apologize if the "review" is incomplete or has gramatical errors... it's bed time. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to ask me more specific questions about the book in general or anything else for that matter.
After months of procrastination, I've gotten my new blog up and running. The new location is http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/dbox/spoutletex.aspx. The RSS feed is at http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/dbox/rssex.aspx.
Adjust your bookmarks and RSS aggregators accordingly, as this URL is now just an archive of old stuff.
[Don Box]
Quite a few people seemed to like the XmlSerializer-based IConfigurationSectionHandler I wrote. Cool! A few people asked about how we could use this same technology to write to the config file, though. Of course, this is a Bad Idea. As anyone who has taken the plunge knows, normal users do not have permission to write to the application configuration file. What you are supposed to do is to write to one of the special folders under Documents and Settings. Here is s a simple helper class to help you do exactly that.
[Craig Andera]
Just to take the issue of writing to the app.config file a little further take a look at this. I asked a question about this on the windows off topic group earlier. Several people responded and enlightened me about the dangers of this and alternatives.
For all those interested,
NewsGator 1.0 has been
released. Seems that some changes have been added for the official release including the addition of a $29 price tag. No more free NewsGator. Unfortunately, my po' self is going to have to obstain from getting NewsGator on that basis. What a shame, it's my favorite news aggregator that I've tried so far. I just can't justify paying for a news aggregator when there are others out there for free. If you don't mind paying, I would definitely suggest you get it. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Generics, partial types, anonymous functions, and iterators - all planned for a future version of C#. This link discusses what these features are and how they might look.
[Craig Andera]
Cool!
YES!!! I'm quite excited. As I was about to leave work, I got word from bookpool.com that they had shipped Fritz Onion's Essential ASP.NET with Examples in C#. I've been waiting for this book since I took the DevelopMentor Guerilla .NET class in August 2002. The instructors in the class recommended it after reading some of the chapters. I hope it lives up to it's hype. I'll let you guys know. For now I'm going to get back to reading Don Box's book so I can clear my plate for this book.
P.S. If you haven't checked out bookpool.com for your technical book buying needs you should. I've looked around and they have consistently lower prices and fast delivery.
P.P.S. Also included in my shipment is Code by Charles Petzold which I hear is quite an interesting read.
I'm frustrated that the DataGrid does not use <th>, <thead>, and <tbody> tags when generating the HTML table. This disables me from using a client side sorting script that we have which uses these tags. I like client side sorting better than doing server side sorting, it's quite fast. No round trip and no need to reretrieve and rebind the data. Not having those tags, also, forces me to have to create a separate stylesheet class for the <headerstyletemplate> instead of being able to apply one stylesheet class to the entire DataGrid that is the same as the rest of the tables on our website. I think this is a major oversight on Microsoft's part. I hope to see this changed in the future.
Early Adopter:
They still make browsers?
Netscape releases 7.02.
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp
It is a shame really. Internet Explorer hasn't had any revolutionary features for over 3 versions now. And it's no surprise why. No outside push. Not to say Internet Explorer is bad. But I use it more because it's always there not because it's necessarily better than other alternatives that I would have to download and install.
I wonder what their market share is. I'm surprised they still make browsers as well. However, I made the switch for more than the fact that IE was simply already there. I was an avid Netscape user until I think Netscape 6 when they decided to do a really crappy job. The browser couldn't render many of the sites I went to properly so I opted to make the switch. I also began to wonder about the quality of Netscape after AOL bought them out but continued to use IE for their built-in browser. Might have been a contract but it still looks bad.
Craig Andera:
A while back, I realized that you can break down the requirements for writing a large-scale system into five areas: scalability, availability, security, managability, and everything else. I often use this breakdown when consulting, and you'd be surprised to see how obvious it makes what people are missing.
I wrote up my results in a little whitepaper a while back, which I've since updated with some refinements around security. I've converted it to HTML and put it here.
Personally, I like to see how everyone attacks projects, especially someone I respect like Craig. The illustrations might need to be redone before publishing :).
Got this from reading Windows Technical: Off Topic Yahoo Group:
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/internet/2003/0302171147.asp?O=E
I apologize to whomever orginally posted it for not crediting them but I deleted the email. By the way for those of you who have not joined the group this will be my second recommendation to do so. I'm beginning to find out that reading the posts is well worth the time just on a comedic basis. Some of those guys are quite witty. (Plus there is an infinite wealth of acedemic value to subscribing to the group.)
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