Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/26
My mental association with getting LogicalDrives was always the System.IO namespace, so I’ve always used Directory.GetLogicalDrives Method (System.IO) .
Recently I bumped into Environment.GetLogicalDrives Method (System), and discovered it has been available for the same time: since .NET 1.x.
I was not so much amazed that these methods return exactly the same data, but that they have identical code. Not just a single call to some common code: their code is the same, line by line. In .NET 4, they have the code below. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/25
StackOverflow user Joe (sorry, no last name) helped me big time by answering my question on Business logic shared by ASP.NET / WinForms: find the location of the assembly to access relative files to it.
Before showing the code at the bottom of this blog post, let me explain the question in more detail:
Basically I was in the midst of refactoring some ‘inherited’ business logic code that – before refactoring – for the ASP.NET side needs to be initialized with an absolute path, but on the WinForms / WPF side only with a relative path to a GetExecutingAssembly directory.
To ease xcopy deployment, I wanted all configuration settings to be relative. But I hadn’t found a common means for these platforms to obtain a directory usable as a root for accessing relative files.
That way I could put identical settings in both the Web.config and App.config, heck even generate them based on a common fragment, whithout having to hard-code absolute path names.
I knew about Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly, but in ASP.NET that location is not where the web site is (both IIS and the WebDevelopment server make use of temporary locations to store the assemblies).
ASP.NET does have Server.MapPath and HostingEnvironment.MapPath, but I didn’t want to make the business logic depend on ASP.NET.
Joe came up with this solution, which works dandy: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, ASP.NET, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, F#, Prism, Software Development, VB.NET, VB.NET 10.0, VB.NET 11.0, VB.NET 7.0, VB.NET 7.1, VB.NET 8.0, VB.NET 9.0, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/24
I’ve been wanting this a very long time, so I’m going to install it Right Now ™ (:
Right before X-Mas, Scooter Software did the ANN: Beyond Compare 4.0 beta available on Windows, Linux, and OS X:
Posted: Dec 23, 2013 4:17 PM
Beyond Compare 4.0 beta is now available for testing on Windows, Linux, and OS X.
http://www.scootersoftware.com/beta
This version adds a number of new features: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *nix, Apple, Beyond Compare, Delphi, Development, Linux, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Software Development, Source Code Management, SuSE Linux, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/24
This has bitten me so many times, so I’m glad I found the below question/answers on StackOverflow.
When you perform calculations in SQL Server involving numeric literals, you have to take into account which precision you want your result to be, and CAST/CONVERT the literals accordingly.
The reason is condensed to this statement by Lieven Keersmaekers:
SQL Server uses the smallest possible datatype.
He follows with examples to view the actual representation of a literal/expression using SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY (which has been there since at least SQL Server 2000).
SELECT SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(1.0, 'BaseType')
SELECT SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(1.0, 'Precision')
SELECT SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(1.0, 'Scale')
SELECT SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(1.0, 'TotalBytes')
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Algorithms, Database Development, Development, Floating point handling, Software Development, SQL Server, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 7 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/23
Brilliant:
UTF-8 explained in less than 9 minutes.
The diagram fits almost on the back of a napkin, so he explained it with a big marker on classic 132-column fan fold green-bar continuous form paper (we used to call it zebra-paper).
I’m definitely going to follow the Compuerphile videos and watch more of them.
Definitely a great addition to my UTF-8 posting category.
Thanks for everyone that pointed me to this video!
–jeroen
via: ▶ Characters, Symbols and the Unicode Miracle – Computerphile – YouTube.
Posted in Development, Encoding, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/22
Cool stuff: DelphiSpec library, inspired by Cucumber. It runs on top of DUnit.
via DelphiSpec Library Announce « Роман.Янковский.me.
A similar one in the .NET realm: SpecFlow – Pragmatic BDD for .NET.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Delphi, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/19
Even when not using Visual Live Binding, Delphi generates empty .VLB files in both Delphi XE3 (virtually always) and Delphi XE4 (most of the time).
Visual Live Binding is one way of binding data to UI in FireMonkey and can also be used in VCL, but does not have to (Alister Christie made a nice video ▶ Delphi Training Tutorial #77 – Visual Live Bindings – YouTube about it).
Empty VLB files, and a batch file to delete them
The “empty” VLB files are almost empty, as they are exactly 3 bytes long and contain the byte sequence EF BB BF which is the Unicode BOM (byte order mark) for the UTF-8 encoding. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Delphi, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Encoding, QC, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8 | Tagged: Delphi, VLB | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 