Archive for the ‘.NET’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/11/02
Quoted in full because even 2.5 years later, it’s just too funny:
- Python: What if everything was a dict?
- Java: What if everything was an object?
- JavaScript: What if everything was a dict *and* an object?
- C: What if everything was a pointer?
- APL: What if everything was an array?
- Tcl: What if everything was a string?
- Prolog: What if everything was a term?
- LISP: What if everything was a pair?
- Scheme: What if everything was a function?
- Haskell: What if everything was a monad?
- Assembly: What if everything was a register?
- Coq: What if everything was a type/proposition?
- COBOL: WHAT IF EVERYTHING WAS UPPERCASE?
- C#: What if everything was like Java, but different?
- Ruby: What if everything was monkey patched?
- Pascal: BEGIN What if everything was structured? END
- C++: What if we added everything to the language?
- C++11: What if we forgot to stop adding stuff?
- Rust: What if garbage collection didn’t exist?
- Go: What if we tried designing C a second time?
- Perl: What if shell, sed, and awk were one language?
- Perl6: What if we took the joke too far?
- PHP: What if we wanted to make SQL injection easier?
- VB: What if we wanted to allow anyone to program?
- VB.NET: What if we wanted to stop them again?
- Forth: What if everything was a stack?
- ColorForth: What if the stack was green?
- PostScript: What if everything was printed at 600dpi?
- XSLT: What if everything was an XML element?
- Make: What if everything was a dependency?
- m4: What if everything was incomprehensibly quoted?
- Scala: What if Haskell ran on the JVM?
- Clojure: What if LISP ran on the JVM?
- Lua: What if game developers got tired of C++?
- Mathematica: What if Stephen Wolfram invented everything?
- Malbolge: What if there is no god?
–jeroen
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Posted in .NET, APL, Assembly Language, BASIC, C, C#, C++, COBOL, Development, EPS/PostScript, Fun, Go (golang), Java, Java Platform, JavaScript/ECMAScript, LISP, Makefile, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, Quotes, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Scripting, Smalltalk, Software Development, T-Shirt quotes, TCL, Turbo Prolog, VB.NET, Visual BASIC, XML/XSD, XSLT | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/10/12
I mentioned Asbjørn Heid on wiert.me before. While prepping for the Deadlock Empire workshop at EKON20, I needed a Delphi equivalent for the .NET [Way: Barrier Class (System.Threading)
The game uses that in level deadlockempire.github.io/#H4-Barrier [WayBack].
Edwin van der Kraan found the ThreadBarrier/ThreadBarrier.pas at master · lordcrc/ThreadBarrier implementation via [WayBack] Is there a way to create memory barriers in Delphi? Something like .NET’s System.Threading.Barrier class, java.util.concurrent.CyclicBarrier… – Horácio Filho – Google+
It’s from Asbjoørn who is known as lordcrc on GitHub. Cool stuff!
So yes, there is a Delphi version of If you thought you could do multi-threading, then play “The Deadlock Empire” games. You can find it at https://deadlockempire.4delphi.com/ There are two deadlockempire implementations there:
The workshop was great fun!
This is about a web game focussing on the concurrency issues in multi-threading environments. By the conference there will be a Delphi version of it. At the workshop we will play each round interactively: all attendees play the round followed by a short discussion. This is about collective learning, so the speakers will probably learn… Read More
Source: [Archive.is] If you thought you could do multi-threading, then play “The Deadlock Empire” games – Entwickler Konferenz
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 10.1 Berlin (BigBen), Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/10/05
It might sound like I’m late in the game, but remember that blog posts are usually scheduled like a year in advance.
So I found out a long time ago (I think it’s Matthijs ter Woord who attended me) about Visual Studio Code.
At the start [WayBack] it was more limited (from memory something like C#, TypeScript, Java Script languages and frameworks Node.js and ASP.NET 5) than my other development environments but now it’s much richer.
It’s based on the Electron framework which I kew from the Atom.io editor and Koush‘s framework Electron Chrome that wraps Chrome Apps in Electron so he ensured Vysor would live after Google will kill Chrome Apps.
Oh it’s free and runs multi-platform which I like a lot (and was one of the reasons to start using Atom.io): Mac OS X, Windows and Linux are supported.
So here are a few links to get started:
I got reminded a while back** that it is now supported by OmniPascal [WayBack] which I like because of my Turbo Pascal -> VAX/VMS -> csh -> Delphi -> AS/400 -> .NET background.
Like Visual Studio Code is updated often, the Omni Pascal blog [WayBack] shows regular updates and I like it a lot better than the Lazarus IDE (I’m not a visual RAD person: I’m a RAD code person) especially the refactorings.
So start playing with it. I will post more about my Visual Studio Code experience in due time.
–jeroen
** via [WayBack] Finally: OmniPascal 0.11.0 released – Implement an interface via key stroke …
Posted in .NET, ASP.NET, C#, Delphi, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Node.js, Omni Pascal, Pascal, Scripting, Software Development, TypeScript, Visual Studio and tools, vscode Visual Studio Code | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/10/04
There is so much great stuff in reStructuredText, take for instance [WayBack] reStructuredText Interpreted Text Roles where basically can create your own role (for instance :csharp: or :delphi: roles based on :code: for syntax-highlighted code blocks given the right syntax highlighters).
I got there via this great piece by[WayBack] Chris who answered [WayBack] Inline code highlighting in reStructuredText – Stack Overflow:
Having looked into this some more I stumbled upon the document reStructuredText Interpreted Text Roles. From this document:
Interpreted text uses backquotes (`) around the text. An explicit role marker may optionally appear before or after the text, delimited with colons. For example:
This is `interpreted text` using the default role.
This is :title:`interpreted text` using an explicit role.
It seems that there is a code role, so you can simply type
:code:`a = b + c`
to render an inline code block. To get syntax highlighting you can define a custom role. For example
.. role:: bash(code)
:language: bash
which you can then use like so:
Here is some awesome bash code :bash:`a = b + c`.
Note, the document I link to makes no mention of the version of docutils to which it refers. The code role is not available in docutils 0.8.1 (which is the only version I have to test against).
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Development, Lightweight markup language, reStructuredText, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/09/19
I have seen too many projects over the years trying to do input validation by checking KeyPress. This is not limited to Delphi projects (C#, VB and other projects suffer from this just as much). Most of these projects suffer from these::
- Much of the KeyPress logic logic in the UI byusing half-baked copy-pasted code fragments.
- They all fail missing important functionality (like paste, clear, Ctrl-key handling and such) either supporting or suppressing that functionality where needed
If doing Delphi, then that code should be rewritten in a generic way based on examples like like these:
–jeroen
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Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/08/16
Too bad: it was fun while it lasted.
Mid april 2017 [WayBack] HDD Guardian – Home closed down, so the latest commit removed all the [WayBack] HDD Guardian – Source Code.
HDD Guardian provides a Windows front-end for smartctl, a utility which monitors your hard drive(s) and SSD(s) for health status, taking advantage of S.M.AR.T.
The WayBack machine and Archive.is have archived some links though:
Anyone interested in getting it before codeplex itself shuts down:
git svn clone https://hddguardian.svn.codeplex.com/svn
Edit 20210909:
Note that a while ago, the salvaged source code got pushed to GitHub: [Wayback/Archive.is] native-api/hddguardian: A GUI app to watch and manage HDDs’ S.M.A.R.T., based on smartmontools. Salvaged from https://hddguardian.codeplex.com
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, Development, Power User, Software Development, VB.NET, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/08/03
Interesting for anybody working on list growth strategies.
In this case with some Delphi background information and in depth coverage of FastMM memory (re)allocation strategies.
[WayBack] Stefan Glienke (of [WayBack] Spring4D fame) needed some help with allocation strategies and observed the difference between:
TList.Grow (and TStringList.Grow) growing like this: 4, 8, 12, 28, 44, 60, 76, 95, 118, 147, 183, 228, 285, 356, 445, 556, 695, 868, 1085- Generic
TList<T> growing the same way as the .NET List<T>: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024
There is this nice [WayBack] Dynamic array – Growth factor – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia mentioning this table:
[WayBack] Javier Hernández mentioned he doesn’t think exponential is better than n^2.
[WayBack] Eric Grange (of [WayBack] DWS and [WayBack] beginend.net fame) mentions he tends to use 1.5, it is about as good as 2 for small lists, but reduces waste for large ones. He also uses a constant delta to accelerate growth early on, so something like:
n := n + (n div 2) + 8
Since allocation strategies highly depend on the memory allocator as well, I was glad [WayBack] Primož Gabrijelčič (of [WayBack] OnmiThreadLibrary and [WayBack] Smart Mobile Studio fame) elaborated on FastMM:
- FastMM small block allocator sizes (size includes the leading header) are: 8, 16, 24, 32, … 160 (in +8 steps), 176, 192, … 320 (+16), 352, 384 … 480 (+32), 528, 576, … 672 (+48), 736, 800, 880, 960, 1056, 1152, 1264, 1376, 1504, 1648, 1808 , 1984, 2176, 2384. [FastMM4.pas, SmallBlockTypes global var]
- While the size of reallocated region fits inside a small block (with a different size than a previous block), the data is moved around (new block is allocated from a new suballocator). If it is too big (>2384 bytes), it gets allocated from the medium block allocator (which handles all block sizes up to 264752 bytes; larger blocks come directly from VirtualAlloc).
- When small blocks are reallocated (to a larger size), allocator always allocates at least 100% + 32 bytes larger block, even if less is requested by the RTL (example: 8 bytes will grow to 2*8 + 32 = 48 bytes). When medium blocks are reallocated, allocator always allocates at least 125% of the old size. This boosts the performance when blocks are enlarged by small values as they can be enlarged “in place” (no data moved around, just the header is adjusted).
Stefan Glienke and Primož Gabrijelčič then concluded that:
- Resizing an array from say 4 elements (pointer size) to 1000 (in multiple steps) will for sure move several times when jumping from one region into the next larger one.
- Changing to a growth factor of 1.5 vs 2 won’t change anything in terms of memory fragmentation in FastMM4.
Source: [WayBack] I was just looking at TList.Grow (and TStringList.Grow) and I realized that the…
Edit 20181127
Delphi 10.3 Rio makes this configurable in a global way for all threads at the same time (#facepalm! as it is the 1980s Turbo Pascal ExitProc mess all over again): [WayBack] Delphi RTL Improvements in 10.3 Rio via [WayBack] +Marco Cantù is unstoppable. I can’t keep up LOL – Clement Doss – Google+
The SetGrowCollectionFunc is of course not documented in the RTL, only in the [WayBack] What’s New – RAD Studio 10.3 Rio: [WayBack] Search results for “SetGrowCollectionFunc” – RAD Studio 10.3 Rio.
Stefan Glienke commented in that G+ thread:
I recently experimented with different grow factors and while the memory fragmentation can only mitigated for medium and large blocks (where it actually matters imo) it might be beneficial to only grow by 1.5 at that point. But that has yet to be tested.
What I liked so far is the grow strategy that Go uses (2x until 1024, 1.25x after that) – see
https://golang.org/src/runtime/slice.go#L115
Since you usually set the size upfront if you add many elements at once (well, if you know how many beforehand) the grow strategy only matters in the long run. You want to balance speed (too many realloc might slow things down unnecessarily), memory overhead (if you are overallocating much you risk wasting too much memory) and memory fragmentation (which might happen with a grow factor bigger than the golden ratio)
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Java, Java Platform, Software Development | 7 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/08/01
A very interesting piece of research, in which I see a very familiar concept of single owners and I new concept of them providing shields for accessing the manually managed memory. I do miss mentions of Anders Hejlsberg, Chuck (Charles) Jazdzewski, or others that lay the foundation of ownership in the [WayBack] TComponent Branch.
Microsoft Research’s manual memory management for .NET: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/snowflake-extended.pdf
Interesting concept of manual but safe memory management with exactly one owner of an object at any given moment and shields that prevent an object’s destruction while it’s still in use by other threads.
Source: [WayBack] Christopher Wosinski – Google+
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, History, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 