Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/14
I love StackOverflow.com; since they clean out duplicate questions very well, it now is becoming a very good site for reference materials as well.
I won’t duplicate the tables of .NET CLR/Framework and Visual Studio version numbers here as it will age: the tables linked below will somehow be updated by someone. The real power of SO.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, Development, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/13
When doing WinForms development in Visual Studio 2010 (including SP1), be aware of a bug with UserControls that hamper debugging; sometimes you get an error like this:
Error 9 Unable to copy file "obj\x86\Debug\MyProject.exe" to "bin\Debug\MyProject.exe". The process cannot access the file 'bin\Debug\MyProject.exe' because it is being used by another process.
When using SysInternals’ Process Explorer to see which process has handles open to MyProject, you will see that devenv.exe (The Visual Studio IDE) is the culprit: sometimes it has a lot of handles open.
The workaround is simple: close all UserControls before debugging your WinForms application.
A real pity, as UserControls are a very useful feature when developing software (many platforms use the same paradigm, .NET certainly wasn’t the first to introduce it, and it is available in for instance WPF as well).
Note that there are other causes of the same error message, but for me this was the issue.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Software Development, VB.NET, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/06
When you write applications, it is important to include both the CUA and the Windows/Apple keyboard shortcuts, and get the tab order of keyboard accessible user elements right.
Many modern applications seem to put less and less emphasis on the most efficient user input device: the keyboard.
You should: it makes your application much more pleasant to use.
I wrote about CUA before, but the Windows and Mac shortcuts are just as important.
A small table (please post a comment if you know additions):
Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Hardware, IBM SAA CUA, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, KVM keyboard/video/mouse, Power User, Software Development, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/05
Totally forgot about this: YAPP – yet another pretty printer.
–jeroen
via: delphi – Save source code with formatting syntax highlight – Stack Overflow.
Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Prism, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/11/30
Even if you have used something for over a decade, you can learn about it :)
I was refactoring bits of code where someone clearly didn’t understand the benefits of enumerations, similar to this very contrived example:
using System;
namespace Demo
{
// explicit equivalence of:
// public enum TrafficLight { Red, Yellow, Green };
public enum TrafficLight { Red = 0, Yellow = 1, Green = 2 };
public class Program
{
public static void Main()
{
// old code:
Console.WriteLine(IntIsRedTrafficLight((int)TrafficLight.Red));
Console.WriteLine(IntIsRedTrafficLight((int)TrafficLight.Yellow));
Console.WriteLine(IntIsRedTrafficLight((int)TrafficLight.Green));
}
public static bool IntIsRedTrafficLight(int trafficLight)
{
return (trafficLight == (int)TrafficLight.Red);
}
}
}
The code was using way too many casts, and my goal was something as simple as this: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/11/15
When I saw code like this in a production app, I was speachless:
if (matcher.Trim().Length > 0)
{
if (eesteWhere){sqlWhere += "WHERE ";eesteWhere = false;}
else{sqlWhere += "AND ";}
sqlWhere += "m.matcher like '" + matcher.Trim() + "%' ";
}
Not once, twice, but hundred of fragments like these. Not generated, but hand copy-pasted. And the client thought they were running stable, reliable apps :(
This is soo XSCD ‘Exploits of a Mom‘ (aka Bobby Tables):
The department that wrote the code has been closed a while ago, but some serious refactoring time needs to be invested here, as all applications delivered by that department are vulnerable to SQL Exploits.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 2.0, Database Development, Development, Software Development, SQL, SQL Server | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/11/08
Every once in a a while I do WinForms development. On the .NET platform it still is the best way to create simple business applications that just, well: work.
WinForms apps are not fancy, but the actual users don’t care much, as long as they can their daily work done. They love fanciness of their mobile devices, but for stuff they use 8 hours a day, they just want something that works quickly, well and easily. So WinForms for a baseline is good.
WinForms historically has had two ways of automatically: Anchors and Dock (.NET 2 introduced another way using FlowLayoutPanel and TableLayoutPanel, but often they make things more complicated than needed).
One of the pitfalls of Docking is when you set Dock to Fill. Sometimes the affected control will be too large.
Every time that happens, I am baffled, as .NET is the only platform with that behaviour; I use other platforms too, and they don’t have this docking peculiarity (of course the have others, that’s the fun of using multiple platforms <g>).
–jeroen
Via: c# – Panel.Dock Fill ignoring other Panel.Dock setting – Stack Overflow.
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, Development, Software Development, VB.NET, WinForms | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/11/03
Sometimes you just want to ask a user for a simple string of input.
The InputBox function is an easy way to do do this. It has a tiny issue with the icon (it uses the one that belongs to the application installation, not the icon in the project properties).
InputBox has been part of Visual Basic since the 90s. And it is very easy to use from C# and other .NET languages:
Microst.VisualBasic.Interaction.InputBox("Did you know your question goes here?","Title","Default Text");Sometimes you have to look a bit further than your regular toolbox for simple solutions.
I should dig up my 2006 session on the My Object in Visual Basic: that is also very easy to use in C#.
–jeroen
via: Input Message Box in C#?.
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, Development, Software Development, VB.NET, VBS | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/11/02
It has been a while, but I have done some WinForms maintenance on business apps. For those kinds of apps, WinForms still is a productive environment, apart from one thing:
When you have a Dock of Fill, sometimes that control fills more than it should.
The reason is the order in which things are being calculated.
I always forget the trick, as other very productive environments for writing business apps don’t have this peculiarity (they have others, life is full of interesting peculiarities <g>).
Simple solution:
Now it fills exactly the wanted area :)
Thanks Jeff Cuscutis for posting this concise solution.
–jeroen
Via: c# – Panel.Dock Fill ignoring other Panel.Dock setting – Stack Overflow.
Posted in .NET, Development, Software Development, WinForms | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/26
This is from 2009, but still sooooo funny.
Lets use these 2 thumbs as parity bits.
I should have done this with pounds and pounds.
Why doesn’t John Skeet does never sleep.
No, you can’t have Visual Studio … yes telepathy is fine.
And more great quotes, sample code and experiences (like the Turkey Test) in this wonderful presentation by Jon Skeet and the famous Tony the Pony
[Wayback] Jon Skeet and Tony the Pony on Vimeo on Vimeo
Hilarious, and true :)
--jeroen
via Jon Skeet and Tony the Pony on Vimeo.
Posted in .NET, Development, Jon Skeet, Pingback, Software Development, Stackoverflow | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 