Channel 9 - Discussions by Eric Falsken

Coffeehouse - What is the worst thing in .NET?

Eric Falsken — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:56:58 GMT

littleguru wrote:

Klaus Enevoldsen wrote:
What about ".Equals(object) : boolean"? It is seriously the worst thing in the .NET Framework. It was only invented because we did not have operator overloading in .NET 1.0! Removing "Equals" from the framework would be an OK breaking change!

Please not! I need Equals:

int i = 1;
int j = 1;
object o1 = i;
object o2 = j;

bool r1 = (o1 == o2); // false
bool r2 = o1.Equals(o2); // true

how about:

bool r1 = (o1 == o2); //true
bool r2 = (o1 === o2); //false

That would be much better imho. Just like PHP. use === for identity equality, == for value equality, and = for assignment. Very standard and clear.

Coffeehouse - What is the worst thing in .NET?

Eric Falsken — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:53:22 GMT

Partial classes and extender methods are a start. now let's get some serious multiple inheritance. Pleeeeeese. I've had to subclass some poorly written parent classes that I had no control over....

Tech Off - publishing code changes

Eric Falsken — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 03:31:44 GMT

I get to rework my server setups. To deploy code updates, I currently have to Remote Desktop onto my server and use Eclipse to syncronize my source code repository with the local server. The boss insists on it this way because sometimes he checks things into source control that he dosn't want to "go live" yet, or which need revision by another team member. I guess there's nothing really wrong with it, but in this day and age, it feels kind of "wrong" to have to access the server directly and interactively pull files onto the server.....that was so 1997-server-management-style.

Does anyone have any better ideas?

The only thing I can come up with is to force him to manually pull older versions of the files he does not want to publish, causing his system to appear "as he wants it", and then doing an FTP, xcopy, or equivalent operation to publish to the live server. He won't like this, but the catch is that other users may accidentally download his unpublished changes and publish them.

How can I make this work?

Tech Off - Does Visual Studio have an "advanced mode" now?

Eric Falsken — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 02:21:41 GMT

How do I load the other layouts?

Tech Off - Does Visual Studio have an "advanced mode" now?

Eric Falsken — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 16:34:31 GMT

I'm back on XP for a short time, but I had to reinstall Visual Studio. Now a bunch of the features I'm used to (like my Immediate Window) and the debug toolbar with "step in" "step out" "step over" are all missing. There are other things, but those are the most obvious. Where'd all the useful stuff go?

To head off the obvious, I've tried resetting my profile, deleting my VS preferences folder(s), and looking through all the menus. I'm pretty sure most of the options are nowhere to be found except in the "customize toolbar" dialog.

Coffeehouse - Tips for building online communities?

Eric Falsken — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 07:43:00 GMT

I would recommend against the forum, actually. Put your videos into a video blog ala Blogger or YouTube or any of the other blogging services. If people want to comment on videos, let them comment. Comments take a lot less effort for the occational visitor. Forums require more committment to register and check periodically, and are more appropriate for a community of people who are actively discussing a range of topics.

There are hundreds of forums out there, and I hate registering for yet another site just to leave a comment. I typically leave without commenting. Especially if I'm not likely to come back.

Blogs on the other hand allow me to subscribe in my RSS reader, and do not require registration before allowing me to comment.

I've been running the db4o developer community: http://developer.db4o.com for almost a year now. Active users love posting. But the blogs almost never get comments because they're registration-only. (working on loosening that up a bit) But the only reason people come to post in the forums is if they want help on an issue they are having.

If you're expecting a lot more "Help, X dosn't work" posts, leave it on comments until you start getting enough repeat traffic to make real "discussions" possible.

As for driving traffic, put your feed/blog url into your sig everywhere you post (for starters), and get your feed listed anywhere possible. Keep the content coming. Even shows like ARCast and Hanselminutes took 20 episodes before they caught on.

Tech Off - Script to recycle appDomain?

Eric Falsken — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 08:58:40 GMT

Does anyone have a script that can recycle an appDomain? I'm tired of running iisreset just to kick one misbehaving website.

Coffeehouse - Microsoft website all screwd up this weekend

Eric Falsken — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 09:21:39 GMT

Right now, http://msdn.microsoft.com and downloads.microsoft.com are coming up with HTTP:500's. Passport was down a while ago. And other microsoft sites have been going up and down all weekend. I've noticed that their favicon changed too. What's going on?
....
And why hasn't slashdot picked up on it yet? I figured it would have been the top story of the day by now.

Tech Off - New Wiki for CommunityServer (Open-Source, Free)

Eric Falsken — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 22:23:53 GMT

Over at http://developer.db4o.com/ProjectSpaces we've been eating our own dogfood for the last few months. I'm happy to say that the new CS-Wiki system is ready for public beta.

CS-Wiki is Open Source and free (LGPL) add-on to Community Server (the same system that runs Channel9)

Coffeehouse - What is your favorite Programming languages For Servers?

Eric Falsken — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 23:51:39 GMT

Why use different languages at all? C# is the only one you should be using.

Tech Off - C#'s \n escape

Eric Falsken — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 23:50:51 GMT

Use Environment.NewLine instead

Tech Off - What is this project.web.xml file?

Eric Falsken — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 23:39:08 GMT

I was looking at a recent project that I had downloaded (it happened to be CommunityServer) and bumped into this file. I can't find anything about it in the visual studio help files, and MSDN is just lame....it won't search for "" (including the tags). Here's the contents of the file:



    
        CommunityServer.Web

I'd been struggling with ASP.NET and the assembly name when an assembly is compiled dynamically. Is this file a possible solution? Does it have something to do with references or dynamic compilation?

Tech Off - Macs are suddenly 4x faster with an Intel chip?

Eric Falsken — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 11:12:16 GMT

Where are all those mac dorks that have been saying for years that G6 Macs were faster than PCs?

Apple claims it on their own website: http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/intelcoreduo.html

Coffeehouse - Data Access Layer

Eric Falsken — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 19:31:15 GMT

leeappdalecom wrote:

Cool thanks for the links.

One thing i don't get in these explanations is, what if you use binding in your presentation layer surely its easier to get your DAL or BLL to return datasets to the client for binding purposes?

Also to note this is a winforms application not a ASP.net app

By far the easiest way of creating simple data applications is to use db4o. The DAL involved is so slim and easy to use, it's like it isn't even there. I've got a sample application on my website, and an article in the upcoming .NET Developer's Journal (Jan `06) that demonstrates how to use the db4o object database.

The sample application on my site makes extensive use of data binding. In fact, I think I only had to write 4 or 5 lines of database code. The rest of the application is done in design-time (with no Visual Studio plugins or code-automation tools), or it's for doing things like enabling/disabling buttons.

Coffeehouse - Could anybody send me an wallop invite?

Eric Falsken — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 08:47:00 GMT

Probably this MS Research Project: http://mywallop.com

A Wired News article comparing MS Wallop vs. Friendster

Tech Off - Any clue why my site crashes randomly?

Eric Falsken — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 10:45:46 GMT

Ever since upgrading to .net 2.0, my website randomly goes down every few days with an error like the one below. The only thing that changes is the letters/numbers in the filename. As far as I can tell, this filename is IIS dynamically compiling my application. No changes are made to the website, but it still dies every few days untill someone restarts W3SVC. Anyone have any ideas?

Server Error in '/' Application.

Could not load file or assembly 'App_Web_gvvevrsq, Version=0.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'App_Web_gvvevrsq, Version=0.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Coffeehouse - 32-bit or 64-bit?

Eric Falsken — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 04:45:52 GMT

DRM will be unavoidable, congress is seeing to that. Even with intel, you can turn off the processor ID. That shouldn't be part of your consideration.

AMD processors smoke when they overheat. Intel ones slow down and shut off. Other than that, the CPUs really are about equal. More importaintly, Intel-based motherboards are light-years ahead of non-Intel chipsets, so that's a strong vote for Intel CPU/MoBo combination. I think everyone will agree that Via and SiS motherboards are only good enough to wipe your a55 with. (ouch)

Vista and future software will start to take advantage of 64-bit processing. Right now, it's almost pointless, unless you're one of those rare users who might actually utilize such functionality (engineering, databases, or 3D)

Tech Off - ASP.NET 2.0 dynamic compilation is unstable?

Eric Falsken — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:08:40 GMT

Periodically, I get a FileNotFoundException. It appears that the ASP.NET runtime dynamic compilation of my site does something wierd and "forgets" that some of my pages are already compiled, or forgets where it compiled those pages too. Other pages continue working fine. Here's the full error:

Could not load file or assembly 'App_Web_1ch9ntvd, Version=0.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'App_Web_1ch9ntvd, Version=0.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Does anyone have any ideas? This has happened on 3 different webservers... on 3 different machines ... Even on the ASP.NET Development Server. But on different pages at different times, with nothing being changed at all.

Tech Off - O/R Mapping - Techniques / Software

Eric Falsken — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 03:13:18 GMT

How about no O/R mapping at all? No O/R mapping solution can get even close to how fast db4o is when storing and retrieving objects. You're right... nHibernate, and their bloody mapping files are cumbersome. So that's why I elect to use db4o.... I just avoid all that hasstle and use a native object database.

Tech Off - Making an aplication for .NET 1.1 When Using .NET 2.x

Eric Falsken — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 05:52:36 GMT

Angus wrote:

Is there nything I can use to'downgrade' my application?

There's an easy way: Open the IIS manager on your local computer. Find the "Default Website" branch and open it's properties. Then, on the ASP.NET tab, tell your website to use ASP.NET v1.1.whatever...

This is assuming you will also be using VS2003 to edit/compile your application. Worst case, you can use the command-line compiler or WebMatrix.

Coffeehouse - any cool .NETCF 2.0 apps around ?

Eric Falsken — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 05:43:50 GMT

You actually got it to work? All I've heard about is the trouble people are having trying to get it working.

Tech Off - with the 64-bits out are 32-bit systems are obsolete?

Eric Falsken — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 02:19:34 GMT

As newer software comes out which is 64-bit optimized, you'll see larger performance differences. But even then, don't expect a large difference unless applications suddenly start demanding a LOT more memory.

In all reality, right now, you'd have to be multi-tasking tons of large software, or doing some real hardcore data crunching (encoding video maybe?), or some serious engineering models (like 3D design software) to come out ahead after buying a 64-bit system.

That wouldn't stop me from buying one though, if I were in the market for a new workstation.

Coffeehouse - Best Place for Exposure

Eric Falsken — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:25:00 GMT

Right here

Tech Off - Generic Type Casting - Unsolveable?

Eric Falsken — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 04:41:56 GMT

Makes sense to me. DerivedType[] can be cast to BaseType[], but List can't be cast to List even though it should be able to, if I remember from what I read about generics.

Tech Off - A book about time?

Eric Falsken — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:14:28 GMT

I've had a book on my Amazon wishlist for a while called Calendrical Calculations. It basically breaks down all of the different ideas of calendars and date systems into easily explained concepts and ideas. I was wondering if anyone knows of a similar book which explains TIME, timezones, daylight savings in different parts of the world, calculating sunrise and sunset, why the second is as long as it is. Why AM and PM. How time was measured throughout history, and how its' measurement has changed. And the bigest question of all: How the hell did the whole world get standardized on the same mesurement of time when they can't seem to agree on the same calendar, or anything else?