Channel 9 - Discussions by JohnnyAwesome

Tech Off - MSBUILD 3.5 Failing on Build Server

JohnnyAwesome — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:02:30 GMT

We have a small silverlight 1.1 app we are trying to publish internally to demonstrate what we hope to incorporate into our internal tools after the 2.0 "go live" release.

The code builds fine on my desktop ("works on my machine!") using VS2008 Professional or command line msbuild and I can use VS to publish to the webserver over a network path fine as well.

The issue is msbuild keeps failing on the build server and I can't for the life of me figure how to fix this. CruiseControl checks out the code from source control fine but fails on the MSBUILD task. When I try and use the command line to build the solution after I RD into that box I get this error for all 4 projects in the solution:

error MSB4057: The target "Build" does not exist in the project.

If I remove or hard code the DefaultTargets attribute in the project tag of any project file it still fails.

This is a server 2003 box with frameworks 2.0.50727, 3.0, and 3.5 all installed. Obviously I could install visual studio and this would go away, but I don't want to do that.

Anybody else run into this problem and have a solution?

Coffeehouse - Great use of Silverlight

JohnnyAwesome — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:37:20 GMT

I thought the excessive load time reminded me of the daunting days when corporate America discovered Flash and every site had like a 10 minute for the site to load a stupid into movie.

Now, I know this was a sample of what can be done, but it does make me wonder if when Silverlight goes mainstream are things going to be intro-movies and long waits all over again?

I sure hope the silverlight community does not have to start over back to the early flash days to learn "less is more" sometimes.

Coffeehouse - Prototyping Performance: The Cookie Monster and Windows Vista

JohnnyAwesome — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:15:29 GMT

raymond wrote:

Lloyd_Humph wrote:
And I thought you'd gone

Once a Niner always a Niner!

Wait. So, I'm trapped here, now??!! Even the Marines let me eventually get back to civilian life!

Coffeehouse - Wife 2.0

JohnnyAwesome — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:46:36 GMT

Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women, man.

Coffeehouse - Microsoft feeling the heat from flash Linux?

JohnnyAwesome — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:02:07 GMT

After getting really interested in Mono and wanting to try out some ASP.NET on an Apache server I tried to get a LAMP stack going at my house.

I have never managed an open-source server (I started years ago with NT and IIS4 I think?), so there was a learning curve for me. But, when trying to go to a Linux forum I discovered the phrase "GUI" is somehow a 4 letter word.

I can work in the command line; I PREFER NOT TO. Microsoft will never feel the heat from Linux as long as the wall of ridicule to new users is so high and I have to run around several grad students' out of date pages in order to find the applications I want to implement.

Lack of support and documentation is in it's own a cost of entry.

Tech Off - Web Design static rulers

JohnnyAwesome — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:43:05 GMT

Good question! I am so rarely in designer I didn't even pay attention to that, but it is a cool feature.

I tried Phtoshop key shortcuts since they are so frequently adopted into other enviornment to no avail.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio How to Videos

JohnnyAwesome — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:57:13 GMT

I just started watching the LINQ one to check out how they were done.

Pretty good production values! I like the slow pan in on code blocks.

Tech Off - C# array constructor & initialization

JohnnyAwesome — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:50:16 GMT

Compiler questions have baffled me before as well. I certainly do not have answer for you, but you are not alone.

Tech Off - VS2008 rule change on variable declaration?

JohnnyAwesome — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:52:39 GMT

odujosh wrote:

Yea Switch statements are evil anyways. Basically your doing a manual table look up in the example and setting temp based off the value of the switch parameter.

I think the code would be better off if it called some data access pulled it from a source (hash table, database table, xml file, whatever) and then operate on it using a work flow. With XAML adding a branch isn't a code change. You can bring down a process push in the new XAML and bring it back up. Depending on how populaur the work flow and the eventing infrastructure you have in place you may even be able to do it in process.

Call me a snob

snob.

Coffeehouse - Cool user interfaces?

JohnnyAwesome — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:05:59 GMT

One my favorite quotes that I always think of was from a behind the scenes interview about level design for the game Splinter Cell. The designers were talking about early on how things work. So, if opening a door is one way; it has to remain that way throughout the game.

Whatever you decide upon (and certain KISS is the best), just remain consistant. Going to different pages should never result in unepxtec navigation behavior or placement.

And like Joel Spolsky says in User INterface Design For Programmers; you're kind of stuck with the expected UI. Which is why every word processing program looks pretty much like Word. It kinf of sucks from a design perspective, but you just can't do something totally out of the blue. Not that it wouldn't be really cool, it's just that people will reject it.

Good luck!!

Coffeehouse - W3bbo's off to Cali?

JohnnyAwesome — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:07:12 GMT

@DoomBringer: That is spot on. I live in San Francisco and it is one of the few cities I have lived in when I complete a vacation I really look forward to returning home. The bay area is a great place.

However, like many residents in Northern California or "Norcal" we really feel disconnected from the southern portion of the state. It is a different world there. Different values, poor air quality, and way too much traffic and cars.

I also lived and did my first undergrad degree in Sacramento, so I can attest to figuerres' description of Sacramento. It is a lovely town albeit still a "small" one by most state capitol standards.

The only part of LA I really like is Santa Monica and if the weather is good a walk along the beach and boardwalk is a must.

Good luck!!

Coffeehouse - Blockbuster may not survive, and that's a good thing

JohnnyAwesome — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 23:26:42 GMT

Their attempt to tie in the web ordering demographic to their physical locations were weak at best. I would order several DVD's and each month I believe I was given 1 or 2 coupons for "in store" rental.

Even the DVD business model is silly. Blockbuster should have never invested too heavily in competing with NetFlix and jumped directly to crafting a good plan for the world totally IP driven.

The good news is all of those locations will be turned into taqarias (at least here in california it is like that). If a chain business goes under, a taco shop will move in and succeed.

The 9 Guy Around The World - C9 Guy at my desk at Tokyo University

JohnnyAwesome — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:23:10 GMT

Cool. The picture is too small. Any way to get a bigger so I can see what books he's garding?

Tech Off - JavaScript behavior: odd or not?

JohnnyAwesome — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:09:31 GMT

I presume you are asking this because you would expect it to retrun nothing and it does in fact return a value?

Obviously that wouldn't fly in C# because you would be giving a new meaning to it in the scope. But, from what I understand "var" in JS is not actually instancing a an object the same. It wouldn't change the meaning of the variable until it was set, I think.

Tech Off - Writing Office Reports on the Server-Side

JohnnyAwesome — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 21:48:17 GMT

Rossj wrote:

I've had some success in the past with Aspose.

It isn't free but it is fast and uses no automation. Might be worth a try, and at that price it might be cheaper to buy it than spend the dev time re-inventing it.

Yes. I have used that product as well. At present an old version of SoftArtisan ExcelWriter is licensed on the server, including what appeard to be some .NET consumable COM objects.

But I really wanted a managed code approach to this. And even if it doesn't work for this particular project, now I want to know. What are these third party apps doing? Is it something I can roll myself, even if just for the helluvit?

I am just looking for a point in the right direction to do that.

Coffeehouse - What would you do if everything fails (what's your plan B)?

JohnnyAwesome — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:33:13 GMT

If I have no other options I am going to presume that it is the apocolypse and quickly join the roving gang with the tallest feather adorned headdress ala Mad Max.

Failing that; there is always PHP work.

Tech Off - Writing Office Reports on the Server-Side

JohnnyAwesome — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:55:06 GMT

I have been researching on how to add a Word/Excel export option for dynamic data in an ASP.NET 2.0 application I have been working on. I have worked with several third-party objects (especially in the classic ASP days) but have never written anything myself from scratch.

I understand the Microsoft considerations (I am not even still applies to .NET the same) when wanting to write/modify .xls and .doc files on the server. Especially, the pitfalls of leaving objects open and running numerous COM objs (in this case Office 11 typelibrary) and use of InteropServices. Also, I understand running on an impersonated identity with correct rights to the target directories for writing/reading capabilities. Yet, I require functionality beyond writing simple XML or HTML to the browser with a type attribute and I need to support Office 2003 so the Open XML project seems out of the question.

I am not worried, in this case, about Office end-user licensing issues; since this app is for a corporate intranet and all users must have valid and up-to-date Office licensing (including the target server consequently). However what I want to know is:

1.) If I wanted to write this type of functionality myself (without being locked into a 3rd party subscription service or license) what steps do I need to take?

2.) Is this something that requires the purchase VS Tools for Office?

3.) Do any developers out there who have decent experience in writing to Office applications advise against this approach?

At present, I was able to skirt around this problem by opening existing templates and inserting into them via ADO.NET and the OLEDB provider, but everything in this target export is dynamic (headers, formatting, etc) based upon user input.

Coffeehouse - Getting started with functional programming?

JohnnyAwesome — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:53:28 GMT

I am by no means an expert in this area, but I have never heard Ruby really described as a functional programming language and from what little Ruby I have done it certainly did not seem functional to me. It may have some qualities like closures and lambdas but it is an imperative language.

One of the online authors I really enjoy who is very much into functional programming is Larry O'Brien who has written several places about Erlang and there is a new Erlang book at present as well. I also think that is the language that the YAWS project is written in.

If you are really looking to get into it, why not give F# a try? It's now officially a member of the .NET family now.

Tech Off - Good SQL Fizz Buzz

JohnnyAwesome — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:52:42 GMT

PerfectPhase wrote:

Just write a SQL-CLR function and call that

Hahahaha. Certainly that would be the best choice in the present day.

People forget about fundamentals and what it was like walking uphill both ways to school. They other day I was talking with a friend about a UDF I had dropped into a database for an old client that performed a RegEx search pretty similar to Ken Henderson's sample here and he was baffled by my approach.

I forgot to add it was SQL Server 2000 base being accessed by a classic ASP request. I thought I read an article this week or last (I want to say it was by Rob Conery) about how we are now at a point where a lot of people only know .NET already. The concept and clunkiness of old school approaches are now foreign. I think that is good and bad, personally.

Tech Off - Good SQL Fizz Buzz

JohnnyAwesome — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:46:19 GMT

Well, if the candidate understood TSQL comments, would the next part be identify the mission closing quotation?

I remember reading Atwoods article and thinking to myself (after knowing how I would do it in C#) how would I ask that question and answer it in TSQL?

The answers others posted online after that were very interesting! I had to admit if I had been interviewed on the spot with that question I could not have been as creative in TSQL as many others were.

Tech Off - Google reader optimized for Wii

JohnnyAwesome — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:00:42 GMT

It is actually fairly impressive. The readability of most text based things on the Wii are really user friendly and actually very cler and easy to navigate and consume.

If that browser could handle video or flash content it would quickly become a defacto browser in our household for many internet tasks.

Tech Off - Special chars and SQL Server query

JohnnyAwesome — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:10:07 GMT

I am sorry, I had some issue reading your post.

Are you saying its a bug that they do not match because the dashes are in fact not the same character? Is that not actually expected behavior?

mdash <> ndash and so forth, kind of thing?

Coffeehouse - Is Vista a modern ME?

JohnnyAwesome — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:06:15 GMT

Oh and Vista could be the end of an era if Apple (though they never would for a multitude of reasons) started licensing their OS to other manufactures.

What if Dell had a Leopard offering?

Vista wins right now by default at the OEM level simply because of that fact. An old roomate emailed me the other day asking me "whats an ubuntu?". She had evidently been shopping online for a new computer.

Coffeehouse - Is Vista a modern ME?

JohnnyAwesome — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:05:57 GMT

I do not think that 9ers are really the best people to ask about OS upgrades though. We invest so much time preparing our environments to operate as work tools, that once we are happy it's tough to make us move. Technically inclined people are by nature not very rash or impulsive, so we don't scrap our beloved environment because we're supposed to.

I had to be dragged kicking and screaming from 2000P. I loved that OS on a near unhealthy level, but I came to really love XP. Most users will switch for some slick new feature which may entirely be presentational in nature and contain no new added functionality.

After my parents purchased a set of new laptops which of course came with Vista pre-installed they called me telling me I needed to switch.

"You should see how everything looks!"

I did eventually upgrade one of my development laptops {not because of how stuff looked though }. I am, with some level of embarassment at least, one of those people who reverted back to XP.

It was a simple equation:

# of improvements < # of issues

Tech Off - Open Source .NET Forum Software?

JohnnyAwesome — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:44:24 GMT

Ok. So, some other items came up and I was unable to implement YAF as quickly as I would have liked, but it is plugged in and running now.

A few follow up items:

The HTML is not spectacular but the savings in development time it would take to match many of its other features more than makes up for it. So, in my case any XHTML complaints are moot, since I am not going to write that sh!t from scratch for a minor request like the type I was trying to address.

The source code compiled easy enough into a bin solution for any alterations I required including changing around the breadcrumbing to work with a control I had in place in the masterpage I made their default file inherit. Security alterations were not even difficult to change over (the app now resides in an intranet site using AD authentication) and easy to get running.

My only complaint was how rife it was in code-behind/class in-line HTML. Kind of a pain from my perspective, but I think that might be from YAF being built upon legacy 1.x code. Maybe someone who knows more about the project than I can elaborate more?

All in all, its really stable (can tell there has been a lot of work put into it) and when you look at development time as man-hours and dollars this was just a super-savings and well appreciated.