DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by KirillOsenkov

Chained null checks and the Maybe monad

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 05:15:52 GMT

A great many programmers have met a situation where, while accessing a nested object property (e.g., person.Address.PostCode), they have to do several null checks. This requirement frequently pops up in XML parsing where missing elements and attributes can return null when you attempt to access them (and subsequently trying to access Value throws a NullReferenceException). In this article, I'll show how a take on the Maybe monad in C#, coupled with use of extension methods, can be used to improve readability.

Welcome to the new DotNetKicks

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:00:14 GMT

Welcome to the new DotNetKicks - Lots of improvements and even more on the way!

Tic-Tac-Toe: Open Source Silverlight Game

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:11:57 GMT

A simple good looking Silverlight 3 game complete with source code.

Com interop in C# 4.0: Indexed Properties

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:53:23 GMT

One of the things I love about my job is that I get to make people happy. How do I do that? By giving them what they want of course! One of the things I don't like so much about my job is going back on a decision that we made before, and having to revert some of the behavior. Well, we've been talking about COM interop in C# 4.0, and are now in the thick of things. Today we'll chat about a feature which many people have asked for in the past, but we've stayed away from until now - Indexed Properties.

Getting Started with IronPython

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

I recently spent some time getting IronPython up and running on my system; I will review what I learned in this post.

Indexed Properties in C# 4.0

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:41:06 GMT

In C# 4.0 you can call parameterized properties that are declared in other languages (VB, COM, C++, etc) using the indexer syntax, for instance instead of excel.get_Range("a") you can now write excel.Range["a"]. You still can't declare your own indexed properties from C#. The feature is immediately available in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 for your indexing pleasure.

Community Convergence

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:24:57 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-sixth community convergence. As you probably know by now, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 has been released. I've worked with the team to create a wide range of technical material designed to support this release, and I will call it each item out here in this post. Be sure to check out the new How Do I and Interview videos and the great posts by Alexandra Rusina.

Dot Net University is Live

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:51:20 GMT

Doug Turnure and Mark Dunn just reopened the .NET University site. This resource includes approximately 40 developer-oriented presentation kits that include slides, speaker notes, demos, demo scripts and webcast videos. You can use these materials in your own presentations, or simply access the valuable information that they contain. You can also find free, sequenced online training at http://myrampup.com. Ramp Up is a free, online, community-based learning program, with a number of different tracks that will help you build your portfolio of professional development skills.

Integrating OpenID in an ASP.NET MVC Application using DotNetOpenAuth

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:00:02 GMT

OpenId is getting more popular and with it requests to integrate it into Web sites as a user authentication mechanism. In this post I'll discuss the OpenId integration on CodePaste.net in an ASP.NET MVC application discussing both high level OpenId concepts, the process and the code implementation.

C# Structured Editor Prototype

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:30:02 GMT

As part of my research back in school I was building an experimental structured editor for C#. Now I've decided to publish the sources and binaries on CodePlex: http://structurededitor.codeplex.com To give a better idea of how the editor works, I've recorded six short videos showing the different features below.

Booting from a VHD

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:30:04 GMT

Hosting an OS in a virtual machine can be very useful for developers, but sometimes one pays a price in terms of performance. In Windows 7 developers can get improved performance in virtual machines by native booting a VHD. First create a Virtual PC that hosts Windows 7, then restart your computer, and finally boot directly into the VHD that contains the Windows 7 OS. When you native boot a VHD your virtual machine runs very close to the metal; performance is greatly enhanced and you have much better support for OS features that may not be available inside a standard Virtual PC.

Community Convergence LV

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:52:11 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-fifth release of Community Convergence. The big news this week is the release of an updated version of CodeRush Xpress, version 9.2. This upgrade to the popular set of free enhancements to the VS IDE has important performance and memory improvements. You might also be interested to hear that the Popfly Game Engine source code has been released. Finally, Microsoft DevLabs has released an experimental version of the .NET Framework called STM designed to make concurrency simpler.

Windows 7 Code Pack v 1.0 Released

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:45:06 GMT

The Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework provides support for various features of Windows 7 and previous releases of that operating system. The Code Pack has reached version 1.0 and has been published on Code Gallery:

Community Convergence LII

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:50:37 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-second release of Community Convergence. In this issue, I provide a series of links to C# team blog posts, and to other posts that might be of interest to C# developers.

Having Fun with the New Editor in VS 2010

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:45:00 GMT

A brief demo of how easy it is to customize the new WPF-based text editor in VS 2010

Community Convergence LI

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:04:38 GMT

Welcome to the fifty-first edition of Community Convergence. In this post I'm simply going to highlight some of the great blogging activity produced by our team in recent weeks. Eric Lippert has been wonderfully productive. I'm beginning to wonder if we shouldn't simply dedicate an entire section of the Internet to his work. I've also included a few pointers to the work of our friends in the F# world; both Luke and Luca played major roles in the C# world for many years, and it is fun to track what they are doing with F#.

Silverlight Layouts Part 1

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:37:40 GMT

This is the third part in a series of posts on Silverlight. In this post covers creating an interface for a Silverlight application. It explores simple ways to work with Grid controls, and how to create Rows and Columns inside them.

Essential LINQ Published

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:01:02 GMT

There was a knock on my door this morning. By the time I could make it to the front of the house, the delivery man was gone, but he had left behind a box full red and white books, each with the title Essential LINQ. On the cover was my name, and the name of my good friend Dinesh Kulkarni. This was, of course, a box full of the first copies of my most recent book. They had a arrived at my house on a most propitious date: the first day of spring.

Community Convergence XLVIII

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:21:58 GMT

Welcome to the 48th Community Convergence. The C# team continues to work hard to get out the next version of C#, and to add improvements to the Visual Studio 2010 IDE. Working long, fruitful hours on these rainy Washington State January days and nights, the engineers on our team are doing a great job putting together a set of features that will improve both C#, and the experience C# developers have in the Visual Studio IDE. They are also working to lay the foundation for some big improvements which you will see only after the next version of C# ships.

How to debug crashes and hangs

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:12:16 GMT

At my job on the C# IDE QA team I've learned some useful things about debugging in Visual Studio, which I'd like to summarize in this post: Turning off "Enable just my code" Attaching the debugger using Tools | Attach To Process Selecting Managed, Native for mixed-mode debugging or Enable unmanaged code debugging Attaching to multiple processes Selecting processes and threads Breaking on first-chance exceptions using the Debug | Exceptions dialog Picking the right thread Loading symbols Viewing the call stack Saving the minidump file

Jeff Richter Video on Asynchronous Programming and his Power Threading

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:27:37 GMT

I recently had the chance to sit down with Jeff Richter and discuss his Power Threading Library. This library provides a simple technique for handling asynchronous development. By making clever use of C# Iterators, Jeff is able to make asynchronous code looks as though it is synchronous code the executes in a linear fashion. This greatly simplifies the asynchronous programming model, making it easy for you to complete tasks that were formerly considered difficult.

LINQ Reference Documentation

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:42:06 GMT

The LINQ documentation created by Microsoft is available both inside Visual Studio, and for free via the MSDN library found on the WEB. Here are some important pages from that documentation that can help you navigate through the online reference material that Microsoft has prepared for LINQ developers. I would not suggest using these references materials as a primary means of learning LINQ. However, if you have a book or other guide to LINQ development, then this reference material can be a useful addendum to that text. If you understand in a general way how LINQ works, but need answers to detailed questions, the links provided here may sometimes help you find answers to your questions.

Links about Visual Studio 2010 and C# 4.0

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:00:54 GMT

Accumulated links to videos and articles about new features in Visual Studio 2010, C# 4.0, .NET Framework 4.0, as well as overview of C# language and IDE new features.

Anders Hejlsberg Video on C# Dynamic

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:46:02 GMT

In this Channel 9 video C# architect Anders Hejlsberg answers some commonly asked questions about the new Dynamic features that will be included in C# 4.0. Building on the talk that he gave at PDC, Anders chats with C# Community PM Charlie Calvert. They discuss questions that community members have asked and riff on themes of import to developers who have been following the latest news from the C# team.

XNA Game Studio 3.0

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:01:20 GMT

The good folks who put together our gaming tools have released XNA Game Studio 3.0.