DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by vtortola

Single-Entry, Single-Exit, Should It Still Be Applicable In OO?

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:46:03 GMT

Does the "Single Point of Exit From a Function" Principle still applicable in Object-oriented programming?

Implementing Interfaces: ICloneable and IComparable

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:31:02 GMT

A friend of mine was showing me about some common interfaces and some good use cases for them the other day. A discussion arose of how to accurately create a deep copy of an object and the best way to go about it. Shortly after that discussion we got into the Sort() method and how to dictate how that method will sort your objects. This is when he spilled into telling me all about these common interfaces.

How Super Mario Bros Made Me a Better Software Engineer

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:16:05 GMT

Playing NES video games does have some advantages!

Howto savely move a file using C#

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:31:02 GMT

If possible this version uses the special File.Replace on NTFS and gracially falls back on Delete+Move on any other filesystem. Nothing else to comment about here. I am just amazed that this kind of save moving is not supported by the framework itself. Instead the framework's move routine throws an exception if there is an file existing at the target location. Weird. ;)

Seeing the Future in ParallelFX

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 04:31:02 GMT

Showing off Futures in ParallelFX and how they can be used for running and synchronizing many tasks that have results.

.NET 3.5 Brings Major (Undocumented) Changes to ThreadPool

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:31:03 GMT

Interesting information about the new behavior of the thread pool in .NET 3.5.

Try/Catch Blocks Can Hurt Performance Significantly

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:01:02 GMT

Over at Programmers Heaven.com, there's an interesting article on the potential performance impact of try/catch blocks. The article concluded that the average cost of a try/catch block is essentially nothing (sorry there's no author information on the post), and that .NET/C# programmers should not think twice about using try/catch blocks. The author is right that a try/catch block has essentially zero cost. However, like most coding performance issues, exceptions and try/catch blocks do not have performance implications until they occur in some type of loop.

When TDD goes bad

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:46:03 GMT

Last week, at the London .NET User Group meeting, Ian Cooper talked about Test-driven development, focusing on both good and bad practices. I'm a big fan of learning from anti-patterns and mistakes of other people, so the second part of his session was very interesting to me. Here is a short list of things that Ian identified as symptoms that TDD has gone bad in a project, along with my comments...

C# .NET Gmail Tools

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:01:02 GMT

Gmail class library for getting gmail atom feeds and for sending emails through gmail.

File System search via LINQ to Objects

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 11:16:02 GMT

LINQ provides a standard way for developers to query data in diverse locations, ranging from in memory objects, XML data, or relational data living in an Oracle Database.Lets take a look at a scenario where we use Linq to objects to query a directory on the local drive for files that match a given extension, and show the results in a Datagrid control.

Do You Really Need A Distributed Architecture?

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:46:02 GMT

Does the question sound rhetoric to you? Do you think the answer is "Yes" by default these days? Think twice. Ask yourself the questions below. You may change your mind at the end.

Vista SP1: Terminal Services /console switch no longer working

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:31:02 GMT

One caveat of installing Vista SP1 if you use Terminal Services.

Custom Controls Design Time Support Part 15: Debugging Design Time

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:46:03 GMT

The final part in the series describing how to debug design time support.

20 Famous Software Disasters

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:31:02 GMT

"To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer." -Paul Ehrlich