Marquee de Sells: Chris's insight outlet via ATOM 1.0 csells on twitter

You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.




Add #Region Macro Updated (again)

Here. From Harry Pierson: The Add #Region macro has been updated so that one macro can be used with either C# or Visual Basic .NET. It also adds undo support (thanks to John St. Clair).

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Safe, Simple Multithreading in Windows Forms

Here. Chris Sells: "It all started innocently enough. I found myself needing to calculate the area of a circle for the first time in .NET. This called, of course, for an accurate representation of pi. System.Math.PI is handy, but since it only provides 20 digits of precision, I was worried about the accuracy of my calculation (I really needed 21 digits to be absolutely comfortable). So, like any programmer worth their salt, I forgot about the problem I was actually trying to solve and I wrote myself a program to calculate pi to any number of digits that I felt like."

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SML.NET: Functional programming on the .NET CLR

Here. "SML.NET is a compiler for the functional programming language Standard ML that targets the .NET Common Language Runtime and which supports language interoperability features for easy access to .NET libraries."

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Autonomy.NET

Here. "Chive Software have released Autonomy.NET - a continuous integration service for .NET. The tool was inspired by the excellent CruiseControl for Java and has been released under a BSD-style licence. "The current system has the following features: "o Is capable of handling multiple projects "o Polls CVS, initiates builds and emails results "o Is fully configurable via an XML file"

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Where Do You Find the Time?

Here. "Real software engineering has so little to do with actual technology, it's kinda sad. I'm lucky. I only have to do the technology part. My question is, how do people with full-time jobs find the time to learn the technology?"

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The Death of TCP/IP: Palladium

Here. Robert X. Cringely: "If Microsoft is successful, Palladium will give Bill Gates a piece of every transaction of any type while at the same time marginalizing the work of any competitor who doesn't choose to be Palladium-compliant. So much for Linux and Open Source, but it goes even further than that. So much for Apple and the Macintosh." From what I know of the technologists at MS, I believe that Palladium will actually be a good thing. Watch-dogs like Cringely will help to make sure that it is.

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Sun joins Microsoft on Web services security

Here. "Sun Microsystems Inc. said Thursday it will join rivals Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. in developing a technical standard to make sure Web services transactions are secure." As great as this announcement is, I have my doubts as to whether it will last. Sun and MS don't seem to like to play together.

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CoolBars.NET v. 1.1 released

Here. "The suite is complete solution for toolbars and menus creation. Some features of the product: -Menus and toolbars. -Docking and floating. -Run-time customization. -Skins engine. -SDI and MDI support."

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Where Do You Find the Time?

I had lunch with a couple of colleagues on the lecture circuit today and after they asked me what I was working on (Genghis, the Web Services DevCon in October, ref-counting for Rotor, a few books, some consulting, etc), they asked where I found the time. Here's how:

  1. I work with a *ton* of very talented folks. The following are just the ones I'm remembering off the top of my head that I've been working with lately: Chris Tavares, Brad Wilson, Shawn Van Ness, Jon Flanders, Don Box, Tim Ewald, all the Web Services DevCon speakers and staff, all the Genghis contributors, Tim Tabor, Michael Weinhardt, Microsoft, Dharma Shukla, Brian Harry, Chris Andersen, Mark Boulter, and, of course, all of my former DevelopMentor brethren.
     
  2. But most importantly, I don't attend meetings or request vacations or approve vacations or attend meetings or receive reviews or give reviews or attend meetings (did I already say that?) or do any of the other things that employees have to do. Skipping these activities easily doubles or triples my productivity. Of course, I had to give up the steady paycheck to make it happen and it's not the life for everyone, but it works for me just fine. : )

Real software engineering has so little to do with actual technology, it's kinda sad. I'm lucky. I only have to do the technology part. My question is, how do people with full-time jobs find the time to learn the technology?

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Creating a Design Surface in .NET

Here. "Techniques used to create a GDI+-based design surface for the user to create and position various graphic elements within a Windows Forms control in Microsoft .NET. Includes downloadable sample code."

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Final call for web services sessions/speakers

Here. The current set of potential sessions and speakers for the Web Services DevCon East, October 10-11 in Boston is up. If you'd like to present, please send a title and abstract ASAP to csells@sellsbrothers.com.

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Shared Source CLI Update

Here. "This beta refresh continues the Rotor team's commitment to our growing community and we are very excited to watch the community develop and the source base evolve in new directions. There have been more than 30,000 downloads of the Shared Source CLI to date. I encourage you to download the latest Shared Source CLI archive and explore the possibilities it presents. Follow the links from the download page to explore the growing community."

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Gen<X> will be open-sourced

Here. "We have decided that the best thing for our user base would be to open source Gen. Of course, open source means different things to different people, so now we are taking a pause to sort out both the open source terms and where the product will be hosted. Expect a more detailed announcement soon." [ed: Wahoo!]

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Longhorn Will Be Major, Innovative Windows Release

Here. "Forget the point-release tomfoolery: The next Windows version-- code-named Longhorn--is going to rattle some cages and change perceptions about Microsoft's role as industry innovator. Originally envisioned as a stepping stone to the Windows .NET world that Microsoft was promising with the more distant Blackcomb release, Longhorn suddenly took on a much grander role late last year."

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Objects vs. XML aka LISP and How History Repeats I

Here. My Objects vs. XML rant drew some attention on the XML-DEV mailing list. This is a summary of that attention.

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