Marquee de Sells: Chris's insight outlet

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.

Friday, Feb 8, 2002, 12:00 AM in Fun

I Like Clocks

Here's an industrious clock.
Here's a flocking clock.
Here's one using a browser-independent DOM to achieve Flash-like effects.

Ron Neely sends his favorites:

Here's one that converts time to money
Here's one made of bar codes

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Saturday, Feb 2, 2002, 8:02 PM in Fun

A Little Slice of Time

Chris Sells
Feb 2, 2002 8:02pm

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Tuesday, Jan 22, 2002, 12:00 AM in The Spout

A Visit with the Visual C++ Team

I spent a fun two days up at Microsoft last week at the Visual Studio .NET C++ Authors Summit, wherein the Microsoft team shows us how cool VS.NET is for C++ and browbeat us to write a book on the topic. Since I'm already planning to write ATL Internals, 2/e with Kirk Fertitta, I couldn't talk them out of the XBox I so richly deserve. On top of that, they tortured me by taking me to the Microsoft store where they have XBox games for only $10! Those bastards...

If you're a C++ programmer, VS.NET/VC7 brings a lot to the table. And according to Nick Hodapp, a PM on the VC team at Microsoft, many, many of you are C++ programmers. Microsoft quoted some 3rd party studies that say that there are about 3M C++ programmers out there (compared to 5M VB programmers and a whole lot less Java programmers). From a 3rd party survey of VC++ customers, Microsoft found that 90% (!) of them will be doing the same or more VC++ work in the future (about 22 hours/week). They also found that about 75% of VC++ users are MFC programmers (which isn't growing) and 35% of them are ATL programmers (and is growing). Given the number of ATL7 books shipping right now or in progress (ours and a few more), and the increase in the audience, that made Kirk, my Addison-Wesley editor and me very, very happy.

Here are some other interesting tidbits from that survey for you:

68% of VC++ developers build client-server apps
61% build desktop apps
51% build peer-to-peer apps (This number slays me. What are these guys building?!?)
36% build embedded/CE apps
35% build NT services

While we were there, various members of the VC++ team attempted to rock our world in terms of the new and improved features VC7. Sometimes they succeeded. For example, Pranish Kumar told us how the ATL Server version of the Nile benchmark web application was 10% faster than the hand-turned ISAPI version in 1/4th the development time, which is why the Microsoft site uses it for some of their "through-put challenged" areas. Also, Terry Leeper showed us how make mini-dumps for VC++ projects that you can send to the developer's who persist in saying "but it works on my machine..." He also showed us how you can pause threads during debugging, load symbols on demand, set breakpoints in DLLs that aren't loaded at start-up (without that annoying dialog box) and just how much the new optimization features can speed up your code (they did an amazing demo with a recompiled Microsoft codedec that nearly doubled the frame rate with no code changes).

For those of you into ANSI compliance, Microsoft showed off an early internal build of their compiler that raises VC's over all compliance rating to among the highest in the industry. They are able to compile all of the popular 3rd party template libraries, e.g. Loki, Boost, Blitz++, POOMA and a complete STL.

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Tuesday, Jan 15, 2002, 10:42 AM in Fun

Welcome to Wahoo!

This page is dedicated to the game of Wahoo! -- a .NET application meant to be invoked from a .NET client across the internet.

If you'd like the ClickOnce version (for .NET 2.0), click here and (after clicking a few more times), an application that looks like the picture on the right will appear.

To invoke the No-Touch Version version (for .NET 1.x), click here and wait a little while. In a few seconds, an application that looks like the picture on the right will appear. You should note that No-Touch Deployed applications deployed across the Internet are disabled by default when .NET 2.0 is installed on the client machine.

If you find that Wahoo! doesn't have permission to run on your .NET 1.x computer, you can grant Wahoo! Internet permissions using this MSI setup file (Keith Brown helped me fix my SP1 permissions problem!). Even the new permissions are pretty strict, e.g. they do not even allow writing to the file system. If you'd like to increase the permissions allows for Wahoo! so that it can cache high scores to the file system, you can do so via the Trust Assembly Wizard available in Start->Settings->Control Panel->Administration Tools->Microsoft .NET Framework Wizards.

Keith Brown has asked me to remind all of you that even though Wahoo! is managed and executes in the .NET security sandbox, the code in the MSI to grant permissions for the .NET 1.0x version is running with FullTrust permissions, meaning that it could do bad things, where "bad things" is defined as: trash the registry, delete files, send email from your account, spread viruses, reformat disks, change arbitrary spreadsheet values or formulae, remove single columns from database tables, invert the buttons on your mouse, reset your MineSweeper high scores, send lists of installed software to Microsoft, and generally misbehave (thanks Tim Ewald for the exhaustive list : ). Of course, this applies to any MSI file, setup program or any other code that you download onto your machine and run outside of the .NET or Win32 security sandboxes. Keith would like everyone to promise to stop installing new code of any kind on their machines and let software migrate there instead, either via No-Touch Deployment/mobile code-style install-on-demand or via administrator-approved means. Keith believes that installing code on your machine can only cause trouble and I agree -- unless there is code on your machine, nothing bad can happen. Nothing good can happen, either, but "Hey, let's be careful out there!"

The full source code to the .NET 2.0 version is available here. The full source code to the .NET 1.x version (including the MSI file) is available here. The original HTML version is available, as well.

Wahoo! was awarded the Windows Forms Coding Heroes Award on 2/12/02 by the Windows Forms team on GotDotNet. I'd like to thank the academy... : )

If you like this game, you might also like Snake, by Tomas Gudmundsson. I know I do.

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Tuesday, Jan 15, 2002, 12:00 AM in Fun

The Game of Wahoo!

If you like Tetris and you've got .NET installed, check out Wahoo.

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Sunday, Jan 6, 2002, 12:00 AM in .NET

VS.NET Fun Facts

After about a month of banging my head on it, Visual Studio.NET has become my favorite IDE of all time. To save you the bruising, I thought I'd post some productivity tricks and traps I've learned [1] that make VS.NET useful. If you've got your own, send them to me and I'll post the good ones.

DISCLAIMER: I always leave the standard VS.NET key bindings, i.e. I don't set it to VC6 style. In general, I just learn the default keystrokes for things instead of changing them. Saves me time when repaving my machines or sitting down at strange machines. If you've changed key bindings in your VS.NET, these keystrokes aren't likely to work, but the tricks will still be useful if you can figure out what the key bindings are.

Download

If you don't already have VS.NET, run, don't walk, to MSDN to download a 60-day evaluation of VS.NET Professional.

Tricks

The most important thing I've done to make VS.NET useful for me is to unpin all of the windows. This gives me tons of room for the source or design view. This, combined with the keystrokes to pull out the windows (below) as I need them, is probably my favorite feature of VS.NET.
The 2nd most important thing to know is that VS.NET can be invoked from Start->Run using its name "devenv" (no quotes). Therefore, to start VS.NET, type Ctrl-Esc, R, devenv, Enter. Much better than digging into the deep Programs menu.
Make sure to move the "Visual Studio .NET Command Prompt" that's buried deep inside of Start->Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio .NET->Visual Studio .NET Tools to somewhere more handy, e.g. the Quick Launch toolbar, so that you can get to it easily. You'll be using the command shell often in your .NET development.
Let the IDE implement the stubs of an interface function in a class (not a struct):
1. Type the name of the interface after the name of the class, e.g. "class Foo : IDisposable".
2. In the Class View (Ctrl-Shift-C), navigate to the class, e.g. Foo, and choose the interface you'd like stubs for under Bases and Interfaces for that class.
3. In the context menu (Shift-F10), choose Add->Implement Interface.
4. Bask in the glory of Don Box (who showed me this trick).
Let the IDE implement the stub of an virtual function override:
1. In the Class View (Ctrl-Shift-C), navigate to the class, e.g. Foo, and choose the method on the base class you'd like to override under Bases and Interfaces for that class.
2. In the context menu (Shift-F10), choose Add->Override.
3. Bask in the glory of me, who found this all by myself. I found this digging through the .VSZ files on my system. It looks like you can add your own context items to the menus, which sounds like fun...
If you'd like some samples of VS.NET Add-Ins, MS provides some. MSDN Magazine provides an add-in article that you may find useful.
Likewise, Leo A. Notenboom has written a thorough article about how to write an add-in to VS.NET.
Also, in A Designable PropertyTree for VS.NET: Russell Morris has built an implementation of the PropertyTree control that you see in VS.NET's Project Properties dialog. What makes this really cool is that Russell's control is a great example of what to do to integrate with the VS.NET Forms Designer.
If you'd like to add to the Solution, Project, Project Item or Context Menu wizards for VC++, VC# or VB.NET, you can. Here's an example of a project item wizard that produces a custom aspx file and a custom code behind file to go with it.
While ildasm.exe is very thorough, if you'd like to have a prettier view of the types in an assembly, you can load it into the VS.NET Object Browser. Using the file open dialog, click the drop-down and choose Open With and select the Object Browser. Once it's loaded, you can unload it by choosing the Remove item from the context menu of the assembly in the Object Browser.
This isn't a tip so much as an observation. If you use an #if with a compilation symbol, e.g. DEBUG or TRACE, notice that as you move from configuration to configuration that the editor will gray out the code path that won't be taken. Is that cool, or what?!?
Read the online documentation. It's *so* much more useful than the online documentation of old.
Brock Allen showed me the 3rd tab (Projects) in the Add References dialog for adding references from one project to the target of another. This works *so* much better than hard-coding .NET references to a specific output folder.
Ed Stegman pointed out that the Toolbox can be used to store snippets of code. Simply select some and drag-n-drop it on the Toolbox. To paste, drag-n-drop from the Toolbox to your editor. Of course, this is great for duplicating bugs as well. : )
Ed really likes regions, marked using #region/#endregion compiler directives, too. Now that's he's clued me into the keystrokes (below) for expanding and collapsing them, I really like them, too. : )
Ed also reminded me of the Task List and how anything marked with TODO, HACK or UNDONE will be included in your list of tasks. Andrew Stopford reminded me that you can set up your own keywords via Tools -> Options -> Environment.
If, on the other hand, you hate the Task List, Kevin Perry suggested the followings steps to turn if off after a build:
1. Go to Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Project and Solutions.
2. Uncheck the "Show task list window if build finishes with errors" option.
3. Make sure the "Show output window when build starts" option is checked.
4. Now go and close the task list window and it's gone for good!
Several folks have sent along macros that are life savers to them. If you'd like to do that, I'm happy to post them here along with your name and a brief description. Please send attached files instead of inline text, however. Thanks!
- Richard Broida sent along a macro that inserts curly braces and moves insertion point to first line inside, following K&R or MS style, depending on indentation option.
- Joshua Cauble sent along a macro to sort declarations in a VB.NET class to get the items in the wizard bar sorted.
- Don Box sent along a macro to achieve emacs-like M-x compile functionality.
- Peter Andersen sent in a macro that creates a C# string from an arbitrary mark, e.g.. if you select the following lines:
  
  <xml>
  <hithere>mom</hithere>
  </xml>
  
  running the macro produces the following output in the editor:
  
  "<xml>" +
  "<hithere>mom</hithere>"+
  "</xml>";
Drew Marsh pointed out that Ctrl-S works in any of the output windows, e.g. build, debug, etc, to save the contents to a file.
It's cool to have MS folk reading this list. Kevin Perry sent me to procedure to bypass the "Attach to Process" dialog that asks what kind of debugger you'd like to pick, i.e. CLR, T-SQL, Native and/or Script, when you click on the Attach... button in the Debug Processes dialog. Ctrl-clicking on Attach... will give you the Native debugger without asking.
My good friend Tim Ewald reminded me that one of the coolest features of VS.NET is that the solution explorer is really just a view of your actual project folders in the shell. This is especially useful if you choose Show All Files, so that you can add files to your project that are already in your project directory simply by using the context menu. If you'd like to add a file that isn't in your project, you can do so by opening the file and choosing "Move <file> into Project" from the context menu. This is a poorly named item, however, as it actually links to the existing file outside the project instead of moving it in the file system (although the linking is the correct behavior).
To speed the IDE start-up time, you want to avoid the browser being loaded. To do that, from the Start Page, choose My Profile and set At Startup to Show empty environment. Also, close the Dynamic Help window and the Start Page. Now IE will only be loaded on demand.
If you like the tabs showing the various files you have open, but miss the ability to show multiple files at the same time, right-click on one of the tabs and choose New Horizontal/Vertical Tab Group. Both tab groups will show simultaneously and you can move tabs (and therefore the window that the tab represents) between tab groups by right-clicking on the tab.
Maria Abreu points out that VS.NET, by default, neglects to colorize strings (an omission, IMO). You can colorize them via Tools->Options->Fonts and Colors and it really helps. Thanks, Maria.
Graeme Foster posted this tip on the DOTNET mailing list for getting VS.NET to copy the application .config file during the build: simply name the file app.config and put it in the main project directory. At build time, VS.NET will copy the file into the output directory with the build output.
Dominick Baier reminded me that by typing "///" (no quotes) above the declaration of a method or property, the C# editor will give you the template for the C# XML documentation tags with all parameters and return value. The IDE will compose these comments into (fairly ugly) HTML-based documentation for your classes using the Tools->Build Comment Web Pages menu item. A much nicer set of documentation from these comments can be generated by NDoc.
Kunal Cheda pointed out that if you've got multiple things you'd like to start when running or debugging a solution, you can do so at Solution Explorer->Solution Properties->Startup Project->Multiple Startup Projects. *Very* handy for client-server testing.
Nick Hodapp passed along this tip on how to exclude included files that don't change from VC++ dependency checking:
1. Add header file directory names (using full, absolute paths) one per line, to SYSINCL.dat.
2. Exit the development environment.
3. Restart the development environment.
4. Click Rebuild for changes to take effect, noticing a reduction in build times.
Shawn Van Ness thinks that the clipboard ring "is so cool, it should be back-propped into all of Windows": Using Ctrl+Shift+V as an alternative to the usual Ctrl+V paste command, will "cycle" through the last dozen or so bits of text you've copied onto the clipboard. This simple user scenario demonstrates:
1. Copy "#if DEBUG" onto the clipboard.
2. A few lines below, copy "#else" onto the clipboard.
3. A few lines further below, copy "#endif" onto the clipboard.
4. Scroll down many hundreds of lines... or open a different file, etc.
5. Ctrl+Shift+V to paste "#endif".
6. Ctrl+Shift+V, Ctrl+Shift+V to paste "#else".
7. Ctrl+Shift+V, Ctrl+Shift+V, Ctrl+Shift+V to paste "#if DEBUG".
Scott Hanselman pointed out that you can set the font size to VS.NET from the command line using the /fs argument, e.g. "devenv.exe /fs 14". This is great for presenters!
For the complete list of key bindings, MS provides a Keybindings Table Add-In. Here it is already compiled. Just drop it anywhere, register it as a COM server and the next time you start VS, you'll have a KeyMap command in the Help menu.
Russell Sinclair has provided his favorite key bindings in an Excel spreadsheet that prints and folds nicely for keeping it handy.

Here are my favorite key bindings:

Keys	Binding
F8/Shift-F8	Navigate compilation errors
Ctrl-D	Move to mini-buffer
Ctrl-Shift-G in mini-buffer or Ctrl-O in mini-buffer	Open file name in mini-buffer (Ctrl-O seems to open stuff Ctrl-Shift-G does not)
"> command" in mini-buffer	Execute command
Ctrl+/	Move to mini-buffer, typing the leading > for you
Ctrl-Alt-A	Open the command window
Ctrl-PageUp in HTML Design View	Open source view
Ctrl-PageDown in HTML Source View	Open design view
F7 in Form Design View	Open source view
Shift-F7 in Form Source View	Open design view
Ctrl-Alt-L	Solution Explorer
F4 or Alt-Enter	Properties of selected item
Ctrl-Shift-B	Build
F5	Debug
Ctrl-F5	Run, but not debug
Ctrl-Alt-J	Object Browser
Ctrl-Shift-C	Class View
Ctrl-Space when typing a symbol	Complete the symbol you're currently typing or give you a choice of possibilities
Ctrl-Space when entering arguments	Show the function prototype
"-" (no quotes) as the name of a menu item	Menu item becomes a separator
Ctrl-K Ctrl-F	Reformat selection
}	Reformat scope being closed
Ctrl-K Ctrl-C	Comment out selected lines
Ctrl-K Ctrl-U	Uncomment selected lines
Ctrl-}	Match braces, brackets or compiler directives
Shift-Ctrl-}	Select match between braces, brackets or compiler directives
Ctrl-L or Shift-Del or Ctrl-X w/ no selection	Delete entire line
Ctrl-Del	Delete next "word"
Alt-F6	Next visible pane (not for use with all windows unpinned)
Ctrl-Shift-F12	Jumps to next whatever, depending on what's active, e.g. next find result, next task, next error, etc.
Ctrl-"-"/Ctrl-Shift-"-" (no quotes)	Jumps to last/next place you worked
Ctrl-C in the Class View	Copies fully qualified name to the Clipboard
Ctrl-M Ctrl-M	Collapse or expand a region or outlined block (as marked by the [+] and [-] on the left hand side of the editor).
Ctrl-M Ctrl-O	Collapse everything in the current file
Ctrl-M Ctrl-L	Expand everything in the current file
F12	Jump to the current symbol's declaration
Ctrl-G, line #, Enter or Ctrl-D, line #, Ctrl-G	Jump to line
Ctrl-I/Ctrl-Shift-I + string	Incremental search for string
Ctrl-R+Ctrl-R	Turn on/off word wrap
Ctrl+Up/Down Arrow	Scroll window up/down without moving the cursor away from the current line
Shift+Alt+Arrows (Alt+Mouse works, too)	Column selection (include of line selection)

Traps

VS.NET's Copy Project uses FrontPage Extensions to publish a web site from a local testing machine to the deployment machine. This is virtually important if you don't want to hack on your live web sites. However, Copy Project sends everything every time instead of sending the deltas, so it's pretty worthless as far as I can tell. Instead, Brad Wilson clued me into the FrontPage Publish Web command, which only publishes deltas.
The command window (or > in the mini-buffer) seems really cool, but I don't know any good commands to type. Do you?
- Joe Bauer points out that you can, of course, use the command window to print fields or call methods using the ?, e.g. "> ? objMyClass.GetCount()".
- Richard Birkby pointed out the "shell" command, which seems a bit unwieldy for me, but you may like it. ">shell /?" in the mini-buffer will show usage (now that's cool!).
- Drew Marsh points out that the command window (or the mini-buffer with a > prefix) allows you to execute any command provided by the shell, add-ins, or macros. Anything you don't bind to a key combination or toolbar button, you can go into the command window to execute. Also, it supports auto-completion for those of us with poor memories.
- Richard Broida pointed out the use of the "?" command to print variables at debug time.
- John Lam showed me where the docs are for the pre-defined command aliases. He also points out that you can create your own aliases, but you need cool commands first before you can do that. : )
- Ramakrishna Vavilala recommends a cool alias ">alias ! shell /command cmd /c" which reduces the syntax of the shell command considerably and sends the command output to the Command window.
- Don Box pointed me at two commands that forces me to learn the keyboard shortcut to put focus in the command window (Ctrl-Alt-A):
  - ">open <partial path>" will give Intellisense on the file system, e.g. ">open c:\".
  - ">File.NewFile <file name>" will open a new file with the appropriate name and syntax highlighting, e.g. ">open foo.cs". This is even handier when you alias "new" to File.NewFile, e.g. ">alias new File.NewFile", because you can just do this ">new foo.cs".
As far as I can tell, there is no way in a C# project to run custom pre or post-build commands, either on a project or a file level. If the VC++ wizards still had a Utility project, that could be used, but the closest I've seen in VS.NET is a Makefile project. Anyone have ideas on this one?
- Several folks have recommended a VS.NET Add-In Sample that is supposed to provide this capability.
- Kevin Perry showed me where the UI scrambler put the Utility project in this version of the IDE:
  1. Run the makefile appwizard to create a makefile project.
  2. Bring up the project properties for the project and look at the general page
  3. Select “Utility” in the “Configuration Type” property drop down.
  4. Click Apply.
    POOF! Instant Utility project.
    BTW: C++ Static Library projects can also double as utility projects in a pinch.
As cute as the Add Reference menu item is on a project's context menu, your going to have to avoid Add Reference for COM servers and build the references by hand if you sign your assemblies (which you should always do). Apparently a signed assembly is not allowed to reference an assembly that's not signed and the Add Reference menu item doesn't sign the generated assembly. All Add Reference does is the moral equivalent of the tlbimp command line tool anyway, so get used to calling it yourself using the /keyfile command line argument. If you import COM Controls, e.g. the WebBrowser control, you'll need to use aximp instead of tlbimp, but the /keyfile argument is the same.

However, Jerry Dennany points out that you can have VS.NET itself sign your interop assemblies by going to the Project Properties, and under Common Properties / General there will be a section for "wrapper Assembly for ActiveX / COM Objects." You may place your path to the Key File here, and everything still works from the IDE.
There are no wizards for standard SDI, MDI or Explorer-style applications in WinForms as there were in VC++ for MFC applications. However, the wizard stuff is there, although it's obscure, so maybe I'll build one. I've certainly done my share of that kind of work...
Likewise, there is no built in support for MFC-style document handling, separation of data and view, command line processing or command UI handling. I've done my share of that kind of work, too, and I *will* be building that stuff. Anyone want to volunteer to help?
I don't seem to be able to get a custom control on the toolbox unless it's part of a separate assembly. What if I have a custom control in my application? Can I make it show up on the toolbox somehow?
- Bob Beauchemin pointed out that I can customize the toolbox and point it at a built version of my EXE, which sounds kind of awkward, but works.
I can't tell. Is everything being recompiled every time I build, regardless of whether the source has changed or not?
- Drew Marsh pointed out that the Incremental Build option in a C# project will decide whether you rebuild only if it is changed or not.
If a file is "thought of" internally by the IDE as one text, e.g. Text, and you try to save it as another type, e.g. XML, if you're not very careful the save dialog will append the extension of the type it thinks it is, e.g. .txt. To enforce the extension you want, put double quotes around the file name, e.g. "foo.xml".
Neither BeginInvoke nor EndInvoke is shown when calling methods on a delegate in C#, even though they do in VB.NET. This just seems wrong...
Docs on the built-in VsWizardEngine that VS.NET provides would be nice.
- Jon Flanders says that they're documented as part of Enterprise Templates.
By default, adding a new project to an existing solution wants to put the new project in a peer directory instead of in a sub-directory. This seems strange if you're trying to keep these things together (which, presumably, you are if you're grouping multiple projects into a single solution). Certainly, I've seen users dig through several peer directories looking for the solution file. I put sub-projects into sub-directories by hand, but it would be nice if the IDE did this automatically.
Cleaning a project of it's output files doesn't actually work for C# or VB.NET projects (although the UI shows it as an option, as does the command line). Tomas Restrepo has provided an add-in that provides the missing Clean functionality, along with a rant on what problems he had building the add-in.
In spite of CodeWright and every other 3rd party editor supporting it for years, VS still doesn't support keyword expansion, e.g. expanding "if( " into "if( | )\n{\n}", so I use Dexter, from NilgiriHouse. I don't have to change my typing habits at all, but I get tons o' text for free.
The macro recorder is pretty stunted. For example, if I want a macro to switch between some editor settings, e.g. my normal code formatting style and my prose code formatting style, and I record a macro to watch me change the settings, all the recorded macro does is record that the dialog was shown, not what settings I changed. What a let down...

[1] I've learned a ton of these tricks and traps from my fellow DevelopMentor instructors, my students and the .NET mailing list, all of which I can heartily recommend.

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Sunday, Jan 6, 2002, 12:00 AM in Tools

VS.NET Fun Facts

If you haven't seen it yet, check out the VS.NET Fun Facts piece that started as praise and bitching about VS.NET, but turned into something pretty useful if you'd like to get the most out of VS.NET.

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Monday, Dec 31, 2001, 12:00 AM in Fun

My Family Heritage

Grandma says that all US Sells are related from the original Sells that came across on the boat after the May Flower.

My father pointed out that my boys are not, in fact, the original Sells Brothers (and that we must be related, as the originals have his haircut).

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Saturday, Dec 29, 2001, 7:14 PM in Fun

Elvish in the New Age

TimT said:

od oy dp,ryjomh ;olr yjodz
[d. dpttu. gomhrtd pm yjr etpmh lrud
//yo,

SerdarK said:

Is that Elfish?

ShawnV said:

I think it *is* elvish... let me put my laptop in the fire. Ah yes, I can read it clearly now:

One Desktop to rule them all, One Desktop to find them
One Desktop to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them
in the land of Redmond, where the shadows lie

Off Topic mailing list

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Wednesday, Dec 19, 2001, 2:02 PM in Fun

1970s "wocka-wocka" porno guitar

Sung to "Shaft" by Isaac Hayes <http://www.shaft-themovie.com/soundtrack/track01.mp3>

Who's the man with tongue-in-cheek
that's a code machine to all the geeks?

(Box!)

You're damn right.
Who is the man
that would replace COM for its brother runtime?

(Box!)

Can ya dig it?
Who's the cat that won't cop out
when there's IDispatch all about

(Box!)

Right on
You see this cat Box is a bad mother--

(Shut your mouth)

But I'm talkin' about Box

(Then we can dig it)

He's a complicated man
but no one understands him but his pointers

(Don Box)

John Bristowe
Wed 12/19/2001 2:02 PM
dotnet discussion [DOTNET@DISCUSS.DEVELOP.COM]

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Tuesday, Dec 18, 2001, 12:00 AM in The Spout

Too Many Secrets

Tue, 12/18/01

During my three years as director of a software project, I learned a lot about people. In fact, I have a little text file entitled "My life as a dog" that may find a home on this site one day. However, because of a thread on the Windows Technical Off Topic list, one of the things I learned came roaring back like a bad acid trip.

The #1 problem with any organization is always communication. You can do postmortems on projects all day long and only #2 and above will be a surprise. The problem is that to build anything of any size, you need a team. As soon as you have to communicate what's in your head to some number of other people, it's going to happen imperfectly. The best way that we've been able to come up with to deal with this issue is hierarchical structures to practice selective information hiding, i.e. exactly the way we build software.

However, unlike software, humans have feelings and as soon as they perceive that somebody is hiding something from them, they resent it. Again and again, when I see information withheld to hide "bad" news, those being hidden from know something is up and they get upset. And when they're upset, they send emails and IMs and phone calls around the company looking for every scrap of information they can find, all the while ignoring the work that suddenly seems a waste of time in the face of impending doom. The surprising thing is that when folks are given the truth openly and honestly, no matter how bad it is, they almost always dig in and deal with it. Just knowing that they're trusted with the secrets of the company seems to boost morale.

I'm not saying that everyone needs to post their daily activities for everyone to see -- that's too much information. But I am saying that everyone from the CEO on down should be open about the issues they face, including being open to scrutiny and suggestions. I find that after doing that long enough, folks working for me tend to trust me to make the right decisions, leaving them to focus on their own work.

The key is that, unlike software systems where components have information hidden from them by their clients, humans can only be effective if they know that the information is available when they want it. Information hiding still needs to happen, but it's humans that need to choose to hide information from themselves. It whole thing falls apart if the managers do the hiding.

0 comments

Saturday, Dec 1, 2001, 12:00 AM in The Spout

Effective C# Available Today

Sat, 12/1/01

Effective C# is available now from Addison-Wesley. Of course, it's called Effective Java, but *wow* the overlap is amazing. Some of his items I don't agree with, e.g. return zero-length arrays instead of null (although I see his side) and others have been "fixed" due to advances in C#, e.g. override clone judiciously, but so much of it makes sense in C# (and .NET in general) that it's scary. I feel like asking AW for the text so that I can port it to C# over the weekend. : )

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Tuesday, Nov 27, 2001, 3:52 PM in Fun

I am not making this up...

A friend of mine stumbled over this in the Microsoft source code:

//  Function:   RunCommandEx
//  Synopsis:   runs the given command in the current session, more robust
//				than RunCommand
//  Arguments:  none
//  Returns:    S_OK if success
//  History:    October 3, 2000 - created [name withheld to protect the guilty]
HRESULT RunCommandEx(LPCWSTR szCmdLine) {
	DWORD dwTry = 0;
	HRESULT hResult = S_OK;

	// try run command 3 times at most
	while (dwTry<4) {
		hResult = RunCommand(szCmdLine);
		if (hResult!=E_FAIL) {
			// we succeeded
			break;
		}
		dwTry++;
	}
	if (dwTry==4) {
		ATLTRACE(L"COuld start the command even we tried 4 times\n");
		ASSERT(FALSE);
	}
	return hResult;
}

That's not quite my definition of robust, but oh well...

Tue 11/27/2001 3:52 PM

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Tuesday, Nov 27, 2001, 3:41 PM in Fun

.NET edition of Truckin' (Grateful Dead)

"Steal this song right off my page." You can find it at http://www.ferncrk.com/jittin.html. Use only in well ventilated area. Do not expose to open flame.

Stuart Celarier
Tue 11/27/2001 3:41 PM

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Friday, Nov 16, 2001, 12:00 AM in The Spout

Thank You, Don Box

Friday, 11/16/01

Last night, in the middle of .NET Band on the Runtime set, Don announced his retirement from DevelopMentor and training. He's sorry to be leaving us, of course, as we are to lose him, but he's excited about doing new things. Running a company gets more consuming as a company gets more successful and Don certainly brought DevelopMentor a great deal of success. And not only did he run his part of the company, but he also brought a amount of rigor and insight to an amazing range of technology topics, including C++, COM, DCOM, RPC, XML, Java and .NET, heretofore unprecedented in the training industry. He turned the phrase "them that can't; teach" on its ear. But these are things that are well-known of Don.

What is perhaps not so well known is the care and dedication that he had for his friends and colleagues. He worked hard to turn his personal success into opportunities for the other technical staff members at DevelopMentor. And he succeeded. He paved the way for people like Ted Pattison, Keith Brown, Tim Ewald, Aaron Skonnard, Martin Gudgin and a host of others who's made a name for themselves in this industry. Of course, I'm also on this list. If you look at the things that I've got listed on this site, i.e. books, articles, courses, conference talks, etc, a staggering amount of it was enabled either directly or indirectly by Don Box. He's an amazing man and it's been an honor and a privilege to work with him these last six years. They're been the richest of my career and of my life. And for that, I'd like to thank him.

Before we get too blubbery, Don has assured the world that he will continue to pursue technology and to communicate it to an eager audience. I, for one, look forward to what he decides to do next. Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be uniquely Don.

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