Common Genius

Magic Booleans

dnelson — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:55:00 GMT

Hopefully somewhere in your programming career you reached a point where you could recognize the following as a Bad Idea: Foo.Bar(42) What does 42 represent? Why are we passing it into the Bar method? Why not 41 or 43 instead? Presumably 42 has some particular meaning in the context of the method call, but it is not obvious from the usage what that meaning is. Numeric constants which are used directly in expressions like this are called Magic Numbers , and most of us are taught to recognize them...(read more)

Dynamic Typing and a Tale of Two Interviews

dnelson — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:08:00 GMT

A manager needed to hire a new employee, so he posted an ad on a job search website. He soon had a flood of responses. The manager carefully examined the resume of each applicant, looking for specific skills that he knew the job required. Not surprisingly, most of the respondents didn't fit the bill. The manager selected a few that seemed like they might have the right qualifications, and brought them in for an interview. He gave each of them a set of tests to complete that would exercise the skills...(read more)

Why I Hate Marketing

dnelson — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:07:00 GMT

When I complained on Scott Hanselman's blog (on something of a tangent I admit) that the versioning of the .NET Framework was nonsensical, he asked me how I would have done it. I think he was subtly trying to point out to me that its not as easy as it looks. But I already knew that. Obviously trying to come up with a system for describing a platform of technologies and tools in a way that makes sense to techies and non-techies alike is a challenge. But the way it has been done so far doesn't seem...(read more)

WPF Attached Dependency Properties and Roles

dnelson — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:28:00 GMT

Attached Dependency Properties in WPF are a replacement for extender providers in WinForms, but they may also have other interesting applications....(read more)

LINQ and Duck Typing

dnelson — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:17:00 GMT

C# 3.0 saw the increasing use of duck typing, most prominently in LINQ....(read more)

Programming and Chess

dnelson — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:01:00 GMT

I got into programming and chess for the same reason: the excitement. But sometimes doing things "the right way" takes all of the fun out of it....(read more)

C# vs VB.NET

dnelson — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:53:00 GMT

If you are bilingual, or if you spend any time at all in the .NET blogosphere, you have undoubtedly witnessed many of the posts/discussions/arguments/wars over which language is better, C# or VB.NET. These skirmishes range from mild to violent, and are often filled with statements like "All VB.NET users are amateurs" or "All C# users are arrogant elitists." Much of the debate is filled with FUD, and at times it seems to border on a religious war. Let me state right here that I have used both languages...(read more)

C# Language Design Decisions Explained

dnelson — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:22:00 GMT

"Ask A Language Designer" on MSDN explains design decisions made by the C# language team....(read more)

Hungarian Notation - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

dnelson — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 10:06:00 GMT

An article about Hungarian notation and a summary of my opinions on the issue....(read more)

DataSet/DataTable serialization bug with modified row and newline string value

dnelson — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:05:00 GMT

Recently I ran across an unusual bug in the .NET framework. Our application uses .NET remoting with DataSets, using RemotingFormat = SerializationFormat.Xml (the default in .NET 2.0, and the only option in .NET 1.1). We were getting a DBConcurrencyException when trying to save data that was being passed from the client to the server, even though we knew for certain that the data in the database had not changed. After some investigation we discovered that the problem was related to a field in a modified...(read more)

"Project location is not trusted", on a local drive

dnelson — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:26:00 GMT

Dealing with the "project location is not trusted" warning in Visual Studio, when the project in question is on a local drive....(read more)

catch(Exception)

dnelson — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 03:03:00 GMT

Posts from the FxCop blog about catching general exception types generated a lot of controversy. I've posted about a particular comment which I think demonstrates a misunderstanding of what static code analysis "rules" are all about....(read more)

Collection Initializers and Duck Typing

dnelson — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 12:57:00 GMT

C# 3.0 will include a new language feature called collection initializers. But are the language designers going too far to make the feature usable by previously built classes?...(read more)

CommonGenius.com is launched!

dnelson — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 08:34:00 GMT

After years serving as a placeholder for miscellaneous server needs, CommonGenius.com has finally been launched as a website in its own right. The overall site organization and content is still evolving, and will continue to do so for some time. You can expect to find resources on software and software development as the site grows. For now, stay tuned to the Site News blog for further announcements about the site.