Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow, Discourse, and RGMII. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Let's be kind to each other. Find me
programming languages
I mentioned in a previous post that I was launching command line utilities from an ASP.NET web app and capturing the output. I wrote a little multithreaded .Process wrapper class to encapsulate this behavior. It's nothing magical, but it is handy for these scenarios: Dim cmd As
.net
Did you know that Process.Start always uses the security context of the parent ASP.NET process? I just found this out the hard way; Using Process.Start on “whoami.exe” always returns the ASPNET worker process no matter what I do. Some searching turned up this entry in Scott’
asp.net
If you deploy ASP.NET websites to a web farm, you may run into this perplexing System.Web.HttpException: The viewstate is invalid for this page and might be corrupted If you’ve installed ASP.NET 1.1 service pack 1, you may also get a much more helpful exception
asp.net
About a week ago, Scott Hanselman posted a neat tip on deploying multiple /bin folders in an ASP.NET application. What’s really cool about this is that it lets you build a pseudo plugin architecture into your existing ASP.NET website. Scott documents it perfectly; I’m here to
programming languages
Now that XML comments are confirmed for VB.NET in VS.NET 2005, I’ve started to aggressively adopt the VBCommenter add-in, which adds XML comment support to the current version of VS.NET. XML comments are great primarily because of the additional IDE tooltip feedback they provide to
game development
I’ve often said that game development is the most difficult kind of software development. It tends to be very low level coding, on unusual hardware platforms, and you have to constantly optimize for performance and “fun” – whatever that may be. Consider the complexity of one small facet of game
vb.net
I saw on Dan Appleman’s blog that a new version of his Visual Basic.NET or C#: Which to Choose? is available, reflecting the latest changes in VS.NET 2005. I immediately bought a copy from Lockergnome, apparently the only vendor that allows instant eBook downloads after purchase.* There
usability
This Human Factors International presentation (ppt) references something called a Columbia Obstruction Device: I couldn’t find any actual references to the Columbia University science experiment they’re referring to, but it certainly seems plausible enough. The parallel with users and usability is natural. Either maximize the cheese (make your
asp.net
I finally bit the bullet and formatted my ASP.NET CAPTCHA server control as a CodeProject article. This version of the control has a few significant improvements over the last version: * Optimized with use of HttpModule and Cache objects * Removed ViewState for Captcha text (this isn’t secure, doh) * Added
software development
There’s an interesting eleven page article in the Economist considering the cost of software complexity: The economic costs of IT complexity are hard to quantify but probably exorbitant. The Standish Group, a research outfit that tracks corporate IT purchases, has found that 66% of all IT projects either fail
technology trends
I recently took the plunge and upgraded to a plasma television, mostly because I want a decent native resolution for my home theater PC under Windows Media Center Edition 2005. Analog televisions don’t do 640x480 very well, and can barely be coaxed into legible 800x600. However, HDTV or EDTV
software development concepts
One warning sign I look for when working with other developers is fear of breaking the code. The absolute worst systems I’ve worked on are the ones where the developers practically tiptoe around the source code. The main problem with fear of breaking the code is the implicit assumption