software development concepts
I’m currently reading Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert Glass. It’s definitely a worthwhile book, although I do have two criticisms: 1. Someone really, really needs to buy Robert Glass a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Or at least get him a
.net
For quick and dirty HTML syntax highlighting, have you tried the Squishy Syntax Highlighter? By way of demo, here’s a little CRC32 routine I scavenged last year. Update 3/05: I am using client-side JavaScript highlighting. I noticed that VS.NET automatically translates the IDE highlighting into the RtfTextBox
programming languages
Scott Hanselman continues to impress with his consistently useful blog entries, this time an observation about performance. I found an even more interesting link buried in the comments, though: the Eric Lippert post, How Bad is Good Enough? I’ve read articles about the script engines that say things like
.net
I just posted another CodeProject article, Convert any URL to a MHTML archive using native .NET code. The title is a bit misleading; using my class, you can actually convert any URL to one of four formats in a single line of code: * Web Page, complete (HTML plus files in
communication skills
I didn’t realize Dan Appleman was blogging again! In one of his recent posts, he brings up an excellent point related to my recent posts on skill disparities in programming and being good at your job: sometimes, it’s the non-technical things that make you a better programmer than
microsoft visual studio
At this week’s Triangle .NET Users Group, Microsoft’s Doug Neumann gave a presentation on Visual Studio 2005 Team System, which looks great. What wasn’t so great, however, was the related news that Doug delivered: Whidbey will ship with a “new” version of crusty old Visual SourceSafe. There
hex editor
It’s kind of a specialized tool, but when you need it,* a hex editor is indispensable. I’ve used Hex Workshop since, geez, 1997! I recently purchased an upgrade to the latest version and I was pleased to see it’s still under very active development, with lots of
user experience
God bless whoever at Microsoft decided to build Calculator Plus, an unsupported free upgrade for calc.exe. On the other hand... who decided it was a good idea to skin the UI by default? My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing! Now compare that “upgraded” UI to the windows default,
iis
Isn’t it annoying how deleting a folder from your wwwroot$ doesn’t automatically remove the corresponding website in IIS? You have to go into IIS and delete the website. If you’re lazy like me, you probably have about a dozen left-over zombie websites waiting to be deleted (or
user experience
Why is it, 10 years after the publication of Alan Cooper’s seminal, About Face, applications still regularly present this dialog to me? Cooper said it best on page 136: It is possible to argue that users have come to expect this behavior; that its absence would cause experienced users
debugging
One of the most underappreciated features of Visual Studio .NET 2003 is the Command Window. Did you know there are a bunch of command alias shortcuts available for use in the command window? I use ‘?’ all the time, but I didn’t know about the others. And then there’s
software development concepts
Chris Sells is one of those rare developers who is so talented at both coding and communicating that everything he writes is worth reading. How I wish this was more common! If you haven’t already, read through his archived Spout posts; there’s some really great stuff in those