programming languages
I've been trying to improve my use of keyboard shortcuts in Visual Studio .NET. Here are the ones I use most often, what I consider my "core" keyboard shortcuts: Go to declaration F12 Debug: step over F10 Debug: run to cursor ctrl + F10 Debug: step into
software development concepts
Joel, on the merits of dogfooding: Eating your own dog food is the quaint name that we in the computer industry give to the process of actually using your own product. I had forgotten how well it worked, until a month ago, I took home a build of CityDesk (thinking
code refactoring
I don’t usually get territorial about modifications to “my” code. First of all, it’s our code. And if you want to change something, be my guest; that’s why God invented source control. But, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t take working code and
bug fixing
Recently, we had this strange problem with a particular smart client application at work. It happened when the user clicked the OK button on a specific form. Like all difficult bugs, it was impossible for us to replicate. We put a bunch of diagnostic scaffolding into the deployed executable; this
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
debugging
I debug remotely at home, mostly because I prefer not using the crippleware version of IIS. It's kind of a pain to get it running, because you have to be more careful with permissions and configuration, but basically it works. At least, it worked until I installed XP
.net
One of the great features of .NET is the automatic garbage collection that absolves the developer of worrying about C++ style memory management, where for every allocate, there must be a destroy, or you're leaking. And yet, I frequently see overzealous developers write code like this: Public Function
debugging
I'm looking forward to VS.NET 2005 like everyone else, but the one killer feature that will absolutely compel me to upgrade on day of release is Edit and Continue. I had no idea exactly how much time I spent editing live code in VB6's debugger
error messages
I'm sure I don't have to explain what is wrong with error messages like this: Catastrophic Failure General Protection Fault Error: The operation completed successfully But as bad as those are, they pale in comparison to what is, hands down, the worst kind of error message:
c#
One of our production web servers keeps deadlocking the ASPNET_WP process, like so: aspnet_wp.exe (PID: 3588) was recycled because it was suspected to be in a deadlocked state. It did not send any responses for pending requests in the last 180 seconds. This is painful. It means