DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by ColdChilli

5 podcasts that every .net developer should be listening to

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:46:01 GMT

A list of the best .net podcasts on the web

Wrap Your Name Value Variables

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:16:01 GMT

ASP.NET gives a developer a lot of loosely typed key-value collections in which to stash stash variables, depending upon persistence needs. The short list includes ViewState, Session, Application and HttpContext.Items. These collections can come in very handy when one needs to keep an object around outside of a single request or shuttle things between different bits of the http pipeline. But it comes at a price-these collections are loosely typed, just returning Objects. Moreover, there is no compile-time checking to ensure that you are requesting the right key in the right place. Errors can lead to crashes at best, and interesting data corruption at worst. Here is a handy technique to avoid such issues.

Only iterating over the objects you want in a foreach loop

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 12:01:01 GMT

Have you ever had a collection made of several types which all derive from the same base class? How many times have you needed to iterate the whole collection and check each element to make sure its the type that you want to work with? Here's how to do you type checking completely inline inside of the foreach loop so you only get the objects you want.

Page_Load is Evil

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 05:16:01 GMT

Page_Load is Evil. And here is why.

The Adapter Pattern

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 06:01:01 GMT

A good clear explaination of the adapter patter ... clear explainations and real world analogies with code (vb.net 2003 ... but the code is quite generic).

C# Generics Recipes

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 09:01:02 GMT

Learn when and where to use generics and find recipes for using generics to solve problems. Excerpt: A long-awaited feature, generics, is finally here with the advent of Version 2.0 of the C# compiler. Generics is an extremely useful feature that allows you to write less, but more efficient, code. This aspect of generics is detailed more in Recipe 4.1. With generics comes quite a bit of programming power, but with that power comes the responsibility to use it correctly. If you are considering converting your ArrayList, Queue, Stack, and Hashtable objects to use their generic counterparts, consider reading Recipes 4.4, 4.5, and 4.10. As you will read, the conversion is not always simple and easy, and there are reasons why you might not want to do this conversion at all.

Software Development Top 30 Mistakes

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 22:31:02 GMT

I have been developing software and web applications for nearly 11 years now. Software development has come along way since the days of Binary, Cobol, etc. What still fascinates me however about software development however is the same mistakes made before, are still made today.

.NET Framework 3.0 Is Out the Door!

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 03:01:04 GMT

Microsoft officially released .NET 3.0

Interview questions for C# job [part 1]

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 07:31:01 GMT

This is a long list with questions that you may be asked at C# job interview (with answers). Enjoy

How to: Execute (another's class) private methods

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 05:01:04 GMT

Do you need to get access to a method that has been marked as private? here's how you can

Performance of foreach vs. List.ForEach

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 08:01:02 GMT

Today I was iterating a List<int> using a foreach-loop and feeling a bit smug in knowing how much more performance-conscious I was being than if I'd tried doing the same thing with an ArrayList filled with ints. Thanks to the wonder of generics, the C# compiler neatly avoids numerous boxing operations by using a System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerator<int> instance instead of the older System.Collections.IEnumerator. Then I got to thinking: "is this really the fastest way?" Upon investigation, it turns that, no, it isn't the fastest way.

Code Better - Use String.Format

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 02:01:01 GMT

Poorly handled exceptions might speak volumes about someone's coding abilities, but it's string concatenation that's a sure bet to kill a programs readability (thus maintainability). Everyone knows that they should use StringBuilder's for better performance when concatenating a lot, but to improve maintainability, string.format is king!

The Demise of NDoc and A Challenge For Users Of Open Source Software

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 02:01:02 GMT

A summary of the unfortunate demise of the NDoc 2.0 project. But more importantly, it is Paul Haack's eloquent appeal to developers to do their part and contribute to the open source projects which make their lives much easier.

The simplest error reporting in ASP.NET

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 05:01:01 GMT

In ASP.NET 2.0 I'll show you how to get notified by e-mail when an unexpected error occurs - ONLY by editing the web.config. No C#/VB.NET code needed!

A new day, two new browsers compared - Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 and IE 7.0 B

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 00:11:01 GMT

Like a schmuck, I can't resist installing beta software, especially REALLY beta software, especially on computers that I really shouldn't be installing beta software on like my computer or my wife's, especially at 2am. After some painful installation chaos/debugging...I got Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 and IE 7.0 Beta 3 installed. Here's my thoughts.

C#'s new ?? operator

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 11:51:01 GMT

From the post "I hadn't seen this in any of the C# 2.0 feature lists, but Fritz Onion brings this little gem to light for me. There's a new operator: ?? It's a lot like the old inline if statement."

Hundreds of 'Kick Start' Data Models

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 14:11:01 GMT

Over 300 kick start data models. They look well designed, although the mention of Access Database at the top of each page is a little unsettling

Choosing the Right Type of Exception to Throw

Sun, 09 Jul 2006 16:31:01 GMT

After you have decided when you need to throw exceptions, the next step is to pick the right type of exception to throw. This section provides those guidelines.

Strongly-Typed Reflection

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 08:21:01 GMT

Ayende Rahien presents a solution for strongly-typed reflection. - "I refactor a lot, and I just hate it when everything compiles okay, and then things breaks on runtime. I think that static reflection will enable writing amazing code. The functionality is already built into the CLR (check the ldtoken/ldftn IL instructions and friends). It didn't make it into the 2.0 release, but I hope that it will be in the next release. In the meantime, the 2.0 Reflection has been optimized, so that is what we have for now. But it's not enough for me. ..."

Digitpede Network: Grid computing for .NET

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 09:31:02 GMT

this is one hell of a cool idea: Grid computing for the .NET framework. and there is a dev edition too, which is free!

Why Store Your Data In A Relational Database?

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 00:09:01 GMT

Covers why normalized relational databases are a good platform agnostic choice for storing data.

Roland Weigelt's GhostDoc

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:13:01 GMT

GhostDoc is a free add-in for Visual Studio that automatically generates XML documentation comments. Either by using existing documentation inherited from base classes or implemented interfaces, or by deducing comments from name and type of e.g. methods, properties or parameters.

FileHelpers 1.5.0 Released - Flat File Handling

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 17:09:01 GMT

The FileHelpers are an easy to use .NET library written in C#. Is designed to read/write data from flat files with fixed length or delimited records (CSV). Also has support to import/export data from different data storages (Excel, Access, SqlServer)

Eric's weblog - Update User's Session with AJAX

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 19:17:00 GMT

Shows how to warn or update a users ASP.Net session using AJAX/Atlas

A CAPTCHA Control for ASP.NET 2.0

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 05:41:00 GMT

CAPTCHA is short for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart" and is the most popular technique used to prevent computer programs from sending request to Web servers. This can be for meta-searching search engines, doing dictionary attacks in login pages or sending spam using mail servers. You may see CAPTCHA images in Google register page when you do availability check on too many usernames or in Yahoo, PayPal and many other big Web sites.