DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by Lear

Tuple, a new type on .Net 4.0

Mon, 25 May 2009 23:46:37 GMT

If you ever played with some language that have the Tuple type I bet you miss it in .Net. Well 4.0 adds it.

Secrets of SharePoint 2010 Exposed at TechEd 2009

Mon, 18 May 2009 10:32:29 GMT

The details of SharePoint 2010 are under tight wraps. If you asked any of the presenters at Tech Ed the typical response was "I have no idea what you're talking about." But that doesn't mean presenters didn't occasionally slip up or say more than they probably should have.

Add an action to a SharePoint list actions menu for a specific list

Mon, 11 May 2009 00:50:06 GMT

If you have ever tried adding a SharePoint custom action to the actions menu and tried using "List" or "ContentType" as the "RegistrationType" and then tried to specify a specific list or content type in the "RegistrationId" you know that it doesn't work. SharePoint will silently not render your custom action. If you try and target a generic list using a "RegistrationId" of "100" you will see that SharePoint will gladly render your action on every list in the site. I have found a rather kludgy work around to the problem.

Code Access Security Cheat Sheet

Thu, 07 May 2009 21:46:05 GMT

A full page cheat sheet on Code Access Security (CAS). Includes screenshots of the .NET Framework 2.0 Configuration tool. Describes the following terms: Permission, PermissionSet, Code Group, Policy Level, Assembly Instance, Evidence; and Evidence Type.

Creating a MVVM "Hello World" application in 30 seconds

Fri, 08 May 2009 17:31:02 GMT

A example of how to create a hello world MVVM application using the MVVM toolkit!

Roadmap of Microsoft Certifications - SQL Server Certifications

Tue, 05 May 2009 11:31:14 GMT

In these times of economic slowdown and uncertainties, more and more IT professionals are concerned about their job security and their qualifications. With job insecurity looming on their minds, it is a common trend for developers to start hunting for ways to update their skills. Sound knowledge and real world work experience are always a good way to help secure your future. However, a great way to demonstrate knowledge and competence is by having a certification in the technology one claims to be proficient in.

Is F# faster than C#

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 06:16:11 GMT

I had a bet with a co-worker that C# would out perform F# for a simple counting exercise. This turned out to be quite a surprise for many reasons. In this blog post I will try to explain why.

An Exciting Future: C# 4.0, Silverlight 3, MVC Dynamic Data, Live Mesh

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:39:01 GMT

A roll call of exciting technologies Microsoft is working on for software developers.

Write My Rhino Mocks Expect Statement

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:35:19 GMT

Have Rhino Mocks automatically generate your expect() and return() statements for you with this new open source project.

TryParseGuid - Try/Catch vs Regex

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:45:11 GMT

Need to TryParse a Guid? Guess which is faster: try/catch or Regex.Parse. The results may surprise you.

Back to Basics: Generics

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:01:12 GMT

Introduction There are language features that are nothing more than syntactical sugar. For example, C#'s coalesce operator (??) is a short-handed and specialized if-else. Object initializers make it easier to set properties on a newly created objects. Some features though go beyond mere convenience and add real value. I know it seems like we constantly have to learn new things, while at the same time actually produce code to pay our bills. It can be hard to pick and choose what to learn and what can wait. Let me be straight up though: if you haven't mastered generics yet, you're starting to fall dangerously behind.

ASP.NET MVC Tip #34 - Dispose of Your DataContext (or Don't)

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:16:14 GMT

In this tip, the author demonstrate how you can dispose of a DataContext within an ASP.NET MVC controller. Next, he argues that there is no compelling reason to do this.

Eight Miserable TFS Features

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:34:56 GMT

Eight reasons why Team Foundation Server is a miserable tool for source control.

Retrieving the Current User's Active Directory Object

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:43:22 GMT

Useful code sample of how to retrieve the current user from AD.

Forget Burndown Use Burnup Charts

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:36:17 GMT

Agile projects traditionally use burndown charts to visually show work remaining over time. But burndown charts have a major shortcoming: they fail to show what makes agile projects agile - new requirements. And that's where burnup charts come in.

jQuery and Microsoft

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:01:02 GMT

ScottGu announce that Microsoft will be shipping jQuery with Visual Studio going forward. We will distribute the jQuery JavaScript library as-is, and will not be forking or changing the source from the main jQuery branch. The files will continue to use and ship under the existing jQuery MIT license.

Subversion Support Comes to CodePlex. Sorta'

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:01:02 GMT

A little publicized feature lets you use Subversion to access project hosted on CodePlex - without the need to run SvnBridge locally!

Don't be clever 2 - The cost of cleverness

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:46:03 GMT

In the modern world of programming we need to be more cognizant of making our code readable and grokkable than to make it clever or sneaky. For 99% of the developers out there, no one is ever going to pat you on the back for being sneaky. You're probably more likely to get punched in the face for it when the team has to spend the weekend debugging a piece of your clever code.

A Major Silverlight PITA, and Two Annoying 3.0 Limitations

Sat, 31 May 2008 04:46:03 GMT

Did you know Silverlight implements the Visible property as an enumeration not a Boolean? That leads the author to find two frustrating .Net 3.0 limitations: No ByRef Extension Methods, and no ByRef Automatic Properties.

RemoteLINQ - How to make your LINQ span the globe

Fri, 23 May 2008 22:46:02 GMT

After reading John Skeet's blog about Generating Mandelbrot images using PLINQ (Parallel LINQ) the author got the idea to build his own LINQ extension. Instead of just splitting the work across processors like PLINQ does, RemoteLINQ splits it across multiple machines.

Performance: LINQ to XML vs XmlDocument vs XmlReader

Fri, 02 May 2008 04:37:04 GMT

Compares speeds of XML parsing techniques. Ultimately XmlReader beats LINQ to XML in almost every run except for very small XML documents. What's interesting though is how the numbers scale between text encodings.

Silverlight 2: Add project references to other Silverlight projects

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:24:30 GMT

Apparently in Silverlight 2 you can't add references to non-silverlight projects. It's a real pain. Paul Stovell gives an excellent workaround.

ScottGu: Unit Testing with Silverlight

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:16:02 GMT

One of the important capabilities we shipped with the Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 was a unit test harness that enables you to perform both API-level and UI-level unit testing. This testing harness is cross browser and cross platform, and can be used to quickly run and verify automated unit tests.

Expression Trees: Why LINQ to SQL is Better than NHibernate

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:31:02 GMT

The article claims that LINQ to SQL is inherently better than NHibernate because LINQ takes advantage of a new C# language feature called expression trees.

Dotnetkicks Penance

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:01:02 GMT

Sometimes this feeling of guilt comes over me. A little voice in my head says: "Why haven't you visited the upcoming section of Dotnetkicks.com lately..." How guilt can lead you to support your fellow Dotnetkickers...