DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by RPenton

WiimoteLib v1.7 Released

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:37:32 GMT

WiimoteLib version 1.7 has been released! Use .NET to communicate with a Wiimote paired with your PC.

Silverlight and the 2009 Presidential Inauguration

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:46:03 GMT

Tomorrow's presidential inauguration of Barack Obama will be a truly historic event. Silverlight is being used as an enabling technology on several sites that will allow those of us who can't be there in person to share the experience online...

why i decided to stick with linq-to-sql over linq-to-entities

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:02:59 GMT

Recently I tried, I really tried to like L2E, but I just can't do it! It adds layer upon layers of extra crap I have to do over L2S while offering little to no improvements over the soon to be deprecated ORM. I am officially sticking with L2S until they get L2E better developed. Now I am hardly the first person to write about this, but I feel my concrete examples are somewhat helpful when trying to decide.

There is More Content than Just the Front Page on DotNetKicks

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:01:03 GMT

Are you tired of going to DotNetKicks and finding the same stories on the front page for days in a row? Trust me, there is some great content out there that never makes the front page. You just have to look a little deeper. When you do, you can help put some of that great new content in front of the masses. Even if you don't submit stories yourself, you can still help out by giving the initial votes that push a story to the front page.

F# to ship as part of Visual Studio 2010

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:46:22 GMT

Last year, the head of the Microsoft's Developer Division, S. Somasegar, announced that Microsoft had begun investing in F# as one of Microsoft's supported languages on the .NET platform. I am now thrilled to announce one result of this investment: F# will ship as part of Visual Studio 2010! Since the September 2008 CTP of F#, the F# team has been working hard on integrating F# into the main development branch of Visual Studio 2010. Below I show a screen shot of using the F# development tools in the 2010 shell, with the new editor and the new look-back-in-time "Debug History" window.

Netflix to Lay Off 50. Blames Silverlight.

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:31:17 GMT

In a corporate blog post today, Netflix (NFLX) said 50 of its technical specialists in its customer service group will be let go at the start of next year. The reason? The company isn't blaming the economy, it's blaming Microsoft's (MSFT) Silverlight

IronPython 2.0 Has Been Released

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:16:08 GMT

Microsoft has released IronPython 2.0 on CodePlex, the .NET implementation of the Python language. The most important improvement is running on top of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR).

LINQ-to-Entities: The Blackberry Storm of ORMs?

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:31:17 GMT

Opinion article on how LINQ-to-Entities currently seems to compare unfavorably to LINQ-to-SQL.

Scott Gu's Links for Nov 2nd

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:46:15 GMT

Dec 2nd Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio, Silverlight/WPF

Introducing Silverlight Contrib

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:38:04 GMT

I've just started a new project on CodePlex called Silverlight Contrib. The aim of this project is to offer the most comprehensive collection of free and open source Silverlight controls. The first drop is very small, but with support from the community, I hope to grow this collection into a full suite of controls that you can incorporate into your solutions.

New Image Generator control in ASP.Net 3.5

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:16:02 GMT

This week Microsoft have released a new control called ASP.NET Generated Image control to display image in ASP.Net page. This article will give you a kick start on this control and some of its features.

Silverlight Particle Generator

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:31:02 GMT

Cool particle effects live demo done with Silverlight. Sources are available, too!

Very exciting news! Red Gate's .Net Reflector

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:15:25 GMT

Red Gate announced today that, under a new agreement, it will be responsible for the future development of .NET Reflector, the popular tool authored by Lutz Roeder.

Why I'm Unimpressed With Rawness Of Skillz

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:46:02 GMT

Since forever, geeks who take themselves seriously have loved to brag such things as, "I use Notepad to edit web pages". Carrying this over to actual programming, "I never click into the designer when editing my ASPX", or "I never design a database using designer tools, I always design it all using raw T-SQL," or "I always update my SVN from the command line". (Someone in a local tech user group bears the post signature, "Real men use Notepad.") Puhleeze. I'm not impressed, and frankly I think anyone who brags like this should get a swift kick in the pants.

SQL Server 2008 RTM available from MSDN/TechNet

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:31:08 GMT

Finally it is done and ready for download for MSDN/TechNet -subscribers.

Microsoft Releases SQL Server 2008

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:16:02 GMT

Customers and partners worldwide confirm mission-critical applications, enterprise-class data warehousing support.

Batch Updates and Deletes with LINQ to SQL

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:26:52 GMT

A couple weeks ago, I read the article, LINQ to SQL Extension: Batch Deletion with Lambda Expression by Jeffrey Zhao. In case you didn't read the article, it discusses the downside of most O/R Mapping frameworks when it comes to multiple updates or deletes. He states the fact that a SQL statement for each row flagged as update/delete in the entity set is created. I went about implementing something similar to what Jeffrey envisioned and I'll explain some of the hurdles I had to overcome to achieve it.

ASP.NET Dynamic Data Preview Available

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:16:02 GMT

From ScottGu's blog. Today we released an updated ASP.NET Dynamic Data Preview. This new dynamic data preview now works with the standard built-in ASP.NET data controls (GridView, ListView, FormView, DetailsView, etc). The dynamic data support enables these controls to automatically handle foreign-key relationships.

Entity Framework & ADO.NET Data Services in VS 2008 SP1 & .NET 3.5 SP1

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:56:23 GMT

No release date yet, but the Entity Framework will be a part of the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1 releases.

Google AdSense Advertising - eeech...

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 01:46:02 GMT

Rick Strahl has a great post questioning how much fraud Google actually lets through with AdSense.

The importance of System. Environment.NewLine

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:46:03 GMT

When using \r\n can screw you!

Great Little Silverlight Tool Every .Net Developer Need

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:31:02 GMT

A light and handy Silverlight utility which allows you to select through all the possible String.Format options. And provides you with a code snippet to paste into your code.

OOXML: Why all the haters?

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:16:04 GMT

Apparently Microsoft's OOXML formats recently received ISO certification. . . .

Stored Procedures vs. Ad-Hoc (yet again yawn)

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:46:03 GMT

Inspired by Chris Love's Things I Hate About NET post http://www.dotnetkicks.com/aspnet/Things_I_Hate_About_NET I respond to his love of (yech) Stored Procedures.

Mike Snow's Silverlight Blog

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:01:02 GMT

Blog containing a tutorial series on developing a game using Silverlight. Hot!