The 1st New Hampshire Code Camp is being help Saturday, Feb 28th at Daniel Webster College.  Registration is now open at http://www.thedevcommunity.org/.  We're looking for developers or DBAs to present at this event.  We're also looking for component vendors or recruitment firms to sponsor the event with giveaways, or to help cover food costs. (Contact me - phil@denoncourtassociates.com or Pat Tormey)

I love going to code camps, I always learn a lot about technologies that I don't get to use in my day-to-day life.  It's nice to network with other developers, learn what problems they're running into and how they're solving them.  The manifesto describes it best: By and For the Developer Community, Always Free, No Fluff...

With the economy in apparent decline, a lot of you developers are looking for ways to make yourselves more marketable.  According to ToastMasters International, presentation skills are "crucial to success in the workplace".  Code Camps are a great way to start refining your speaking skills.  Nobody expects a polished speaker.  All we're looking for is someone to show us some code, help facilitate a conversation, or show us something new.  If you get nervous when you speak in front of people and that's deterring you, partner up with a buddy to deliver the talk with you. Presentations should go about an hour, and budget time for dialog/Q&A.

Here's how to register to speak at the NH Code Camp:
1) Create an account at thedevcommunity.org, or sign into your existing one.
2) Complete a Speaker Registry profile
3) On thedevcommunity.org 's home page, click the submit a presentation link next to Code Camp New Hampshire
4) Repeat (as necessary)

Looking forward to seeing you all there...

There really is a single instance of a static field per appdomain.  It kind of says this in the C# language reference, but not very explicitly.  This knocked me around a little because I had assumed that there was a single static field per type within an appdomain.  I had a base type that had a dictionary as a static field and assumed that each class that derived from it had its own instance of the static field.  Not so…

Look at the following test code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text; 

namespace ConsoleApplication3
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            baseClass.AStaticValue = 3;
            inheritedClass.AStaticValue = 4;
            Console.WriteLine("baseClass {0}", baseClass.AStaticValue);
            Console.WriteLine("inheritedClass {0}", inheritedClass.AStaticValue);
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
 
    public class baseClass
    {
        public static int AStaticValue = 0;
    }

    public class inheritedClass : baseClass
    {

    }
  }
 }

I expected the results to be
baseClass 3
inheritedClass 4

Instead, the output is
baseClass 4
inheritedClass 4

So unless you decorate the field with ThreadStatic or ContextStatic attributes, static means just one in an appdomain.  Remember that when you are inheriting from objects that have static fields, there’s only one instance of that static field.

Part of the .NET 3.0 release was the System.Speech namespace.  This gives you easy access to powerful speech capabilities.  Text to Speech, Speech Recognition, and Dictation are all part of this library.  I've tried speech recognition every 5 years or so, and it has always worked, but it never allowed me to work faster than just using my keyboard.

As a consultant, I work on a variety of different machines.  Sometimes just my laptop, sometimes my laptop with an external monitor, and other times a dual monitor system.  Pictured below is how I set it up on my laptop. 

Most panels are auto hide so that I can maximize the amount of space to view the code.  Getting to the solution explorer means I have to take my hands off the keyboard, and go to the mouse to select the tab.  There are keyboard shortcuts, but I either don't remember all of them, or they don't work in all types of documents.

Since speech recognition is so easy to use with the system.speech dll, and Visual Studio addins aren't rocket science either, I built an addin that enables speech recognition within Visual Studio.  Basically, the addin maps a list of words, that when recognized, execute a command in the Command Window.  So, when I need to quickly look at the task list, I don't have to remember the keyboard shortcut, or mouse to it.  I just speak "Task List".  When I need the toolbox, I say, "Toolbox".  I didn't get into dictation, because I don't think it is efficient to speak "for space open parenthesis int i space equal space zero semicolon i less than items period count semicolon i plus plus close parenthesis open curly brace..."

I uploaded the source and an installer here on CodePlex.  Because (I think) Visual Studio 2005 only works with addins written in .NET 2.0, this only works for VS 2008.  Try it out and let me know how it works.

Me either.  See here in the C# Language Reference.  This means you can overload the operators for your classes.  The example on MSDN talks about classes that have a true, false, or null (neither true nor false) state.  You could also create a type that can be both true and false.

Overloading operators can lead to code that is difficult to read.  You should only overload operators when it makes sense to do it.  If it is unclear what “if (myType)” means, don’t overload the operators.

I wrote a small rules engine for a company a while back and this would have been helpful.  Supplemental rules were implemented as separate classes so that they could be dynamically strung together in different orders as the business logic changed.

Here’s a contrived sample using the true/false operators:

    public class Customer
    {
        public string CustomerName { get; set; }
        public string EmailAddress { get; set; }
        public decimal OutstandingBalance { get; set; }
    }

    public class CustomerIsGoodRule
    {
        
        public CustomerIsGoodRule(Customer customer)
        {
            this.Customer = customer;
        }

        Customer Customer { get; set; }

        public static bool operator true(CustomerIsGoodRule theCustomer)
        {
            return (theCustomer.Customer.OutstandingBalance <= 0);
        }

        public static bool operator false(CustomerIsGoodRule theCustomer)
        {
            return (theCustomer.Customer.OutstandingBalance > 0);
        }
    }

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Customer c = new Customer();
            c.CustomerName = "Joanne Doe";
            c.EmailAddress = "joannedoe@mailinator.com";
            c.OutstandingBalance = 25;

            CustomerIsGoodRule cigr = new CustomerIsGoodRule(c);

            if (cigr)
            {
                SendNewCatalog();
            }
            else
            {
                SendNewStatement();
            }
        }
    }

One thing to keep in mind is that if you provide a definition for true, you must also provide one for false.  Also notice that the logical negation operator (!) was not overriden, so a statement like if (!cigr) fails to compile.

Visual Studio 2003 stores Reference paths for projects in the .User file. Not in the csproj file. I can't see why they wanted to store that information in a separate file. The settings pertain only to the specific project. Anyway, if your application's build is dependant upon having the reference paths set, make sure you are adding the .User files to your source control system. The csproj file is not enough.

Normally you can find the .User file in the same directory as the project file... Unless it is a web application/service. Then you will find the file in the VSWebCache folder. Which makes it very difficult to put that file under source control. I don't see a good solution to this problem. Maybe porting the build to use NAnt. Although that would be burdensome if we just wanted to debug the project. 

I guess the best solution is to architect your project so that it isn't dependant on a reference path.

I've given a introductory talk on Code Access Security a few times now. As I'm showing all the pieces from an administrative point of view (Code Groups, PermissionSets), and I go to create a code group, there is an option in the wizard that allows you to import the settings from an XML file. People listening to my talk always, without fail, ask, "How can I generate that XML file". It's fustrating, because there is no clear way to do. No menu option, no command line utility. I alway mean to research how to do it, but never seem to find the time. A couple of nights ago, I looked into it. It turns out on each PermissionSet, or CodeGroup, there is a ToXml method. Since it appears the only way to get the XML is using that method, I wrote a utility that will export the XML to a file. You can download it here.

System.Random r = new Random();
bool tstResult = r.Next(0,1) ==0 ? true : false;

			//Set up overrides

			XmlAttributeOverrides overrides = new XmlAttributeOverrides();

				

			//ChildItems

			XmlAttributes dontIgnore = new XmlAttributes();

			dontIgnore.XmlIgnore=false;

			overrides.Add(typeof(ParentObject),"ChildItems",dontIgnore);
                      
			XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ParentObject),overrides);