When it comes to our understanding of Unicode issues, the "Born in the USA!" chant (no matter how you feel about The Boss) can almost amount to a proclamation of cultural ignorance.
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 03/23/2009
Most of the time it doesn't matter where the user puts your application's windows, but every now and then you really need to know -- or even decide this for yourself.
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 03/02/2009
Create a custom tool to provide a flexible and easy way to generate code on demand.
Taking a careful look at the capabilities the compiler gives to anonymous types provides an excellent tutorial on what you should consider when you create your types -- including whether they are classes or structs.
While moving code backward is nice, what really matters is that code can move forward.
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 02/02/2009
Iterators are a crucial part of modern programming, not least because they provide the basis for collection traversal using For Each loops. Language Integrated Query (LINQ) adds to the importance of iterators, as iterators are the source of IEnumerable(Of T) that forms the backbone of LINQ. Learn how to take advantage of them in your code with several different techniques for creating your own iterators in VB.
- By Bill McCarthy
- 02/01/2009
If programmers are leaving VB and aren't going to C#, where are they going?
- By Daniel Appleman
- 02/01/2009
Visual Studio 2008, ASP.NET, and the Azure Services Platform combine to simplify local development of data-intensive Web apps and automate their deployment in Microsoft data centers. The result: You get maximized availability and reliability with almost limitless on-demand scalability, while you pay only for resources consumed.
- By Roger Jennings
- 02/01/2009
In these days of increasingly common least-privileged users, where should you store your application data?
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 01/19/2009
Learn how Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) 4.0 changes everything you thought you knew about workflow. Also, learn why using string primary keys is a bad idea; find out where to get a data grid for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF); overcome the annoying issue of files not loading at runtime; and copy files into the executable directory.
- By Kathleen Dollard
- 01/01/2009
Can you name one thing Microsoft designed right the first time?
- By Karl E. Peterson
- 12/08/2008
LINQ to SQL continues to be a top contender in the .NET object/relational mapping tool market despite Microsoft's promotion of the Entity Framework as one of the "Pillars of SQL Server 2008: Dynamic Development."
- By Roger Jennings
- 12/01/2008
VB and C# share many similarities, but also have a handful of significant differences; learn what you need to know to program effectively in VB as a C# programmer.
- By Kathleen Dollard
- 12/01/2008
Developers of VB and C# can learn a lot from the similarities -- and differences -- between the two.
- By Patrick Meader
- 12/01/2008
Chances are C# is not your first programming language. Here are several tips that can help you leverage C# better if you already know VB.NET.
Learn how LINQ, extension methods, and lambda functions can help you add a bit of distinction, simplicity, and robustness to your code.
- By Bill McCarthy
- 11/01/2008
Take control of casting exceptions, determine whether parent records have children in LINQ to SQL, and resolve cref references in XML comments.
- By Kathleen Dollard
- 11/01/2008
Hard-coded messages don't scale well, and .NET's inherent error messages are user-unfriendly. Learn how to create a more scalable and user-friendly data-driven messaging system.
- By Paul D. Sheriff
- 10/01/2008
Visual Studio Team System's Code Metrics feature isn't perfect, but if you understand what it's measuring and how, you can use it to gain insight into your apps' overall complexity and to spot potential problem areas.
- By Kathleen Dollard
- 10/01/2008
Austria-based testing-tools vendor Ranorex GmbH has released an automated application-testing solution targeting Windows, .NET and Web development.
- By Michael Desmond
- 09/16/2008