Compiler warnings as errors

Do you treat compiler warnings as errors? NO?! How could you? =(

Read how to do that

Ruby is... Visual Basic?!

Did you know that Ruby was a codename for a prototype form generator? And did you know it was bought by Microsoft and later on evolved into Visual Basic language?

Wikipedia

Microsoft NEK 4000

Seems like you can't find this wonderful keyboard in Minsk shops. What a pity =(

IronRuby alpha 2!!!

YAHOO! Wonderful present from IronRuby creators :)

Looking forward to try irake...

Microsoft Live Calendar

Yesterday I played a bit with Microsoft Live Calendar. Looks like a brother of Google Calendar, a very close one. Really, they have very much in common, though Live Calendar is much younger.

I don't know of any API for it, but soon I'll have to investigate them - we've started a project of synchronizing studies schedules with GCalendar and LCalendar. Hope we'll move as far as our ambitions are :)

Joke :)

Is it true that server with Windows 7 can be easily restored by showering it with a bottle of 7Up? :-P

ASP.NET Chart Control

After so many years of third-party implementations we have it! Native asp:chart control that will be shipped with ASP.NET 4.0.

Read about asp:chart

Nice browsers comparison

You can view results of other browsers and test your own!

Entity Framework, how could you? :(

Yeah, that's it. Entity Framework has shocked me in the morning. I tried to wrap some legacy code with nice EF function and everything seemed to work fine - model browser showed me stored procedure and it's ObjectContext analogue. But the trick is that it existed only in EF XML mapping, not in C# code =(. After some googling I've found something very frustrating:

Function import code will not be generated if stored procedure it's mapping returns scalar value.

I'm upset :( All is left is to wrap result value with some fake entity. Perhaps, I could have written my own function but it's not the case for framework-that-does-everything-for-you.

Hope this feature (bug! bug!) will be fixed in EF v2.

Microsoft Live Reader

Why - I do ask you. WHY? Why Microsoft has such a beautiful tool like Live Writer and have no tool for RSS reading? Yes, Live Mail includes some tools for reading RSS but I'm really looking for online solution.

Once again - WHY?!

WebMail Notifier

Lately due to my interest in Microsoft new products I've been extensively using Hotmail. It's a pity they can't send incoming letters to GMail and each time I had to visit hotmail page and check for new messages manually. GMail had no such problem as I've been using GMail Notifier for a while. Today I thought of same Firefox add-on for Hotmail. Little googling - and see what I've got:

WebMail Notifier

It's marvelous! It supports all of these: Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo. I like it :)

I hate XSLT xsl:for-each!!!

I've spent almost an hour trying to find out what's wrong with this xslt file. All I needed was to display list of items each at new line. I've tried simple newlines, concatenated newline with "." in body of "value", added empty xsl:text elements with newline inside, tried 
, tried 
 - nothing worked!!! And these methods worked fine outside the xsl:for-each element, but inside it... Arghhhh! I tried to use xml:space="preserve" - It helped neither.

After all I started adding '\n' to each item I wanted to be at new line. Yes, it's not view-decoupled but it works and I know there will be no need to change xslt in way this change will break produced result.

P.S. I hate XSLT!!!!

Thoughts on Ruby

Not actually mine, but anyway, mine are similar.
Read not mine thoughts

As for me, Ruby minuses are:

1. It's slow
2. No native threads support
3. It's slow
4. Minor bugs that sometimes mess me up
5. It's slow

So these are five minuses of Ruby (it's speed deserves three minuses, for sure) and I don't know if IronRuby will fix these but I really hope to see that.

P.S. Dear kirindave, your post is wonderful but please don't use italics - it's very hard to read. Thanks to my FireBug that allowed me to disable this italics style.

Fresh Books

Yesterday I had a chance to visit a bookshop. That was nice :) First I grabbed some fantasy books and then I've noticed familiar 'Addison-Wesley Signature Series' book cover. It's rather thin though it's very good:



This book covers different topics on continuous integration and gets user acquainted with the de-facto standard for continuous integration: Cruise Control. I'm really looking forward to reading it :)

Another book I bought is:



I've heard many good testimonials about this book so the choice was obvious :)

Haha, Google Analytics is down

It's first time I see this message but I'm really disappointed with it:

>>>>>
An Error Has Been Detected

Please try again. Thank you for your patience.
<<<<<

=(( Seems like Google is not that stable

This is my test post with Windows Live Writer

Wow! I like it :) Clean and easy install and wonderful textpane with your blog style.

Also it supports pasting code from Visual Studio - and that's one of reasons I've decided to switch to this software. Actually it's not built-in and accessible via this plugin but whatever :)

IE8 features

Here's short summary of IE8 features announced at Microsoft Developer Days in Minsk:

1. JavaScript improvements:
a. Totally rewritten Garbage Collector - performance gain
b. String operations improved - performance gain
c. Collections operations improved - performance gain

2. Development improvements:
a. JavaScript debugging
b. On-fly changing of literally anything at the page
c. JavaScript profiler
d. XMLHTTPRequest now can be cancelled
e. added JavaScript event for connection interrupts

3. Standards and compatibility
a. fully supports W3C recommendations
b. compatibility modes for previous IEs: 7th engine and 5th & 6th emulation
c. HTML 5
d. CSS 2.1

4. User features
a. Web Slices - like RSS, only much better and with visualization :)
b. URL parts are clickable - useful for websites with sitemap
c. each tab is a single process - if it crashes nothing happens to other tabs


Bad news: no IE8 at the end of November :( More details here.

Visual Studio 2010 will have WPF UI!!!

Yeap!

According to information presented for developers at Microsoft Developer Days, user interface of Visual Studio 2010 will be completely rewritten in Windows Presentation Foundation!

Perhaps, it will even have a ribbon :)

P.S. In CTP text editor selection background is _sexy_ :-P

Tabs or Spaces?

Do you use tabs or spaces to indent your code structures? I was a huge fan of spaces but recently had a chance to review code written with tabs visualized in Visual Studio. It looks great! :)

Just try it! To show white spaces in Visual Studio use 'Edit > Advanced > View White Space' menu item. Use 'Edit > Advanced' menu to tabify or untabify selected lines - really cool feature when you are converting your old file to your new religion :)

Don't forget to go to 'Tools > Options > Text Editor > All languages' and check 'Keep tabs' radio. Otherwise next time you'll press the Tab key you'll see four dots instead of one sexy arrow :)

To modify color of visible white spaces use 'Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts and Colors > Display Items > Visible White Space'. Try setting color to make them visible enough though not distracting you with visual noice. As for me, I'm using rgb(34, 114, 134) for my modified Moria theme. Looks like this:



You can see them easily yet concentrating on your markup is easy.

Enjoy :)

One day left

Tomorrow I'm going to visit nice 'Microsoft Developer Day in Minsk' event. As for me, the most interesting topics will be VS 2010 and Windows 7. Hope I'll not be disappointed with it ;)

P.S. I'll possibly post here some photos from this event.

Windows 7 most discussable topics

Here you can find an interesting article about five most talked-about Windows 7 features. According to this article, they are:

1. modified UAC (yeap, much more customizable drive-me-crazy-popups)
2. new taskbar (finally we can sort icons at taskbar. Perhaps, the larger step taken from Win 3.1 :))
3. HomeGroup - now it will be much easier and secure to share your folders, view Mary's shares, etc.
4. Libraries - looks like some case of taggable file system. You'll be able to group files by their content, not only drives and folders. As for me - I'd like to see fully functional taggable file system.
5. Touchscreen - for now I'm not sure how this feature will be useful. Perhaps, in games with horizontally placed monitor it will be useful (Tetris, Spider, Fallout 3... oops, not the case :D). But in routine tasks... I'm not sure. Hope Microsoft knows what it's doing.

And of course I have my own give-me-it! feature. As for me, I'm really looking forward to Vista sidebar controls floating all around here and there. Simplest use - stick notes all around your desktop. Sidebar was just toooo strict to place them all in one place. And here... Yammy!

First step to ergonomic workplace

Yeah! Just added THIS to my wish list:



Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

Microsoft Developer Days in Minsk

It's coming!!!

On thursday I'm going to visit this event and make a short photoreport about it. Really looking forward to Windows 7 presentation.

San Francisco Guest

Wow :)

Recently someone from San Francisco has visited my blog. Nice to meet you, American guest :)

P.S. I love Google Analytics :D

Great movies

Yesterday I had a chance to view Wall-E and Max Payne movies. Both are great!

Microsoft free e-books

Wow!

These are cool:

• Programming Microsoft LINQ
• Introducing Microsoft® Silverlight 2, Second Edition
• Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 3.5

Preview and download

OSC Complains

Oh no!

BBC had recently shown a two minute advertisement for Windows 7, product that yet not exists. OH NO! This will for sure destroy Open Source.


OSC: Mommyyyyyy!... :'(

Visual Studio 2010 - UML support

Wow! That's it - now it has UML project type. Logical class diagrams, sequence diagrams and some more - I like it!

Though it was confusing how to make 'Implement from class diagram' context menu item work. Seems like it generates code from diagram but in reality it just shows you error with request to configure something I could not find.

Anyway - it's cool :)

P.S. Dynamic keyword is cool!

Using TODO lists in programming

Lately I've found it incredibly useful to have paper notepad with a pen next to my computer. It's really a save-us-all thing! Each time I need anything to do I write it down to this list and when time comes I do what needed and strike this item out. When day ends or some implementation part is ready I like rewriting remaining items to new page - feels like starting from a scratch!

Just try it :)

IronRuby

Downloading latest IronRuby sources - expecting FUN!

Happy birthday, my Google Analytics :)

One month ago I've added Analytics script to this blog.

Summary results for this month:

~ 93 unique visitors from 7 countries
~ 83 visitors view my blog under Windows, 8 under Linux and 2 under Mac
~ 55 visitors used Firefox, 14 used IE, 14 used Opera. The rest used Safari and Chrome.

I like statistics :)

Google Alerts to Google Reader

Did you know you may send your Google Alerts to you Google Reader feed?

It's actually WOW! No google spam in your inbox. In GMail you read your letters and in Google Reader you read your news. Simple, baby

GTalk боты

Недавно узнал о существовании ботов-переводчиков в GTalk. Отличные ребята :)

Англ - Рус:
en2ru@bot.talk.google.com

Рус - Англ:
ru2en@bot.talk.google.com

Инкубатор бизнес-проектов

Вчера на форуме любимой кафедры запустили Инкубатор бизнес-проектов.

Если вы живете в Беларуси и у вас есть хорошая идея, но не знаете, где взять деньги на ее реализацию - вам сюда!

Я являюсь лидером группы скринкастов и консультантом групп Google и OpenCourseWare. Планы просто глобальнейшие :)

Мой жж опять активен

Сабж

Соответственно, сюда будут лететь больше технические мысли, а туда - раздолбайские.

Раздолбайско-технические мысли будут дублироваться =)

Дни разработчика Microsoft

Регистрация прошла успешно!

 

YAHOO!

Зарегился в LinkedIn

Судя по отзывам, неплохая социалка для профессионалов. Посмотрим :)

Новая мини-цель в карьере

1. MCTS
2. MCTP
3. MCM

Пока буду готовиться к MCTS, но стремлюсь к мастеру :)

ASP.NET 2.0 client-side validators API

Here

А что нас ждет в будущем?

Давайте прикинем.

Технологии:

JavaScript 2.0
CSS 3.0
HTML 5.0


Браузеры, полностью или частично поддерживающие эти технологии:

Internet Explorer 8 - до конца 2008 года, т.е. осталось меньше 2х месяцев
Google Chrome - по идее, начало 2009
Safari 4 - скоро
Firefox 4 - начало 2009


Новый js значительно облегчит разработку на клиентской стороне, CSS 3.0 обернет это все в красивейшие эффекты, а HTML 5 сделает Web 2.0 намного ближе.

Ждем-с.

З.Ы. Ближайшее - ИЕ8 - ЖДУ!

JavaScript 2.0 - скоро на ваших экранах

Вот здесь интересная статья о будущей версии JavaScript - 2.0. Радует наличие классов в более привычном виде и (внимание!!!) generics!!!!!

Чрезвычано позитивно :)

Чуда не получилось :)

БАТЭ - Зенит    0 : 2

Теперь из шансов разве что выход в кубок УЕФА - если Зенит в следующей игре сольет, а БАТЭ в домашнем поединке порвет Реал. Прямо говоря, шансы маленькие, увы.

В напряженнейшей борьбе...

...Зенит вырвал очко у БАТЭ

0 - 1

...пока ;)

БАТЭ-ЗЕНИТ - в процессе

Идет игра. Пока вроде БАТЭшники чуть давят Зенит, но неизвестно еще, что будет.

Зенит фолит по-страшному, Аршавин охренел просто. Я понимаю, им плохо в группе, но это не повод фолить. Понаехало тут...

Fallout 3 по продажам обошел предыдущие части сериала?

Вы что, серьезно? о_О

3я часть сериала, имеющая за спиной мощный пиар и бренд - Bethesda, обошла предыдущие части, которые не рекламировали и которые провалились в продажах?

Ни разу не верю, это какой-то развод.

Источник

Microsoft прекратила продажи Windows 3.x

Источник здесь.

R.I.P.

:'(

БАТЭ против Зенита

Сегодня будет хорошая игра.

БАТЭ на подъеме после последней игры, сделавшей их чемпионами Беларуси. За плечами у них ничья с Зенитом на чужом поле. А на "Динамо" будут сотни своих болельщиков.

Должны победить!

З.Ы. С другой стороны, Зенит приперт к стенке - будет драться как раненый зверь.

Свершилось

Впервые в истории США президентом стал чернокожий. Плохо это или хорошо - не знаю. Скажу лишь, что теперь на нем лежит большая ответственность - если он умудрится развязать войну или ввергнуть страну в еще больший кризис - ой как нескоро следующий чернокожий президент придет к власти.

Я не говорю, что они плохие просто из-за цвета кожи. Я говорю, что они другие. Не хуже и не лучше - просто другие. Равные, несомненно. Но разница есть. И субъективно граждане США будут отторгать чернокожих президентов, если Обама слажает.

Надеюсь, что нет.

Мелкий депресняк

Отчего-то почему-то
Грусть свалилась на меня.
Холодный ноямбрь :(

Сертификация от Microsoft

Задумался о получении сертификатов от Microsoft. Все-таки приятная вещь. Хотя, некоторые достаточно крутые программеры считают, что это нафиг не надо - если ты крут, то ты крут, и не обязательно будешь крут если ты крут по сертификату. Логично. Но попонтоваться хочется, так что буду узнавать, что и как :)

Условное компилирование в C#

Вкратце - если пометить метод System.Diagnostics.ConditionalAttribute, то он будет скомпилирован лишь если при компиляции объявлена переменная, которую мы передали в конструктор атрибута.

Т.е. если пометим как:
[Conditional("DEBUG")]

то этот метод скомпилируется (и, соответственно, выполнится), лишь если в коде будет объявлена переменная DEBUG.

Подробнее здесь.

Выходные просто пролетели

С бешеной скоростью =(

Радует то, что хотя бы выспался :)

Линч нового .NET логотипа

Линч положителен, что не может не радовать.