Ever wanted to dump the stack for all threads for a running Win32 process then follow this guide:
Getting Stack Traces of a Running .NET Process
This suggests using ntsd.exe – so to interpret results:
Ok I am getting information overload – looking into a new UI initiative and am coming across new terms – that I need to jot these down:
PRISM – the new name for the CAL or CAG development:
http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc785479.aspx
Code project and channel 9 articles to build a light weight framework using PRISM:
CodeProject PRISM part1
CodeProject PRISM part2
Calcium
Channel 9 articles
If developing a plugin architecture how do you stop the rotten egg crashing your whole app? Use MAF or MEF and hee is a good summary of the problem
And if you want to use Winforms on PRISM.
Finally the WPF Disciples community
Wanted to know what the memory requirements are for a single process on windows machine – if you have 32gb machine a process will not use all of it – you need to look at the bios settings.
The virtual address space of processes and applications is still limited to 2 GB unless the /3GB switch is used in the Boot.ini file. When the physical RAM in the system exceeds 16 GB and the /3GB switch is used, the operating system will ignore the additional RAM until the /3GB switch is removed. This is because of the increased size of the kernel required to support more Page Table Entries. The assumption is made that the administrator would rather not lose the /3GB functionality silently and automatically; therefore, this requires the administrator to explicitly change this setting
How many organisations out there have the remit to start new software projects? In today’s credit crunch world many software projects are put on hold but wait we can do something new with the old without realising it. Its called Brownfield Development.
Introducing new technology ideas to existing or legacy projects, breath new life into that team or just do things better. It takes it ideology from politics and the full definition is on Wikipedia.
Ever wanted to know what to monitor when diagnosing issues with performance – here is a great article to track the most important counters you will need:
You know the story you have to maintain an old project written in 2003 but you have already moved ahead and have installed 2008 – but you then install 2003 and your project in 2003 no longer builds – well its because 2008 breaks all old debugging configurations – to get 2003 to debug again follow these steps:
After the upgrade the debugger in Visual Studio 2003 will be broken. This is because the "Machine Debug Service" no longer starts. To fix:
We all know about Cloud Computing but what do we know about the economics of it. Well, when the Economist run an article on it you know it is worth a look….
Economist Cloud Computing Article
However I think they miss the point that the cloud does more than social computing in that it does provide a platform to develop applications on.
I have followed the developments from this dude Sasha Barberfor a while now on CodeProject and his articles never cease to amaze me.
I am going to have a crack at using his new framework – Cinch – for a brief explanation – goto:
Cinch MVVP
Alot of my work involves designing user interfaces. Upto now I have been a server side developer dabbling a little in the UI but you cannot just isolate yourself to server or gui. Nowadays the professional developer needs skills from front to back.
Whilst there have been formal patterns for a number of years which have helped the server side there has been little for User interface patterns. Perhaps they have already existed but now it has been spec’d out formally.
Two noteworthy sites are:
QUINCE – Infragisistics UX Design Patterns all the ways a UI should be developed.
Many a times we need to see how long it takes for data to be sent and returned in event based systems – but how long is “how long”. The following article from Bob at 29west is a great summary on how to achieve this….
Estimating Errors in Round-Trip Latency Measurements due to Clock Drift
I have had to set up subversion for my client a number of times and up to now there have been quite a few step to do this. Below are the useful websites to do this yourself and some also have managed to simplify the task even more – so this is a useful starting point:
1. Install the svn-server or use VisualSvn
2. If you want to hand install for Unix then follow this guide
3. For integration of svn on the client for DevStudio and Eclipse
4. Four useful tips and tricks
I am looking into Silverlight and how to develop applications within DevStudio – the world of RIA and presentation has changed so much and Microsoft is still in a state of flux so this two websites make life easier for the old guy to get into the bright new thing.
We are constantly having debates at work whether c# is any much slower than c++ and most of the time the question comes down too what are you writing and what is the maintenance factor?
This site provides for a great comparison for all languages so that the debate can be laid to rest.
I am currently upgrading to vs2008 and using subversion for source control. Up to now I have been using a little visual studio plugin called Ankh to work with DevStudio but for some bizarre reason I could not get it to work with vs2008.
So I searched the net and guess what its a f%?*!*g Microsoft issue… again!
Here is a very good article on Dr Dobbs about writing a multi-core enterprise solution using the (P)rocess (Q)ueue (R)epertory design pattern. I have worked on systems which kind of implement the same thing always missing what the article says is a must: instrumentation. This is the first time I have seen it so well documented like this.
PQR – A Simple Design Pattern for Multicore Enterprise Applications
I am working on a piece functionality at work to send data between Java and .NET – the latter is an application that is in production so am limited in changing the core transport layer. I have come across an interesting problem when sending dates between these 2 systems. To cut a long story short I am using the DateTime.Ticks property to represent the DateTime on the wire however Java cannot use this directly (or vice versa) as the Epoch in both languages is different. Java bases its calendar on January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT (aka “the epoch”). In .Net the “the epoch” corresponds to 12:00 A.M., January 1, 0001 GMT.
Hence using the Tick value in both systems needs to take into account eh difference in these Epochs. The magical numberto use is 62135596800000L – this is the number of Ticks from the .NET Epoch to the Java Epoch which I get using the following code:
DateTime javaEpoch = new DateTime(1970,01,01,00,00,00);
Console.WriteLine(javaEpoch.ToUniversalTime().Ticks);
I use this number in Java accordingly – all times internally in Java are represented in UTC (Date and Time in Java) :
Calendar now = new GregorianCalendar();
long lTicksJavaEpochToNow = now.getTimeInMillis() * 10000;
long lTicksMSDotNetEpochToLocal = lTicksJavaEpochToNow + 62135596800000L;
This should then convert back into the right date in .NET – however ther are some caveats like Timezones etc buf if you work in UTC then you should be ok.
What date is it today? Converting dates from .Net to Java and vise versa.
I have recently converted to Eclipse for a small Java project I am working on – and am getting to grips with the IDE. I have been using DevStudio 2003/2005 for the last 5-6 years so learning a new IDE is a challenge. Although there are some similarities and concepts there are times when there is something completely different.
I found this useful article on the web to give DevStudio users an introduction to Eclipse – I found it to be quite good.
I recently attended a a talk given by Mike Culver of Amazon around their new EC2 service. My eyes were opened to so many possibilities that this technology could provide but Matt Davey of Lab49 summaries my thoughts just as well.
Here is one example of a service written on top of EC2 – a scalable server farm.
I wanted to add a RSS feed to this blog site so users could subscribe to updates in their reader of choice. I thought WordPress would provide me a widget to do this, but I could not find one until I figured out that you have to use a combination of a Text widget and have an FeedBurner account set-up.
The site is now free as it has been acquired by Google – and it is very simple – there are step-by-step instructions when you sign up – so if a novice like me can do it then so can you!!!
Being an application developer having to write in so many languages (though not at the same time) sometime you find yourself wanting to remember things that you did a while ago but need to jig your memory – the site below I found to be useful to find all the basic answers at your finger tips, and not just languages but how-to’s on Office Applications.
