MikeWo's Musings: Blog

Vote to have IronRuby in VS 2010

Michael Wood — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:35:08 GMT

Michael Letterle has posted a Microsoft Connect feedback suggestion asking that IronRuby be included in the box in Visual Studio 2010. If you feel the same way, head over to the Connect site and vote it up.

(There’s also an IronPython request as well.)

.NN 22: Enums Can be Cast to Unmapped values

Michael Wood — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:03:28 GMT

There are a lot of little nuances with the .NET Framework and one such nuance I see quite a bit of is an interesting behavior of enumerations. Did you know you could cast an instance of an enum to a value that isn’t in the enumeration?

Let’s take the following enum and method:

public enum Gender {
Male = 0,
Female = 1
}

public static void WriteGender(Gender gender)
{
Console.WriteLine(gender.ToString());
}

Somewhere in code someone will call the method like this:

WriteGender(Gender.Male);

This will result in the word “Male” being written to the console, just as you would expect; however, what if you were using the enumeration as a property on a person class and loaded that class from data in the database?

public class Person {
// …

public Gender Gender {get; set; }

// …
}

When you load the class from your data source you will likely cast the value you stored for Gender, but that’s where the problem lies. In the data store the value is likely an Integer (of some size) and could be values other than zero and one. Using the method and enumeration above, try the following in code:

Gender testGender = (Gender)3;
WriteGender(testGender);

This code compiles and executes just fine. The result is the number 3 is written to the console. If you aren’t careful about this it can lead to some unintentional consequences and bugs. For example, it wouldn’t be surprising if a developer created an if or switch statement around the value of the Gender property. Likely they will expect one of the two values and not code for anything other than that. I’ve seen similar scenarios where someone created a switch statement and only dealt with the two known cases, and didn’t supply a default statement. This lead to the system silently going forward without an exception and a decently hard bug to track down later down the line.

The lesson to learn here is that you should ALWAYS ensure you have guard clauses when dealing with enums (well, at least that is my opinion). If you are using an enum as a parameter to a method, check the validity of the value being passed to you. If you are loading an enumeration value on an object, again, check to make sure it is valid.

You can check for validity by using the Enum.IsDefined method.

if (!Enum.IsDefined(typeof(Gender), gender)){
//… The value isn’t mapped in the enum!
}

What you decide to do with the knowledge that an invalid value is being passed is, of course, dependant entirely on what your application needs to do. Sometimes you may then map the value to a default, or maybe you’ll throw an exception. How you decide to handle it is really not as important as knowing that you should be handling it.

As with any public method parameter, check your enumerations. You should have guard clauses on most parameters that are passed in to your public methods simply because you should be following the tenant of “don’t trust your callers”. This is especially true if the data originates from a 3rd party system or from a user interface.

Until next time…

Cincinnati Satellite for Grand Rapids Give Camp

Michael Wood — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:42:38 GMT

Ed Sumerfield is leading the satellite location in Cincinnati for the Grand Rapids Give Camp the weekend of November 13th-15th. You can check out his Meetup site at http://www.meetup.com/TechLife-Cincinnati/calendar/11455422/?a=cv1c_grp&rv=cv1c for more information. If you are willing to donate some of your time to charity, please contact Ed to find out more information about this great opportunity.

Microsoft DogFooding Conference

Michael Wood — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:46:51 GMT

Microsoft and a host of local partners is throwing a two day FREE event on November 12th and 13th. This event will cover a veritable cornucopia of technology, products and methodologies. If you’re interested in SQL Server, TFS, Scrum, LINQ, SharePoint, Exchange, F#, Sketchflow, Silverlight, Azure, ForeFront, RIA Services, Secure Code (just to name a few of the topics covered) you’ll get some benefit from this event. The speakers are pulled from Microsoft, community leaders, MVPs and MS Partners. There will also be a group of “Experts” available to ask questions to. You can find the agenda and registration links over on Jeff Blankenburg’s site (link below).

Check it out!

Ryan Cromwell, the Team Foundation Server Technical Specialist at my employer SDS, will be giving a talk on using TFS with Scrum projects on Friday afternoon. Ryan brings his deep knowledge of the TFS product and combines it with the collective experience of our Agile Development Center crew to provide an insightful presentation. I’m looking forward to it.

Also, I’ve been asked to participate in the “Ask the Experts” area.

CodePaste.net

Michael Wood — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:19:14 GMT

If you haven’t seen CodePaste.net before it’s a neat little scratchpad for sharing code. I came across this the other day when @JeffHandley tweeted about a specific piece of code he was working on.

Let’s say you need feedback on something you’re doing and your pairing partner has left the desk for a phone call or a visit to the little developer’s room. You can paste the code you’re looking at into CodePaste and then post the url out for everyone to see. What? You aren’t pair programming? Well, then this service will be even more helpful to you.

It has syntax highlighting for several languages (sadly, Ruby and Python are notably absent from the list) so the code is easier to read. You can post anonymously and the snippet will be held for up to 10 days. If you create an account you can save your snippets indefinitely. It also looks like you can subscribe to the Recent Snippets feed and consume the feed as RSS, ATOM, XML, JSON as well as just view the web page.

Check out their About page.

Visual Studio 2010 & .NET 4.0 Training Kit

Michael Wood — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:47:49 GMT

Earlier this week Visual Studio 2010 & .NET 4.0 Beta 2 was made available for public consumption. To help get you started with all the new features and widgets in VS the folks over at Channel 9 have hosted a Training Kit site. You can find a few videos and a download to help you get going.

One of the video courses is on Parallel Computing. If you are interested in learning about what VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 bring to the table as far as helping make parallel computing easier to deal with make sure to come out (please register) to see Stephen Toub on his Parallel tour across the heartland region. You can find out more about the tour over at Jennifer Marsman’s website. If you are in the Cincinnati area Stephen will be making his stop this Wednesday. There is a day session from 3 PM to 5 PM at the Microsoft office, and a night session at MAX Technical Training from 6 PM to 8 PM. The night session is sponsored by CINNUG and MAX Technical Training.

The Power of Shear Human Will

Michael Wood — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:19:05 GMT

This is not a technical post. This is a post about someone that the word “hero” just doesn’t begin to encompass the full story. This is a story about someone I know that risked all that he had for a cause he believed in, and would do so again.

I knew Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Elliott Miller (US Navy Seal) when we were in Boy Scouts together. We didn’t go the same school, so I only got to know Elliott through our scouting trips and when we both worked on the local Boy Scout camp staff together. Elliott was a funny, easy going guy. He like to give people a hard time, all in good fun (so he fit right in with the rest of us). I think the last time I saw Elliott was at a scouting function at the Boy Scout camp years ago.

Elliott went on to Join the Marines and served four years before coming out to get a college education. Less than a year after that New York was attacked on September 11th. Elliott immediately signed up for the Navy and was a SEAL about two years later serving as a combat medic and sniper. In 2006 Elliott was wounded in Iraq by a grenade. While he was being evacuated the vehicle he was in was blasted by an explosive device, further injuring him. The extent of his injuries were almost unfathomable: burns over 60% of his body, brain injury, massive loss of blood and severe fractures. The next time he woke up he was in Texas. Over the following two years Elliott went through 60 surgeries.

Here is the part I wanted to share. Elliott is STILL a Navy SEAL. He helps manage a gym used to train Navy Seals. He trains most days harder than I do in a week (likely a month). He came back from injuries that would likely cause most of us to curl up in a little ball and check out. His story is just inspiring. Elliott was featured in Ethos, a Navy magazine. You can download the issue here as a PDF. The picture on the front page is of Elliott. His story starts on page 20, “Journey of Wounded Warrior”, written by Mandy McCammon. If you have time, please read it.

I’ve not spoken to Elliott since that day long ago when I last saw him at Boy Scout camp. I sent him a birthday email a while back thanking him for all that he has given. I felt that no words could ever come close to actually meaning much compared to what he went through. How do you say, “Thank you” to someone who has gone through that? How do you use the same two words you use when someone passes you the salt and have it mean more?

Elliott is where he is today because of who he is and the sheer human will to survive and move forward. Whether you agree with the mission in Iraq or not, stories like Elliott’s (and there are many) show us that there are people who will give anything for our country. These people are heroes in my book.

NOTE: Elliott is actually mentioned twice in that issue. In the article on Michael Kobold reaching the top of Mount Everest to raise money for wounded warriors Elliott is mentioned as the inspiration for Kobolds' ascent.

A Little Fiction Please

Michael Wood — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:42:14 GMT

I’m a reader by nature. I grew up in a town that had a hand full of other people my own age, only one of which was really into the same things I was. Because of that I spent a great amount of my time reading. Mostly science fiction and fantasy stuff (I’m sure that’s pretty common in the tech industry). I’m still an avid reader (I love my Kindle) but I do spend a fair amount of time in my car (roughly an hour and a half every work day) so listening to some audio books/podcasts has been a decent way to feed my story addiction.

Usually I’m listening to technical podcasts throughout the week, but I do enjoy getting a little fiction in as well. I listen to the Podcastle and Escape Pod podcasts from Escape Artists, Inc. These two fiction podcasts focus on Fantasy and Science Fiction respectively and (generally) each week have a new story. The stories come from all over the place and while there are quite a few repeat authors, you usually get a very unique story with each episode. I will have to point out that many of the stories are NOT suitable for work, nor would I recommend letting your kids listen to them without you hearing them fist. Some of the content is PG-13 and some is closer to “Unrated” or X. Since the stories and authors vary so much, so does the type of story and content.

One of the more recent stories on Escape Pod was one called “Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-four Hour Bookstore” by Robin Sloan and narrated by Stephen Eley (the founder of Escape Pod). This was just an awesome story that ran the gambit of just plain odd and realistic to outright far-fetched. The story even has references to Google storing their data in giant crystalline structures. The wit of the main character is great and Eley’s reading really brought the character to life. The author noted that the origination for the story idea actually came from a mis-red tweet of one of the people he was following.

The concept of the story is that it is set in the current uncertain economic times and the main character gets a job working the late shift at a 24 hour bookstore that dealt in rare, ancient texts. The customers are somewhat eccentric and the owner, Mr. Penumbra, takes eccentricity to a whole new level. The main character slowly learns that the customers are coming to the store to get more from the books than just a good story. I don’t want to say anymore because it will ruin the story (if you choose to go listen), but if you like fiction I highly recommend the story. You can listen to it on the podcast, or if you like to read then check out the original release of the story on the author’s blog.

The Escape Artist podcasts are all released under Creative Commons, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives 3.0 license so they are free to download and distribute. They have a Paypal account to donate to if you like what you hear. I’ve been listening to them for about two years now and *most* of the stories have been pretty good (I tend the skip some of the more graphic ones). The Union Dues series by Jeffrey R. DeRego that appear on Escape Pod are great, gritty stories about what it could be like if Super Heroes did exist and belonged to a Union.

If you are looking for something to load your MP3 player or iPod up with for long drives and you need a break from technical information, then I highly recommend listening to a few stories from one of the Escape Artist podcasts. Make sure to listen to at least a few of them because one story doesn’t represent the whole collection.

msDev.com

Michael Wood — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:19:08 GMT

It’s almost impossible to keep up with all the resources we have available to us as developers. It seems new websites and such are popping up every day with great content on how to stay current. One I wasn’t aware of until recently is http://msdev.com. This site has links to lots of tutorials, virtual labs and seminars. For example, check out their “Everything You Need to Know About Azure as a Developer” series. They also have a Silverlight series (Fundamentals, SL 2 & SL3), WPF Series and a few on ASP.NET MVC. Each of the tutorials look to be about 30-60 minutes on average and cover some aspect of the technology being presented.

If you are trying to keep up, or just want a little intro into a specific technology then msDev.com is a good place to start with. Don’t expect level 400 type information, but it does appear to be a good starting point.

CINNUG ASP.NET MVC Firestarter Event just two weeks away

Michael Wood — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:25:27 GMT

Don’t forget that CINNUG will be hosting an ASP.NET MVC Firestarter event on Saturday, October 17th at the Microsoft Office in Mason, OH. If you haven’t already registered you can do so at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=140750.

You can find out more about the event on the CINNUG website blog at : http://cinnug.org/blog/archive/2009/10/04/reminder-asp-net-mvc-firestarter-event-on-oct-17th.aspx.

Once again we have set up a nerd dinner for the night before the event. The dinner will on Friday, October 16th at Dewey’s pizza in West Chester starting around 6:30 PM. Please RSVP at http://nerddinner.com/1129. You do NOT have to be registered for the event to show up for dinner.