March 2005 Entries

I downloaded this addin from Alex's blog today and was instantly impressed with its features. I regularly am doing copy and paste stuff and always have to format the pasted value by hand. Many thanks Alex.

I found this article that outlines how to provide code documentation features, that exist in C#, to the VB.Net IDE. The ability to provide an XML file, containing comments, directly from the source code, then manipulate this file into a readable interface, is a great feature. The most likely places where I can see this being used are for internal (i.e. developer, tester, etc.) documentation and for the foundation of external technical documentation (i.e. 3rd party control documentation). All the same, it is very interesting to see this concept for the first time.

I've built enough applications to know that the UI acceptable to the developer is completely non-functional for the end user. In my VB6 life I built a number of wizard based work flows for applications. For those of you still working with VB6, I suggest the GHPWizard. It is very robust, offers a large number of events when moving from page to page, and presents all the properties I've ever needed when creating wizards that have conditional work flows. The reason behind this post is that I am currently reading C# and the .NET Platform by Andrew...

It appears MS has decided to<a href="http://news.com.com/Microsoft+delays+tool%2C+database+updates/2100-1007_3-5628166.html?tag=cd.top"> delay the releases</a> of VS 2005 and SQL 2005 yet again.

Found this on <a href="http://www.thespoke.net/MyBlog/Bernard/MyBlog.aspx">Another Day in the Antz Farm</a>.  Thanks to Bernard You keep asking us who called the cook a bastard; what we want to know is who called a the bastard a cook. <i>- Anonymous Australian Soldier</i>

<a href="http://addressof.com/blog/">Cory Smith</a> has published a <a href="http://addressof.com/blog/articles/CodingGuidelines.aspx">manifesto</a> for coding guidelines in VB.NET. It is a very well thought out document and I agree with almost everything that he has written.  I agree with his <a href="http://addressof.com/blog/articles/CodingGuidelines.aspx#1513">comment on indent sizing</a> rather than the literal suggestion in the document.  Indents need to be consistent for all developers rather than any one specific size.  I have worked in code where there has been 3 different lengths of indents used and it is so very much harder to read.  I also would agree that 2 is a better sizing than the default 4 for the indents.  I work on a 19" monitor set at 1600x1200 resolution...

I watched part of Mr. Holland's Opus tonight (Movie Night in Canada -- please bring back hockey!) and one of the things that I started thinking about was how communication is so much more effective when delivered with emotion.  The idea came to me when I noticed how the animation of sign language adds another dimension to a conversation.  We've all had one teacher, lecturer or professor who delivered his/her message monotone.  We complain about these people being boring and often our dislike for the subject they speak on is predicated by their delivery.  Most people we work with, meet on the streets and spend our free time with...

If anyone is Edmonton and your feeling parched, a stop at the <a href="http://www.thesherlockholmes.com/">Sherlock Holmes</a> downtown is a must.  I visited this Thursday past and was more than pleasantly surprised.  The place is a small tudor style building in the heart of downtown, surrounded by towers on all sides.  Once inside, the decore is very traditional with large wood beams and white walls (where not covered by memorabilia).  They had numerous beers on tap, a good selection of liquors and, best of all, a full menu.  True I visited during the <a href="http://www.timhortonsbrier.ca/">Brier</a>, but for a Thursday night the place was packed.  As I have moved only recently to the city...

I saw this <a href="http://www.bearcanyon.com/etc/HomeComputerEvolution.jpg">posted</a> on <a href="http://pluralsight.com/blogs/mike/">Mike Woodring's blog</a>.  Today is the last day that I complain about my 19" CRT.

When I was working in Australia, I was asked by non-technial types what development tools we had used to create our software.  I casually reponded with VB, SQL and Crystal.  The blankly looked back and me and, not knowing that VB was a programming language, asked how VB played into our development tools.  After a short discussion it became very clear that VB to them was Victoria Bitter beer.  Here's a <a href="http://vbroadhouse.mvps.org/images/VBsixpack.jpg">6 pack</a> of VB for you.  This is why I love VB.

This blog post is from 2005 and has not been updated for newer versions of these products. Update One of the things I've since found, while using Active Reports, is a very poor implementation of exporting reports. Active Reports offers the ability to export reports to PDF and XLS formats. The PDF export works fine and has never once caused me any concern. Unfortunately, XLS exports are the polar opposite. I created a simple listing report consisting of approximately 5 columns of data with no summaries or groupings. When exporting the data to XLS, a 2 page report was taking in excess...

I have become what I fear.  Today while creating a data structure, I created a foreign key field that allowed NULL values.  I know what you are saying to yourself as you read this, so see this <a href="http://igloocoder.blogspot.com/2005/01/relationship-hell.html">post</a> to know that I abhor this practice. Please let me find my way out of the quagmire of standardization vs. good practices. There was an interesting post today on <a href="http://geekswithblogs.net/ronp/archive/2005/03/08/25767.aspx">Ron Phillips blog</a> commenting on coders who have higher standards than their bosses.  I'd like to say that the issues that Ron discusses can be present due to an overall company culture of technical ignorance.  I have personally had to lower my...

For the past couple of days, we've run into this problem at work where the VS IDE was acting really weird.  If you edited something in the design window, and went back to the code window, none of the intellisense features would work.  Also the Undo Checkout feature wouldn't work correctly and at one point VS took it upon itself to check out about 8 to 10 files.  Today was supposed to be build day, but, needless to say, it got postponed in favour of finding the culprit. We searched high and low and found little if anything about such things.  Most of what we found was related to...