An idea for Nick Bradbury
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[8:38 PM]
Nick, I was thinking about your Twitter post, and not wanting to resort to using the Twitter API to retrieve a profile image.
What if one of your NewsGator backend guys implemented IHttpHandler and returned you the requested image, based on the user id?
So you should be able to do something like http://hodgepodge.newsgator.com/twitter/image/userid.jpg. The IHttpHandler could grab the request, make a request to Twitter for the image, and return it to you. I believe this would work, but I'm not 100% sure. May be worth investigating so you can code things the way you'd like to on the client side.
If I had a Windows based backend I'd write it for you to try, but, unfortunately I don't.
Labels: .NET, Development
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IPy 2.0
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[8:17 AM]
Harry Pierson: "This is a very pretty sight. It’s a screenshot from the IronPython CodePlex home page showing that 2.0 is the 'current release'. Yes that’s right, dear reader, IronPython 2.0 has officially been released!" - The dynamic language guys have been doing a great job, we have IronPython, IronRuby, and the DLR thanks to them. Well done, and congratulations.
Labels: .NET, Development, Microsoft, Python, Ruby
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Delphi Prism RTM'd
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[10:30 AM]
Nick Hodges: "Today we announced Delphi Prism — our next generation Delphi development tool for the .Net platform. We have licensed the RemObjects Oxygene technology to create Delphi Prism. Delphi Prism is platform, stack, and database neutral. You can write code for the CLR almost anywhere it exists, including Mono for Linux and the Mac." - This happened a few days back and it represents a very interesting move on the part of the Embarcadero team. Native integration with Visual Studio will bring them a lot of attention, especially with guys like me that live in that environment and thrive in it.
Congratulations guys!
Labels: .NET, Development, Tools
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Dumping ground language
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[3:28 PM]
James Robertson: "The next time someone claims that C# or Java are 'easier' because they use 'standard C style syntax', this is worth pondering: a comment I saw pass by on Twitter" - Wow! When I read that I thought to myself, No way there's that many keywords! Well, I was wrong. According to this page there are 77 keywords and 16 contextual keywords. I really hope C# doesn't continue to become a dumping ground for features. Like LINQ support, why? Sure it makes the code look a bit cleaner, I guess, but why add that directly to the language? I thought that's why the CLR is open? So someone could come along and create the "Database Programming Language" and it magically works with the other .NET languages?
Labels: .NET, Microsoft
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I couldn't agree more
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[8:09 AM]
Jason Bock: "The thing about having a public .NET API using underscores is it doesn't fit the recommended coding style. If you're in Eiffel, that's actually what you do - in fact, you use upper-case and underscores (e.g. GET_CUSTOMER). But it .NET, public APIs should be Pascal-cased with no underscores - e.g. GetCustomer." - It's kind of strange how cultures form around coding style. You have the *NIX hacker that tend to use lower case and underscores and heaven forbid K&R style bracing, ick, the most disgusting coding style EVER! I find it hard to believe the IronPython and IronRuby teams use the K&R style, but they both started life outside of Microsoft, so they have that open source feel.
I'm with Jason on this, I do prefer Pascal cased public methods, and since there is a standard they should follow it, even if they don't like it.
Consistency is important.
Labels: .NET, Development
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IronRuby on Rails
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[8:06 PM]
twitter.com/john_lam: "ironruby running unmodified rails!" - That's pretty darned sweet.
Update: John Lam: "IronRuby doesn’t just let you run Rails; it lets you interact with the rich set of libraries provided by .NET. You’ll be able to use IronRuby to build server-based applications that run on top of ASP.NET or ASP.NET MVC. You’ll be able to use IronRuby to build client applications that run on top of WPF or Silverlight. You’ll be able to use IronRuby to test, build and deploy your .NET applications. You’ll be able to run Ruby code in your web browser and have it talk to your Ruby code on your web server. That’s a feature that we feel that many folks will enjoy." - Wow.
Labels: .NET, Microsoft, Ruby
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Yes, that stuff is fun IMHO
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[12:27 PM]
Jason Bock: "There will be a nice .NET API I'm going to make around this with unit tests so the rest of my code doesn't have to deal with monstrosity." - I'm kind of weird like that. Integration projects are fun to me. I had the opportunity a few years back to write a .NET assembly on top of a component for collecting PLC data. It was extremely fun and I was able to use it on a few different projects.
Labels: .NET, Development
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DLR Tutorial
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[11:05 PM]
DotNetGuru.org: "The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) is a layer on top of the .NET Framework 3.5 aiming at help you to build dynamic languages in .NET. Languages created with the DLR could be a language embedded in an application (like before) or a new language for the .NET platform like IronPython or IronRuby provided by Microsoft."
Labels: .NET, DLR, Microsoft
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IronPython and Visual Studio
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[5:49 PM]
Harry Pierson: "We've hired a few people around here recently (including me obviously). However, if you have a burning desire to work on IronPython (or IronRuby) and Visual Studio, we're still hiring" - This is exactly what's needed to make IronPython and IronRuby really slick! Complete integration into the Visual Studio IDE. Make them first class citizens.
Labels: .NET, DLR, Microsoft, Python, Ruby
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Silverlight, IronRuby resources
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[9:43 AM]
rubydoes.net: "There are other people that have blogged about silverlight and IronRuby before, it might be a good idea to check them out as well." - Tagged for later.
Labels: .NET, Development, Python, Ruby
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Building on the DLR
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[3:00 PM]
Matthew Podwvsocki [via Harry Pierson]: "So, I can admit, I've been on a bit of a kick with compilers and such after my posts on DSLs, Compilers and the Irony of it All and Lang.NET and Rolling Your Own. Today is no different, but this time, I'm just intrigued by targeting the DLR instead of the CLR. Thankfully there are a few great references that people are doing right now for these little adventures. One day once I'm more finished with the deep dive into F#, I'll dig a little deeper." - Maybe someday I'll be able to take a look at this, right... Anywho, Matthew has a nice list of examples for building on the DLR.
Labels: .NET, DLR, Microsoft
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Dynamic C#
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[2:20 PM]
Charlie Calvert: "All the code that occurs in a dynamic block will potentially support dynamic lookup; even if the accessed members are not known by the C# compiler to exist, it will allow the code." - Does C# have to become a kitchen sink language? Why not let IronRuby and IronPython become the leaders in this regard and keep C# as clean as possible? One of the arguments presented for the inclusion of dynamic support is that PIA's can be expensive. If someone needs to use a COM component generate an assembly in a language that supports dynamic lookup and use that.
C# doesn't need to be all things to all people.
Labels: .NET, Development, Microsoft, Visual Studio
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On Patterns
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[10:15 AM]
John Gossman: "I love the article, but must add I have always struggled with RoutedCommands and CommandBindings. I think the APIs are too complex for what they do, but more importantly I prefer to route commands through my application model, not through WPF's element tree." - Patterns are meant to be used as templates, or here's an example of how do to something. In reality, in the production world, I've found you start off with a pattern only to expand or tweak it to what works for your system.
Labels: .NET, Development
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Proof of concept
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[10:37 AM]
Tom Distler: "The videos are displayed using WPF MediaElement objects, and passing in a URL with our custom protocol type and the id of the camera to connect to. The great thing about WPF is that we get all the scaling, reflection, and overlays you see above for free. Another one of our UI guys (Nick) did a demo with live video playing on a 3D cube that can be rotated by the mouse. I will post a screen shot when I get one." - Yes, this week-and-a-half proof of concept was a great deal of fun. Now we need to get the go ahead to do it for real. I must say Tom's DirectShow knowledge has been a breath of fresh air, he's a great addition to the Endura team.
Nick, Brent, and Abe; thanks for creating some compelling demos. A picture is worth a thousand words. The demos are a heck of a lot better than Tom and I showing people a fully constructed graph in GraphEdit that would display grey video. 
Labels: .NET, Development, DirectShow, Windows, WPF
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.NET Source Code
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[4:54 PM]
Scott Guthrie: "Last October I blogged about our plan to release the source code to the .NET Framework libraries, and enable debugging support of them with Visual Studio 2008. Today I'm happy to announce that this is now available for everyone to use. Specifically, you can now browse and debug the source code for the following .NET Framework libraries:" - Neat.
Labels: .NET, Microsoft
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Visio + Kuler == Coolness
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[9:47 AM]
Saveen Reddy [via John Nack]: "This code just takes the highest rated Kuler colors and draws them in Visio." - Very cool. I'd talked about doing something like this as a widget to change colors in the Windowing environment, but the idea of doing something with Visio never crossed my mind. How weird is that? Nice job Saveen.
I can't tell by my brief look at the code but it would be nice to use it to take Kuler color palettes and create Visio themes (I think that's what they're called these days? There used to be a color schemes add-on that would apply color templates to the drawing. Unfortunately I haven't investigated Visio 2007.)
Labels: .NET, Development, Visio
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Deploying a SQL Database
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[10:36 PM]
Scott Guthrie: "The good news is that this week the SQL Server team published the release candidate of a new SQL Server Hosting Toolkit that will make it much, much easier to deploy your SQL solutions remotely to a hosted environment. The toolkit allows you to work with SQL Express, SQL Server 2000, and SQL Server 2005 databases locally, and then easily transfer your schema and data and install them into a shared hosting remote SQL Server account."
Labels: .NET, Development, Pneumatic, SQL
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Windows losing ground with developers?
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[8:22 AM]
The Server Side.NET: "Microsoft is not dead, and it is not dying. Rather, the company's decline in market share is a runny nose." - I can definitely see this happening with the focus clearly on web based stuff. If you're doing client side applications Windows is pretty hard to beat, unless you're doing Mac applications, but the server side has a ton of dynamic language support with frameworks that allow folks to be highly productive and it's all free; Ruby + Rails, Python + Django, etc... On Windows we have those two plus we have ASP.NET and [insert your favorite .NET language here], but is that really an advantage? In short No. The real answer is Yes and No. For me it would be easier to use ASP.NET and C# because I already have experience with ASP.NET and C# is super easy to transition to because of my C/C++ background. Sure I could pickup Ruby and/or Python, but I'd need a bit of time to become as proficient with it as I am with C/C++. Who knows in the end it may be well worth my time to be a Ruby/Python dude, only time will tell.
Hey, have you looked at C#'s upcoming LINQ implementation? Check out Scott Guthrie's series on LINQ; Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. It's going to make life more productive for the C# developer, that for sure.
Labels: .NET, Microsoft, Python, Ruby, Windows
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Note to self, Windows hosting service
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[7:14 PM]
Need to revisit this hosting service in a while...
Labels: .NET, Pneumatic
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