I just found an intersting interview with Scott Guthrie, the General Manager for .NET:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/bb266332.aspx

It contains some nice anecdotes about the early days of .NET ('The only compiler they had was this thing called "simple managed C," which we affectionately called "smack."'), talks about the role of an architect ('The super-senior architects who have the biggest impact can marry deep, deep technical and design skills with people skills and collaborative abilities.') and the status of .NET ('I think the hallmark of a good framework doesn't lie in the applications people build on it that you had expected them to build, but in the fact that customers and developers were able to take it far beyond what you had imagined').

3/18/2007 7:10:14 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [6] 

Did you notice that the new version of .NET Reflector supports reading PDB files? This means that local variables are now correctly named during decompilation and are no longer called local[x].

Currently Reflector expects the PDB file next to the assembly to pick it up. I think it would be a nice feature if you could specify an alternative symbol path.

4/15/2006 11:15:53 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [4] 

With the download availability of Visual Studio 2005 Beta2 and SQL Server 2005 April CTP on MSDN subscriber downloads it's about time to update my post on compatibility of the different builds.

Once again let's take a look at the version of the CLR that comes with each product:
VS.NET 2005 Beta2: 50215.44
SQL Server 2005 April CTP (aka IDW14, 9.00.1116.08): 50215.44

So there should be no problem installing both sidy-by-side and even the install order shouldn't matter this time. I've tried it out on my laptop (Yukon first then VSTS) and indeed everything worked out just fine. Please note that you'll need SP2 on WinXP or SP1 on WS2003 and Office 2003 SP1 (if you want to use VSTO).

Another note: When talking to a MS person they refer to Beta2 as 50215.45 because that is the correct version number. Why is that? 50215.45 = 50215.44 + updated SQL Express. So with regards to the binaries there is no difference between .44 and .45. You'll notice that all System.* assemblies are labeled .44.

Now you might ask which version of Avalon and Indigo is compatible with Beta2? And until now the answer is "None". As I described in the previous post the March CTPs required PD7 builds of the CLR to run. So basically if you want to use Avalon or Indigo stick with PD7 or wait for a new, upcoming CTP build of Avalon+Indigo.

4/18/2005 9:19:02 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [1] 

A friend of mine who is an enthusiast of astronomy showed my this cool application: NASA World Winds 1.3.

Installing the app quickly revealed that it is based on .NET, namely written in C# with Managed DirectX as a graphics library. Even better, the source code is available on sourceforge.

The lead developer justifies his decision in a nice plea for .NET.

3/14/2005 8:54:53 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

If you are not very familiar with writing a managed C++ wrapper around an unmanaged C++ class library as I had to do last week, the following tutorial is of great help: http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/Cpp/cpp_managed/interop/article.php/c6867/

The sample shows how to instantiate classes from C# and make callbacks from unmanaged to managed code with delegates.

One of the next things I needed was the conversion between STL strings std:string and System::String which is described here.

2/8/2005 8:21:42 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [2] 

Today, I tried to implement SSL-based transport security for the webservices calls between our smart client running on NT4 and the server. Additionally, the client was supposed to include a user certificate in each call.

For the server configuration, IIS help provided a pretty good step-by-step tutorial which made it really easy.

The client certificate can be included with the following code (from MSDN):

// Load the client certificate from a file.
X509Certificate x509 = X509Certificate.CreateFromCertFile(@"c:\user.cer");
// Add the client certificate to the ClientCertificates property of the proxy class.
bank.ClientCertificates.Add(x509);

A blog post by Jan Tielens described the steps necessary to change the client code so that it accepts the servers SSL certificate.

Finally, I wanted to take the client certificate from Windows Certificate store instead of the file system and noticed that currently (.NET FX 1.1) there is no managed implementation for this scenario. A webpage by Michael Gallant explained two possibilities for that: one using the unmanaged CAPICOM dll and the second by P/Invoking the CryptoAPI. I decided for the second due to lower deployment hassle and it worked without problems.

To enumerate all certificates in the stores you can use the function CertEnumCertificatesInStore.

11/25/2004 8:54:33 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

Soma announces:

"One of the top feedback requests from our customers is support for Edit & Continue (E&C) in C# in Visual Studio 2005.  I am excited to announce that the C# team took your feedback to heart and has added support for E&C in Visual Studio 2005."

10/15/2004 6:30:29 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

Today SQL Server 2005 has been released to the MSDN subscriber downloads. If you try to install it on a machine that has Whidbey Beta 1 already installed you'll get a asking you to deinstall the .NET Framework. This is because Yukon ships with a slightly newer Framework build (40607.42) than the original Beta 1 of Whidbey (40607.16).

Just go to Add/Remove Programs and deinstall the .NET Framework - no need to deinstall Visual Studio 2005 itself. After that, you should be able to install Yukon which copies the newer version of the Framework to the disk.

Ready is your side-by-side install of Whidbey Beta1 and Yukon Beta2!

7/26/2004 6:47:46 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

Today at Teched Europe 2004, Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 (formerly code-named Whidbey) is announced. On the new Developer Center site you can download two sets of products:

• The full Visual Studio 2005 Beta, available to MSDN Subscribers initially; and by order for non-subscribers for a small fee in the near future.
• The Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta Products, available for free public download. "The Express products are lightweight, easy to use, easy to learn tools for hobbyists, enthusiasts, and students who want to build dynamic Windows applications and Web sites."

The other interesting site when developing with Whidbey is the MSDN Product Feedback Center, where you can submit Feature Requests and Bugs directly to the product teams, get notified of fixes, rate on the importance etc.

The MSDN documentation is available here.

6/29/2004 11:16:01 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

There are a couple of interesting demo videos of some parts of Visual Studio 2005 Team System (code-named Burton)

http://www.activewin.com/awin/comments.asp?HeadlineIndex=24465

5/26/2004 10:23:18 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [1] 

"Xen, a new programming language coming out of Microsoft Research and developed in conjunction with the University of Cambridge, promises to bring together three disparate but integral components of programming, wrapping them together in .Net."

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1441099,00.asp

2/2/2004 12:51:00 AM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

I've heard a couple of times that people - especially who have not been to the PDC - are a bit confused about all the new codenames and the technologies behind them. While it seems easy to google for more information about each it is also important to know which technology wave they belong to.

The first upcoming technology wave is made up of Yukon, the next version of SQL Server and Whidbey, the 2.0 version of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio (currently the version number is still 1.2 which is expected to be changed prior to the release). They are supposed to ship simultaneously in late 2004 (I think that's what I've heard at PDC - correct me if I'm wrong).

The second one is the "Longhorn wave", where Longhorn is the codename for the next version of the Windows operating system. The .NET FX is then included in the OS and the whole set of APIs is called WinFX. According to the Microsoft Developer Roadmap a new version of Visual Studio, code-named Orcas will be released at the same time (Currently, you can use the Whidbey version to develop Longhorn applications). A server version of Windows called "Longhorn Server" is expected to be shipped shortly after the client.

Yukon/Whidbey wave:

• ClickOnce (no-touch deployment)
• MSBuild (new build system)
• ObjectSpaces (O/R mapper)
• Whitehorse
• parts of System.Transactions (according to Don Box's session at the PDC)

Longhorn/WinFX/Orcas wave:

• Avalon (new graphic subsystem)
• WinFS (new storage system)
• Indigo (communication, good FAQ here, perhaps separately before Longhorn for WS2003 and WINXP)
• Monad (command shell)
• SuperFetch
• NGSCB

11/17/2003 5:04:34 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [2] 

Setup projects in Visual Studio .NET 2003 can be used to install the .NET Framework with your application, but only if you have installed the optional Visual Studio .NET Framework Bootstrapper Plug-in on your development computer. The Visual Studio .NET Framework Bootstrapper Plug-in modifies the behavior of the Setup project's Bootstrapper property to include the .NET Framework bootstrapper as well as the Windows Installer bootstrapper. The .NET Framework redistributable is then packaged with your application; when the user runs the bootstrapper setup.exe, it checks for the correct version of the .NET Framework at install time and if necessary, installs it before installing your application.

Thanks to Duncan Mackenzie for the link.

10/14/2003 3:43:04 PM (W. Europe Standard Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]