When anyone mentions 'Kernighan and Ritchie', we all know what they are referring to: that brief book that introduced the C language to programmers, and set a high standard for all subsequent books on computer languages. Now over thirty years later it is still in print and translated into over 20 languages, being required reading for undergraduates. We sent Richard Morris to interview Professor Brian Kernighan… Read more
The Cobra Programming Language is an exciting new general-purpose Open-source language for .NET or Mono, which features unit tests, contracts, 'informative' asserts, generics, Compile-time nil/null tracking, lambda expressions, closures, list comprehensions and generators. Even if it had been developed by a team, it would have been a remarkable achievement. The surprise is that it is the work of one programmer with help from a group of users. We sent Richard to find out more about that one programmer.… Read more
There are suddenly a number of strong alternatives to C# or VB. F#, IronPython and Iron Ruby are now joined by an open-source alternative called Cobra. Phil is taken by surprise at a language that is so intuitive to use that it is almost like pseudocode.… Read more
Cristina Cifuentes was already well-known for her work on decompilers before she took the development of Sun Microsystems 'Parfait' bug-checking application for C/C++ source. Unlike the classic 'Lint', Parfait is careful about avoiding false positives. What is more, it is fast, and popular with programmers.… Read more
LINQ makes code easier to write and maintain by abstracting the data source. It provides a uniform way to handle widely diverse data structures within an application. LINQ's Lambda syntax is clever enough even to allow you to create generic building blocks with hooks into which you can inject arbitrary functions. Michael Sorens explains, and demonstrates with examples.… Read more
We asked Phil to come up with a simple explanation of connection strings. We somehow weren't expecting a 'quote of the day' for your database, or a C# application to gather data from the internet. However, sometimes the oblique approach is the best, especially when the knowledge comes from hard-won experience by a cynical man.… Read more
Luca Cardelli is probably best known for Polyphonic C# and Biocomputing, but he has designed a number of experimental languages and published a variety of papers on Theoretical Computing subjects such as type theory and operational semantics. He is now Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, and head of the Programming Principles and Tools and Security groups. We sent a slightly apprehensive Richard Morris to ask him about DNA Computing… Read more
Phil Factor presents a simple CLR Assembly to allow SQL Server users to access all the powerful RegEx library methods in .NET. In the spirit of 'get something up and running', he takes a hands-on approach and demonstrates that you needn't be a C# hotshot or Visual Studio expert to develop a CLR assembly for SQL Server… Read more
Anders Hejlsberg, the creative genius behind C#, and much of the .NET framework, had already been famous for sixteen years as a compiler-writer before he joined Microsoft twelve years ago. His BLS Pascal, Turbo Pascal, and Delphi had revolutionized the way that we develop software. Today, he is still bubbling with new ideas and radical initiatives.… Read more
Generics in C#, enable you to define classes, interfaces, delegates or methods with placeholders for parameterized types used within. This allows you to define classes that use a generic type, and define the type at the time of instantiation or method calls. This makes your code strongly typed, but makes maintenance easier.
Prasanna describes the improvements in .NET v3.5
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Tired of struggling through dull, monchrome SQL, C# and VB code in website blogs and forums? Then check out the all-new Simple Talk code prettifier!… Read more
With only 24 hrs to go to the release of his brand new C# 2005 CRM application, Mike Bloise encountered severe memory leak issues. This case study describes how he solved them using ANTS Profiler.… Read more
Although FTP is commonly used to transfer files over the Internet, it's somewhat unfriendly to firewalls. Phil Wilson shows you how to create a BITS upload program using C#, which will transfer files over browser ports.… Read more
Phil Wilson demonstrates how to build and deploy a .NET COM assembly using best practices, and how to access it from early and late binding clients.… Read more
