Philip Greenspun is probably best known to other geeks for his Tenth Rule of Programming: "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." Amongst the general public, he is most famous for founding ArsDigita and suffering the subsequent miseries that came from accepting venture capital.… Read more
The public perception is that, when something is deleted, it no longer exists. IT in general prefers the fuzzier idea of the trashcan, where the deleted compromising documents can blow around a digital landfill site for years. The Cloud takes this further, and so the data you serve up to the cloud can be stored out there indefinitely, no matter how hard to try to delete it. Rob Sheldon investigates, and finds the cloud a worryingly public place.… Read more
A lot of numbers that we use everyday such as Bank Card numbers, Identification numbers, and ISBN codes, have check digits. As part of the routine data cleansing of such codes on data entry we must check that the code is valid- but do we? Dwain Camps shows how it can be done in SQL in such a way that it could even be used in a constraint, to keep bad data out of the database.… Read more
Git isn't just for source code, but it also helps with the prototyping of the user interface. It allows for faster iteration and a better structure for making and recording design decisions. GitHub for Windows provides an way to visualize what decisions are available and to work on several possible alternatives independently.… Read more
Switching from developing ASP.NET WebForms to MVC might seem awkward at first, but Ed demonstrates why the change needn't be painful, and how best to build a set of tools for rapid MVC development. This article is hosted on Github, so feel free to contribute suggestions, improvements or translations.… Read more
For Windows programmers, Linus Torvalds work has suddenly become relevant. No, we don't mean Linux, but Git. This distributed Source Control system now works sweetly as a nut on Windows. We contacted Linus for a second interview; this time to talk mainly about Git, but also to catch up with his thoughts about computer languages.… Read more
The Secure Socket Layer is now essential for the secure exchange of digital data, and is most generally used within the HTTPS protocol. .NET now provides the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to implement secure communications directly. Matteo explains the TLS/SSL protocol, and takes a hands-on approach to investigate the SslStream class to show how to implement a secure communication channel … Read more
The most persistent struggle in data processing has been to ensure clean data. There are many ways that data can be incorrect and a database must check, as best it can, that the data is correct. The CHECK constraint is ideally suited for this sort of work, and the checking routine can become quite complex when dealing with check digits in data.
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Cryptography is an increasing requirement for applications, so it is great that it is part of the .NET framework. Matteo builds on his first article that explained Asymmetric Cryptography and Digital Signatures, and tackles Symmetric Encryption and how to implement it in the .NET Framework. … Read more
Donald Knuth is an extraordinary man. As well as inventing 'Literate Programming' and writing the most important textbook on programming algorithms, he is also famous for designing and programming one of the most widely-used digital typesetting systems ever, even designing the fonts that went with it. He also pioneered the use of 'Open-source' software. Knuth is a man of engaging charm and enthusiasms who combines a knowledge of history, music, art and mathematics with a unique insight into the art of computer programming.… Read more
Digital Signatures aren't the most intuitive software devices to explain, but Matteo boldly gives a quick-start account of Asymmetric Cryptography and Digital Signatures before demonstrating how simple it can be to perform a signature using an X509 certificate and .NET Framework base classes… Read more
There are good reasons for preventing old versions of Outlook from connecting to Exchange Server. You'll probably, at least, want to do it for security. Before you do so, you'll also need know what versions are out there being used so you can make sure that blocking of legitimate users is prevented. Ben Lye explains how it is done. explains … Read more
Code-generation has been used throughout the age of the digital computer. The use of code to generate code might, at first glance, seem an odd thing to want to do, but the technique is alive and well, and is widely used in .NET. Nick Harrison explains, and introduces the CodeDom...… Read more
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