Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…
A coworker and I have been trudging through a lot of code recently. .NET code written by a C programmer. Folks, these things should never mix, because when they do, you end up with:
byteArray = new Byte[hexString.Length >> 1];
That’s right. Don’t divide by 2. Bit shift. And nevermind that there is a builtin .Net function that does what this line of code came from. And nevermind yet again that there’s a good helping of HEX shit like this in an ASP.NET web app.
A coworker just ran across this awesome feature in a book so I thought I’d share it.
How many times have you recompiled an app just to get some debug/trace information spit out? In VS 2005 you can have a breakpoint write information to the output window as if you compiled in Debug.WriteLine statements. Just set a Breakpoint, right click on it and select When Hit. In the dialog you can configure what gets printed out.
Today I probably spent a good 6-8 hours working on Chef. I was able to get a lot done and move it to the point where the recipe management side has a functional, basic object model. You know what that means?? Time to move on to the UI!
I already started to play around with the basic look and feel of the UI, and I’m excited about it. Its unlike anything I’ve done before; I look forward to being able to give a sneak-preview in the coming weeks.
Today also saw me beginning to hunt for a good, cheap Help Authoring tool. I ran across a promising, free product shipped with the Visual Studio SDK called HelpStudio Lite but upon installation discovered the license prohibits it being used for anything other than Visual Studio-integrated help solutions. That was mentioned nowhere, but was bright and shiny in the EULA. WTF! The next candidate is WinCHM. It appears to be basic and with a good price tag ($50), so I’ll try and dig up some reviews on it.
The past two nights I have been working up a prototype for the new Chef website. I think it’s the best looking site I’ve done, if I say so myself. Taking the advice of a coworker, I mocked up the layout in photoshop before touching html/css. It sure made the process go much faster, and if I hadn’t done it this way I know I wouldn’t have ended up with these results. Worked great.
Now that the general layout is done, I’ll slowly move it over to ASP.NET and really work on it. But that’ll be a while because I have to finish the Chef rewrite first.
I’ve been keeping my eye on this for a while now. A couple months ago I installed it on my desktop at home to start developing my dad’s new website PBJ Unlimited and also installed a technology preview of the SQL Management Studio Express, which looks to be just as featureful as the non-express version.
A couple days ago I checked to see if they had released a new version of the management studio and was greeted with the download for the Advanced Services – which includes full text indexing. All Free. Free to use, free to redistribute. Fantastic.
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