Cool Programming

VS Express Editions

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 18:14:38 GMT

Microsoft's Visual Studio Express Editions (the free one) are no longer Beta and available for download.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/

Microsoft Faces Heat over VS 2005 Quality

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 16:16:41 GMT

Ayende Rahein: It's interesting to note that nearly all those bugs were known to Microsoft, but were closed because of time constraints. I'm shocked that even after countless CTPs and two betas, there are so many serious-you'll-lose-work-and-tear-out-your-hair bugs in the product.

Randy: Sounds like VS 2005 SP1 is just around the corner.

Singularity and Sing#

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 16:38:39 GMT

Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft Research has developed a prototype of a microkernel operating system, code-named 'Singularity.' Its most surprising feature: It has nothing to do with Windows. [cut] The OS is currently written entirely in a combination of Microsoft's C# programming language, as well as a derivative of C#, which the team is calling "Sing#." (Sing# is a derivative of Spec#, which is a derivative of C#.) The ultimate goal is to write the OS entirely in Sing#, Hunt said. While Singularity does rely on Microsoft's C#, it is not making use of Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) or the Java virtual machine. Instead, the team is relying on "Bartok," a Microsoft-Research-developed compiler and run-time environment.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1882174,00.asp

Be careful what you type in VS.NET 2005

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 17:13:33 GMT

Frank Bouma: Today I was doing some small research work with generics in VS.NET 2005 professional RTM and I was just typing normal code when the IDE suddenly locked up, a hardcore hang with 100% CPU usage. After a kill process, I restarted the IDE, loaded the same testproject, went to the same line of code and typed the same text... bam! hangs again!

http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2005/11/03/429371.aspx

Randy: I remember a similar problem in VS.NET 2003.

Hosting ASP.NET Troubles

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:52:29 GMT

A few days ago, I noticed that KBCafe.com wasn't responding quickly. Once in awhile, the loading page would hang up. I investigated and after an horrifying exchange of emails with my hosting service, they told me they allocated 1/5 of the memory to my Web application. Since the server had 2GB, they allocated 400MB to my Web application. Whenever my Web application would consume 400 MB of virtual memory they recycled my application. When I heard this, I finally realized my hosting service is run by idiots. One fifth of 2GB of memory is not 400MB of virtual memory, it's 400MB of private memory. Virtual memory not only includes the private memory, but also includes shared DLL on the hard drive that were mapped into my virtual address space, regardless of whether I'm actually loading or ever using them. While investigating this problem, I encountered numerous mundane Web site owners that fell prey to the same hosting service stupidity. I hope that somebody looking for help someday will encounter this little blog entry and he can use it to show his hosting service that they are a bunch of idiots.

Update: My hosting service just confirmed the setting. In fact, it was 300MB of virtual memory and 100MB of actual memory.