Mark Levison

Ignore Attribute for FxCop?

As I much as I love FxCop I find it difficult to maintain exclusions when we rename class/methods/variables. I think the underlying problem is that we can only record exclusions in the FxCop project XML file. When a name changes all previously excluded items reappear causing developers to curse the fact that they renamed the method. An elegant solution to this problem would involve an FxCop ignore attribute, for example:

[FxCopIgnore(" UsePropertiesWhereAppropriate", "Method has a non-trivial cost")]
public void SetCellHeight(int height)
{
....
}

Now when FxCop runs it would find the attribute and ignore the method. Prior art exists in the form of the pragma's that we used to in C++ to turn off specific warnings.

BTW I've posted this as an enhancement request at GotDotNet

Surviving on the internet - suggestions for dealing with spyware

Inspired by a number recent problems that various friends have had with spyware, I thought I would make some basic recommendations on what to do. I thought about sending everyone to Brian Livingston's Window Secrets - but most of his recommendations require $$$ - fine for corporate IT environment, but who wants to spend more money on their home computer.

Use a Mac or Linux - there are far fewer viruses & spyware currently targetted at either platform. If you're using Windows then here's what I do (BTW even Mac/Linux users need a hardware firewall and a spam filter):

A Hardware firewall like the Linksys BEFSR81 or D-Link DI-604 4-Port Broadband Router - protects your computer from inbound attacks from internet.
A Software firewall - Zone Alarm (basic version is free). Its a pain to setup for the first few days, but it will tell you when a new piece of software is trying to make an outbound connection from your PC.
Antivirus software - many excellent products are free for home use, I use AVG from Grisoft. Set it for automatic updates and run at least once a week.
Spam Filter - SpamBayes, installation instructions and the FAQ. SpamBayes is better than any of the commercial alternatives that I've tried including Cloudmark.
AntiSpyware - None of the tools detect and removing everything. Brian's article shines in documenting the threats. He recommends three tools: Microsoft AntiSpyware beta, Webroot Spy Sweeper, CWShredder - use all of them. Update and run full scans at least once a week. BTW CWShredder exists to defeat just one piece of spyware its noxious variants: CoolWebSearch
Browse the web with Firefox not Internet Explorer (IE). A large amount of the spyware is installed surreptiously on your machine when you browse websites. Firefox doesn't have the same vulernabilities as IE - if only because its been developed since many of the vulernabilities became well know. Firefox obviously has its own weaknesses but with 5-10% of internet users they're not going to be widely exploited for a while. Use IE only when forced by site that won't work in Firefox
Updates - run a recent version of Windows (2000 or XP) and either turn automatic updates on or use Windows update (requires IE :-) - look for it at the top of your programs list on your start menu. BTW never trust a link that you find to Windows Update on the web - it might not take you to the MS site.

If you find your self hit by spyware Brian's article talks about how to use Hijack This and where to ask for help.

Good luck

Looking for a CompactFlash MP3 that doesn't suck

I'm trying to find a small MP3 player for my wife. For the most part she wants to listen to spoken word (training materials, etc), with some music. Since the player needs to be small (preferably carried around the neck), I'm assuming that I want Compact Flash.

Must have list:
1) Small size
2) Good quality sound
3) Good battery life (prefer AA to AAA
4) Supports MP3 and WMA
5) Decent user interface-that doesn't require a degree in CompSci to use.

Important (but not essential features):
6) Supports Voice recording > 1 hr in length
7) FM receiver

Nice to have
8) FM transmitter for playback in the car

It needs at least 512M, perhaps even 1G.
A few minutes of reading CNet's reviews suggest the IRiver's 700/800 series would seem to fit the bill.

What other Flash players can you recommend?
Which review sites do a good job (other than Consumersearch)?

We choose a Creative Nuvo M200 - it sounds great

Notepad replacements

I've spent alot of the past few days tweaking little details in nmake files (used for post build events). I quickly grew tired of the builitin Notepad and all its limitations. A few minutes of Googling found dozens (NoteTab, UltraEdit ($), NotePad2, NotePad++). I like both '2' and '++' - both support syntax highlighting (for many languages), solid support search & replace (including regex) ... STOP reading go and play with them.

In the end I choose NotePad++ because it supports having a number of files open at once (via tabs).

Thanks to the PowerToys weblog

BTW Programmers Notepad might also be worth a look.

This post now hosted at: http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2006/11/ive_spend_alot_.html

Getting Things Done

I'm trying to swallow the "Getting Things Done" koolaid and wondering
what other Windows users do to manage their todo lists. Are you using
GTD?

I know there is an Outlook addin (for $US 70 ), but I'm not prepared
to pay that especially since I don't keep outlook open all the time. I
saw Merlin's post (How does a nerd hack GTD?) and I like the
idea of making the lists text files (especially since I can then use subversion to store my lists). Does any one else use text
files? If not what tools are you using?

1) Just a series of text files
2) A PIM like Evernote
3) Other software (like: TodoList2)

Specific questions:
1) Merlin uses a QuickSilver trick to append a line of text to a file without switching contexts (ie
applications). What do you do?
2) Do you have an automatic method to get the actions from each project into your _@nextactions list?

News Readers for Windows

Extensible programming

Rereading Greg Wilson's article (Extensible Programming for the 21st Century) and a few others in the past weeks, has made me think a bit more.

I'm don't think that the underlying representation matters as much as having a common tool to manipulate it. In the case of Java/Eclipse (or C#/VS .NET) - storing the results (the code) in text is fine. What we need is for Eclipse (or MS) to expose the asbtract syntax tree to the various plugins. In many cases these plugins will bypass the text editor and display the program in their own way. I think this allows us to make the leap to the next generation tool without having to replace the infrastructure (ie new source code control systems etc.)

Update as Trey pointed out - by expose I didn't mean readonly - I meant expose for and allow for modification. Thanks Trey.

Programs still edited as text redux

Apparently I'm not the only who has been thinking about how we edit programs. Jon Udell has written a column "Exploring the deep structure of code" and a blog entry "The deep structure of code". He mentions an interesting paper that I'd missed: "Example Centric Programming" (PDF) by Jonathon Edwards . I think that Jonathon's "Manifesto of the Programmer Liberation Front" nicely summarizes much of what I was thinking about. In particlular these paragraphs really resonate with me:

Text is a dead-end

Programming is stuck in an evolutionary dead-end: the use of character strings to encode programs. Every other computer-mediated form of expression has evolved beyond text into sophisticated WYSIWYG interfaces to complex data structures. For example, no one still uses textual markup for word processing (except, notably, Computer Scientists with TeX). We need WYSIWYG programming.

It's called 'code' for a reason

Programming languages are built upon two basic tricks: the use of grammars to encode tree structures (AST's) into text, and the use of names to encode linkages across these trees. Much of what makes a language unique is its particular style of name resolution, as in the polymorphism and inheritance techniques of OO languages. Text is a dead end because all these sophisticated techniques in one way or another are just encoding structure in text strings. This is disastrous for usability.

Structure needs to be made explicit and directly manipulable, not implicit and encoded. Mentally parsing and interpreting this implicit structure is an enormous cognitive burden for the programmer. Modern IDE's such as Eclipse go to great lengths to extract the encoded structure back out of the text and help us to visualize and manipulate it somewhat more directly. Refactorings are provided by the IDE to automate the complex and widespread changes in syntax necessary to effect simple semantic changes. This is absurd. We should manipulate semantic structures directly through a WYSIWYG interface. The language is the IDE.

Much of what we know about programming language design is about clever ways to encode structure in text, and fancy ontologies to rationalize naming. Discarding the textual representation suddenly makes all this irrelevant, and opens a whole new space of design choices. Some who are invested in the status quo will see this as a threat and become counter-revolutionaries.

When I wrote Programs still edited as text? Why?, I was struck by the absurity of tools like QuickCode .NET. This is macro tool - I type in 'prop int test', do an Alt+Q and it generates a property for me. Pure text replacement. It works well and is certainly faster than typing properties by hand, but simple text replacement strikes me as insane. We could do this in emacs. When inserting a new method why do we need to type all the kewords 'protected static void' - a better IDE would just prompt me for scope (public, protected, ...), modifiers (abstract, static, ...) and return type. I could continue this list for sometime to come - I think our modern IDEs are hampering our productivity.

What needs to be done? In the short term:

IDE's need to better tools to manipluate their Abstract Syntax Trees
The Abstract Syntax Trees need to be documented and made accessible to external vendors

BTW "QuickCode .Net" is perfectly good tool, I'm mention it only because I'm familiar with it.

Finally, Jon I hope that the tool vendors give you good reason to give up Emacs long before you retire (let alone go to the grave).

Debugging Exceptions in the WinForms designer

Matthew Adams co-author of Windows Forms in a Nutshell has just start a blog. His 2nd entry "What has the designer done now" has some excellent tips on working with the designer. My favourite is:

You can build a control that has an implementation bug that causes an exception at deisgn time. Everything will build fine, but when you reopen the designer you'll see the exception text.
...
Fixing it can be tricky. If inspection doesn't work, a handy tip is to open a second IDE, and attach to the original instance of VS.NET. You can then set some breakpoints in your control and watch what happens as you open the designer.

Sweet - I occasionally encounter this problems - usually when I've split a common base class out of several forms. No finally I can try to debug them. Thanks Matthew.

BeginInvoke() another undocumented Security requirement

Earlier today I got myself into a little trouble, I had been calling BeginInvoke() to act as a PostMessage() to display a new object only after its parent had been created. When running under full trust this worked very well, however as soon as someone (not I oops) tested in the default internet trust - Boom a security exception. It turns out that BeginInvoke() calls MarshaledInvoke() which eventually calls CompressedStack.GetCompressedStack() which has a link demand for Unmanaged code. Unsurprisingly code deployed from the internet doesn't get this permission by default.

MSDN Dev Chat on Zero or No Touch Deployment in the real world

On Feb 17, Robi and I will be reprising our early effort, based on the feedback - this version will be more hands on. Dev Chat: No Touch Deployment in the real world from the official descritpion:

In October 2004, Databeacon launched the Databeacon Smart Client family of products. These products use no-touch deployment to provide web reporting and data analysis capabilities to Windows PC users enabled with the .NET Framework. Join the two chief developers responsible for this project as they outline the technical strategies, obstacles and actions taken in bringing one of the first no-touch commercial software products to market. This session will focus on no-touch deployment and integration with Microsoft Office products.

If you want to learn more about No Touch Deployment and see if it makes sense for your WinForms application our dev chat will be a good place to start.

What is No Touch Deployment?

When Windows Forms applications is downloaded (from a web server), run directly on the users' machines without prior installation.

BTW you might also be interested in our success story the launch of our product (and the world's first commercial No Touch Deployment application) http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/mlevison/archive/2004/10/18/28961.aspx

Update: the chat has happened, the recording is now up at: http://www.placeware.com/cc/lmevents/view?id=msft021705ad&pw=2WRDXC

Learning Python

Darrell Norton has an excellent entry on Learning Python. This is something that I've mentioned a few times in the past year. Its time to rollup my sleeves and get to work.

Installing a new Dishwasher - a learning experience

I'm not much of a hardware guy at the best of times and installing a new dishwasher was always going to be an interesting experience.

Always assume that everything currently installed in your house is a special case. Our old dishwasher was attached to the water supply with a copper pipe. This copper pipe had non-standard fittings at both ends. I spent over an hour trying to bend the old copper pipe to be where the new dishwasher wanted it to be. Then I realized it couldn't be made to fit the new dishwasher. So I took the old copper pipe to Preston Hardware, looking at the pipe they told me that my shut off valve had non standard thread size (oddly enough I think someone installed an outdoor tap as shutoff). So I had to cutoff the old thread from the existing shut off, install a new compression adapter (there was just enough pipe to do this) and install the new hose.

All told it took over 3 hours to install the new dishwasher!! but it doesn't appear to have leaked, so it was worth the effort (and the infinite supply of plumber's tape I used).

GMail Invites

I have a few gmail invites at my disposal email me at mlevison at gmail if you want one.

Update - their all gone for now. I'll update this post if I get anymore. A number of people have have left comments (not what I asked for) or sent email (what I asked for), since I declared them all gone on Saturday. Don't bother, I don't have anymore for now/

Update: isnoop gmail invite spooler currently has about 170,000 - try your hand there. In addition all my future invites will be sent there.

Update: Please don't post comments requesting gmail invites. Use the isnoop spooler linked to above.

mscorlib not marked as loading from the Global Assembly Cache - why?

I've been doing some work to reduce the number of assemblies (from outside the Global Assembly Cache (GAC)) we load before posting a loading message. While doing this I discovered that mscorlib doesn't have its GlobalAssemblyCache property set to true. Why? ~~If you look in "C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322" (this directory is the GAC) I see mscorlib.dll. If I do a gacutil /l mscorlib is not registered.~~ Why isn't part of the GAC? What is different?

Update: An embarrassing mistake, I got the location of the GAC wrong. The GAC is found in %WINDOWS%/Assembly. However this still begs the question in .NET 1.0/1.1 mscorlib isn't part of the GAC. Why?

With Whidbey it will be.