Monday, July 01, 2002

After some deliberation Richard has decided to follow the C# idioms in his C# code, not the FCL ones. His observation that I prefer C# correctness over FCL correctness is accurate - I believe this is primarily a language-level issue, and deserves a language-level approach. When he says that "C# is just another layer of abstraction between the programmer and the metal", I agree wholeheartedly. Good programmers understand that the abstraction exists, embracing it where it simplifies and peeling it back where it gets in the way. Might I point out that System.Int32 could be viewed as an 'abstraction' layered on top of the raw CLR int32 type? Richard also points out "Who knows, at this time C# goes hand-in-hand with the CLR but could that change?". I'm not sure if this is being cited as a reason to use the FCL types, or to use the C# simple types. In any event, I don't think this is a serious concern: C# is a ECMA specification so is under some degree of change control, and int is defined in the spec as "...represents signed 32-bit integers with values between –2147483648 and 2147483647". The spec also maps int to System.Int32, and defines System.Int32 as having Int32.MaxValue==2147483647 and Int32.MinValue==-2147483648. I guess some alternate platform might burn >4 bytes to store an int, but that's immaterial - personally, I'm not expecting this version of C# to ever magically having ints take on a smaller or larger range. That's the beauty of standardization! [Peter Drayton's Radio Weblog] - See and thats why I follow the blogs of guys like Richard and Peter. Left to my own devices I would go with FCL because the "seemed" to fit better. Not much logic in that concept... !   7:41:40 PM     Best 'find' in someone else's trash? "In 1996 when RAM was like gold, the company I used to work for upgraded our QMS Postscript network printers. The swapped out the main CPU boards and piled the old ones in boxes marked 'Trash' in the empty hallway leading to my office, I picked one up just to take a look to see how they were made. I was looking at the board and I spied ZIP memory, a form of high speed SDRAM, I took down the number and called a memory recycler I saw in the back of MacWeek magazine. Well lo and behold they said they would give me $100 a piece for each one I sent them, there was 16 per board and I had 20 boards sitting in and around my office! They wanted the whole board so they could remove them without damage. I packed them up and used the company's own UPS account to ship them off, two weeks later I recieved a check for $35,000! There was also other types of memory on the boards I wasn't aware of! " [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson] - Gotta appreciate Dane for digging up these stories! 7:38:37 PM     Student Paddled For Refusing to Recite Pledge of Allegiance. In Alabama, a student stood silently with his fist raised rather than recite the Pledge of Allegiance. As punishment, the boy was spanked three times with a wooden paddle and given a written reprimand. The school board policy requires students to say the pledge and salute the flag during the day's first class and to sit through "prayer requests" and a moment of silence. The rest of the story is here. [kuro5hin.org] People were wondering whether the Pledge was required in some places. Here you go... a modern tale. When I was in school, it was required of us as well (stand, hand on heart, say the pledge). Corporal punishment was already on-the-outs, but you'd certainly get a trip to the principal's office. [The .NET Guy] - I guess one could argue the only time that this really becomes an issue is in such cases where no alternate schools are available to the child and the child is forced to perform an act he doesn't want for the sake of conformance. Of course I guess the term child is wrong since this was ayoung adult engaged in protest. Anyway paddling part just amazes me. In Germany we had a little experience called The Third Reich that cured us of the kind of nationalist sentiment that has its beginnings in odd little acts like this one. (Or other odd little acts like the one in which an Austrian Dummkopf became the German head of state - but thats another story...) One can be patriotic without enforcing ones sense of national pride onto another person under the threat of bodily punishment. 7:35:09 PM     GACUtil Add-In. I needed a simple way to invoke GACUtil as a custom build step. Utility makefiles were clunky, NAnt was too extensive (but cool) and the BuildRules sample wasn't quite extensive enough. So I built my own. [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News][Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog] 7:30:22 PM

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