Tim’s Blog of futility.

London 2012!

Tim Ensor — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 20:53:00 GMT

So, I am normally a gigantic cynic, but I can't help be excited about this! Listened to the result coming in on Radio 5 Live and was amazed when London was anounced. I cant help but feel slightly sorry for Jacques Chiraq - he now has to walk in to the G8 conference and face the full glare of Blair's grin turned up to 11.

Anyway - 2012 - The little un will be 8, which should be old enough to enjoy it. Its the kind of thing which doesnt come around very often so I have to promise myself now I'll get myself down and watch some of the action!

Partial Classes & Code Gen

Tim Ensor — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 18:19:00 GMT

Carl Franklin wrote , amongst lots of other stuff, that Partial Classes may enable code gen.

I would argue that all we need for good code gen is inheritance, and that Partial Classes are an all-too-tempting red herring.

One of the basic problems with code generation has always been that, if you ever need to re-generate our code, you will wipe out any manual changes you have made to your generated classes. This is basically unacceptable, because the hand-written code is effectively the tricky bit (once you have the code gen working well that is). So, the trick is to find a way of protecting your hand written code, while keeping the benefits of generating code.

So, on the surface, partial classes seem very tempting. It can work in the same way that, say, the forms designer works in .net 2005. That creates a partial class for all the designer-generated gubbins, and a partial class for all your hand written bits. Neat! But there are problems. Eventually, you will need to alter the behaviour of one of your auto generated properties or methods with hand written code - and you won’t be able to do this. So then you have the dilemma - do you alter the generated code or not?

Using inheritance this need not be a problem. Your code generation should produce a set of abstract "base" classes. All base classes should be inherited by a "user" class - which ideally starts with no code in it. Any differences in behaviour can then be handled by overriding the base class member in the user class. You still have the benefit of preserving hand written code, but you gain the ability to generated behaviour.

Actually I'm very much looking forward to the next DNR. Kathleen Dollard is speaking and no doubt code generation will be a major topic. I'm sure she would be much more eloquent at making the above point than me!

BBC Podcasting Trial

Tim Ensor — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 15:08:00 GMT

The BBC is Podcasting! I'm a fan of DNR, and think that more good quality podcasts ar ea Good Thing. The BBC is only trialing it at the moment so I guess the more we use it the more likely it is to be continued and extended.

Posting on here not goign as planned. Never got around to following up the Harrogate thing... must try harder!

Tech Roadshow

Tim Ensor — Tue, 31 May 2005 20:51:00 GMT

Off to the Free Harrogate Microsoft Tech Roadshow tomorrow and Thursday. I'm quite looking forwards to it! Microsoft don’t get oop north very often, and I have constant envy of a friend of mine based in London who is forever going to various courses, functions, events, etc.

This is actually a bugbear of mine. In the US and Canada, events seem to be spread out a lot more. I know the UK is very south-east based, and yes geographically its not that big, but we seem to have a very large developer community for the population. Surely us poor Northerners deserve a bit more of Microsoft’s love?

Anyway, I have a horrible fear it will basically be a 2 day advert for VS 2005, but I intend to go to enjoy it. If nothing else there will be a nice chance to network with other geeks on the Wednesday :-)

Heard on the radio this morning...

Tim Ensor — Wed, 25 May 2005 21:23:00 GMT

Turns out that , at the end of WWII, us Brits assassinated Himler before the Yanks could interrogate him. History up to this point has it that he committed suicide before being turned over to the Yanks for interrogation and the Nuremburg trials.

Question has to be – why? There is a theory it’s because the British government were negotiating with him and they didn’t want the US to find out, because it would have been embarrassing. Other historians point out that doesn't stack up, as everyone was negotiating with everyone else during the war anyway, and this would be no more or less embarrassing than any of the other negotiations.

My theory? We got the secrets of making zombies out of him and then got rid of him. One day I’ll post the précis for my film idea here – Nazis vs Zombies. At last! My two favourite trashy cinema forces of evil, slugging it out.

Blogging

Tim Ensor — Mon, 23 May 2005 21:18:00 GMT

OK, so I decided to start a Blog.

I have no idea how this is going to go, or indeed if it will go. The basic idea I suppose is to ramble about a series of topics that affect me, so I’m going to try and split the thing in to three streams:

Stuff about me and my life. This will mainly be mindless guff about what has happened to me in the past and will probably be of little interest to people who don’t already know me.

Observations on the world about me. I can see that this will end up mostly be me getting cross about stuff I have heard on the radio on the way in to work. My main source of the days rant topics is the Today programme on Radio 4. I know it is never good to rely on a single source, but I would say if you had to rely on one single soure, this is probably the best one. Hopefully I will be able to put my own filter on things though.

Tech stuff. This might end up being me dribbling over new gadgets I cant have, but I will hopefully try and do some useful stuff. I am no guru. I don’t have any amazing new insights in to how you should be coding. But hopefully I can have some ideas I can share, and maybe point people at stuff I consider interesting.

What I DONT want this blog to become is what so many end up becoming - just a collection of links pointing people at the latest post by someone else’s blog you've probably already read. But it probably will, because most do.

Tim