Pete's Weblog

I've long since given up on using RichTextBox for a code editor, but while I was investigating its use I came across a number of ways to improve it's functionality. I'll present these here in a series of posts on the subject.. first up is how to speed up the control's updating, as well as adding one little extra formatting option.

Looks like it's the season for talking about exceptions. Brad Abrams discusses them at some length, and now Joel Spolsky does the same (and with almost the exact opposite opinion).

I seem to be cursed with the ability to see both sides of this issue. On the one hand, I like being able to throw an exception whenever an impossible condition comes up in running code (you know, when that if-statement you put in "just in case" goes off completely unexpectedly). On the other hand, I hate having to deal with exceptions being thrown... trying to make my code completely exception safe is very annoying.

And there's nothing exceptional about calling File.Open with a non-existent file.

Time for a little introduction/test post combo. First, thanks to Jeff for letting me start this blog.

Here's some info about me:

• Name: Peter Vidler
• Age: 22
• Job: None (emails from potential employers are welcome :) )

By nature (and education) I am a programmer. Since I am also unemployed and have lots of free time on my hands, I am currently using that time to play with C# and the .NET framework. Specifically I am most interested in Windows Forms, so you'll be mostly seeing information and links in that area here.

If you need/want to get in touch with me you are welcome to email me at pvidler@gawab.com (which may or may not filter your email so I won't see it), or p.j.vidler@cs.cf.ac.uk (which is an old university account that may go down at any time and cannot be used for outgoing mail). Or just post a comment.