ASP.NET

Hiring Services and Web Developers at ArenaNet

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:06:24 GMT

Recently, I wrapped up my duties as a lead developer at myspace and headed to ArenaNet over in Bellevue, Washington. My team is hiring and we’re looking for awesome services and web developers. If you’re looking for a new challenge and would like to be part of the next Guild Wars gaming experience, check out the descriptions at:

Services Programmer

Web Developer

And you can hit me up at yow-hann at arena dot net. Hope to see some of the GWB community folks out there!

Fiddler Filtering - Back to Basics

Yow-Hann Lee — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:49:36 GMT

This is one of those things where you just get a tad lazy and forget to do; hence the title of this entry. Fiddler, like a lot of other tools (i.e. Search as an example), is generally good out of the box.

So while troubleshooting a particular item today where we were only interested in one response type, rather than going through the typical diarrhea of fiddler entries, I opted for filters. Along with the “Show only HTML” option in the Filters tab below, there is also a slew of other options to slice and dice that incoming traffic. This is one of the areas I enjoyed as the Fiddler builds progress.

If you’re looking just to ignore images (from say user generated content pages), you can just hit “Rules” –> “Hide Image Requests”.

Just like how traditional TV ad targeting is the lazy person’s way of doing targeted search ads (ok, so maybe that’s arguable), avoid laziness and target your fiddler sessions to what you really need. Anyway, that’s the back to basic of the day.

MVC Framework in ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP - Workaround for Accessing Controls in Code-Behind

Yow-Hann Lee — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:26:11 GMT

I've been meaning to post the following but only got to it just now. For those that have started playing around with the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP, you will have no doubt come across being unable to access controls declared in aspx from code behind. This is a heads up for those wanting to start dabbling in the MVC framework.

When you create a new ASP.NET MVC web project, the pages don't have a designer.cs file. In a typical web project, this is still dandy since you can access the controls by ID in code behind; the designer files are simply abstracted. However, in the MVC web project, you will get compilation errors. Instead, you could access inline. ASP.NET runtime will generate your declared controls (peek in temp dirs of your loaded modules), which explains why you can access and manipulate the controls inline.

Naturally, you may not want to do this inline. To access your controls in code behind, simply right-click on your web project and select "Convert to Web Application". And Voila!

Courtesy of ScottGu

Learning a Language...

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 12:22:59 GMT

No, it's not what you've come to expect in a GWB tech blog. No, this blog post is not about Scott Hanselman's debate of "a universally best programming language". I have recently been checking out http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com. As you will no doubt notice, it is a French .NET podcast.

Other than a stint in Quebec early in my childhood and a couple French classes in high school, I am not exaclty a Francophone. However, by listening to this series, I am hoping to combine my passion of software development with learning a language. It's a struggle but should prove for a great time. Afterall, French is the language of love!

Although to heed the advice of Steve Yegge and his point of the "one trick pony", it should really be a French podcast on Python. Stay tuned...

Seattle Code Camp 2007 (aka v3.0)

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:48:50 GMT

Around this time last year, we were fast approaching the Seattle Code Camp held at Digipen in Redmond. Well, it turns out that it will be held in the same location this year on ~~November 3 & 4~~ ~~(edit: received an email from the organizer with updated dates. It will now be hold on Nov 17 & 18) (edit: received another email saying that this would be postponed to January sometime...TBD)~~ (edit v3: Seattle Code Camp V3 will happen on Jan 26 & 27, 2008)

This was a great event last year with strong emphasis on XNA last year as it was "the new hotness". You'll be able to find my blurbs about the event last year here and here (excerpt on IIS 7.0). This time last year, there were two main differences or missing ingredients. I actually didn't have a Vista box to run IIS 7.0 and the other being that I wasn't working at MySpace yet.

Anyways, go check out the Code Camp info at: http://seattle.codecamp.us/.

Bring your enthusiasm!

Calling GWB bloggers experiences on 64bit OS running IIS 32bit mode

Yow-Hann Lee — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:14:13 GMT

As per Microsoft support, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894435, running your 32 bit ASP.NET applications in IIS on Windows Server 2003 x64 is a simple matter of flipping the bit and enabling 32 bit mode. After aspnet_regiis on framework, you should be ready to go.

Having said that, has anyone come across post production/deployment issues in said configuration?

I know, I know...what's the justification for running such a scenario? You could have an internal library that references 32 bit specific dll (native code) in which you don't have the 64 bit version of. Which leads to the next thought..why not use Windows Server x86 with PAE extensions? What are the benefits of Server with PAE as opposed to Server x64? Comments, thoughts and rants are welcome. Answers ranging from "Depending on if x and y are...you will get..." vs. general practices.

Looking forward to Task Parallel Library, aka Parallel FX Library...

Yow-Hann Lee — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 20:56:13 GMT

It's interesting to see the projects coming out of MSR. For example, back in 2005, MSR developed a C# Software Transactional Memory at: http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/Details/6cfc842d-1c16-4739-afaf-edb35f544384/Details.aspx. The goal of the library was for devs to develop multithreaded programs with shared resources without using locks.

In the October issue of MSDN Magazine, we're presented a brief look into Microsoft's Parallel FX Library. Article can be found at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/10/futures/default.aspx. In an age of multi-core processors, the software infrastructure has yet to catch up. One measure of a great API is by contrasting the amount of pain suffered by implementing with and without that resource. I'm looking forward to the CTP. This and ScottGu's recent announcement of ASP.NET MVC framework.

Marking the One Year Anniversary of Script#

Yow-Hann Lee — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:45:07 GMT

On the first anniversary of the initial release of Script# by Nikhilk Kothari, he releases Script# support for ASP.NET AJAX. I still recall initially reading about Script# on his blog last year and wondering why it hadn't been married with what was then known as Atlas. But I quickly realized that this was sprouted as a personal venture. Aside from asp.net and tools he's involved in, there is a reason why this guy is a heavyweight in the .NET world.

Quick BrainSharpener (#10) - Managing ASP.NET Session State in a Distributed Environment

Yow-Hann Lee — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:19:00 GMT

To make up for using a FizzBuzz-like question in the last entry (Hey, the title does stress "quick" doesn't it?), I will follow up with a thoughtful and practical question. This one is somewhat technology dependent but could be potentially reworded to be more agnostic.

NOTE: As an interview question, I wouldn't recommend asking this unless the candidate claims to have .NET knowledge. This usually comes in conjunction with a pure coding whiteboarding problem.

QUESTION:

Describe a couple different approaches to managing ASP.NET Session State in a distributed fashion. (You get extra points if you've never had to deal with this problem and had to come up with something on the spot. Usually, people that fall into this group are more likely to come up with unique approaches.)

A Brief Look at Online IDEs

Yow-Hann Lee — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 09:14:00 GMT

A couple years back, I remember thinking about IDEs as an SaaS. It definitely seemed ridiculous at the time, especially given that online spreadsheets were merely ideas in the works. (NOTE: I'm not saying it's a good idea even today). Also, the thought of having a Visual Studio clone within your browser was a bit much. <insert reference here to classic rule of thumb for creating a desktop driven app vs a client/server app - sorry, I came across an article, amongst a few, way back but I cannot find it now. If anyone knows what I'm referring to, please provide the link.>

Now in 2007, with a few online IDEs on the market, I decided to blog about a couple. I alluded to Yahoo Pipes and their designer in an earlier entry at: http://geekswithblogs.net/yowhann/archive/2007/02/13/106252.aspx. Also, just to add a disclaimer, this analysis excludes websites such as Try Ruby or Run BASIC which provides a quick install free environment and is aimed at getting people to try the language.

There is SednaSpace, an online IDE offered as SaaS. The online IDE was actually built in ASP.NET and the IDE is specialized to produce web apps. And surprise, surprise...the web apps that are generated are in ASP.NET =). While this is a visual programming service, there is an option to download the generated source. After examining the generated code, you quickly realize that it was not structured in a manner that can be easily maintained by developers. But then again, generated code is usually less than ideal. So most of the value in this service comes from the codeless programming aspect.

The SednaSpace designer is very much like the visual designer in VS. Unfortunately, because their aim is to completely abstract code away from the user and keep it primarily visual programming driven, there were some usability issues. Being in a less mature niches, online IDE and visual programming, does not help. And while they do have sparse online documentation at their site, their built-in help within the IDE is non-existent and under construction. (See Below). I imagine there is potential for a following once the service matures and they provide users with adequate quickstart guides and documentation.

The forms are based off of adding eventlisteners and actions to hook up to, much like ASP.NET. Logical expressions can be built using an expression builder that pops up in a separate window. Shown below is a simple graph, button and textbox with a validator (the expression being a value being <= 10).

Then there is CodeIDE (http://www.codeide.com/), which is actually an IDE for multiple languages (Perl, LISP, JavaScript, BASIC, etc). This one is more lightweight than SednaSpace but is limited in IDE features. Shown below is a simple program and its output on the right.

(NOTE: resizing your window while in CodeIDE is not preferred).

Last but not least, there is The Flex Online Compiler, which I have yet to dig into.

I am not going to rank these online IDEs; the purpose of this entry is moreso to bring awareness to a few online IDEs. While it may be possible to monetize this, I am not sure what kind of following it would have. Currently, CodeIDE and SednaSpace are free and I did some some ads within the IDE. So perhaps they intend on monetizing this in a similar fashion as other SaaS.

If the intent is to make this a paid service, it will be a long road ahead in convincing development shops let alone the enterprise of adopting this. While building even something trivial in SednaSpace, there were latency issues. Nevertheless, kudos to these guys for getting this out there. It is not something I would use right now, but it is something that seems like it was loads of fun to build as an SaaS.