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Sergey Vlasov's News Archive

February 9, 2003

February 9, 2003

February 9, 2003

February 10, 2003

I like real world statistics. Here is a programming languages popularity comparison by Tiobe Software.

February 12, 2003

February 13, 2003

February 14, 2003

February 15, 2003

February 15, 2003

February 16, 2003

February 17, 2003

February 17, 2003

I'm going to start new fun project - Rubik's Cube. Eiffel Envision + .NET + NUnit + DirectX 9.0. Tools Envy ®.

• To import new assembly go to Project Properties - Assembly References
• Eiffel mangle all .NET names (e.g. TestFixture -> TEST_FIXTURE_ATTRIBUTE). But you can see it in ObjectBrowser.
• To create class and procedure attributes (e.g. for NUnit) use something like attribute: create {TEST_FIXTURE_ATTRIBUTE}.make in indexing section.
• Not referenced classes don't participate in compilation and not included in final exe. So I forced to make reference to my test class somewhere near the root. Maybe there is the other way.

February 18, 2003

There is also Agile Data Homepage by Scott W. Ambler. Lot of useful information, but maybe bit superfluous, especially for me right now. BTW, Scott W. Ambler's Agile Modelling mailing list was my last step before diving into XP.

February 19, 2003

February 20, 2003

February 22, 2003

Cover scan and other relevant changes in Books.

February 22, 2003

February 23, 2003

February 23, 2003

Downloaded Glowcode. Looked good - small and humble. Crashed every time when starting to profile. Uninstall.
DevPartner Profiler. Integrates (hides) into MS VS. Required to build my program with special profile data. It worked for debug configuration, but failed with release build. Uninstall.
100 MB VTune. Last chance, better be good. And it really good. After I figured out linker "/fixed:no" option, rebuilt application and profiled I got my bottleneck (as usual it wasn't that I thought of) and reduced it to reasonable level. BTW, memory mapped file was approximately 3 times faster then fseek/fread in this case.

February 24, 2003

February 24, 2003

February 25, 2003

February 25, 2003

February 27, 2003

How it works. News stored in xml file. News filtering and presentation done via xsl. Cookie with last_read_id stored and retrieved by scripts and passed as parameter to xsl (because xsl can't do it itself).

• User with scripting or cookies disabled get prompt to turn it on.
• First time user with scripting and cookies enabled get introduction to CN concept and prompt to go on.
• Next time user with scripting and cookies enabled get only recent news.

February 27, 2003

February 28, 2003

February 28, 2003

March 1, 2003

March 2, 2003

Big XP projects with tens of developers are very rare. And so Martin's management experience is invaluable. Usual planning discussions on groups are quite simple and miss (as I see now) many important points. I definitely need some planning experience and then I'll read this book one more time.

March 3, 2003

March 6, 2003

March 6, 2003

March 9, 2003

3 weeks elapsed since I announced Rubik's Cube project. Time to ship something. Release 1 placed at the bottom of Code section. ebcl.dll (standard Eiffel runtime?) is 13.5 MB in size, that's why executable package is so big. You can run tests yourself from exe file using NUnit. Of course there is full source code written (rewritten from ### see my previous post) according to resume-quality and TDD principles. For all Eiffel discrepancies you should blame me (not Chet and nor Bertrand).

• Survive suspend and lock workstation events.
• Keep window form square regardless of resizing.
• Store brick mesh (brick.x) inside exe as resource.
• Antialias figure in spite of video card settings.

• Create function that doesn't require class instance <g>.
• Use for_each instead of for loop. Perhaps only C++ has such a great algorithms library.
• Read pixel from screen using only managed (.NET or DirectX) facilities. As a result I created small library in C# (getpixel.dll) based on Charles Petzold's code.
• Use pi number from library instead of hard written constant.
• Don't use explicit references to test modules, but ensure they compiled in.
• Format numbers before display.
• Store DRAWING_COLOR in array.

Well, "more features to come" and I hope to unleash power of DBC in most appropriate language.

March 9, 2003

March 10, 2003

March 11, 2003

March 12, 2003

assert(resample([0 1 2 3 4], 2) == [0 2 4])

function result = resample(input, new_step)
result = 0 : 2 : 4

function result = resample(input, new_step)
result = input(1) : new_step : input(length(input))

Instead of removing duplication we could use triangulation

assert(resample([2 3 4], 2) == [2 4], 'second first element')
assert(resample([0 1 2], 2) == [0 2], 'second last element')
assert(resample([0 1 2 3 4 5 6], 3) == [0 3 6], 'second new step')

function result = resample(input, new_step)
result = input(1) : new_step : input(length(input))

Tests pass, done.

Here is my pros for triangulation and cons against first approach:

• Novices hardly see any duplication at all.
• Simplest thing's duplication not in the code and not in the tests, but in the code + tests. I don't think we should mix it.
• What about "no code without failing test"? Remove duplication in my example isn't refactoring - it does change function behavior.
• Triangulation suitable for testing legacy code.

March 13, 2003

March 15, 2003

• Laurent Bossavit. Bright person in XP list, probably too extreme, but not on the blog.
• Brian Marick. Famous tester (in QA sense), manager of Testing Foundations with a lot of resources (unfortunately, there is almost nothing to benefit TDD developer), converted to TDD now.
• Glenn Vanderburg. He described the blogging community as "like Usenet, but with only the interesting people."

More than appropriate here a Writing as a Reflective Practitioner with Wisdom (beware unclosed header tag).

March 15, 2003

See also Top 10 tricks used by recruitment agencies!.

March 15, 2003

My projects really lack AT and I'm going to bring the customer closer to the development team. Teach her and help her create these testing scenarios.

March 15, 2003

March 16, 2003

Very interesting and easy to read paper on software economics Towards Measuring Software Value (you can hover mouse over indices to read notes) by Howard Baetjer.

Two sites about non-standard job searching techniques: JobHuntersBible by Dick Bolles author of "What Color Is Your Parachute?" and Ask The Headhunter .

March 17, 2003

March 20, 2003

    int signal_attenuation(){
        const int maxThreshold = 42;
        int result = free_space_attenuation();
        if (result >= maxThreshold)
            return maxThreshold;
        result += obstacles_attenuation();
        if (result >= maxThreshold)
            return maxThreshold;
        ENSURE(result <= maxThreshold);
        return result;
    }
    

    typedef int (*IntFunction)();
    int signal_attenuation(int maxThreshold, IntFunction free_space_attenuation, IntFunction obstacles_attenuation){
        int result = free_space_attenuation();
        if (result >= maxThreshold)
            return maxThreshold;
        result += obstacles_attenuation();
        if (result >= maxThreshold)
            return maxThreshold;
        ENSURE(result <= maxThreshold);
        return result;
    }
    

     int signal_attenuation(int maxThreshold,
                            boost::function<int> free_space_attenuation,
                            boost::function<int> obstacles_attenuation){
     ...
    

    template <int maxThreshold, class FreeSpaceAttenuation, class ObstaclesAttenuation>
    int signal_attenuation(){
        int result = FreeSpaceAttenuation::free_space_attenuation();
        if (result >= maxThreshold)
            return maxThreshold;
        result += ObstaclesAttenuation::obstacles_attenuation();
        if (result >= maxThreshold)
            return maxThreshold;
        ENSURE(result <= maxThreshold);
        return result;
    }

    class MockFreeSpaceAttenuation{
    public:
         static int free_space_attenuation() const{
            return 1;
         }
    };
    

March 22, 2003

For detection I used _CrtMemCheckpoint and _CrtMemDifference functions from Debug version of C run-time libraries. First checkpoint placed before first test and second after the last. No need to change other code or project settings. It becomes a little trickier if you want to suppress Release build warnings or wrap this API in elegant class, but doable (although I failed to get memory leak size).

March 23, 2003

Yesterday installed Cincom Smalltalk. I already have a little experience with Squeak and now I'm reading Ivan Tomek's introduction. For me the different kinds of messages and their precedence were most confusing and this tutorial clears it in a moment.

March 25, 2003

• Nobody can misunderstand that. Of course only place for books is the bookcase.
• It's very easy to check solution correctness.

Tomorrow I will promote acceptance tests first practice to direction.

March 26, 2003

One lesson for me - continuous communication is the key. Rare meetings are bad time to introduce new ideas, cause everybody have accumulated they own thoughts and want to talk more then listen.

March 27, 2003

"I don't always use TDD for throwaway code. When I don't, I almost always get in trouble and have a long debugging session. Slow learner." Ron Jeffries.

March 28, 2003

March 29, 2003

"If something (good) hurts, do it more often."

March 30, 2003

April 1, 2003

Using MS Visual Studio .NET and Visual Assist .NET for C++ projects, here is a list of functions (which use current text cursor position) that I have key bindings to:

Other important features are auto completion and syntax highlighting (VA), tabs (similar to Netcaptor or MyIE) (MSVS), templates for class/test/function files creation (handwritten wizards).

I'm now using VisualWorks 7 a little for personal project. You know "Smalltalks' IDE are best". Well, I'll say you this: default configuration is ... questionable. Different windows (9 to the moment) clutter my taskbar, no user friendly toolbar, menu, key bindings customization. Good news: there are parcels for syntax highlighting, autocompletion, tabs. Today I hacked through to add "go to class in one key" feature. Something like "change your environment".

April 4, 2003

How it works:
1. There is no "tomorrow". Free time doesn't grow on trees.
2. More early is's fixed, more early you'll start to get benefits.
3. Quality work has strong positive feedback. And vice versa.

April 11, 2003

April 12, 2003

April 12, 2003

Which approach is better? I prefer the latter. Former looks more efficient, but to solve a problem is not enough. Do we need this solution at all? Do we need toolbar, what size of the window we want, is this a right test? We should think about it and interacting with an environment is not the best way of thinking for me. Fast feedback is important, but first define the goal.

April 13, 2003

I have a little experience using Windows Media Encoder 9 and this is how it works. I also recommend to download Window Media Player 9, it required for video editing and seems to have most recent codecs. I'm using Windows XP, but theoretically it should work under Windows 2000 as well. I'm using Genius Mic-01A microphone with frequency response from 100 Hz to 10 KHz and it sounds great. During recording my Athlon XP 1.667 GHz loaded up to 100% (70% on average).

A picture is worth 1000 words, so check the bottom of Code section. There is little programming experience in that file, but you can check quality of picture and sound. You can also use such recordings for personal reflections <g>.

April 15, 2003

Without specification there is no correctness. Maybe this is the way to fight against "code first".

April 17, 2003

"... the programmers did not commit a bug. The team didn't do the right thing, it is true, but the problem starts with a missing Customer Test." Ron Jeffries.

April 17, 2003

April 20, 2003

April 20, 2003

April 22, 2003

April 23, 2003

April 25, 2003

When I first saw and tried CppUnit, the need to open test dialog somehow and click "Run" button every time I test was the reason I created my own UT framework that runs from command line and just displays assertions result in Windows MessageBox. I used the same approach creating UT framework for Clipper.

Then VisualWorks and SUnit. Lack of description in assertions is my main objection (SUnit 3.1 has descriptions, but it displays them in common launcher window and so they are ineffective). Despite that SUnit has several neat features such as time elapsed from the last successful run, number of tests and yellow background while running tests.

Definitely there are programs to automate such tasks (I even wrote one myself), for example Tasker that I'm using right now. But I think it would be better if UT frameworks developers build some interfaces (COM, command line) into the program to facilitate true one key press operations.

April 25, 2003

Two most interesting things for me in this release are BOOST_CURRENT_FUNCTION macro similar to __FILE__ and __LINE__ (it works in vc7) and Filesystem Library.

April 25, 2003

WindowsXP controls in VW 7.1 looks little inappropriate as I use classic Windows scheme. Old windowSpec of my main window failed to load in v7.1, so I recreated it from scratch. To successfully deploy I included Toolbar resources in project (it used when you have a menu in program). Also I created separate image for deployment and I hope it will lighten the process (but definitely not to the level I have in C++). Testing using ForkedUI seems to cease to work too, but now I know that mixing acceptance testing with unit testing isn't a good idea anyway and I will try to use external tool such as TestComplete.

April 29, 2003

April 29, 2003

April 29, 2003

Removed link to Joel on Software (everybody knows about him without me and it's not so interesting now). Added link to just discovered Agile Articles (lot of resources divided by categories for easy search).

Added agile-testing yahoo group (posters include Bret Pettichord, Lisa Crispin, Elisabeth Hendrickson, Cem Kaner from a testing world as well as many known leaders of agile community). Removed Boost Users group as of little value, particularly for the reader of the main Boost (developers) group.

May 1, 2003

May 1, 2003

Transaction class>>newWithAmount: aQuantity from: fromAccount to: toAccount whenCharged: aTimepointOrDate
  ^self newWithAmount: aQuantity from: fromAccount to: toAccount whenCharged: aTimepointOrDate
        creator: nil sources: Set new

newWithAmount: aQuantity from: fromAccount to: toAccount whenCharged: aTimepointOrDate
               creator: aPostingRule sources: aSetOfEntries
  ^self new setAmount: aQuantity from: fromAccount to: toAccount whenCharged: aTimepointOrDate
            creator: aPostingRule sources: aSetOfEntries

Transaction>>setAmount: aMoney from: aDebitAccount to: aCreditAccount whenCharged: aTimepointOrDate
                        creator: aPostingRule sources: aSetOfEntries
"private"
  self require:
  [aMoney isKindOf: Money.
  aDebitAccount isKindOf: ServiceAccount.
  aCreditAccount isKindOf: ServiceAccount.
  (aTimepointOrDate isKindOf: Date) or: [aTimepointOrDate isKindOf: Timepoint].
  (creator == nil) or: [creator isKindOf: PostingRule]].
  self initialize.
  self addEntry: (Entry new setAccount: aCreditAccount amount: aMoney charged: aTimepointOrDate).
  self addEntry: (Entry new setAccount: aDebitAccount amount: aMoney negated charged: aTimepointOrDate).
  creator := aPostingRule.
  aSetOfEntries do: [:i| self sourcesAdd: i].
  self checkInvariant.

Object>>require: aBooleanBlock
  aBooleanBlock value ifFalse: [self error: 'Precondition Violation']

Transaction>>checkInvariant
  |balance|
  balance := entries inject: Quantity zero into: [:total :each | total := total + each amount].
  self require: [balance = Quantity zero].

I hope nobody will call setAmount with integer money, cause [false. true.] value equals to true and precondition violation would not be noticed <g>.

May 3, 2003

May 4, 2003

Thinking about add and change reminds us about delete. Discussions about feature removal are rare and it may seem hard to do right, but in the light of this musings delete requires only to know how the program works. So delete = change - add. In other words, change = delete one thing and add another (on the other hand, delete often results in change of the other objects interconnections).

You may ask what wrong in using good engineering, it certainly can reduce cost of change to the level of new feature addition. But it requires great skills and not everyone want to invest time in education. Unfortunately, I don't see how to avoid it, except of using (fragile and limited) big up front analysis.

May 7, 2003

How XP recommends to struggle with bad habits? Not. Code test and solution any (dirty) way down. Then recall code quality and refactor. These three steps supposed to be short term pleasant and despite that good in long term too.

I want to be better developer, not simpler. Though there is a relationship.

May 10, 2003

May 11, 2003

From the shrink-wrap user point of view, looking at my programs I think the only product that was buggy enough for me is Win95, it was replaced by Win2000 in February 2000. All other programs were selected by the means such as price, compatibility and features.

From the in-house developer point of view, assuring quality (debugging and manual testing) took much of my time. Maybe it's my another personal problem <g>, but I can't throw raw code to my users. Instead I chose to study software engineering, which also supports program evolution.

(Other areas such as drivers, frameworks, languages probably have own peculiarities).

May 12, 2003

"Since there are often too many parameter combinations to test all possible scenarios, the tester must use some methodology for selecting a few combinations to test" The Combinatorial Design Approach to Automatic Test Generation.

May 13, 2003

Duties of an application testing tool

• (low level) mouse movements and keyboard clicks,
• (medium) manipulation of GUI controls (select menu item, press button, move window),
• (application level) controller API calls.

• (low level) GUI screenshots,
• (medium) text, position, visibility, state of GUI controls,
• (application level) controller API calls.

Low level operations are easiest to implement. Sometimes they have user stories behind, e.g. "status bar should indicate object name under the mouse cursor" or "draw a red circle at the top of a graph".

Application level control requires special developers work. It can be COM API, command line interface or exclusive extension.

One my project is a MSVC++ MFC app, other is in Matlab. All controls are native, so TC successfully drives them. There are extensions that allow to instrument MSVC++ program to be "open" for TC (call internal program functions from an external script), but I don't use them yet.

For test code you can use VBScript, C++ Script or Delphi Script (mini CLR <g>) inside TC. Outside you have access to all TC functions through COM. Special (.h) library allows you to cut'n'paste between C++ Script and real C++, e.g. Sys["ActiveWindow"]["WndCaption"] works equally well in the script and in the language. Very convenient.

VisualWorks applications are special. They don't use native controls, so you must use special tools. SilverMark's Test Mentor seems to be the one and only such a tool. It costs $3500, comparing to $350-$500 for TC. Anyway, evaluation version is always free <g>.

May 17, 2003

TM comes in parcels and intended to be used in development image. No support for testing deployed application, i.e. you can't test already deployed program and you can't test is everything included in deployed image during runtime packaging (I mean you can't test it automatically, manual testing is always with you)

Programming tests, main showstopper is that I failed to give UI time for message processing. Obviously, I can't write selectMenu: 'Add'. press: 'OK', because message for menu needs to be processed in UI subsystem -- then dialog with OK button will appear. Adding Processor yield or delayFor: 1000 after selectMenu doesn't help. In TM GUI shell's scenario this two messages form two steps. When TM executes them, it does insert appropriate pause. Unfortunately, I don't know how. Perhaps when running tests TM creates different thread for itself.

self varNamed: 'newsToAdd' put: (NewsItem fromArray: #(2 'April 1, 2003' 'text')).
CommonSuite runScenarioNamed: 'Add news'

TM practice is to create each assertion in different step. When unit testing, I often create several assertions in one function. Creating different step for each assertion is an additional work, but result more intention revealing. As more people work with AT and some of them may be non-programmers, it seems like a good approach.

GUI of TM itself quite ugly and buggy, while rich for running tests and analysing results. No problems during recording and playing scripts (I successfully reimplemented tests that were made using home-grown library). No descriptions in assertions. Little documentation and absence of discussions on web. All that is typical for VW.

May 18, 2003

All my ideas come from experience visiting other news resources. Most convenient scenario is when reader visit news page in exactly the same rate with it's updates (usually daily). If this is the case, news page should contain only new information. My style is different -- I can skip days, I can post several times per day and, most important, it's hard for me to post every day in the same time (but it's a good idea).

When reader visit news page more often than it updates, typical approach is to show her "yesterday news". Reading twice is a duplication that I want to refactor. Thus my Compact News (why almost nobody use it?).

When reader visit news page less often than it updates, typical approach is don't think about this case. Web top posters must die. Anti chronological order in news is like code before test. Thus again my Compact News where order is correct.

There is also first time visitors which interested in archives. Why typical archives are also in anti chronological order???

Here is my design. Main News page contains news for last month (32 days) in most simple (ac) form. Compact News page contains news for last two weeks (15 days). Archive page contains all news since the beginning. Permanent link to Archive is at the bottom of News page.

Perhaps I'll add more features later. Your ideas will be highly appreciated.

May 20, 2003

Basic idea is that given precondition function obliged to satisfy its postcondition. It makes interfaces very explicit and robust. Client knows what to prepare for function call and what a result will be. Supplier can rely on precondition that simplify its job to single responsibility.

For me DBC is the next big step after TDD (which in turn occurred 1.5 years ago). They have much in common: drive design before code, require some time practicing to comprehend, document code. But while TDD is deductive approach (by example), DBC is inductive (by specification). And as both specification and customer tests required for software product, DBC and TDD both help developer build correct solution.

See also this more detailed introduction to design by contract. But more importantly try it for yourself. Precondition checks are most valuable and don't require anything from the language. Postconditions harder to formulate and often TDD solution more simple.

1. For my Matlab project I wrote a function that snaps current mouse coordinates over graphic to data points. This function was thoroughly TDD tested with presumption that graphic's data (signal in time or spectrum) starts from 0. Later we added new type of graphic (autocorrelation function) that spans time interval from -T to T. It took some time to realize that cursor coordinates are now wrong and localize the problem. If I had explicitly written down precondition, I would immediately got error pointing to my (too restricted) function.

2. For my Smalltalk project I wrote a function for substring replacement. Presumption was that source string must contain substring to replace. Then I by mistake (wrong cut'n'past) passed to this function variable news instead of news_xml. Result was an internal VW library assertion and I spend some time to figure out that problem not in my function, but in caller. Again, if I had explicitly written down precondition it would been obvious immediately.

May 27, 2003

Today I killed the Bug which for two weeks terrorized our development team. Steps to reproduce problem were known and easy to follow (it occurred during program startup), but bug appeared only once in 10 to 20 runs when it knows we were hunting (and once in every 2-3 runs when we tried to work <g>).

As I discovered, the key was in mouse movement. If you move mouse over forming window, mouse move handler facing absence of (not yet created) principal objects wreak havoc. Actually, bug (unexpected axes object) was side effect of query gca command. gca returns current axes object and, if there is no axes yet, it creates one. The and clause is documented behaviour, but obviously I were not aware of it.

• Don't blame other vendors, better check your own code. Rare appearance of the bug led me to the thoughts of bad synchronization between Matlab GUI processing and background calculations.
• Improve error handling. Every command can fail and you need to study how and why.
• Check message handlers. They work might start earlier and finish later than lifetime of other objects.

May 28, 2003

How don't waste your time developing software? Ideal development would be typing all code in a row, then deliver application (or, even better than typing, just say it or draw it to computer). No, it's an ideal programming. Development also includes gathering and analysis of requirements, which in ideal world could just be written down as well.

Requirements simplicity comparing to bloated code comes only from omissions. Large part of requirements is in implicit form (doesn't "Clean up your room" extremely vague?). Using modern programming languages and complete requirements in English, programming is a barely syntax reformatting. And I think requirements is not complete without specification of how things should be done (having requirements/specification document we should be able to run our system in manual mode without computer). Software libraries reuse is exactly the reason for chasm between users/developers and programs. Of course reuse also has a lot of benefits and programming task is to bring it to project.

Debugging is a tool to better understand program. Testing to check our assumptions. Refactoring to evolve program. Modularity to manage complexity (calling lots of H2O molecules "an ocean" is also a modularity). It seems everything is important <g>. But novices do spend much more time on the same tasks comparing to experienced developers. So, difference is only in effectiveness. Time waste as inverse of productivity again has led us to importance of skills.

May 30, 2003

Software Testing and Internationalization book by Manfred Ratzmann and Clinton De Young is a modern view on (agile) application testing. Most things are familiar, but check out Testing by Documenting ("Does it really work the way I say it does?") and Interactive Unit Tests ("call a single function interactively" when number of test cases "goes into the hundreds").

I'll use this book as a reference to well known practices in which I have some doubts.

1. "Acceptance testing as Black Box tests". Not able to test everything, we must maximize effectiveness of chosen tests and White Box testing could point out important and dangerous boundary conditions. Maintaining tests, we must minimize their number and White Box testing is exactly the tool to remove duplication from tests (if some functionality implemented through common function, we don't need to test this functionality every test case).

White Box AT blurs the line between unit and acceptance testing, improves non developers' understanding of the product and enriches requirements/specification documents. Moving AT closer to developers removes duplication with UT and could be effectively combined with UI and interunit communications testing.

2. "Use a scripting language to produce tests". I use C++. Yes, it's my native language and all that, but rumors about disadvantages of statically typed languages are big exaggeration anyway. If testing is a software development, why shouldn't we use best development practices?

June 1, 2003

• The Inevitable Pain of Software Development, Including of Extreme Programming, Caused by Requirements Volatility
• User's Manual as a Requirements Specification
• What, Not How?

• Academic Legitimacy of the Software Engineering Discipline (long, but has particularly interesting discussion on how "Programming Is Hard")
• Formal Methods: The Very Idea. Some Thoughts About Why They Work When They Work

June 2, 2003

June 4, 2003

• In C# project, you can run current (selected) NUnit test right from a VS editor. You can also run "ordinary" functions without running whole application and inspect returned values.
• In Eiffel.NET project, addin fails just opening context menu in editor.
• In Managed C++ project, exe file produced by VS 2002 has problems loading with Assembly.Load throwing "BadImageFormatException: The format of the file is invalid". So you can't use it neither with this addin nor with NUnit itself. This problem supposed to be fixed in VS 2003.

June 5, 2003

• Design for Testability by Bret Pettichord. "Practical suggestions".
• The Impossibility of Complete Testing by Cem Kaner (figures at the bottom of the paper). "Tutorial on Impossibility".
• Architectures of Test Automation by Cem Kaner. Alternatives to repetitive testing.

• Hidden Skills that Support Phased and Agile Requirements Engineering.
• Time Constrained Requirement Engineering -- the Cooperative way. Real world RE.

• Human Issues of Agile Processes position papers from OOPSLA 2001. Small insights.
• Refactoring in a Test First World.
• Integrating Extreme Programming and Contracts. One more introduction to DBC. Two remarks: DBC is not for large systems only, Eiffel does have conception of assertions in the middle of the code (it called check).

June 8, 2003

• Finite State Model-Based Testing on a Shoestring by Harry Robinson. (Introduction)
• Graph Theory Techniques in Model-Based Testing by Harry Robinson. (Supplementary reading)
• Model-based Software Testing by Ibrahim K. El-Far and James A. Whittaker. (Supplementary reading)
• In Defense of Monkey Testing by Noel Nyman. (Supplementary reading)
• Intelligent Test Automation by Harry Robinson. (Summary)

June 8, 2003

• Exposing the Fallacy of Good Enough Software
• Learning How To Be A Developer
• Quality by Design part 2: Healing Legacy Code
• In Praise of C and C++ <g>

June 8, 2003

June 8, 2003

June 9, 2003

June 9, 2003

• Managing the Bootstrap Story in an XP Project
• Building Frameworks using XP

June 10, 2003

• Misuse Cases Help to Elicit Non-Functional Requirements by Ian Alexander.
• Comments on XP - reasonable speculations.

June 11, 2003

1. Our goal to is maximize business value of the product to customer for minimal cost and time. Code quality more important for development and maintenance (minimize cost and time). Business value is in working and specific requirements.

2. In XP, design, coding and testing are single activity. We can add requirements gathering and acceptance testing, but they still don't overlap - each activity helps in unique way (BTW, this is why we can't do "less XP", but we can do "more than XP").

3. Measuring time spent on each activity is easy, but without 1 and 2 it doesn't matter.

So, PSP is too narrow for me. It talks only about coding (TSP not better) and talks about work harder, not smarter - it doesn't introduce new practices. Well it talks about reviews, but from the paper I don't see what exactly does it mean - who, when and how perform this reviews? I hope it's not as bad as in Keith's and Ron's experience <g>.

Nevertheless, I will try again to measure my time spent. I tried 1.5 years ago: for 1 month I manually recorded all activities. It requires very good reporting facility, I hope I'll create one this time. And I definitely need automatic tool, at least something like Activity Recorder. It's like profiling application - I want to see the hot spots.

June 15, 2003

June 15, 2003

But it's not the only source of fun in programming. Human beings have two source of "fun": pleasure and evolution. Evolution through creativity covered in the previous paragraph, the second part of the evolution is learning. Learning new things, there is no learning without new word.

Purpose of this reflection was to discover why I'm not so excited in development as most of the programmers (including myself in youth).

June 19, 2003

I easily give people second chance. It's very rare that there is absolutely no time or resources to correct a mistake. And once I have the final result this is the point to judge.

Thus acknowledging mistake isn't important - you will be judged by result. Acknowledging mistake sometimes presumes that you will learn from it. But, even if it true, it's "implementation detail" - there are lot of other ways to learn. Nobody care how you avoid making mistakes - just don't do them and everything will be OK.

Acknowledging mistake might have good psychological effect for the team: you signing to fix it and often free of charge, others looks smarter in contrast to you, you take off the blame from others. Making good things for the team pays back, but don't forget the cost.

June 21, 2003

• Challenges for Analysts on a Large XP Project
• Innovation and Sustainability with Gold Cards
• Learning by Doing: Why XP Doesn't Sell

June 22, 2003

Holodeck product by Security Innovation. First of all read Software's Invisible Users by James A. Whittaker (do you remember his "Test aerobics" clip?).

Brilliant ideas! Interactions with OS severely underrated. James also talks about unintended functionality, which particularly dangerous in security applications (Testing for software security, scanned 15 MB article). And it's not only ideas, Holodeck performs all low level work to assist tester in exploring an application.

From the test first developer point if view, Holodeck can be used instead of mocking OS API. Ability to substitute any function in Win32 or .NET API allows unprecedented control over OS memory manager behavior, file access and network connections. For example, using samples and external interface from the trial Holodeck version, I created two small test applications in Managed C++: first denies file access to Notepad (so File Dialog doesn't show any disks, directories or files), second runs my own application limiting memory usage to 30 MB (my program gracefully managed first use case that required lot of memory and terminated on second). According to docs, I can substitute any system call with my own function or just return arbitrary error code. "Permanent" substitution could depend on input function parameters. "Dynamic" substitution might occur during program run, e.g. you can intercept interface just before particular test case.

While Holodeck is not free and first version GUI is not very useful and we yet can't handle more conventional human user interactions very well, this is the way to go. And using Holodeck API (which is always more preferable anyway), you can solve some kind of the problems right now.

June 23, 2003

It's nice to think about general solution contrary to burdensome application specific trace messages, which cover only a small part of the picture. So, let's think.

June 28, 2003

Running as non-admin or Developer Lifestyle "...developing code as a non-privileged user and helping start a culture change on the Windows platform" seminal article by Keith Brown.

I always was a big (personal) security fan, reading and using appropriate stuff. And I always ran as a single most privileged user, but not anymore. Additional thanks to Craig Andera for popularizing these ideas.

Well, I'm not trying to sell security here. Rather I'm trying to bring out multi-user and limited privilege scenarios. Scenarios for which you should develop your applications. And, please, consider also scenario when user reinstalls OS and wants to preserve all settings <g>.

Try it one day. This is all-time experience.

June 30, 2003

It seems to be the best security blog available: joatBlog.

Top discovered link is a masterpiece called Caring for Your Introvert.

Top discovered security link is a Practical Approaches to Recovering Encrypted Digital Evidence. One clarification: quantum cryptography is to prevent eavesdropping at all.

July 1, 2003

July 1, 2003

Path: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BitBucket\NukeOnDelete
Result: ACCDENIED

July 3, 2003

Exception Management Architecture Guide. "This document discusses design and implementation guidelines for exception management systems that use .NET technologies. It focuses on the process of handling exceptions within .NET-connected applications in a highly maintainable and supportable manner."

What interesting is the exceptions in distributed applications and logging for maintainability. So, you can skip the basics (try, catch, finally) and start right from a Gathering information.

July 3, 2003

July 3, 2003

"TestComplete should be installed and used under the same account and this account should be set to administrator ... Perhaps, the situation will be changed in one of the future versions, but not anytime real soon." Bobby Edgar, AutomatedQA.

July 8, 2003

• Captured windows titles generally are quite informative. Just don't forget to press Win+D taking a break (it took me only a week <g>). BTW, descriptive window title is also a good testing and maintenance tool.
• Most interesting result is how little time I spend in front of the computer - 6 hours per day.
• It's a pity that The Bat! doesn't show current mail-list in title. My most time consuming newsgroup is clc++m, strange.
• I wrote processing program in 1.5 hours in C#. Comparing to Envision development it was such a joy: instant compile without buggy side effects, workable F1 key, ability to use other peoples code.

July 16, 2003

July 19, 2003

Found via Brad Wilson's blog.

July 20, 2003

July 23, 2003

Rubik's Cube intermediate release 2 is ready in Code section. It even solves sometime.

• The less responsibility unit has, the faster it works. So, before fighting against slow code, fight for good "one responsibility" design.
• Having lots of slow code, extract this "slow duplication" in one place. Then optimization effect will be bigger.
• Only for very specific and small modules you can afford complication caused by true implementation optimization.

July 26, 2003

Mike Clark presented Continuous Performance Testing With JUnitPerf article recently. I also did performance testing in several projects, I see a room for improvements in this generally unexplored area and I'd like to discuss it.

• Profile and detect hotspot.
• Write performance test as simple as

  start = getCurrentTime();
  executeHotspot();
  elapsed = getCurrentTime() - start;
  if elapsed > timeAllowed
     assertEquals(timeAllowed, elapsed);
  

• Get red bar, optimize until green.

Problems with profiler:

• It's external tool which you must find (or buy) for your programming environment.
• You must learn this tool.
• It runs whole application, not your particular test scenario.
• It's manual, not automatically repeatable process.
• It slows down and distorts application's original execution speed.

• Fuzzy acceptance criteria: execution time less then 1 second, in average of 10 runs, execution time of 1.001 seconds is also acceptable.
• Fuzzy execution environment: different computers, debug/release builds, background processes, asynchronous garbage collection and run time compilation.

• Support PerformanceTest attribute. Automatically measure execution time for these tests, compare measurements with previous runs, display substantial changes in execution time.
• Display result of PT as integer, not boolean, value. Not passed or failed, but took 15% or 120% of prescribed time.
• Monitor background activity (CPU, HDD usage by other processes) and rerun (mark) failed PTs which were given too little resources.
• Support set of different allowed times for different computers and build options.

• Sometimes you don't want to run performance tests (on slow computers, on unoptimized debug builds, with assertions turned on), but you always want functional tests.
• It allows for simpler setup and code of PTs.
• You may want to try different implementations or comment out parts of functionality to discover hotspot. You know this temporary result will be wrong and you don't want to trigger conventional assertion that prevents display of execution time.

July 26, 2003

July 27, 2003

July 28, 2003

July 31, 2003

"... I was convinced that being able to separate what is important from noise was the main task of an engineer, and also that of a physicist. If you take into account all the factors that are involved into a certain real situation then calculations quickly become cumbersome and meaningless. Yes, meaningless, because very big formulas are very good at hiding what is really going on.

... you have to know what to leave out of your model, what to approximate. Maybe latter you will add a little something to the model and your results will get better; but now you already understand what is going on.

... abstraction is the key to being a better engineer. At least for me. Abstraction is a process by which what is important in some situation is separated from what is not important."

August 1, 2003

"As projects increase in sophistication, programmers often need a means to better reuse and customize existing component-based software. To achieve such a high level of code reuse, programmers typically employ a feature called generics. In Whidbey, the CLR will include a type-safe, high-performance, compile time-verified version of generics which differs slightly in syntax and greatly in implementation from templates as found in C++ and generics as proposed for the Java language. Generics allow developers to author, test, and deploy code once and reuse that code for a variety of different data types with negligible performance impact to applications. The CLR implementation of generics will also reduce code bloat when compared to other strongly-typed implementations, leading to more readable and maintainable source. Microsoft currently plans to support both the creation and consumption of generics in C#.

In addition to improving code reuse, Visual C# will eliminate some chaotic chores often associated with coding, such as implementing enumerator patterns. Iterators are constructs that dramatically simplify this task. Based on similar features in research languages such as CLU, Sather, and Icon, these constructs make it easy for types to declare how the foreach statement will iterate over their elements. Rather than having to create the classes and build the state machine for manually implementing the enumerator pattern, the C# compiler will translate iterator code into the appropriate classes automatically.

Anonymous methods are practical language constructs that will allow C# programmers in the Whidbey timeframe to create code blocks that can be encapsulated in a delegate and executed at a later time. They are based on a language concept called a lambda function and are similar to those found in Lisp and Python. Anonymous methods are defined dynamically at the point where they are used, rather then being pre-defined as a named method of a specific class. Anonymous methods make some types of operations more convenient, particularly when the method signature or body needs to be changed at run time."

August 7, 2003

Porting my custom wizards from VS 2002, I wrote a tutorial Custom wizards in MS Visual Studio 2003 for C++ projects.

August 12, 2003

I think it's enough for me to solve Rubik's Cube. Simple 4 steps look ahead + intelligent weight function just doesn't work. And I don't have any interest to implement complex algorithms required .

This experiment helped me a lot to try Eiffel language. I never thought those beautiful constructions are so hard to use. Lack of free functions and even static functions in classes; inconvenient loop with increment in a body, not in a header; embarrassing implementation inheritance, not composition; no enums; slow general functions like deep_clone and is_equal.

Nice features are, of course, native DBC; general functions like deep_clone; general persistence facilities. I have plans to finish OOSC and online future Eiffel book draft, then will come the final opinion.

So far, I've put release candidate executable in Code section. Now program has separate thread for processing, less delay between moves, ability to rotate cube planes from keyboard.

August 14, 2003

Hierarchies. Top-down decomposition. Divide and conquer. Does it make access to data easier?

Look at MSDN library, what do you use to read about some function? Contents? No, it's index. Look at file system, what do you use to open usual programs or files? File manager, Start menu? No, it's TypeAndRun or desktop/quick launch shortcuts (if it doesn't hurt your aesthetics). Look at writing, what do you use to save a file? File - Save? No, it's Ctrl+S.

The point is that all these intermediate layers are slow and unnatural. Natural way is 1 to 1 mapping (if I want to turn power off, I press Sleep button, I don't go to Start - Shutdown - ...).

How it relates to programming? Well, every programmer knows that most instant access is through global variables <g>. Strive for great names, prefer direct objects collaboration.

Next time you will structure, try to look further.

August 16, 2003

User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development book draft by Michael W. Cohn. This is work in progress and it covers user stories, requirements, planning, users, acceptance testing, XP and SCRUM. Everything is quite familiar for experienced XP reader. What particularly good in this book is a classification of users and separation of users from customers, managers and other not-a-real-users.

I wish I would find something about agile documentation. Besides the code, I see a need for:

• Not all AT are worth to be automated.
• AT automation tools are not very expressive, stable and mature (I'd twice rewrote tests from self-made framework to TestMentor and from TestComplete to TestSmith).
• Best time to write AT is at the beginning of the iteration, but, quite often, best time to automate (implement) it - at the end.

2. User guide for users and developers.

3. Short presentation (overview) for newcomers.

1 and 2 directed to preserve information, while 3 - to transfer it.

Michael also wrote an interesting small article on resource validation Configuration Bugs That Bite. Not that two solutions offered looks very appealing, but the point is to pay attention to this problem.

August 21, 2003

Programming made easier. Today, without any previous experience, I've wrote windows service, that maintains performance counter representing current HDD temperature. As access to performance counters from VBScript kind of complicated, I've additionally created separate WMI class and finally got it from vbs.

Documentation, frameworks and IDE from MS are programmers' best friends.

I would publish this app, if some settings were not hardcoded for my personal configuration. If anyone has interest, feel free to contact me.

August 23, 2003

August 30, 2003

Thinking about Proof vs Test (as in recent discussion in comp.object), sure, good proof guarantees better implementation than good tests, but there are other things that we are interested in software development - primarily design (managed complexity) and system evolution.

As of today, proofs are manual, while tests are automated. That makes tests more preferable for evolving systems. Tests (TDD) also help in design, making it more simple.

Now, what about other practices? What about DBC? DBC clearly is a design technique and automated almost as well as the tests. More interesting is that DBC also facilitates automated proof and simplifies implementation along with the tests.

Looking into the future, I see the needs for more design and more flexibility. Spreading DBC principles now is the right thing to do.

August 31, 2003

• It's original (well, I haven't read many OO books) - design by contract, exceptions as broken contract, constrained genericity, command query separation, SCOOP concurrency architecture.
• It's smart - OO principles are developed with a reader, answering why this is the best solution.
• It's practical - promoting single notation (program text) for analysis, design and implementation. Devising and following "good rules" on rules.
• It's big and concise - that allows in depth analysis.
• It's well-written - indispensable quality for more than 1250 pages.

It also has some limitations - an applicability of OO in general, Eiffel in particular and year of publication (1997) in excuse.

All in all I highly recommend to read it.

Now I'm going to finish "Improving Web Application Security: Threats and Countermeasures" . Then I'll read ongoing work on future third edition of "Eiffel: The Language" by Bertrand Meyer. It's available here (username is "Talkitover", password is "etl3").

I've decided to list electronic versions of books in my Reading section. From the past reading I've included "Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows" Fourth Edition by Jeffrey Richter.

September 1, 2003

"Improving Web Application Security: Threats and Countermeasures" by Meier, Mackman, Vasireddy, Dunner, Escamilla and Murukan. Title is quite misleading, I would call it "Modern Windows Security: The Complete Guide". This book covers everything from TCP/IP to Web Services, from Registry to Isolated Storage, from ASP.NET to SQL Server, from code review to deployment. It uses theory (assets, vulnerabilities, threats, attacks and countermeasures) and practice (code examples, checklists, tools).

Why my current work doesn't have anything with security? <g> For those like me, I can recommend to read about code access security in .NET (security relations between assemblies) and DPAPI (W2K encryption API that uses the user's logon credential).

I've restricted my reading plans in Reading to a bare minimum and added my first XP book "XP Installed" to recommended part.

September 7, 2003

I found rubik solver in Amzi! Prolog + Logic Server samples. Core engine was written in Prolog by Dennis Merritt, but this product offers interfaces to other (modern) languages. So, my project got a new hope to be useful.

Release candidate 2 (see Code section) is now finally able to solve the cube, more fast and less memory hungry. The only thing left is the code cleanup. I'm also interesting how it works on the other computers - your feedback is welcome.

I'm also using NUnit 2.1 now, but there are hardly any useful features for me comparing to 2.0.

September 9, 2003

September 11, 2003

My Cube demo drops 300 frames for 60 seconds run at 100 fps. I thought it was .NET garbage collection.

There is a great tool CLR Profiler that you can read about and download from these 2 articles: Writing Faster Managed Code: Know What Things Cost by Jan Gray and Writing High-Performance Managed Applications : A Primer by Gregor Noriskin. It allows you to see life of every object in your application and it fast. When, for example, AQTime slows my demo by a factor of 10, CLR Profiler runs it almost in real-time.

CLR Profiler distributed in source code and you have to build it for yourself. I recommend to change its temporary directory from %WINDIR%\TEMP to something more appropriate (e.g. %TEMP%) and fix 2 bugs in ReadNewLog.cs (it fails when loading large logs with IndexOutOfBounds error).

You should run CLRProfiler.exe under Admin account. I recommend to turn off Calls tracing, otherwise log file size will be very large and processing will be slow. Most interesting analysis view is Time Line, which shows heap and work of garbage collector.

Well, GC is bad for applications like my demo. It could run anytime, stopping all other threads in (simple) application for 10 - 50 ms (1 - 5 frames). The only way to "control" it is System.GC class with Collect method, which doesn't even guarantee to compact heap (the most time consuming operation in GC cycle). But as GC runs only once in 5 seconds and compacts heap only once in 20 seconds (according to CLR Profiler) it can't drop more then 30 frames.

The real problem with performance turned out to be dependant on window size. With window of 400*400 pixels I had 300 frames dropped, increasing it to 600*600 I got 500 dropped frames. It doesn't depend on rendered scene complexity, so I think it's just raw video/memory/bus speed when copying frame buffers. I made a little tweak changing SwapEffect from Discard to Flip (it reduced drop count in large resolutions for 20%-50%).

Finally, I reduced default window size to 300*300 (100 dropped frames in 60 s) and considered it done.

BTW, a one way to measure frame rate in DirectX applications is Fraps utility. Although, Trace.WriteLine + DebugView is a way more flexible <g>.

September 14, 2003

September 19, 2003

September 20, 2003

When you Add Reference to your C# application in VS IDE, components in main list is not from the GAC. E.g. you may have DirectX 9 runtime installed and Managed DirectX libraries in the GAC, but you would not see it in VS.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders\DirectX]
@="F:\\WINDOWS\\Microsoft.NET\\Managed DirectX"

Then copy your dll files (like Microsoft.DirectX.DirectSound.dll) to this directory.

September 20, 2003

Reading on XP brings me less and less new information and I decided to stop. There are lot of other topics to master. My current interests are .NET, security, Eiffel and C++. I also very interested in functional languages and formal program verification, but I plan to study it later.

Refactoring, Extreme Programming and Test Driven Development are gone from my Yahoo! Groups. comp.soft-sys.matlab is gone from my Newsgroups - my Matlab project successfully finished 3 month ago.

Dale H. Emery added to Weblogs. Psychology is also one of my interest. The only reason I didn't link to Dale earlier - is that I though everybody knows about his page anyway.

Craig Andera, Raymond Chen, Brad Wilson, Chris Sells and Roy Osherove are added to .NET/Windows Weblogs. I posted links to them, so you should have your own opinion already.

Added to Security Weblogs: joatBlog - you know him, A Day In The Life Of An Information Security Officer - great investigation stories, two .NET security blogs by Ivan Medvedev and Greg Fee.

Management Weblogs section consists of two blogs by Johanna Rothman and one by Esther Derby

Two Yahoo! Groups added: Windows Technical: Off Topic - unofficial discussions in great company, Eiffel Software User list - Eiffel developers list.

3 lists from discuss.develop.com on .NET: ADVANCED-DOTNET, DOTNET-CLR and DOTNET-CX. I didn't try appropriate .NET newsgroups, but I think that signal/noise level in these lists is a way more better.

Two newsgroups added: comp.lang.eiffel and comp.software.testing (recent testing tools news).

Some blogs that I read, but didn't link: Martin Fowler's Bliki - it doesn't match my interests. Michael Feathers, Ron Jeffries and Christian Sepulveda started their blogs, but don't post much. And I recently discovered Pete Kruckenberg's Perfect World.

I don't read Troy Jessup's Security Blog, but it's the most beautiful one that I've seen.

September 25, 2003

• Next release of ENViSioN! is scheduled for next quarter.
• You can ignore "run nmake" build error.
• No assertions in release build.
• BOUNDED_QUEUE improvements.
• Multiple attributes.
• Code formatter.

September 25, 2003

// Generics:
Stack<int> stack = new Stack<int>;

// Constrained genericity:
public class Dictionary<KeyType, ValType> where KeyType : IComparable

// Implementation of iterator interface for class developers:
public class ThreeElementsList
{
        public string foreach()
        {
                yield "microsoft";
                yield "corporation";
                yield "developer division";
        }
}

public class List
{
        internal object[] elements;

        public object foreach()
        {
                foreach(object o in elements)
                {
                        yield o;
                }
        }
}

// Anonymous methods:
public class MyForm
{
        ListBox listBox;
        TextBox textBox;
        Button button;

        public MyForm()
        {
            listBox = new ListBox(...);
            textBox = new TextBox(...);
            button = new Button(...);
            button.Click += new EventHandler(sender, e)
            {
              listBox.Items.Add(textBox.Text);
            };
        }
}

September 26, 2003

September 26, 2003

September 27, 2003

It's not as powerful as .NET CAS, but certainly useful.

September 28, 2003

October 2, 2003

October 2, 2003

function_call(value1,
              value2)

October 10, 2003

It's a great complement to OOSC. OOSC concentrates on design, while this book concentrates on programming. So, read first OOSC and then this book.

As it's a language reference, it's not always very entertaining. Parts of the book are still not finished and last update was 1 year ago. But you just have no other choice. You, as general Eiffel developer, can't get this information from other sources. And it's still has quality of Bertrand Meyer's work.

I am more comfortable with Eiffel now. When I've been reading OOSC it was mostly what I can't do in Eiffel, but ETL3 shows that Eiffel is quite practical and contemporary. Eiffel was one of the first languages with support of .NET and Eiffel Software still actively develop new tools and environments, offering free editions as well.

While Eiffel community is extremely small and Eiffel job market behaves accordingly, the language is quite unique/capable to justify its study. Meanwhile, I have 3 more weeks to finish and send my Cube demo to Eiffel Class Struggle 2003.

I recently received latest Bruce Schneier's book "Beyond fear" and Harry Beckwith's "Selling the invisible". It will be my current reading for now.

October 20, 2003

I tried to use VMware 4.0.5 to tests my Cube demo compatibility with Windows 2000 and 2003. Direct3D did not work under emulation. I mean, W2K virtual machine + DirectX 9.0b retail (redistributable) runtime + Managed DirectX demo + Reference DeviceType = Can't create Direct3D device.

It's not new. The news is that when I installed DirectX SDK Summer update on virtual machine it began to work. You don't have to install full SDK, Install DirectX Runtime + Install Additional Runtime Debug Files is enough.

Then I tried the same trick with the original (old) DirectX SDK and yes, it also works.

October 22, 2003

Cube demo v1.00 binaries (1 MB). It still requires .NET 1.1 and DirectX 9. New features: fullscreen mode, wireframe mode, cube maintains proportions when changing window size, option for black background, option for software rendering.

October 27, 2003

Jeffrey Richter's "Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming". Assemblies, reference and value types, constants, properties, events, enumerated types, attributes, delegates, exceptions, memory management, reflection, fundamental patterns (convertibility, equality, cloning, disposing).

This book focuses on IL level and also describes how many of C# language constructs maps to IL code. It's very useful for non C# developers.

No threads, no interoperability with unmanaged code, no remoting. Written style is good, but nothing special.

Overall, book is good. It's my first CLR book and I've learned a lot.

.NET lost several points in my eyes - lack of good design is obviously clear. Programming in C# without generics and multiple (implementation) inheritance requires to write a lot of duplicate code. Things will be better in Whidbey (C# 2.0), but then we will also have revisited MC++ (see also Ecma International Moves to Standardize C++ Binding for CLI) and, probably, Eiffel Envision 3.0 <g>.

October 29, 2003

Bruce Schneier's "Beyond fear". Security trade-offs, examples, analysis, statistics.

If you read Bruce, you will admire this new book. He doesn't repeat himself and writing is excellent.

If you don't know Schneier and security, well, each of his books is a right place to start.

October 30, 2003

Harry Beckwith's "Selling the invisible". Service marketing.

Services are different from products (we don't use them often, they are more hard to evaluate, we can make most of them yourself).

While focusing on marketing, the first thing this book suggest is to improve your service. Then it talks about naming, pricing and other visible things which make image of service in prospect mind.

The book is very small and reminds me "UML distilled" - lots of practical and smart suggestions, touching broad topics (all very relevant) and staying in focus, citing examples and other books.

Software development is service, especially when you use XP model. That was the reason I bought this book. But it gave me more - broader view on not obvious (but important) market aspects.

October 31, 2003

"Peopleware" (Second Edition) by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister.

Book for managers, not for me.

November 1, 2003

One of my favorite tools, CLR Profiler (memory usage profiler for .NET applications) was updated recently (10/28/2003).

• Precompiled binaries included.
• Runs under non admin account.
• (Very good) documentation included.
• Doesn't crush on big log files.

• Change temporary directory in form1.cs line 1272 from %WINDIR%\TEMP to %TEMP%\profiler.
• Add File.Delete(logFileName); in form1.cs line 781 (to remove current temporary file when you chose Always No in Save Profile? dialog).

November 8, 2003

Nicolai Josuttis's "The C++ Standard Library". Utilities, containers, iterators, functors, algorithms, strings, I/O, internationalization, allocators.

Excellent balance between tutorial and reference, readability is very hight. Code examples for almost everything. Library internals revealed to facilitate understanding. Hard answers to practical questions included (components thread safety, errors in standard, typical standard implementation that you can rely on).

Some parts of the library were of less interest to me (I/O, alocators, numerics), but without this book I would not know what I don't use. German accent is noticeable and a little disturbing (for me, non native English reader).

It considered to be the best book on the subject. I concur.

November 12, 2003

I'm ready to design my own file manager.

Here it is - SurF. It's not a product (I've worked on it for only 3 days), but a statement.

November 15, 2003

• Martyn Lovell - a development lead in the Visual C++ group.
• Brandon Bray - also MSFTe.
• Jonathan Caves - also a developer on the Visual C++ compiler team.
• Andy Rich - about Whidbey MC++.

November 16, 2003

November 16, 2003

Herb Sutter's "Exceptional C++".

First of all, it's not just a reprint of C++ Guru of the Week - it's a new (very readable) book.

For such a complex language as C++, books like this one is an excellent opportunity to refresh (and correct <g>) your knowledge.

November 18, 2003

• Ability to copy multiple files to clipboard.
• Shortcut to paste files from clipboard.
• Ability to paste files from clipboard and auto rename on collision.
• Clear separation between current and parent directory.
• Ability to copy file name as text to clipboard.
• Ability to drag files to Windows Explorer and cmd.exe.
• Shortcut for file properties.
• Shortcut to call standard find files dialog starting from current directory.
• Selected items are now always visible.
• Warning dialog when trying to execute file with unknown extension.
• New Tab from immutable tab now works properly.
• First list item now selected automatically when list updated.
• File name is decorated with quotes (if it contains spaces) when placing to clipboard.

November 21, 2003

November 22, 2003

Good article on very interesting for me subject.

November 29, 2003

Overeaters Anonymous: Exceptions, Part II by Marc Miller (nice weblog, BTW).

I'll give you my example.

Test:

Allows to create directory.

Code:

void FileListView::keyDownHandler(System::Object* sender, WinForms::KeyEventArgs* e){
    if (e->KeyCode == WinForms::Keys::F7){
       NewDirectoryDialog* dialog = new NewDirectoryDialog();
       if (dialog->ShowDialog() == WinForms::DialogResult::OK){
           System::String* dir = System::IO::Path::Combine(directory->FullName, dialog->directory());
           makeDirectory(StringToWStd(dir));
           changeDirectory(dir);
        }
    }
}

void makeDirectory(const std::wstring& dir){
     System::IO::Directory::CreateDirectory(dir.c_str());
}

Now, let's focus on makeDirectory. First of all, sometimes it will not be able to create directory (because of wrong name or read-only device) and it's not exceptional scenario. So, I better change its name to tryMakeDirectory. To see how exactly CreateDirectory could fail let's look at MSDN:

.NET Framework Class Library
Directory.CreateDirectory Method
Creates all directories and subdirectories as specified by path.

Parameters path The directory path to create.

Return Value A DirectoryInfo as specified by path.

These are two type of exceptions: invalid argument exceptions and IO exceptions. Minimally designed system should make arguments requirements explicit, but with .NET we should devise it ourselves. And there is the third exceptions type: CLR exceptions (like System.StackOverflowException, System.OutOfMemoryException, System.ExecutionEngineException) which could occur any time.

Following (my) good practices I should ensure function arguments requirements (eliminating ArgumentException, ArgumentNullException, PathTooLongException, NotSupportedException), catch and process IO exceptions, let CLR exceptions go through up to the call stack.

My current code is:

bool FileListView::tryMakeDirectory(const std::wstring& dir){
     //REQUIRE(valid_characters(dir));
     bool result = false;
     System::String* error;
     try{
        System::IO::Directory::CreateDirectory(dir.c_str());
        result = true;
     } catch(System::IO::IOException* e){
        error = e->Message;
     } catch(System::UnauthorizedAccessException* e){
       error = e->Message;
     } catch(System::NotSupportedException* e){
       error = e->Message;
     }
     if (!result)
         WinForms::MessageBox::Show(error, (L"[Surf] Error creating " + dir + L" directory").c_str(), 
                                    WinForms::MessageBoxButtons::OK, WinForms::MessageBoxIcon::Warning);

     return result;
}

Explanation. PathTooLongException and DirectoryNotFoundException inherit from IOException. ArgumentException "should not be possible" as I use PathCombibe to make dir. ArgumentNullException is not possible as I pass non NULL.

But having said all that I'll probably go back to Win32API for this use-case (boost::filesystem doesn't support wide strings, yet).

Root of the problem, of course, is not in exceptions. It's just CreateDirectory should not throw anything: it should assert path validity and return error code for runtime IO problems.

BTW, Eiffel .NET developers have even more fun missing(?) direct catch filters. Code looks like:

feature try_make_directory(dir: STRING): BOOLEAN is
    local
      exception_occured: BOOLEAN
      error: STRING
    do
      if not exception_occured then	
         feature {SYSTEM_DIRECTORY}.create_directory(dir)
         Result := True
      else
         show_error_message(error)         
      end
    rescue
      if last_exception_type.is_equal("System.UnauthorizedAccessException") then
         exception_occured := True
         error := tag_name		
         retry
      end
    end

feature last_exception_type: STRING is
    local
        e: EXCEPTION
    do
        e := feature {EXCEPTION_MANAGER}.last_exception
        if e /= Void then
           Result := e.get_type.full_name
        else
           Result := ""	
        end
    ensure
        Result /= Void
    end	

December 1, 2003

• I'm more serious about relocation now (so, telecommuting part is gone);
• I have one more year of official C++ coding (total is 4 now);
• I'm very interested in .NET development (although, I didn't have opportunity to use it in production yet).

December 2, 2003

• Transparent icons support.
• Ability to move selected files.
• Ability to delete selected files.
• Dialog to create directories.
• Size view.
• Shortcut to call cmd.exe for current directory.
• Small icons for pictures are proportional to original pictures now, not always square.
• Tabs are placed on multiple lines now, not on single line.
• File watcher fires only once in a second now, not on every file change.
• Programs are run from current directory now, not from SurF start directory.
• File name is always enclosed in quotes when coping to clipboard now, not only when it contains spaces.
• Browse for folder dialog doesn't have make folder button now.
• Browse for folder dialog is opened from root now, not from current tab direcory.

Code is clear and stable now. NUnit doesn't work with MC++ assemblies and I didn't find a solution for it. So, I don't have a single unit test yet. It's quite interesting experiment to develop without UT. Although, this program has almost zero logic. Of course, I have lots of acceptance tests. And I use DBC. Assertions without doubt change my design, I don't think unit tests would change it the same way. Without UT I have to run program more often for manual testing, this is bad. But again, for GUI and API interactions UT doesn't fit well anyway.

December 9, 2003

• Concept checking - A more abstract complement to type checking by Bjarne Stroustrup. Usage-pattern approach to constrained genericity.
• Mechanisms for querying types of expressions: Decltype and auto revisited by Jaakko Jarvi and Bjarne Stroustrup. Simple type deduction and implicit templates.
• C++/CLI Overview by Herb Sutter. Nice slides.

December 12, 2003

• Color marking just created and modified files.
• Browse history.
• Time view.
• Size view now fully operational.
• Selection and focus preserved on browsing and list updates.
• Focus is always on list for keyboard friendliness.
• Shortcuts changed to more simple keys.
• Middle mouse click closes tab.
• All buttons removed (use shortcuts and clicks).
• Wait cursor while filling list.
• Control+Enter runs file in new console window.
• Control+Enter opens new tab for selected directory.
• Only active tab auto updates now, background tabs update when you switch to them.
• Fixed incorrect sorting based on lowercase file name.

December 14, 2003

December 18, 2003

Ever wondered at System.Drawing.Color names? How are Beige, BurlyWood, Linen look like?

December 18, 2003

• Textures.
• Lights.
• Ability to rotate cube sides using mouse, instead of keyboard.
• Mouse cursor auto hides on idle.
• Pink color replaced by purple color.
• Ability to resume demo after stop.
• Alt+Enter now also toggle fullscreen mode.

This release doesn't properly indicates missed cube resources.dll, hiding mouse cursor works awfully with dialogs, debug build doesn't indicate not installed DirectX and debug build has serious issues with HIGH_RESOLUTION_TIMER. But if you just watch the demo (as a good user <g>) you shouldn't care about it.

December 18, 2003

Probably it's a little early to talk about my experience in Envision 2.0, but I can't leave my article in Envision 1.2 state.

So, what I found most useful in 2.0:

1. Name overloading.
You can write create {VECTOR_3}.make(x, y, 0) now instead of create {VECTOR_3}.make_from_value_x_and_value_y_and_value_z(x, y, 0).

2. Lots of (small, but nasty) bugs fixed.

You can read more about improvements here (it is Eiffel Studio online documentation). Not news, but other useful link is External features, also missed in Envision docs.

Not all is fixed in v2.0 unfortunately:

All in all, it is a step forward. Envision team gives us free version of the real Product for .NET development in Eiffel. They are extremely responsive on (our) user feedback and just need a little more time.

December 18, 2003

Herb Sutter's "More Exceptional C++".

December 20, 2003

Scott Meyers's "Effective STL".

December 21, 2003

The "Empty Tab Bug" unveiled:

__gc class FileListView{

FileListView(){
      new System::Threading::Timer(new System::Threading::TimerCallback(this, timer_handler), this, 1000, 1000);
}

void timer_handler(System::Object*){
	Invoke(new TimerDelegate(this, on_timer_in_UI_thread));
}

void on_timer_in_UI_thread(){
	REQUIRE(!InvokeRequired);
	if (fileWatcher->any_changes() && tabManager->is_tab_selected(parentTab)){
		BeginUpdate();
		Items->Clear();
		std::vector<FilePath> entries = directory_contents(current);
		for (std::vector<FilePath>::const_iterator i = entries.begin(); i != entries.end(); ++i){
			FilePath fullFileName = path_combine(current, *i);
			add_list_item(i->cli(), file_icon(fullFileName, BackColor), file_color(fullFileName));
		}
		EndUpdate();	
	}
}

};

System::Drawing::Color file_color(const FilePath& file){
	System::Drawing::Color result = System::Drawing::Color::Black;
	System::IO::FileAttributes a = System::IO::File::GetAttributes(file.cli());
	if (a != -1){
		if (a & System::IO::FileAttributes::Hidden)
			result = System::Drawing::Color::DarkGray;
		else if (a & System::IO::FileAttributes::Encrypted)
			result = System::Drawing::Color::Green;
		else if (a & System::IO::FileAttributes::Compressed)
			result = System::Drawing::Color::Blue;
	}
	ENSURE(result == System::Drawing::Color::Black || result == System::Drawing::Color::DarkGray ||  
		result == System::Drawing::Color::Blue || result == System::Drawing::Color::Green);
	return result;
}

The question is "Why list sometimes stops to display any contents while everything else works fine?".

File.GetAttributes Method 
Return Value
The FileAttributes of the file on the path, or -1 if the path or file is not found.

The lessons are:

• System::Threading::Timer fires from separate thread, don't forget to marshal call before updating UI.
• Exception specification in MSDN is not always correct. I have seen it before and now always catch System::Exception, not the listed ones.
• Unhandled exception in separate threads goes unnoticed, unlike the one from the main (UI) thread.
• Wrapping BeginUpdate/EndUpdate to RAII object would preserve list display capabilities in case of (unexpected) exception.

December 21, 2003

"... it is usually relatively straightforward to create a header file named std.hpp that includes all the standard headers:

#include <iostream> 
#include <string> 
#include <vector> 
#include <deque> 
#include <list> 

Normally this would take a while to compile, but given a system with sufficient memory, the precompiled header scheme allows it to be processed significantly faster than almost any single standard header would require without precompilation. The standard headers are particularly convenient in this way because they rarely change, and hence the precompiled header for our std.hpp file can be built once.

Never before I heard about this approach (to precompile standard headers) from a distinguished C++ experts like David and Nico. And yes, it makes total sense. I immediately made three files for SurF: std.h, boost.h and platform.h (Windows and .NET stuff). All plus dbc.h included in stdafx.h.

I also, finally, added strings like #using <System.Windows.Forms.dll> to platform.h. It was necessary for VC++ 7.0, but 7.1 doesn't require it anymore. I added them to enhance Visual Assist intellisense capabilities, that turns out still depend on #using includes.

December 25, 2003

• Empty tab bug fixed.
• Ability to drop files on SurF.
• Ability to drag'n'drop files to directories in list and to tabs.
• Ability to switch between two tabs using Control+~.
• Focused item is now always visible on refresh and browsing.
• Browse for folder now requires double-click to invoke.
• Alpha character quick key search disabled.
• Fixed potential unhandled exception dialog when selecting non-path in browse for folder dialog.
• Fixed potential unavailability to watch for files in favorites folders when SurF startup time is too big.

December 29, 2003

• "The Common Language Infrastructure Annotated Standard" by James S. Miller and Susann Ragsdale.
• "Windows Forms Programming in C#" by Chris Sells.
• "Managed DirectX 9 Kick Start: Graphics and Game Programming" by Tom Miller.

December 29, 2003

"Thank you for participating in the beta test program for Eiffel ENViSioN! 2.0 ... We also would like to announce that Sergey Vlasov is the winner of the beta-test program. He reported the highest number of high quality bug reports. As such he will receive a free copy of Eiffel ENViSioN! 2.0."

January 3, 2004

"C++ Templates: The Complete Guide" by David Vandevoorde and Nicolai Josuttis.

But even more valuable is an application of these rules. Descriptions for Barton-Nackman trick, empty base class optimization, curiously recurring template pattern, expression templates, SFINAE principle. Lots of examples and future directions of C++ language.

January 4, 2004

"Pattern Hatching" by John Vlissides.

On the good side, this book describes Generation Gap pattern that recommends encapsulate automatically generated code (by GUI wizards, script preprocessors) in separate class and provide handwritten behavior in class that inherits from it. I think this is the right thing to do (although I can't evaluate it as I don't use wizards).

January 4, 2004

Another colors reference (now in alphabetical order, better for search and offline storage): C# Color Name Table by Joseph Newcomer.

January 12, 2004

Working software today and tomorrow

January 13, 2004

"Windows Forms Programming in C#" by Chris Sells.

Forms, dialogs, drawing, printing, controls, design-time integration, resources, data binding, multithreading, web deployment, serialization. "Parts of this book have explored sections of the framework that are completely outside the System.Windows.Forms namespace because you need that knowledge to build real WinForms applications."

"... this book does a great job of hitting a huge number of features". It was great for me as a second book on .NET (after Richter's on CLR fundamentals). Such (pure technology) overviews are very useful for starters. But if you are experienced .NET developer or reader (Chris wrote lots available online and in MSDN), this book would be a less valuable.

January 14, 2004

A Shareware Life blog by Thomas Warfield. Shareware business model, marketing, games development. One more way to make money.

January 14, 2004

SurF version 0.25:

• Default drag'n'drop mode is move now.
• Ability to open tab from path in clipboard.
• Focus after file deletion now moves to nearest item, not first item in list.
• Global hotkey for instant access to SurF.
• Ability to minimize to notification area.
• Ability to mark different running copies of SurF with different colors.
• Customization via command line parameters.
• "Original" application icon.
• Size view now supports UNC paths.
• Ability to run SurF not having its install directory as current.
• Better indication for selected drag'n'drop (copy or move) mode.
• Description for F7 key (make directory) added to readme file.
• Ability to auto open directory on file drop to it.
• About and Make Directory dialogs now don't create tabs in taskbar and are centered to main form.
• F1 now opens readme.html.

January 24, 2004

Learning from mistakes: the Don Quixote pattern story by Roy Osherove. "... no initial time estimation was expected of me. After the couple of days were over I went to my team leader and said that I am still investigating the various ways in which this would be possible to do."

It is so easy to create environment where that couldn't happen. Where you work in pairs. Where business objectives don't allow you to spike for more than a day or two. Where you can leave the problem to your subconsciousness and return to it later.

January 27, 2004

"The Common Language Infrastructure Annotated Standard" by James S. Miller and Susann Ragsdale.

• This book contains lots of reference material that is more appropriate in electronic form.
• (Good) examples are very rare.
• No good design. CLI is to low level for it or just lacks it.

It's important for application developers not to concentrate on (MS) technology too much. So, I recommend to look for a more concise source on the topic.

January 27, 2004

Static Verification and Extreme Programming paper by Peter Amey and Roderick Chapman from SPARK team.

January 29, 2004

February 5, 2004

February 11, 2004

"Managed DirectX 9 Kick Start: Graphics and Game Programming" by Tom Miller. Lots of Direct3D from points to vertex and pixel shaders, sound, input devices, 2D graphics, networking, audio and video playback.

Tom is the development lead for MDX and blogger. In this not a very big book he touched plenty of topics. Most of the book contents are comments to enclosed examples. Examples are very illustrative and essential for such a complex API as DirectX.

On the dark side, this book is small enough to go in depth. Has as a target audience intermediate level programmers - comments are often excessive. Code quality is not high - code duplication particularly bad in printed form.

Overall, it's a best MDX overview book so far. Very interesting for hobbyists. For 3D specialists it's perhaps too simple. Non-game developers probably should wait for a more mature 3D API.

February 11, 2004

February 21, 2004

February 27, 2004

• Context menu and Alt+Enter now support multiple selected files.
• Less user intrusive color marking for recently changed files.
• Added support for dragging files as shortcuts from SurF to Start Menu, Desktop and Windows Explorer.
• Multiple file names now can be copied as text to clipboard.
• Make directory dialog now displays current directory.
• tgz extension added as archive to sorting groups file.

March 1, 2004

I started from GRAPE library, but didn't find analog for Win32 FloodFill function (one of my figures is filled triangle and I don't know how to draw it other than drawing three lines and then filling the interior). So, I turned to WEL library and got the work done. I needed only the picture, but I've got also a standalone executable that I can distribute to others.

One thing that I were particularly interested to know is how external resources (such as Win32 pens and brushes) are freed in Eiffel (how it can work without RAII <g>). To my surprise it works automagically in GRAPE - I can create any number of pens without a single GDI leak. In WEL I have to explicitly call delete.

March 2, 2004

Paul Graham's "On Lisp". "This book is intended for anyone who wants to become a better Lisp programmer". Perhaps I should have took this description more seriously when I looked for a general introduction to functional programming. I had carefully read two first chapters of "ANSI Common Lisp" (also available online here), first 5 chapters of "On Lisp" and then skimmed through the rest of the book. Lisp language is very simple and "untyped" (just like Smalltalk) while I like to have help from compiler and "typed" intentions, so I didn't have an incentive to go deeper.

Overall, most material was familiar for me from modern C++ approaches like templates meta programming. Except nondeterminism, that I encountered adapting Rubik's Cube solver written in Prolog.

April 19, 2004

I'm in a process of changing my organization. I don't work for NII RES anymore and I'm going to stop my software development activities at Mechel.

April 19, 2004

A Comparative Study of Language Support for Generic Programming paper by Ronald Garcia, Jaakko Jarvi, Andrew Lumsdaine, Jeremy Siek, Jeremiah Willcock.

April 19, 2004

Eiffel ENViSioN! version 2.01 was released on March 25, 2004. I haven't tried it yet.

April 19, 2004

Proposal to add Design by Contract to C++ by Thorsten Ottosen from C++ Standards Committee Post-Sydney mailing.

April 21, 2004

Updated Links.

Web: Comeau C-C++ Online conformance test was removed (I don't use it, VS 2003 is (good) enough for me), Agile Articles and Hedgehog Archive were removed as these sites don't work anymore.

Newsgroups: comp.object's description was altered (formal methods advocated by Costin Cozianu and Steven Perryman even more appealing for me now than "classical agile" point of view); comp.std.c++ was added for discussions on C++ future; microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.clr, microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.drawing, microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.performance were added for my interest in .NET essentials; microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.managed was added for my interest in Managed DirectX.

April 30, 2004

Blogs updated in Links.

Updated links to Dale H. Emery, Raymond Chen, SecurityMonkey, Ivan Medvedev. Added link to short (blog only) joat.

Removed links to Keith Ray (trying to minimize agile reading) and Greg Fee (not supported anymore).

Added links:

General section: Ars Technica - tech news, Lambda the Ultimate - computer science, Pete Kruckenberg - networking the world, Charles Cook - computing, Darrell Norton - agile .NET, Gunnar Kudrjavets - quality software, Valery Pryamikov - different and same.

Security section: Dana Epp - developing secure software, Michael Howard - MS security.

.NET (old Windows) section: Mike Gunderloy - critical news, Joel Pobar - Rotor, Rico Mariani - on performance, Tom Miller - Managed DirectX, Fabrice Marguerie - tools and source.

Employment (old Management) section: Zoe and Gretchen - careers at MS.

Testing section: Jonathan Kohl - tester and developer collaboration, Tim Van Tongeren - testing real world.

May 12, 2004

May 28, 2004

Mail lists updated in Links.

Updated links to Boost and Eiffel Software User list.

Added SecurityFocus Mailing Lists: BugTraq - reading since October 2000, Focus on Microsoft, Firewalls, Secure Programming.

Added NTBugtraq - "discussion of security exploits and security bugs in Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP plus related applications".

Added DOTNET-WINFORMS list from discuss.develop.com.

Added discuss.microsoft.com lists: DirectX programming issues and Compiler Developers for .NET

Added Resistance as a Resource Yahoo! Group - Dale Emery's list.

January 2, 2005

For the last 7 months I'm working as Information Security Administrator at Mechel Chelyabinsk. My main responsibility is a protection of users workstations - about 2000 Windows computers, mostly connected to local network:

• I developed general security policy to streamline security efforts.
• Regularly clean different computers (that were unprotected) from viruses and other malware, configure software to prevent future infections and return computers to operation.
• Provide security information, recommendations and news for users and local administrators.
• Organize relevant security updates for OS, applications and protection software to ensure automatic updates and to simplify manual patching.
• Monitor network for dangerous activity and investigate suspicious machines.

I always have interest in security and now on this job I've got hands on experience and deeper understanding. I better realize how vulnerable we are now and how much improvements required for software to become secure.

January 5, 2005

I'm using TopCoder currently to rebuild my C++ skills and get trained on quick algorithmic solutions - it's great! Practice rooms have all tasks from previous competitions and each task has solid description and extensive test suit.

Today I participated in live competition (Single Round Match 226, Division 2) as GliderTC. Solved easiest task of three. And solved second (medium) a minute after coding phase had finished :( I have no idea how people solve all 3 tasks in these 75 minutes. Maybe I should use shorter variable names <g>.

May 27, 2005

Unusual Scanner version 0.20 - disk scanner for nonstandard (possibly malicious) files (readme). I wrote it for my current work to simplify analysis of client computers infected with trojans. I also wrote server part - it checks file for known malware using Kaspersky Antivirus engine and databases. I implemented very simple and unreliable file transfer protocol between client and server, so I don't distribute server part with uns publicly.

July 19, 2005

Experimental Rubik's Cube version 1.28 with DirectX 9.0c support. Expect stable version in a week.

Experimental SurF version 0.43. Expect stable version in a month.

July 27, 2005

Rubik's Cube version 1.30 with DirectX 9.0c support (readme). If you already saw previous version (1.20) no need to download this one.

Previous versions of Rubik's Cube was developed for the very first version of DirectX 9 (v1.0900). DirectX 9.0c was released a year ago and it includes only v1.2902 components. And then DirectX 9.0c June 2005 edition includes only v1.2906 components. Overall, end user has hard time to use applications dependent on old Managed DirectX components. This version of Rubik's Cube supports DirectX 9.0c Gold and DirectX 9.0c June 2005 edition (and it will probably fail under newer...).

This version of Rubik's Cube was compiled using Eiffel Envision 2.5 (previous version used v2.0). While Eiffel Envision 2.5 still doesn't work under non-admin account out of the box, it is fixable by coping HKCU\Software\Classes registry keys from Administrator account to HKCU\Software\Classes in User account. (Actually, it took me a week to make it work on 2 different computers, but I can't reproduce what special I did for that).

August 15, 2005

Proudly presenting SurF File Manager version 0.48. There are large improvements over previous v0.26 and you can read about it here.

August 24, 2005

"C++ Coding Standards" book by Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu. Reference of best practices in modern C++ development. The authoritative book that can officially support your personal coding style <g>. Discusses what needs to be discussed - concise and practical.

October 11, 2005

Updated resume and foto.

October 23, 2005

I'm actively using COM (ActiveX, BHO, RPC) in my current project - never used it seriously before.

Finished reading George Shepherd's and Brad King's "Inside ATL" (I was very interested in libraries that simplify COM usage). The book describes ATL wizards and classes. For me, it's too shallow for reference and too detailed for practical guide. My current objects work fine from ATL wizard's code and I don't ask for more.

November 9, 2005

November 18, 2005

I hope this is all I need to know about COM.

November 27, 2005

Breaking changes

1. std::vector<System::Byte> doesn't compile now. Changed it to std::vector<unsigned char>.

DoubleClick += new System::EventHandler(this, double_click_handler);

DoubleClick += new System::EventHandler(this, &BaseFileListView::double_click_handler);

$(IntDir)/$(RootNamespace).$(SafeParentName).resources 
$(IntDir)/$(RootNamespace).$(SafeParentName).ru.resources

resources = new System::Resources::ResourceManager(S"SurF.ResourceFiles", System::Reflection::Assembly::GetExecutingAssembly());

$(IntDir)\$(RootNamespace).$(InputName).resources

resources = new System::Resources::ResourceManager(S"SurF.ui_strings", System::Reflection::Assembly::GetExecutingAssembly());

4. System::Windows::Forms::ListView lost file colors in a very bizarre way. First, it shows files with black color. If I resize window - all colors appear normal. Until I select file - then it becomes black again. My solution was to add WinForms::Application::EnableVisualStyles() call to main.

void ColorIconUpdater::start(){
	workerThread = new System::Threading::Thread(new System::Threading::ThreadStart(this, work));
	workerThread->Start();
}
void ColorIconUpdater::work(){
	CoInitializeEx(NULL, COINIT_APARTMENTTHREADED); 
	SHGetFileInfo(file, 0, &shfi, sizeof(shfi), SHGFI_ICON | SHGFI_SMALLICON);	
	CoUninitialize();
}

void ColorIconUpdater::start(){
	workerThread = new System::Threading::Thread(new System::Threading::ThreadStart(this, &ColorIconUpdater::work));
	workerThread->SetApartmentState(System::Threading::ApartmentState::STA);
	workerThread->Start();
}
void ColorIconUpdater::work(){
	SHGetFileInfo(file, 0, &shfi, sizeof(shfi), SHGFI_ICON | SHGFI_SMALLICON);	
}

GetHostEntry("192.168.67.1").HostName == "192.168.67.1"; 
GetHostByAddress("192.168.67.1").HostName == "SV";

7. Label.AutoSize = true doesn't change actual size immediately anymore. Changed it to:

label->AutoSize = true;
label->Size = label->PreferredSize;

Nice changes

1. [System::STAThreadAttribute] now works for WinMain and I happily removed previous unreliable workaround:

System::Threading::Thread::CurrentThread->ApartmentState = System::Threading::ApartmentState::STA;

2. Added DoubleBuffered = true; for ListView that implements file list. No more flickering!

Performance changes

2. Build time is 10-20 % slower in VS 2005. SurF.exe build by VS 2005 runs all tests 8% faster in Release and 100% slower in Debug builds.

November 27, 2005

November 29, 2005

void BaseFileListView::WndProc(WinForms::Message* m){
     bool menu_msg = (m->Msg == WM_INITMENUPOPUP || 
                      m->Msg == WM_MEASUREITEM || 
                      m->Msg == WM_DRAWITEM) && 
                      *shell_menu;
     WinForms::ListView::WndProc(m);
     if (menu_msg)
         (*shell_menu)->HandleMenuMsg(m->Msg, m->WParam.ToInt32(), m->LParam.ToInt32()); 
}

if (menu_msg)
   (*shell_menu)->HandleMenuMsg(m->Msg, m->WParam.ToInt32(), m->LParam.ToInt32()); 
else
   WinForms::ListView::WndProc(m);

December 2, 2005

December 10, 2005

• No more flickering in file view.
• Support for Windows XP visual styles.
• More responsive interface and file operations.
• More stable startup.
• Better large font support.
• Sharper icons for up and current directories.
• Slower file view redraw speed.

December 10, 2005

I developed following template to correctly use autoscaling:

1. Create all controls and Controls->Add them.
2. Autoscale form based on current font.
3. Setup controls (as they know now about nonstandard font).

WinForms::Button* connect_as = new WinForms::Button();
Controls->Add(connect_as);

ClientSize = System::Drawing::Size(400, 200);
AutoScaleDimensions = System::Drawing::SizeF(6, 13);
AutoScaleMode = WinForms::AutoScaleMode::Font;

connect_as->AutoSize = true;
connect_as->Text = S"Connect as...";
connect_as->Location = System::Drawing::Point(10, 10);
connect_as->Click += new System::EventHandler(this, &SelectShareDialog::on_connect_as);

December 10, 2005

Bug, feature? Where to report?

December 10, 2005

• Rename, Replace Literal;
• Extract Method, Modify Parameters, Pull Up to Super Class, Create Standard Methods;
• Encapsulate Field, Convert Local to Field, Convert Global to Static Field, Convert Static to Instance Method;
• Push Down to Derived Class, Extract Class, Extract Super Class, Move Static Field, Move Method.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. I managed to apply Rename, Replace Literal and Extract Method to empty native Win32 project, but nothing more complex - inclusion of <iostream> breaks SlickEdit, using SlickEdit on C++/CLI project fails, Move Method refactoring fails.

December 13, 2005

• Rename, Introduce variable;
• Encapsulate member variable, Extract function, Change function signature;
• Push down members, Pull up members, Extract superclass.

December 13, 2005

It's possible to create malformed data file that will lead to access violation when loaded using CArchive MFC class (Bug Details).

December 14, 2005

And you can't copy comctl32.dll from XP to 2000 as it depends on other XP system components (like kernel32.dll).

December 14, 2005

December 18, 2005

Once I developed for Managed DirectX without SDK using only Runtime Components and I thought maybe it will work for Avalon too. I installed WinFX November CTP Runtime Components - entire package is 43 MB, web install for my system is 16 MB. Tried Chris Sells examples and found that I can't change XAML even for C# without SDK.

December 21, 2005

December 25, 2005

January 3, 2006

Highly recommended.

January 15, 2006

I'm a strong believer in multi-paradigm programming. Wish to have time to write something big in Prolog and Haskel...

February 18, 2006

• Added edit dialogs and per user persistence for general settings, favorites and startup directories.
• Added toolbar and improved menu look.
• Added keyboard shortcut Shift+F10 for context menu.
• Added keyboard shortcut F3 and File menu item for Search.
• Added what's new page.
• Fixed problems with canceling rename of read only file and trying to rename file giving new name with slash character.
• Fixed problem with new directory creation given invalid new directory name (e.g. "\\").
• Added workaround to show recently attached USB disks - reopen Browse For Folder dialog.
• Added homepage link to readme page.

May 7, 2006

• Added "Add to favorites" and "Add to startup directories" menu items.
• Added "Select with same extension" and "Select with same name" menu items.
• Improved file colors and icons loading (more work is performed in background now with more threads).
• Added tooltips for situations when menu action can not be performed.
• Reduced delay to show final size view results.
• Replaced most of message boxes with tooltips, disabled OK dialog buttons until valid input.
• Replaced OK buttons with action verbs.
• Made all dialogs resizable.
• Added explicit checkbox for connecting to selected share on server.
• Updated parent directory and current directory icons in file list view.
• Added icons to dialogs.
• Added link to Russian language pack for .NET Framework 2.0 to readme file.
• Fixed disabled settings persistence when not using global hot key.

May 22, 2006

• Fixed relative QuickPath search broken in v0.53.
• Added fade effect to dialogs and ability to configure it through General Settings dialog.
• Made cosmetic changes in dialogs controls layout.

May 26, 2006

My conclusion is that "Exceptional C++ Style" adds little value to Sutter's previous excellent work.

June 13, 2006

It's modern look at Authentication and Authorization technologies on Windows platform and beyond. WCF, InfoCard and why we need unifying identity metasystem.

June 14, 2006

I converted SurF from Managed C++ to C++/CLI last week. Conversion was rather straightforward and if I knew it is so easy I'd made it earlier. 80 percents of conversion is to convert * to ^ and new to gcnew for .NET classes. Do use regular expressions for it (but take into account that Replace in Files with Regular expressions eats last symbol in tag for closed files, so Keep modified files open after Replace All).

Find what - System\:\:{[a-zA-Z\:]+}\*
Replace with - System\:\:\1^

It will replace System::Exception* with System::Exception^ and so on.

Find what - new System\:\:{[a-zA-Z\:]+}
Replace with - gcnew System\:\:\1

Everything else could be found in C++/CLI Language Specification. Language overview clause is particularly informative.

June 15, 2006

My big personal problem was that I used same Name (SurF) in application manifest as name of exe file (SurF.exe). I knew that manifest file name should be different from exe name and named it appropriately, the problem is that during ClickOnce installation manifest file name is changed according to Name in application manifest (becoming SurF.exe.manifest)! With this foreign manifest my exe was not able to use built in manifest and "failed to start because MSVCP80.dll was not found". Now that I know about it this is not an issue any more.

mage.exe -New Application -FromDirectory surf -Processor x86 -Name "SurF File Manager" -Version 0.55.0.0 -ToFile surf\SurF_File_Manager.manifest -CertHash "01 df 59 30 ef 11 84 6b 55 ca 90 55 ba f5 93 be 07 a2 27 23"

mage.exe -Update surf\SurF_File_Manager.application -AppManifest surf\SurF_File_Manager.manifest -CertHash "01 df 59 30 ef 11 84 6b 55 ca 90 55 ba f5 93 be 07 a2 27 23"

July 2, 2006

When I wanted to add custom application icon to ClickOnce installer for SurF and mage.exe didn't have command line switch for it that was the last straw. I moved to MSBuild.

<Project DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">

    <PropertyGroup>
        <DeployUrl>use property parameter</DeployUrl>
        <SupportUrl>use property parameter</SupportUrl>
        <Version>use property parameter</Version>
        <Description>use property parameter</Description>
        <UpdateInterval>use property parameter</UpdateInterval>
        <UpdateUnit>use property parameter</UpdateUnit>

        <Thumbprint>01 df 59 30 ef 11 84 6b 55 ca 90 55 ba f5 93 be 07 a2 27 23</Thumbprint>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <ItemGroup>
        <EntryPoint Include="SurF.exe"/>
        <IconFile Include="app.ico"/>

       <Dependency Include="ru\SurF.resources.dll">
            <AssemblyType>Managed</AssemblyType>
            <DependencyType>Install</DependencyType>
        </Dependency>

        <File Include="doc\*.*">
        </File>

        <File Include="settings\*.*">
        </File>
    </ItemGroup>

    <Target Name="Build">

        <GenerateApplicationManifest
            AssemblyName="SurF_File_Manager.exe"
            AssemblyVersion="$(Version)"
            Dependencies="@(Dependency)"
            Description="$(Description)"
            EntryPoint="@(EntryPoint)"
            Files="@(File)"
            IconFile="@(IconFile)"
            OutputManifest="SurF_File_Manager.manifest">
            <Output
                ItemName="ApplicationManifest"
                TaskParameter="OutputManifest"/>
        </GenerateApplicationManifest>

        <SignFile
            CertificateThumbprint="$(Thumbprint)"
            SigningTarget="@(ApplicationManifest)"/>

        <GenerateDeploymentManifest
            AssemblyName="SurF_File_Manager"
            AssemblyVersion="$(Version)"
            DeploymentUrl="$(DeployUrl)"
            Description="$(Description)"
            EntryPoint="SurF_File_Manager.manifest"
            Install="true"
            OutputManifest="SurF_File_Manager.application"
            Product="$(Description)"
            Publisher="Sergey Vlasov"
            SupportUrl="$(SupportUrl)"
            UpdateEnabled="true"
            UpdateInterval="$(UpdateInterval)"
            UpdateMode="Background"
            UpdateUnit="$(UpdateUnit)">
            <Output
                ItemName="DeployManifest"
                TaskParameter="OutputManifest"/>
        </GenerateDeploymentManifest>

        <SignFile
            CertificateThumbprint="$(Thumbprint)"
            SigningTarget="@(DeployManifest)"/>
    </Target>
</Project>

"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\MSBuild.exe" surf\deploy.proj /property:Version=0.56.0.0 
/property:DeployUrl=http://surf.svprogramming.net/install/SurF_File_Manager.application 
/property:SupportUrl=http://surf.svprogramming.net "/property:Description=SurF File Manager" 
/property:UpdateInterval=6 /property:UpdateUnit=Days

Speaking about app icon, actually you can set it in MageUI: select icon file in application manifest and double click on File Type cell.

July 2, 2006

I planned to include deployment manifest in SurF zip archive to enable local ClickOnce installer and updates in addition to web installer and updates. Unfortunately, this scenario is not supported as application identity for ClickOnce application includes the URL where the application file originally came from. It means that if you install application from local path and then try to update it from web site you lose application settings - same application that is deployed from different URLs is two different applications from ClickOnce point of view.

July 2, 2006

• Converted code base from Managed C++ to C++/CLI.
• Created web installer with auto updates.
• Added Pictures icons and File groups settings dialogs.
• Created new home page for SurF.
• Changed application's directory structure (user settings need to be reapplied).
• Changed sorting groups.xml file format.

July 8, 2006

Lock-based programs can't provide any of the above guarantees. If any thread is delayed while holding a lock to a mutex, progress cannot be made by threads that wait for the same mutex; and in the general case, locked algorithms are prey to deadlock."

• Lock-free data structures: the stack by Julian M Bucknall.
• Lock-Free Data Structures by Andrei Alexandrescu (Part 1).
• Lock-Free Data Structures with Hazard Pointers by Andrei Alexandrescu and Maged Michael (Part 2).

July 31, 2006

July 31, 2006

"Leading at the edge: leadership lessons from the extraordinary saga of Shackleton's Antarctic expedition" by Dennis N. T. Perkins presents analysis of Shackleton's expedition accompanied with case studies of modern business leaders facing significant organizational challenges.

It clarified a lot for me.

August 11, 2006

• Added support for NTFS links and alternate data streams.
• Implemented more reliable deleted files monitoring.
• Added ability to drop files as shortcuts.
• Improved loading time and memory usage for directories with many files.
• Corrected context menu appearance when invoked using right mouse click - file for context menu is now always selected.
• Added Application key as alternative method to invoke context file menu.
• Increased display time for warning tooltips and decreased display time for information tooltips.
• Increased file view font size for larger than normal system DPI settings.

August 16, 2006

Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project book by Karl Fogel. While I do use and write free software I never actually learned about it. What makes many developers and users contribute to project? How to organize and attract them? Why OSS projects distributed and licensed the way they do? It's all in the book.

September 23, 2006

• Implemented new tree tab control.
• Added display of overlay icons.
• Fixed display of '&' character in favorites and history menus.
• Refreshed documentation, created discussions and announcements Mail List, added link to source code on SourceForge.

February 26, 2007

• Added ability to create new files.
• Added background execution mode for time consuming file list operations.
• Added drives list to favorites menu.
• Added ability to create new tab from text in Clipboard containing %EnvironmentVariables%.
• Added ability to drag toolbar and dock to sides of main window.
• Added size grips to all resizable dialogs.
• Added indication of other operations availability when dropping files on SurF and source doesn't allow default move operation.
• Added setting focus to original file/directory after creating new tab from clipboard and from parent directory.
• Maximized file information update rate in file lists.
• Changed files context menu to appear near mouse cursor when invoked using right mouse click.
• Improved directory changes monitoring reliability.
• Improved file icons changes monitoring reliability.
• Disabled accidental browsing to already current directory.
• Removed trailing slash from created directory links.
• Fixed black tabs under Windows 2000.
• Fixed failed check when reading file size from unavailable removable media.
• Fixed not selected files that differs only in case when selecting by same name or extension.
• Fixed missing recently attached USB disks when browsing for new tab.
• Successfully tested SurF under Windows Vista RC1.
• Changed default settings from "Use notify icon" and "Hide when minimized" to "Don't use notify icon" and "Don't hide when minimized".
• Added inability to drop delayed files on SurF to known limitations list.
• Made unit tests self-contained.

April 17, 2007

• Added ability to customize views (select name, icon, details, sort order, icons size and hidden files visibility).
• Added ability to create and delete views, select default view.
• Added image view.
• Fixed unhandled exceptions during manual check for updates.
• Fixed inability to shutdown Windows while SurF has open dialogs.
• Fixed file rename cancellation by file list update.
• Fixed inability to browse into special shell folders like assembly\gac.
• Fixed files changes monitoring on network shares.
• Improved fade out effect for dialogs when they are not resized and disabled fade out after resize.

November 6, 2007

• Added file search.
• Added text search integration with Desktop search system.
• Added file attributes to NTFS properties dialog.
• Added detection of special Windows Vista directory links such as C:\Documents and Settings and implemented creation of new tab for target directory (C:\Users) when browsing.
• Added extended verbs to file context menu when Shift key is pressed.
• Extended New - from selection (Ctrl+D) to open new tabs for multiple selected directories or files.
• Implemented theme painting for tree tabs.
• Improved directory contents loading speed.
• Updated parent directory and current directory icons in file list view.
• Fixed accidental status images on virtual tab.
• Documented in known limitations need to hold Ctrl while dragging files from VMware.

November 30, 2007

• Added symbolic links support under Windows Vista.
• Added ability to enter IPv6 address in Network server dialog.
• Added autoscroll for file list during drag when mouse is near edge.
• Added target directory existence check before copying files and prompt to create it if necessary.
• Added ability to reorder columns in found files list by dragging.
• Allowed processing of executable, video, audio and graphics files in text search.
• Improved slow QuickPath search under Windows Vista.
• Improved Stop search command responsiveness.
• Improved image thumbnails quality.
• Fixed occasional incorrect icon extraction for new and changed files.
• Fixed Send To under Windows Vista.
• Fixed small redraw bugs on dialogs resizing.
• Fixed loss of fade out effect after dialog moving.
• Fixed old version in web installer's manifest.

December 23, 2007

Lazy evaluation, Declarative Computation Model, Declarative Concurrency, Message-Passing Concurrency, Transactions, Relational Programming, Logic Programming, Distributed Programming, Constraint Programming. I wish I'd read it much, much earlier. Not now when I'm so immersed in C++. Not now when I'd read it only as programming concepts overview without delving in the details, without idea how I can try it in practice.

December 27, 2007

BTW, there is also Ease At Work presentation on Google Video. It has nothing with the book, but everything with Kent Beck.

December 28, 2007

January 18, 2008

• Added support for large shell icons.
• Added support for shell documents preview.
• Added link icon overlay for NTFS directory links.
• Added share icon overlay for hidden shares.
• Added automatic image rotation when EXIF orientation data is available.
• Fixed transparent icons under Windows 2000.
• Fixed unhandled exceptions during manual check for updates.
• Implemented opening shortcut to directory in new tab.
• Changed shortcut name generation algorithm to follow standard shell conventions.
• Changed found files list's automatic scrolling during search condition from not focused to no files are selected.
• Changed New - from selection to create tabs in current view mode instead of default view.
• Changed file sorting to compare names without extension.
• Documented in known limitations inability to use some characters (e.g. "(&<") for text search.

February 8, 2008

• Improved Image View performance and reliability.
• Added ability to save all SurF settings to file and load all settings from file.
• Added special Windows Vista manifest to prevent virtualization of SurF.
• Added link icon overlay for NTFS file links.
• Fixed thumbnails for emf and wmf files broken in v0.63.
• Fixed possibility of precondition failure after deleting view.
• Changed virtual tab creation rule from 3 to 2 tabs with common root.
• Changed minimal view Icons size shell documents preview applicability from 48 to 64.
• Extended picture file size limitations on views with Icons size 48.
• Documented in known limitations inability to display more than 1200 distinct thumbnails with maximal Icons size (workaround is to reduce Icons size).

February 11, 2008

MPL in itself doesn't resonate with me. The reason is probably it's more suited for library developers and I'm more focused on application programming right now. So, I can't say I've taken much from this book personally. Strong writing nevertheless.

February 11, 2008

February 21, 2008

On the one hand given logical problem was easily solved by traditional OO and functional means, on the other hand applying LP you don't have to solve it at all! I will definitely try to stretch declarativeness further in my work.

February 22, 2008

February 24, 2008

Speaking of Test Complete, I'm not completely happy with it either and plan to try Ranorex.

February 26, 2008

I would say this is exactly the amount of information open source developer should know about licenses in exactly understandable language. Excellent book.

May 2, 2008

Made little benchmark of VS 2008 C++ parallel build performance today.
Hardware: Intel Core2 Quad (Q6600) @ 2.4 GHz, 3.5 GB RAM.
Soft: Windows XP 32bit, Visual Studio Team System 2008 + Feature Pack.
Solution: Native C++, boost, std, std::tr1.

Tested varying maximum number of parallel project builds (PPB) and /MP compiler switch making full solution rebuild:

So, 4 cores give me 46/22 = 2.1 times performance boost.

May 3, 2008

See also short and entertaining Crypto Blunders online paper by Steve Burnett.

May 14, 2008

1. Rename image.png file to image.png.wav.
2. In your WPF project Add, New Item, Assembly Resource File (.resx) with Name g.
3. In g.resx tab Add Resource, Add Existing File image.png.wav.
4. Make sure View, Other Windows, Properties Window is visible.
5. In g.resx tab select image.png, in Properties window set Persistence for image.png to Embedded in .resx.

System::Uri^ uri = gcnew System::Uri("pack://application:,,/image.png");
System::Windows::Media::Imaging::BitmapImage^ bitmap = 
	gcnew System::Windows::Media::Imaging::BitmapImage(uri);

May 31, 2008

June 8, 2008

July 2, 2008

• Added regex suggestions for repetitive symbols and elements.
• Added copying regular expression and format string from Regent directly into Find and Replace dialog in Visual Studio.

September 15, 2008

• Added Microsoft Word wildcards support.
• Added explicit Perl compatible regular expressions support.

October 19, 2008

December 9, 2008

I'm gradually watching PDC 2008 videos. (Note that high-quality WMVs include video of the speakers.) Most interesting ideas so far:

Windows 7 desktop.

Code contracts.

Build time history.

December 10, 2008

1. Rands In Repose - Lots of great ideas on project management, communication, companies and work. Very inspiring.
2. James Whittaker - Looking into the future of testing.
3. Engineering Windows 7 - Windows 7 explained.

December 12, 2008

"Debugging applications for Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Windows" by John Robbins. I try to avoid debugging making source code as high quality as possible using unit tests, design by contract assertions, exception specifications and code review. And so is John! There is a whole chapter right at a start of the book about assertions, tracing, comments and unit testing. Most of the book is about development and debugging in Visual Studio .NET. When Visual Studio is not enough John describes other tools (WinDBG, Dr. Watson) and writes (C++ source code included) his own utilities and libraries (CrashFinder, Tester, CrashHandler, DeadlockDetection, MemDumperValidator, MemStress and FastTrace). The book was written in 2003 and analyses mostly unmanaged code involving good amounts of assembler. It's too low level for me right now. I still hope that I don't need such kind of techniques to find bugs in my programs. John is certainly a Windows debugging guru and excellent writer. He wrote a newer "Debugging Microsoft .NET 2.0 Applications" book and maintains an interesting blog.

December 24, 2008

Oslo is interesting. For my needs it can replace XML and SQL with a higher level "M" language.

"Four" by "Led Zeppelin" is awesome!
"Back in Black" by "AC/DC" is so so.
"Bad" by "Michael Jackson" is terrible.

module Microsoft.Samples
{
  import Language;
  language MusicLibraryLanguage
  {
    syntax Main = s:Statement+ 
	=> MusicLibrary(valuesof(s){l...

    syntax Statement = 
        al:Grammar.TextLiteral "by" 
        ar:Gramar.TextLiteral "is" r...
        => 
   { Album {al}, Artist {ar}, Rating {r} }

    token Rating1 = "terrible" | "awful";
    token Rating2 = "so so";
    token Rating3 = "awesome";

    syntax Rating = Rating1 => 1 | 
        Rating2 => 2 | 
        Rating3 => 3;

    interleave skippable = Base.Whitespace
  }
}

Module ModuleName
{
  MusicLibrary
  {
    {
      Album  = "Four",
      Artist = "Led Zeppelin",
      Rating = 3
    },
    {
      Album  = "Back in Black",
      Artist = "AC/DC",
      Rating = 2
    }    
    {
      Album  = "Bad",
      Artist = "Michael Jackson",
      Rating = 1
    }    
  }  
}

It's not first grammar parser in the world, but it can be the best. Having rich infrastructure (integration with Visual Studio, syntax highlighting, debugging, visual and programmatic parse errors reporting) and exporting data to different formats (text, XML, databases and programming APIs).

Another example is database table definition using "M". Type Friendship is automatically transformed in SQL table Friendships behind the scenes. Later type Friendship2 adds LoveIndex field maintaining compatibility with older clients.

January 1, 2009

More details on .NET contracts:

There are two static contracts verifications tools available: cccheck and Pex. Particularly useful as normal unit tests can't check for precondition violations.

Contracts and Pex are available today for VS2008 with an academic license (Non-Commercial Use Only).

January 2, 2009

CHESS - an elegant solution for finding concurrency bugs in native and managed code.

class Account { int balance; CRITICAL_SECTION cs; public: Account(int b) { balance = b; InitializeCriticalSection(&cs); } int read() { int r; EnterCriticalSection(&cs); r = balance; LeaveCriticalSection(&cs); return r; } void deposit(int n) { EnterCriticalSection(&cs); balance = balance + n; LeaveCriticalSection(&cs); } void withdraw(int n) { int r = read(); EnterCriticalSection(&cs); balance = r - n; LeaveCriticalSection(&cs); } };

DWORD WINAPI WithdrawThread(LPVOID param) { Account* a = (Account*)param; a->withdraw(2); return 0; } void RunTest() { Account* a = new Account(10); HANDLE hThread = CreateThread(NULL, 0, WithdrawThread, a); a->deposit(1); WaitForSingleObject(hThread, INFINITE); ASSERT_EQUALS(9, a->read()); }

Class Account has a bug in withdraw method. RunTest function can theoretically reveal it, but very unlikely in practice. CHESS, on the other hand, systematically and predictably tries different possible thread interleaving and on fourth attempt finds the bug and the problematic interleaving sequence.

January 7, 2009

"Applications = Code + Markup: A Guide to the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation" by Charles Petzold. Describes all WPF elements - controls, drawing primitives, XAML, dependency properties, routed input events, resources, data binding and animation. The book shows no wizards or other helper tools, only C# code and XAML markup - my respect to the author. Writing style is methodological, sometimes even pedantic.

January 9, 2009

namespace boost {
	struct thread::dummy {};
}

January 13, 2009

SHFILEINFO shfi;              
DWORD_PTR success = SHGetFileInfo(L"", FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY, &shfi, sizeof(shfi), 
	SHGFI_SYSICONINDEX | SHGFI_USEFILEATTRIBUTES);

DWORD_PTR success = SHGetFileInfo(L"dummy path", FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY, &shfi, sizeof(shfi), 
	SHGFI_SYSICONINDEX | SHGFI_USEFILEATTRIBUTES);

February 2, 2009

• Added ability to open file list view in separate window using Tab - Detach.
• Added context menu for current directory that can be invoked by right clicking on file list view's background.
• Added ability to paste delayed files (e.g. files from zip archive or e-mails from Outlook) from the Windows clipboard.
• Added Paste shortcut command to File menu.
• Added ability to load default settings from settings\settings.srfs file.
• Added ability to open additional tabs at startup providing directory or file path as command line parameter.
• Added support for Windows 2008 and Windows 7.
• Discontinued Windows 2000 support.
• Enabled overflow for main menu when window size is small.
• Enabled support for Data Execution Prevention and Address Space Layout Randomization.
• Removed UseSettingsPersistence option.
• Disabled beep on file properties in Search dialog.
• Fixed crash when searching for files in two Search dialogs simultaneously.
• Fixed crash when exiting SurF while search for files being in progress.

February 22, 2009

The book and the library are written first of all with performance in mind - lots of pointers, tasks joggling and complex algorithms. For me correctness and simplicity is more important. Fortunately TBB has really good abstractions like atomics, parallel algorithms, scalable memory allocators and the book provides decent information on how to get started.

February 23, 2009

I started from making my tests runner parallel aware. In SurF project I have 58 test suits that run after each successful build and take 11.7 seconds (each suit contains 5-20 tests). I also have 4 additional heavy test suits than I run infrequently. All 62 suits run in 25.5 seconds. Using tbb::parallel_for over test suits I reduced normal tests time to 7.25 seconds (1.6x speedup) and all tests time to 9.4 seconds (2.7x speedup) on my quad-core Q6600. Running VS 2008 TS's profiler I see that most time is spend in system CLR modules and I have no idea what I can optimize to get closer to 4x speedup. Maybe I can organize individual tests into separate tasks, but it looks like a lot of work with no guarantee of noticeable speedup.

I also used tbb::concurrent_vector - good for concurrent reading and adding elements, unfortunately there is still need for a lock obtaining begin and end iterators when another thread uses push_pack. tbb::atomic<bool> - used it for checking should_stop flag in running thread. I didn't use tasks explicitly and there is no equivalent to Asynchronous Agents in TBB.

February 24, 2009

Download WMV video (138 KB)

Instead of it, I moved all time measurement code out of TextTransitionsModel and left it to ITextTransitionsView implementation.

class TextTransitionsModel
{
public:
	TextTransitionsModel(ITextTransitionsView& view);
	void on_search_text_changed();
	void on_search_completed();
	void on_path_updated(
		const boost::optional<std::wstring>& path);
	void on_fade_timer_tick();
	void on_search_text_changed_timer_tick();
};

class ITextTransitionsView
{
public:
	virtual void text_box_append_text(
		const std::wstring& text) = 0;
	virtual void text_box_clear_text() = 0;
	virtual void text_box_font_set_bold() = 0;
	virtual void text_box_fore_color_set_fade() = 0;
	virtual void search_text_changed_timer_start() = 0;
	virtual void search_text_changed_timer_stop() = 0;
	virtual void search_text_changed_time_set_to_now() = 0;
	virtual void fade_timer_start_time_set_to_now() = 0;
	virtual void fade_timer_start() = 0;
	virtual void fade_timer_stop() = 0;
	virtual bool is_fade_time_elapsed() = 0;
	virtual bool is_search_text_changed_time_elapsed() = 0;
};

TextTransitionsModel receives updates on search text changed, search completed, path updated and timers' ticks. It doesn't know anything about real time, but it can start/stop fade and search text changed timers. It can ask the view to store current time - time_set_to_now. And it can ask the view is allotted time elapsed - time_elapsed. Plus the model controls the Full path text, font and color.

class TextTransitionsView : public ITextTransitionsView
{
public:
	TextTransitionsView() : text_box_font_bold(false), 
	fade_time_elapsed(false), fade_timer_enabled(false) {}
	virtual void text_box_append_text(const std::wstring& text) 
		{ text_box_text += text; }
	virtual void text_box_font_set_bold() 
		{ text_box_font_bold = true; }
	virtual void fade_timer_start_time_set_to_now() 
		{}
	virtual void fade_timer_start() 
		{ fade_timer_enabled = true; }
	virtual void fade_timer_stop() 
		{ fade_timer_enabled = false; }
	virtual bool is_fade_time_elapsed() 
		{ return fade_time_elapsed; }

public:
	bool fade_time_elapsed, text_box_font_bold, fade_timer_enabled;
	std::wstring text_box_text;
};

void test_bold_font(TestErrors& errors)
{
	{
		TestErrors::AutoPrefix ap(errors, L"set text and completed");
		TextTransitionsView view;
		TextTransitionsModel model(view);
		model.on_path_updated(std::wstring(L"1"));
		model.on_search_completed();
		errors.assert(view.text_box_font_bold, L"bold");
	}
	{
		TestErrors::AutoPrefix ap(errors, L"completed during fade");
		TextTransitionsView view;
		TextTransitionsModel model(view);
		model.on_path_updated(std::wstring(L"1"));
		model.on_path_updated(std::wstring(L"2"));
		model.on_search_completed();
		errors.assert(view.fade_timer_enabled, L"timer");
		if (view.fade_timer_enabled)
		{
			view.fade_time_elapsed = true;
			model.on_fade_timer_tick();
		}
		errors.assert(view.text_box_font_bold, L"bold");
	}
}

February 24, 2009

1. I used Windows Media Encoder capturing screen of a specific window in high quality. Silverlight doesn't support Windows Media Video 9 Screen codec, so I used Windows Media Video 9 codec in Quality VBR mode. Captured window's width and height should be divisible by 2 or you get "The specified stream does not exist" error.

<UserControl x:Class="QuickPathDemo.Page"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 
    Width="526" Height="134">
    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
            <ColumnDefinition Width="476"></ColumnDefinition>
            <ColumnDefinition Width="50"></ColumnDefinition>
        </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
        <MediaElement x:Name="Video" Width="476" Height="134" AutoPlay="false" Source="QuickPathDemo.wmv"/>
        <Button Content=" Play " Name="bntClick" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center"
		Click="Button_Click" Grid.Column="1">
        </Button>
    </Grid>
</UserControl>

private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
	this.Video.Stop();
	this.Video.Play();
}

<object data="data:application/x-silverlight," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="526" height="134">
	<param name="source" value="images/QuickPathDemo.xap">
	<param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="2.0.31005.0">
	<param name="autoUpgrade" value="true">
<a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=124807" style="text-decoration: none;">
<img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108181" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style: none">
</a>
</object>

February 24, 2009

• Redesigned QuickPath search.
• Added ability to configure files highlighting duration, information and warning tooltips display time using General settings dialog.
• Implemented logical file sorting (2.jpg is now displayed before 10.jpg).
• Improved directories traversal performance.

March 17, 2009

March 28, 2009

• Added automatic tab grouping.
• Created Tabs Studio icon.
• Fixed rare incorrect vertical tabs position after opening a solution.

March 29, 2009

Most revolutionizing idea for me is that batch processing (produce 500 tons of steel, then produce 500 car body frames, then paint all body frames, than assembly all cars) is a big waste of resources. Continuous production (produce steel for one car, then produce body frame, then paint, then assemble and sell it) is faster and more efficient. Batch processing is more optimal in single operations, but overall process efficiency (value for customer) is low. Continuous production is also superior in quality comparing to batches.

April 1, 2009

v0.9.0 - April 1, 2009

• Added Close All But This, Copy Full Path and Open Containing Folder context menu commands.
• Added a file path tooltip for tabs

v0.8.6 - March 31, 2009

• Added lock icon and ability to be combinable for read only files.
• Added .settings, .js, .svc, .svc.cs to the list of combinable extensions.
• Reduced extension shadow opacity.
• Documented requirement to have C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable installed to run Tabs Studio on VS 2008 RTM.

April 6, 2009

• Added registration.
• Added more icons to the tabs context menu.

April 25, 2009

June 10, 2009

System.IServiceProvider serviceProvider = 
	new Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.ServiceProvider(
		dte2_object as Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IServiceProvider);
IMyGlobalService service = serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(SMyGlobalService)) as IMyGlobalService;

July 13, 2009

Roughly speaking, a process (e.g. car wheel manufacturing) could be "stable" or "not stable". "Stable" process can be gradually fine tuned to be as precise as needed (variations in wheel diameter from one manufactured wheel to another can be reduced to be as low as needed). In "unstable" process you can't guarantee to your customer that wheel diameter is in certain limits and to fix it you need to find a variability reason outside the process (e.g. operator need eyeglasses or manufacturing machine requires oil change).

This book explains the foundations of Shewhart's control charts - very practical and industry accepted tool. Statistically processing several wheel diameter measurements you can build Shewhart's control chart that will tell you whether your manufacturing process stable or not. The book also explains why gradually reducing variation in stable process (e.g. up to 1 mm) is economically valuable even when customer accepts wider variation (e.g. up to 5 mm).

July 28, 2009

I think this book is a nice middle ground between practical WiX documentation and fundamental MSI SDK documentation.

August 6, 2009

August 7, 2009

August 16, 2009

September 8, 2009

Through the series of thoughtful experiments and introspective writing you will learn a lot about human behavior in everyday life. It resembles Cialdini's "Influence: Science and Practice", but carefully crafted experiments set this book on the next level. Highly recommended.

October 29, 2009

I've started learning about design. Highly recommended guide.

October 29, 2009

Writing is very good and despite my extensive experience working with Visual Studio I did learn new things.

November 9, 2009

Very good book that structured my WPF knowledge.

November 16, 2009

November 24, 2009

December 1, 2009

December 8, 2009

Very interesting analysis, incorporating lots of data from Google, eBay, iTunes, Netflix, Amazon and blogs.

December 22, 2009

After reading this book I've redesigned my Tabs Studio site. I changed DOCTYPE from HTML 4.01 Transitional to XHTML 1.0 Strict, created fixed width layout with borders and floated some images. Implementing new design required some additional googling, but ideas from the book created solid foundation for my work.

December 28, 2009

Excellent writing, but I'm not sure in what category to put it - business or psychology.

December 31, 2009

January 14, 2010

January 27, 2010

Too high level for that I already know and too social for my personality to act on. At the very end of the book there are six pages of "Tips from the Trenches for Startups" that was probably more valuable for me than the rest of the book.

February 11, 2010

February 11, 2010

February 22, 2010

March 6, 2010

March 7, 2010

May 21, 2010

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