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MVVM – This might hurt a little…
14 November 09 07:23 AM | Avi Pilosof | 4 Comments   

This is an attempt at a collaborative post; I’ll fill in more data if/when people make suggestions; please add comments on more problems and other/better solutions – I’ll add the links. Overall, MVVM is very attractive – but all the screen casts I’ve Read More...

Filed under: silverlight, architecture, mvvm

Real-time list filtering with Silverlight, MVVM, and PagedCollectionView
30 October 09 02:51 PM | Avi Pilosof | 6 Comments   

The Model-View-ViewModel pattern is very good for forcing clean UI code. Ideally, you want to end up with zero code in your .xaml.cs file – everything should be data-bound. As nice as this sounds, sometimes it can get so tempting to break this rule in Read More...

Filed under: silverlight, ui

Useful C# method for unit testing
16 July 09 02:37 PM | Avi Pilosof | 3 Comments   

I’m unit testing a UI that needs to show some lists in various sorted orders, and I wanted to ensure that my tests would cover that. I found this method to come in handy:   1: public static bool IsOrderedBy<T>( this IEnumerable<T> coll, Read More...

Filed under: programming

Silverlight RPG: Steel Saga
24 March 09 03:34 PM | Avi Pilosof | 0 Comments   

My friend Darren who wrote the hilarious Buddy Knavery game has released a preview of his new project called Steel Saga. http://www.steelsaga.com It’s an old-style RPG written in Silverlight, and seems quite deep. At the moment there are only two “zones” Read More...

Filed under: games, silverlight

Live Mesh Applications – whoah.
17 February 09 08:52 AM | Avi Pilosof | 1 Comments   

I’ve been playing with Live Mesh for a long time now, and have been loving it. During this time I’d been hearing about applications for Live Mesh, and while it sounded interesting in theory I didn’t really get what the point would be. Then I watched this Read More...

Filed under: silverlight, programming, mesh

Silverlight Game Contest: $5000 prize
16 February 09 09:51 AM | Avi Pilosof | 3 Comments   

The site is a little low on details/rules, but the prize seems pretty sweet: http://www.serverquestcontest.com   addthis_pub = 'avip'; Read More...

Filed under: games

Be Paranoid. Be Very Paranoid.
03 December 08 01:29 PM | Avi Pilosof | 2 Comments   

Do you maintain an application with a backend database? Does that application ever write to the database? Be afraid. The worst situation to be in with respect to the above is when a customer mails you and says: “Why is my data gone?” 99% of the time, Read More...

Filed under: architecture, programming

WPF: Allow your users to define their own styles using XAML
27 October 08 11:55 AM | Avi Pilosof | 0 Comments   

An application I’ve been working on has the vague property of “displaying items on the screen”, and a fairly unusual requirement which specifies that users be able to completely define how the items look. Our items are displayed on a timeline and can Read More...

Filed under: wpf

WPF: Supporting command line arguments and file extensions
27 October 08 11:05 AM | Avi Pilosof | 1 Comments   

Traditionally, handling command-line args in an app has been a simple case of reading arguments from the “int main()” function (or equivalent). In WPF this changes somewhat. The usual setup is that you have your App.xaml.cs, which loads your initial window. Read More...

Filed under: wpf

You’re asking for the wrong thing.
16 October 08 08:50 AM | Avi Pilosof | 7 Comments   

Just stumbled upon this article by John Dvorak titled “My Windows 7 Wish List”, and I see the same pattern as many of the other fruitless wish list articles. Maybe IHBT … As a user, the user experience (UX) is the only thing that ever matters to you – Read More...

Filed under: software

Trivial but useful extension method
30 September 08 04:34 PM | Avi Pilosof | 3 Comments   

Don’t know why I didn’t write this before; it makes code very readable. Often when you write anything graphics related, you want to constrain coordinates to window edges (for example). So a simple method: 1: /// <summary> 2: /// Ensure that the Read More...

Filed under: programming

On using Arrays
23 September 08 11:52 AM | Avi Pilosof | 0 Comments   

Eric Lippert has a great article on arrays: http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert/archive/2008/09/22/arrays-considered-somewhat-harmful.aspx   I think this is especially useful to consider if you’re writing an API. Consider not just arrays, but any time Read More...

Filed under: api, architecture, programming

Microsoft Bacon Home Edition, RC0
11 September 08 06:39 PM | Avi Pilosof | 2 Comments   

Totally unrelated to programming, but I deem this worthy of a blog post. A few weeks ago I decided to make my own bacon.   Why? Don't ask stupid questions; bacon is an axiom. How? turns out that it's actually not so complex: Buy some pork belly . Read More...

Filed under: bacon

Computer Programming isn't Art
25 August 08 01:24 PM | Avi Pilosof | 6 Comments   

(Sorry, Mr Knuth ) My uncle's hobby is building beautiful furniture from wood. I noticed something last time I spoke with him about it: He doesn't talk about a table, or a book case, or a dresser; at least, that's not what he talks about with emotion. Read More...

Back in Seattle
18 August 08 02:19 PM | Avi Pilosof | 0 Comments   

I recently came back from visiting Seattle (where I'd lived and worked for 7 years before returning to Sydney). My wife was presenting at TechReady, so I figured I'd hitch a ride and make a vacation of it. It was also a good opportunity to meet up with Read More...