jaredpar's WebLog

The 5.0 release of C# introduced the await keyword which makes it extremely easy to use Task<T> in a non-blocking fashion.  This allows developers to replace either blocking calls to Task.Wait() or complicated combinations of ContinueWith and...

  During a review of some low level bit manipulation logic a developer raised a question about the correctness of a piece of code which allowed any arbitrary byte to be seen as a bool.  No one could recall if true was defined as not 0 or simply...

As I’ve developed VsVim over the years I’ve authored quite a few reusable Visual Studio components. For the last 6 months I’ve had many of these factored out to a separate utility library and this last week I decided to publish them...

I just released an update to VsVim for Visual Studio 2010.  This is available on the extension manager in Visual Studio or can be downloaded directly at the following link.  [1] Link: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/59ca71b3...

The DebuggerDisplayAttribute is a powerful way to customize the way values are displayed at debug time.  Instead of getting a simple type name display, interesting fields, properties or even custom strings can be surfaced to the user in useful combinations...

I just released an update to VsVim for Visual Studio 2010.  This is available on the extension manager in Visual Studio or can be downloaded directly at the following link. Link: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca...

One of my favorite C++ features, and one I feel is terribly underutilized in many code bases, is the const mechanism.  It’s a great mechanism for defining dual roles for the same object type: a mutable and (ideally) non-mutable one.  But as...

Not to long ago I received an email from a customer who wanted to report a bug in the VB.Net debugger.  They believed that there was a bug invoking ToString on Integer types in the immediate window and provided the following sample as evidence i...

I just released an update to VsVim for Visual Studio 2010.  This is available on the extension manager in Visual Studio or can be downloaded directly at the following link. Link: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca...

A feature which seems to be getting more requests recently is support for seeing the return value of a function in the debugger without the need to assign it into a temporary.  C++’s had this feature for some time but it’s been lacking in managed...

I just released an update to VsVim for Visual Studio 2010.  This is available on the extension manager in Visual Studio or can be downloaded directly at the following link. Link: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca...

Earlier this week I started writing a function which needed to represent three states in the return value, two of which had an associated value. In my mind I immediately came to the following solution type BuildAction = | Reset | LinkOneWithNext...

In a recent post I discussed the apparent flakiness of extension methods and the debugger being a result of whether or not the DLL containing the extension methods were loaded into the debugee process.  Several users asked in the comment section...

I just released an update to VsVim for Visual Studio 2010. This is available on the extension manager in Visual Studio or can be downloaded directly at the following link. Link: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca...

F#’s seq<T> expressions are a frustrating item to inspect at debug time.  A seq<T> value is a collection and when users inspect such a value at debug time they want to see the contents of the collection.  Instead they are often presented...

Interop of delegate style types between F# and other .Net languages is a pain point that results from a fundamental difference in how delegates are represented in the F# language.  Typical .Net languages like C# see a delegate as taking 0 to N parameters...

Multi-targeting is a feature introduced in Visual Studio 2008 which allows developers to use new versions of Visual Studio to target earlier versions of the .Net platform.  It allowed users to target both the new 3.5 and 3.0 and the previous 2.0...

One source of confusion I find myself clearing up a lot is the use of evaluating extension methods in the debugger windows.  Users report evaluation as working sometimes but not others for the exact same piece of code.  Such flaky behavior can...

A couple of days ago I finished coding up a feature in our C++ code base, hit F5 and was met with a nasty memory corruption debugger dialog. After about an hour of investigation it appeared one of my types was living past the lifetime of it’s owning...

I just released an update to VsVim for Visual Studio 2010.  This is available on the extension manager in Visual Studio or can be downloaded directly at the following link. Link: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca...

One pattern I’ve started running into is developers explicitly throwing a NullReferenceException when validating the “this” parameter of an extension method. public static void ForEach<T>( this IEnumerable <T> enumerable, Action <T>...

Shortly after Visual Studio 2010 shipped I wanted to experiment with the new VSIX format for traditional Package extensions.  I fired up my copy of Visual Studio, ran through the new package project wizard.  But instead of a nice shiny new project...

A question came up recently on stack overflow concerning the display of newlines in the immediate window.   The author noted that any .ToString method which contained a newline printed incorrectly when evaluated in the immediate window. ...

After 4+ years on the languages team it’s time for me to move onto the next adventure.  I joined the languages team in the winter of 2006.  Since then I’ve worked on pretty much every part of the language experience including the compiler, debugger...

One item I find to be limiting in C# is the new generic constraint.   The syntax construct specifies that the type backing a given generic parameter contains a parameter less constructor.   It allows methods to create instances of generic...