jaybaz [MS] WebLog

In What are my Goals? , Jim asked : How do you plan to "Develop a culture of energy, productivity, and learning on the team"? One of the activities I have in mind is a reoccurring Refactoring Party. It works like this: Each week we come...

In my previous post , I said: “Unfortunately, language readability is often at odds with writability.” And “Generic method type parameters are inferred from the concrete parameters” Here’s what I’m...

A question came up on the Yahoo! Groups Refactoring Group about what language design would be best to support Refactoring. We think about this quite a bit, but usually we phrase the question more generally: What language design would make...

Dru sent me a mail via this blog containing only this text: Does it generate x86 or CLR only? I can't be sure that this isn't a troll, so I'm posting this blog. Dru, what's up? What are you talking about?

In my last post , I wrote: “ Debugging information (pdb). Set with ‘csc /debug[+|-]’. It doesn’t affect codegen, so it’s really not very interesting.” In my opinion, this should always be on, and compilers...

Somasegar, my boss's boss's boss's boss, talks about Express .

I wish they had picked a name that was easier to say with a mouthfull of breakfast. Maybe we'll call it “Da PFC”. See Dan's blog , again. Now you have a chance to reach in to our internal bug database. Enter a bug, vote on what you want...

See Dan's blog . We've just announced the C# Express SKU. It's like a lightweight Visual Studio. It downloads quickly, and doesn't take a lot of disk space. I hope this expands the base of C# developers, and will increase the quantity of feedback we...

A question came up on an internal DL about checking if an assembly was debug or release. I’m always looking for something to spout about, and this seemed like a good one. There are 3 things people typically identify as the difference between...

Suppose I have some new crazy idea about development. I'd like to try it out on a problem big enough to be interesting, but small enough to be doable in a short time. Got any favorite small programming problems?

Object Thinking I think I'm giving up on Object Thinking. I enjoyed it for a while, and it has had an important impact on my thinking: The four fundamental assumptions in Object Culture. ( e.g. : “Everything is an object”) When...

One of the challenges in the Method class is that C# doesn’t let me apply generics as signatures all over the place. I would have liked to make the delegate type a type parameter, and somehow specify that Method.Invoke matched the signature of the...

I'm in training for all of the afternoon. I'm in an auditorium in the fabulous Microsoft Conference Center. Nice digs. The rows of seats are separated by rows of small desks, which include a small loudspeaker every 10 feet. As a result, I can understand...

I’ve read the first 7 chapters of Object Thinking. I’ve still got a lot of questions, but I’m liking it so far. Today I talked with Renaud about some of the ideas & the problems we work on. The first step, says West, is to...

Today one of my tasks is to state my goals for the coming year. I did something unusual today. I showed my goal list to the people who work for me, and asked them for feedback. This is an opportunity for them to say what we should be working on as...

So far, I've had a heated discussion of the value of TDD, an enjoyable lunch, chatted with my team, and had a meeting with some other managers about our execution of Whidbey plans. I'm now writing this blog. What I haven't done is started my review...

I did it. I cut my hair. It's long enough to rest on my shoulders, but that's about it. I also shaved the back & sides of my head, just above the tops of my ears. If I had the time, I would keep it in a french braid. But that's just too hard to...

On Eric's Blog, a debate is raging on the topic of safety on a motorcycle. It's an old debate, and we're not about to end it here. I have some thoughts from my experience, and they're too verbose to stuff into a comment on his blog, so I'm writing...

It's too hot in my house. The ventilation is pretty bad, so it just stays hot late into the evening. (In the winter it's drafy. Go figure.) My kiddo is wearing some water sandles. It's the perfect outfit for the situation. Fashionable. Not too warm...

Discussions about Windows XP Media Center Edition are always a little odd for me. They center around TV PVR scenarios. I don’t watch TV. I don’t have cable or satellite or an antenna or anything. I don’t want it. The primary reason...

I have to admit, I'm looking forward to Half-Life 2 . My wife was a tester on the Half-Life: Day One. She had to play through with only a crowbar, because they hadn't finished coding up the firearms or first-aid stations. Even when they added the pistol...

I wish that .CPLs and .MSCs were smarter about normal users. I want to be a normal user, open a Control Panel applet , and have it prompt me for credentials if needed. Same thing for the administrative tools. Here's what I do instead. I create a...

If you want to user Windows Terminal Services, Microsoft says you need a server OS . Seems like overkill. I don't need my Windows XP-based email machine to support 500 concurrent users. I shouldn't need a licensing server & a $1500 OS. Here...

AKA “Run as non-admin”. We call it “RANU” around here, or sometimes “why would you do that?” I have a Linux background . There it seemed obvious to run as 'jbazuzi' sometimes and 'root' other times. But making it...

Actually I mean “no casts”. Cyrus says : I hate casts. They usually indicate to me that something is being wrong. However, in this case I need them because the language won't allow me to express this completely safe concept. Me too...