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• What's The Difference?

• Simple names are not so simple, Part Two, plus, volcanoes and fried foods

  I've returned from a brief vacation, visiting friends on the island of Maui. I'd never been to that part of the world before. Turns out, it's a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, entirely made out of volcanoes. Weird! But delightful. The Read More... Posted Thursday, November 05, 2009 6:52 AM by Eric Lippert | 7 Comments Filed under: C#, Puzzles, Dialogue, declaration spaces, scope, customer service, Simple Names, maui

• As Timeless As Infinity

  User: Recently I found out about a peculiar behaviour concerning division by zero in floating point numbers in C#. It does not throw an exception, as with integer division, but rather returns an "infinity". Why is that? Eric: As I've often said, "why" Read More... Posted Thursday, October 15, 2009 6:25 AM by Eric Lippert | 32 Comments Filed under: VBScript, C#, Floating Point Arithmetic, Dialogue, Language Design, exception handling, Delphi

• What's the difference between conditional compilation and the conditional attribute?

  User : Why does this program not compile correctly in the release build? class Program { #if DEBUG static int testCounter = 0; #endif static void Main(string[] args) { SomeTestMethod(testCounter++); } [Conditional("DEBUG")] static void SomeTestMethod(int Read More... Posted Thursday, September 10, 2009 7:12 AM by Eric Lippert | 10 Comments Filed under: C#, Dialogue, What's The Difference?, conditional compilation

• The correct answer is "no"

  No technology today. I have not done a post on relationship advice in ages! Compare and contrast these two conversations: ****** Version One: Alice : Thanks for having lunch with me. I suppose you know what I want to talk about. Eric : Yeah, I do. I think Read More... Posted Thursday, July 02, 2009 7:10 AM by Eric Lippert | 13 Comments Filed under: Non-computer, Dialogue, Relationships, Psychic Powers

• In Foof We Trust: A Dialogue

  User : The typeof(T) operator in C# essentially means “compiler, generate some code that gives me an object at runtime which represents the type you associate with the name T”. It would be nice to have similar operators that could take names of, say, Read More... Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009 7:54 AM by Eric Lippert | 45 Comments Filed under: C#, Dialogue, Language Design

• A Book By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

  As you might have gathered from my previous posts on the subject, I occasionally edit technical books as a hobby. It’s nice having a hobby that pays money instead of costing money. And I always learn something from every book. Many years ago, on one of Read More... Posted Thursday, April 02, 2009 6:09 AM by Eric Lippert | 10 Comments Filed under: Scripting, Books, Mistakes, Dialogue, naming

• Preventing third-party derivation, part one

  In this episode of FAIC, a conversation I had with a C# user recently. Next time, some further thoughts on how to use the CLR security system in this sort of scenario. Him: I have this abstract class defined in one assembly: // Assembly FooBar.DLL public Read More... Posted Friday, September 26, 2008 8:17 AM by Eric Lippert | 27 Comments Filed under: Security, C#, Dialogue, Begging the question

• Method Hiding Apologia

  Here's some back-and-forth from an email conversation I had with a user a while back. Why should one avoid method hiding? If there were no advantages and only disadvantages then we would not have added it to the language in the first place. C# implements Read More... Posted Wednesday, May 21, 2008 7:34 AM by Eric Lippert | 24 Comments Filed under: C#, Software development methodology, Dialogue

• I Have A Mysterious Fifth Sense

  A little fun for a Friday afternoon. The economy must be picking up -- I'm getting cold calls from recruiters again for the first time in about four years. Today was the second (and third!) this month. However, apparently some of them are just a wee bit Read More... Posted Friday, August 20, 2004 4:35 PM by Eric Lippert | 16 Comments Filed under: Rants, Non-computer, Dialogue

• What are the VBScript reference semantics for object members?

  Basically, the rule is pretty simple -- if you want to pass a variable by reference, you've got to pass the variable, period. VBScript does not support passing object properties by reference. Read More... Posted Monday, September 15, 2003 7:36 PM by Eric Lippert | 10 Comments Filed under: VBScript, Scripting, Dialogue, Begging the question