Bug Babble

Bugs, debuggers, stuff

Simple VS Addin (updated)

Back during the PDC for Whidbey I wrote a post about Creating a Simple Addin. Recently I was looking...

Author: SteveJS Date: 12/21/2005

Naming threads in Win32 And .Net

When you are debugging an application with multiple threads it can be handy to have a better name...

Author: SteveJS Date: 12/20/2005

Change Debugger behavior with Attributes

Certain metadata attributes modify the stepping, breakpoint, and callstack behavior of the VS...

Author: SteveJS Date: 12/03/2005

Netmodules: Sort of like a lib

I first ran into netmodules before VS 2002 was shipped. The netmodule gave me precisely what I asked...

Author: SteveJS Date: 11/27/2005

XSLT debugging in Visual Studio

Visual Studio is a big tool. It's easy to miss some useful features. Hopefully the XSLT debugger...

Author: SteveJS Date: 11/17/2005

Edit and Continue on 64 bit Windows

Pascal writes about the joy of x64 Windows XP, and some drawbacks. One drawback is no Edit and...

Author: SteveJS Date: 11/15/2005

Make DataTips Transparent

Enhanced datatips are my favorite new debugger feature. However, sometimes you want to see...

Author: SteveJS Date: 11/12/2005

Post Mortems

I won the guess the murderer contest. Shai and I compete to guess who the real murderer is on Law...

Author: SteveJS Date: 11/10/2005

Perf Awareness is not Premature

I've found myself adding a timer to each of the unit test frameworks I use so I can see how long my...

Author: SteveJS Date: 11/06/2005

Checking the result of new is a bug in C++

At least, it is a bug in VC8. That check won't happen. Reading Larry Osterman's recent posts "What's...

Author: SteveJS Date: 11/01/2005

Tabs vs Spaces

Of course, there is only one answer to whether tabs should be allowed in a source file. The utility...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/30/2005

Data Breakpoints

The VS debugger allows two types of breakpoints. There are location breakpoints and data...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/27/2005

Stop Mid Func Eval, Nested Break States

A coworker mentioned Func Eval sounds like "Funky-val". Stopping at a breakpoint in the middle of a...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/23/2005

More hours in the day

In the summer of '94 I sketched a design for my ideal 'mp3' player. I didn't spec the compression...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/20/2005

PsuedoVariables and Format Specifiers

The VS debugger has a history of tiny but useful features hidden in the expression evaluator. These...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/18/2005

Login fun

Jeff Atwood argues that the Login dialog should infer the username from the password:...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/17/2005

$env=0

Winning the award for the least understandable UI metaphor: the ability to view the environment...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/15/2005

Full Impact Dance Nostalgia

Shai is an artist in crunch mode, so I was a lone bachelor at the Dance Underground last night....

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/15/2005

Assembly language survival guide (for Debugging ... not writing)

Knowing just enough assembly is a really powerful aid in Debugging. These are short articles that...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/14/2005

Devenv stealth feature, Poor Man's Profiler

This feature is unsupported. It is undocumented. If you call help desk about it nice people will say...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/13/2005

Keeping My Note Flag Customizations

OneNote's Note Flags feature rocks. However, after I started using them I ran into a funny, subtle...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/12/2005

Edit & Continue trick for Conditional Bps

Using Edit and Continue to fix a bug is handy, but don't wait until you've found the bug to start...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/12/2005

Is there such a thing as a good bug?

I was dreaming last night that Shai and I were cleaning an old apartment, when a hockey puck sized...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/05/2005

unread writer

I've never read a book by my favorite writer. Joss Whedon created the TV shows Buffy the Vampire...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/05/2005

Random Repros

Adi Oltean continues a great series of blogs about supportability, with this one about Random...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/03/2005

Using Note flags in Onenote

How I expected to use note flags was very ambitious. How I actually use them is much simpler. I like...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/01/2005

This is not the bug you are looking for.

Some flaws cause what I call the 'quick exit' feature. This is where the app just disappears. No...

Author: SteveJS Date: 09/30/2005

Learning about Strengths

I knew he wouldn't read them, so I asked to borrow the two management books on Andy's ottoman....

Author: SteveJS Date: 09/24/2005

One week only!

Eveyone seems to be leaving town for a week. Many are claiming to be enroute to some 'PDC' in LA....

Author: SteveJS Date: 09/11/2005

Parse Error!

Ebay has an SDK. From the site: "Now Available: eBay SDK for Windows 3.0" My first thought: Who is...

Author: SteveJS Date: 09/08/2005

My OneNote Persona: 'Piler'

I am writing this using a free trial of OneNote I installed on my home computer. Last week I chimed...

Author: SteveJS Date: 09/03/2005

Use the symbol server

Below you see the sad state of affairs that comes from not using the public symbol server: This is...

Author: SteveJS Date: 08/28/2005

The Modules window in VS.

When I debug a problem on someone else's machine the first thing I do is look at the modules window....

Author: SteveJS Date: 08/27/2005

Try OneNote!

https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011436411033.aspx (I saw this on sluper's blog...

Author: SteveJS Date: 08/27/2005

The Best Software Writing I, and 'I love Bees'

I bought this book yesterday and just finished at lunch today. Some of the articles were ones I'd...

Author: SteveJS Date: 07/10/2005

Is this obvious?

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; class LearnTheMaterialsYouWillUse { static void...

Author: SteveJS Date: 03/27/2005

Edit and Continue in C#

We've finally announced C# will support E&C! I have been quite silent lately, and that is in...

Author: SteveJS Date: 10/15/2004

Unfortunate Contribution

Me: that stupid WeatherBug thing is on IE as well!Shai: It's my special contribution to your...

Author: SteveJS Date: 08/28/2004

Trying out TDD

I started developing a hobby project at home to try using TDD. I pretty quickly came to an issue....

Author: SteveJS Date: 06/13/2004

The Debugger is useless.

Cyrus says he doesn't need a debugger when developing managed code. He is not advocating using...

Author: SteveJS Date: 06/11/2004

New to us Games

My wife Shai just got a 'new' old video game: Equestriad 2001. We had to run it in Windows 98...

Author: SteveJS Date: 06/09/2004

A few Great Books

I lent out a couple of books today. For nonfiction books I measure how good they are by how many...

Author: SteveJS Date: 06/09/2004

A few Great Books

I lent out a couple of books today. For nonfiction books I measure how good they are by how many...

Author: SteveJS Date: 06/09/2004

Left Side, Right Side

Never refer to two software components as 'The Left Side' and 'The Right Side'. The name will stick,...

Author: SteveJS Date: 06/08/2004

Unmanaged Debugging vs. Managed Debugging vs. Mixed Debugging.

All versions of VS support debugging both managed and unmanaged code. However there is a big...

Author: SteveJS Date: 05/05/2004

Blast from the past

An old friend from college found me via this blog. Hi Chuck! He and I used to work in the Autonomous...

Author: SteveJS Date: 05/05/2004

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