Thank you Jon Skeet

Q: Can Jon Skeet ask a question that even Jon Skeet can’t answer?
A: Yes. And he can answer it, too.

Weird VS Bug 99

Still a bug in VS 2012.

It happened frequently to me on my current work machine in VS2010 that the VS Global Search stops working with this annoying message:

“No files were found to look in. Find was stopped in progress.”

This is the answer: Ctrl + Scroll Lock

Git disHarmony

If only my various git interfaces would play together nicely.

This is too regular an occurrence.

Function Declarations vs. Function Expressions

Great post on the subtleties of Javascript functions with examples and quiz.

VS 2012 – Not as bad as 2010

Recently started using VS 2012. It’s growing on me.  Here’s my first impressions from my current focus as a C#/.Net WPF developer.

The bad

The bad parts are similar to bugs in VS 2010

• MS Test "Now even more unusable than ever":  can’t run tests in current context and all the tests in a project are lumped together so you can’t just look for tests in one class.  Workaround: use ReSharper as your test runner.
• Similarly slow worthless XAML designer.  Workaround: switch to XML view and move on.
  • Checkout performance improvements coming in update 2.  These new numbers are barely acceptable, the current numbers are beyond atrocious.
• Similarly slow to startup, load/reload projects.  Particularly awful when switching between git branches.  Workaround: close the solution, switch, reopen.
• Similarly freezing on reloading projects in large solutions.  Workaround: go for coffee.
• Breaks compatibility with old TFS versions.  Workaround: git tfs and wait for your tfs server to be upgraded.
• It still has this error with the find function, which is by now just a quirk since I’ve seen it so often
• the status bar says "Ready" well before a build completes
  • Error list doesn’t reliably clear when building
• switches from output window to the error list when starting a build
• copying text from the dark theme doesn’t include the background, so its invisible when you paste it somewhere (white text on white background)
• Frequent freezing caused by the XAML editor can be fixed by this PowerShell script (if you must use the XAML editor and for some reason don’t want to switch to XML editor) 

  while($True){
  kill -processname XDesProc.exe*
  Start-Sleep -s 1
  }

• XAML Designer crashes even though I don’t use it.  That’s a powerful bug:

The Good

After 2 years, you would think they could impress right out of the box, but not really, but after you use it for a while, you won’t want to go back.

• Highlighting all instances of a searched word on a page
• Included dark theme is nice
• When changing XAML/XML tags editor changes both tags at once – open and close
• Better intellisense in XAML
• Ignore specific exceptions directly from the dialog.  A big time saver:

• Intellisense is working better in XAML for Static Resources even though I’m in the XML editor (not sure if this comes from VS or R#)

Gregg

I take most of my notes in Gregg Shorthand.  Its helped me a lot.  Now I’m teaching my son to write the script with this 1955 edition.  You can get it on Amazon for next to nothing.  Its wonderfully anachronistic with its advertisements for coal heating tune-ups and hotel rooms for 4 dollars.

I find shorthand very easy to write and harder to read. I have very little reading practice. I write 10 times more than I read and only use notes for a few detail confirmations.

The hardest part of learning shorthand is the few words in the writing/reading practice that just don’t make sense no matter how hard you try (and are so obvious once you find out – like most bugs).  I’ve made some recordings so that won’t be a problem.  Here’s a link to the lesson 8 and 9 readings.  I’ll post the earlier lessons on request.

 

Here’s the request for 300 copies of a mailing piece in reading 63 below:

 

Back to (Code) School

I’m refreshing my Internet skills with the excellent Code School online course jQuery Air.  They make it interesting and productive with good production values and coding challenges. The course dates from 2011 at least, just before a batch of goodies in jQuery 1.7.

It gives a great overview.  You’re on your own to stay current though.

The intro jQuery course is free.  Highly recommended.

the async we’ve been awaiting for

Watched the build async await talk.  Async await does look like the finally Task++ answer to asynchrony and the syntax is as I expected and better.  Funny thing about the video is that the occasional applause makes it sound like an infomercial.

Its new in .Net 4.5 but you can use it in .Net 4 with this Targeting Pack.

 

the 909th most dangerous bug ever found

Be careful with your JSONP

you could be at risk for

CSRF:  Cross Site Request Forgery

Love/Hate Mint.com

Mint.com is a great financial aggregator.  It really helps track a lot of accounts.  It’s funny that when you close an account (or an account closes on you, like a bank merger) you can only delete the account in Mint, losing all your history.  Vote here to improve the situation.