Like most developers, I'm a huge fan of the scroll wheel.  It's a major part of my daily computing experience, so much so that I find I lose major productivity if I'm relegated to using just the scrollpad on my laptop. 

Now I've been using Windows for a while now.  But I was amazed to learn something brand new today.  Somebody posted a tip that you could simply "middle click" with the scroll wheel on a tab in Visual Studio to close out that document.   So I fired up VS to test it out and sure enough, it works. 

That made me wonder ... is this a Visual Studio trick, or does it apply to any application with tabs?  I fired up Firefox, IE, and Notepad++ and it works on all of them, too.

I showed this little trick to a coworker who was also surprised to learn about it.  He said, "I knew you could open new tabs by middle-clicking with the scroll wheel, but I didn't know you could close them, too."  Huh???  "Sure.  If you middle-click on a link in Firefox or IE, it will automatically open the link in a new tab."

There you go - two tips for the price of none.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008 2:10:38 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Tips | Windows

I will be presenting at the Atlanta Microsoft Professionals User Group meeting tonight with Alan Stevens.  The topic is Inversion Of Control, including a comparison of four of the leading .Net IoC Containers.  The meeting starts around 6pm, with our talk scheduled to begin around 7:30pm.

Location
Microsoft
1125 Sanctuary Pkwy
3rd Floor
Alpharetta, GA

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Monday, July 07, 2008 7:11:58 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [1]  .Net

Every project ends up with one or even possibly many static helper classes.  If you program in Java, I'm willing to bet the house your project has a StringUtil class lurking around somewhere.  These classes are easily abused, but can serve a valid purpose, such as a factory class responsible for creating instances. 

If these classes contain only static methods (as they usually do), there is never any reason for them to to be instantiated.  However, in both Java and C#, it's easy to forget that if you do not explicitly declare a constructor, the compiler will generate a no-arg constructor by default.  The consequence is that the following code is valid:

StringUtil util = new StringUtil();

You've just allocated memory unnecessarily.  Plus, the garbage collector will now incur extra overhead since it will have to reclaim this memory even though it was never actually used.  All of the methods are static, so there is no reason to instantiate an individual object from this class. 

To avoid instantiations, make sure you declare a private no-arg constructor.  This will cause the compiler to throw an error any time the class is attempted to be instantiated.

public class StringUtil
{
    // constructor marked private since all methods are static
    private StringUtil() {}

    // bunch of static methods not shown
}

A side note - If you are using C# 3.0, I recommend using extension methods to enhance the behavior of existing classes rather than creating a something like a dedicated StringUtil class.  First of all, any class declaring extension methods has to be marked as static and cannot be instantiated.  And more importantly, it provides a much cleaner implementation to add those helper methods directly on the affected class.  The added bonus is that Visual Studio is smart enough to provide Intellisense for extension methods on targeted classes.

Sunday, June 22, 2008 9:35:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Back To Basics | C# | Java | Programming

At the next Java conference you're at, pay close attention to how many of the speakers are using Apple laptops.  Here's a wild-ass guess - all of them.  Well, maybe you'll find the one strange dude who didn't get the memo, but I'm not sure that guy is even allowed in the speakers' lounge.

Now, I sort of get it.  Apple makes beautiful machines.  The hardware is top-notch, the UI is slick, it's UNIX based, and, probably most importantly to most Java developers, it's *not* Windows.

Here's the odd part.  In case you didn't know it already, OS X uses it's own JVM instead of using one provided by Sun.  And Apple is notorious for lagging behind Sun with releasing updated versions of the JVM.  They only recently released a 1.6 version of their JVM a month or so ago, but only with support for 64-bit Intel-based hardware (i.e. machines bought within the last 2 years).  If Microsoft tried to pull off stuff like this, they would get absolutely killed in the press and blogosphere. 

None of this has seemed to slow down the spread of Java developers to the Mac.  Is it clever advertising?  The eye candy?  A status symbol?  The fact that it's not Windows?

I think it's kind of like the whipped guy in college who was dating the super hot girl that always cheated on him.  He knew it, she didn't exactly hide it, but he could never bring himself to break up with her because she was just too hot.  His options were to either put up with her cheating, enjoy his turn at bat every now and then, and walk around campus with her on his arm; or go back to the minors and date somebody more in his own league.

Steve Jobs famously said, "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain." 

It is easily apparent to me that Apple doesn't view Java as a first class citizen on its platform.  Are other Java developers blind to this fact?  Do they hold out hope that things will change?  Are they willing to put up with it for other reasons?

As for me, I'm a happy Vista customer.  :-P

Saturday, June 21, 2008 10:02:13 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Apple | Java

Scripting languages like Ruby and Groovy recognize the importance of collections like lists and maps, treating them almost like first class objects.  By doing so, they make it really easy to create collections like these and populate them all in one step.

For example, in Ruby here is how this is done:

# create a list
lst = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
# create a map
map = { "one" => 1, "two" => 2, "three" => 3 }

Not surprisingly, we see very similar syntax in Groovy...

// create a list
def lst = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
// create a map
def map = ["one":1, "two":2, "three":3]

And in case you missed it, one of the changes in C# 3.0 was the ability to initialize collections similar to the way it's done in these scripting languages (though the syntax is not *quite* as clean):

// create a list
var lst = new List<int> { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };
// create a map
var map = new Dictionary<string, int> { {"one", 1}, {"two", 2}, {"three", 3} };

IMO, the new collection initializers (along with property initializers) are one of the nicest changes in the new version of the .Net framework.  And since I'm feeling nice, I won't show how this is accomplished in native Java. 

Saturday, June 14, 2008 8:23:10 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  C# | Groovy | Ruby

Inspired by a recent Hanselminutes podcast about getting back to basics, along with my experiences at my last client, I've decided to start a series of blog posts on fundamentals and best practices.  Ideally, I'd like to post about once a week on some aspect of programming that isn't necessarily tied to a particular technology or framework.  While these posts may contain code samples in a particular language, I'd like them to be applicable across platforms.

In this first post, I want to talk about the gravitation of junior programmers to books on particular technologies rather than books on fundamentals. 

Let's face it - programming books are nearing end-of-life status.  Don't get me wrong, I love reading programming books (I'm finishing up one right now and have two more in the queue).  But in this age of the internet and how quickly technologies change, coupled with our "gotta have it now" instant gratification society, it's next to impossible to publish a book that is relevant, accurate, timely, and interesting.  My hat is off to those people who can do so successfully.

Despite this fact, programming books are (for now) still quite popular.  It's certainly not from a lack of volume, both in the number of books available and in the length of the individual books.  A former colleague of mine recently bought an ASP.Net book that appeared to have decimated half the pacific northwest and was so heavy it probably could be considered a weapon.  It makes me wonder how a publisher thinks any modern developer can consume 1,500 page books on subjects that, let's be honest, aren't particularly enthralling. 

Now I love the fact that developers are so interested in learning that they continue to buy programming books despite the logic that says they'd be better off googling and reading blogs.  Here's my problem with developers who buy programming books ... the books I see on developers' bookshelves tend to be targeted at particular technologies (e.g. LINQ, WCF, Ajax, etc...) rather than general software engineering practices.  In particular, I'm talking about junior developers who probably need the fundamental books the most.

Here is a starting place for books that I feel form a solid foundation for a professional programmer:

I've said it many times, I'd be much more inclined to have a strong developer on my team who has no experience in a particular technology rather than a weak one who has been doing that technology for 5 years.  Once you grasp the fundamentals, you can pick up any technology and be productive much quicker.

Friday, June 13, 2008 8:16:01 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  Books | Programming