Dotnet/.NET – C#

Microsoft.NET development

Finds of the Week – 10/17/2007

As an attempt to make this blog appears more busy:-), I will begin my "Finds of the Week" series. Each week, I will share miscellaneous finds and thoughts I ran into that are related to mostly .NET development.

Here are the finds for this week:

.NET

  • Parallel Performance: Optimize Managed Code For Multi-Core Machines; by Daan Leijen and Judd Hall; via MSDN Magazine. In a few years' time, I predict that most new PCs will be multi-core. This article talks about the new Task Parallel Library (TPL) and provides code samples.
  • document.f.q.focus(); The Billion Dollar Line of JavaScript (by gst, via blogstorm.co.ok) talks about how many people use the Search Box on their browser to navigate to various web sites, instead of typing in a URL, and how this practice translates into revenue for Google. Interesting read.
  • alessandro pointed out that and IMG element with an empty src attribute will call the browser to make a request to the default document (usually default.aspx).
  • Understanding Windows Workflow Foundation (by razi bin rais, via Codeproject.com) is a nice overview of Windows Workflow Foundation.
  • Where are the basic controls in Silverlight 1.1? When I started experimenting with Silverlight recently (see my Silverlight Hello World application), the first question that came to my mind was: where are all the basic controls such as button, checkbox, textbox, etc?

    XAML Intellisense drop-down

    Don't worry! Apparently, they are not there because it's still an Alpha release. According to this post from Tim Sneath, the following controls are planned to be included in the released version of 1.1: Button, TextBox, Scrollbar, Slider, ListBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, ComboBox, and UserControl (no TreeView, RichTextBox, or DataGrid).

 

Tools

  • Probably old news to most CSS pros, but just in case you have not heard, FireBug is a very useful extension for FireFox/CSS development. Highly recommended if you ever work with CSS. I could have saved countless hours debugging HTML/CSS issues with this tool.
  • Notepad++ is a new addition to my toolset. Supports syntax highlighting, regular expression search/replace, Unicode, Macros, and is light-weight.

Windows Mobile / Pocket PC

Blogs

Miscellaneous

  • I am pretty bad with keeping in touch with people, and I have found that LinkedIn makes it fairly easy to keep in touch with past colleages. Last week I had some free time so I decided to look up old colleagues on LinkedIn. It was great to hear from many people I worked with years ago. I found many people by simply searching on the name of the company we worked for.

And Now, Something Different

Check out the Windows Live Maps Bird's Eye view below. See the black car entering the cul-de-sac? That's me and my car.

Microsoft Windows Live Maps - Chinh's Car

How do I know that’s my car? Well, for one thing, my car is black. But the real reason I know it’s me is that a moment later, my garage door opened half-way… as I was about to drive into the garage:

Microsoft Windows Live Maps - Chinh's Car

At first glance, it seems to be an amazing coincidence (like one-in-a-million amazing). What is the chance that Microsoft’s Bird’s Eye low flying plane would fly across my house and snap pictures just as I am about drive into my garage? However, after further calculations, it turns out that the real probability is around 1/8640 (5-second window over 43200 average seconds of day-light). Still a very small chance, but certainly not lottery-winning “amazing”.

My Silverlight 1.1 Hello World Application

Update 1/27/2009: I posted an updated version of this article targeted for Silverlight Runtime 2.0 here

Imagine being able to author rich Internet applications in your .NET language of choice, without having to mess with Javascript, cross-browser compatibility issues, or ActionScript. That’s the promise of Microsoft Silverlight 1.1. In this article, I will document my attempt at creating a Silverlight 1.1 “Hello World” application. My Hello World application is a little bit more fancy than the typical one… this one involves some animation, and drawing a few shapes from code.

Silverlight Hello

If you are new to Silverlight, Silverlight 1.1 (currently in Alpha) is the version that will include the .NET CLR and allow you to write Silverlight code with .NET languages such as C#.

Most Silverlight 1.1 C# examples I found on the web use the XAML file to declare and set object properties. In my example, I am going to create and draw most objects from the code behind c# class.

Installing Visual Studio 2008

If you don’t have Visual Studio 2008 already installed. You can download it from here. Downloading and installing Visual Studio 2008 to my Virtual PC took about 3 hours (1 for the download and 2 for the install).

Note: It’s possible to
develop Silverlight 1.1 applications with Visual Studio 2005, but the process is not integrated as with Visual Studio 2008

Installing Silverlight Runtimes and Tools

Install the following runtimes and tools from here. I am linking to the main page instead of the individual downloads just in case the download links change.

  • Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 Runtime.
  • Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 Alpha September Refresh
  • Microsoft Silverlight Tools Alpha Refresh for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 (July 2007)

Create a New Silverlight Project

  • In Visual Studio, choose File/New/Project and select Visual C#/Silverlight/Silverlight Project. The Silverlight project type is added when you install the Microsoft Silverlight Tools above.
  • Give your project a name.

Creating a new Silverlight Project

Silverlight Project Files

After the project has been created, you are presented with the default Page.xaml file:

Page.xaml

Your Solution should now have the following files:

Page.xaml

The two files that you will be working with are Page.xaml and TestPage.html. Page.xaml stores the markup for the design elements (for more info on XAML, see this MSDN article). TestPage.html is the regular HTML page that will host the main Silverlight object. Silverlight.js is the Javascript helper file for Silverlight applications.

For our example, we will be adding code to Page.xaml.cs. This is what Page.xaml.cs looks like initially:

Page.xaml

Add Some Code

Ready to write some code (complete source code at the end of the article)? First, we are going to add a Storyboard element to our Page.xaml. This Storyboard element serves as a timer for the animation we are going to display.

<Canvas.Resources
 class="kwrd">>
    <Storyboard x:Name
        class="kwrd">="mainTimer" Duration="00:00:00"
            class="kwrd">/>
</Canvas.Resources>

Then, we add some code to the Page.xaml.cs file (click here

for simple “Hello World” version… if you just want a simple Hello World app):

using System;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Ink;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Animation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace CdoHelloWorld
{
    public partial class Page : Canvas
    {
        /// <summary>Represents a cell on the grid</summary>
        private class Cell
        {
            public double X; //
                x-coordinate of cell
            public double Y; //
                y-coordinate
            public bool On; //
                True if cell is "on"
            public double Order; //
                Display order
        }

        private List<Cell> cells = new List<Cell>(); 
            class="rem">// list of all cells
        private int xSize = 26; 
            class="rem">// width of the grid, in number of cells
        private int ySize = 7; 
            class="rem">// height of the grid
        private int numCells; //
            total number of cells
        private int cellIdx = 0;

        public void Page_Loaded(
            class="kwrd">object o, EventArgs e)
        {
            // Required to initialize variables
            InitializeComponent();

            // Assign a random value to each cell 
            Random rnd = new Random(Environment.TickCount);
            numCells = (int)(xSize * ySize);

            for (int y = 0; y < ySize; y++)
            {
                for (int x = 0; x < xSize; x++)
                {
                    Cell cell = new Cell();
                    cell.X = x * (this.Width / xSize);
                    cell.Y = y * (this.Height / ySize);
                    cell.Order = rnd.NextDouble();
                    cells.Add(cell);
                }
            }

            string template = " "
                            + " x x xxxx x x xx "
                            + " x x x x x x x "
                            + " xxxx xxxx x x x x "
                            + " x x x x x x x "
                            + " x x xxxx xxxx xxxx xx "
                            + " ";

            for (int i = 0; i < template.Length; i++)
            {
                if (template[i] == 'x')
                {
                    cells[i].On = true;
                }
                else
                {
                    cells[i].On = false;
                }
            }

            // Sort the cells by the random values
            cells.Sort(
                delegate(Cell c0, Cell c1)
                {
                    return c0.Order.CompareTo(c1.Order);
                }
            );

            mainTimer.Completed += new EventHandler(mainTimer_Completed);
            mainTimer.Begin();
        }

        void mainTimer_Completed(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            // Get the next cell
            Cell cell = cells[cellIdx];

            // Draw the cell
            Rectangle r = new Rectangle();
            r.Stroke = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.DarkGray);
            if (cell.On)
            {
                r.Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Red);
            }
            else
            {
                r.Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.LightGray);
            }
            r.Width = this.Width / xSize;
            r.Height = this.Height / ySize;
            r.SetValue(Canvas.LeftProperty, cell.X);
            r.SetValue(Canvas.TopProperty, cell.Y);
            Children.Add(r);
            cellIdx++;

            if (cellIdx <= numCells)
            {
                // restart the timer
                mainTimer.Begin();
            }
        }

    }
}

Here’s the simple version of the code:

TextBlock t = new TextBlock();
t.Text = "Hello world!";
Children.Add(t);

Firefox Bug and Workaround

There is a known problem that causes the Silverlight object to not show up in Firefox. To fix the problem, remove the DOCTYPE declaration from the HTML file. See this MSDN forum thread.

Deploying Silverlight Applications to Your Web Server

To deploy my application, I simply copied the files including the ClientBin directory to my web server. Any web server will do (the server that hosts my Hello World application is an apache server).

And Now, Ladies and Gentlements, My Hello World Silverlight App

Click here.

Source Code

Download complete source code for this article.

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StringBuilder is not always faster – Part 2 of 2

In a previous article (“StringBuilder is not always faster), I provided some quick benchmark data and gave “rules of thumb” for when to use StringBuilder and when to use traditional string concatenations. In this follow-up article, I will attempt to provide a more detailed analysis.

If you don’t want to bother with the details, jump directly to the conclusions here.

A Look at the Generated MSIL

A reader, Matt, suggested that it’s possible the compiler may have noticed that I never use the generated test objects in my benchmark code and not created them. That would definitely invalidated my test results!

Here’s the original benchmark code:

for (int i = 0; i <= 1000000; i++)
{
    // Concat strings 3 times using StringBuilder
    StringBuilder s = new StringBuilder();
    s.Append(i.ToString());
    s.Append(i.ToString());
    s.Append(i.ToString());
}

And this one, using traditional concatenation, took slightly less time (1344 milliseconds):

for (int i = 0; i <= 1000000; i++)
{
    // Concat strings 3 times using traditional concatenation
    string s = i.ToString();
    s = s + i.ToString();
    s = s + i.ToString();
}

According to Lutz Roeder’s .NET Reflector (great tool), the answer is no. Here’s the IL from Reflector:

.entrypoint
.maxstack 2
.locals init (
    [0] int32 i,
    [1] class [mscorlib]System.Text.StringBuilder s,
    [2] string V_2,
    [3] bool CS$4$0000)
L_0000: nop
L_0001: ldc.i4.0
L_0002: stloc.0
L_0003: br.s L_003b
L_0005: nop
L_0006: newobj instance void [mscorlib]System.Text.StringBuilder::.ctor()
L_000b: stloc.1
L_000c: ldloc.1
L_000d: ldloca.s i
L_000f: call instance string [mscorlib]System.Int32::ToString()
L_0014: callvirt instance class [mscorlib]System.Text.StringBuilder [mscorlib]System.Text.StringBuilder::Append(string)
L_0019: pop
L_001a: ldloc.1
L_001b: ldloca.s i
L_001d: call instance string [mscorlib]System.Int32::ToString()
L_0022: callvirt instance class [mscorlib]System.Text.StringBuilder [mscorlib]System.Text.StringBuilder::Append(string)
L_0027: pop
L_0028: ldloc.1
L_0029: ldloca.s i
L_002b: call instance string [mscorlib]System.Int32::ToString()
L_0030: callvirt instance class [mscorlib]System.Text.StringBuilder [mscorlib]System.Text.StringBuilder::Append(string)
L_0035: pop
L_0036: nop
L_0037: ldloc.0
L_0038: ldc.i4.1
L_0039: add
L_003a: stloc.0
L_003b: ldloc.0
L_003c: ldc.i4 0xf4240
L_0041: cgt
L_0043: ldc.i4.0
L_0044: ceq
L_0046: stloc.3
L_0047: ldloc.3
L_0048: brtrue.s L_0005
L_004a: ldc.i4.0
L_004b: stloc.0
L_004c: br.s L_0078
L_004e: nop
L_004f: ldloca.s i
L_0051: call instance string [mscorlib]System.Int32::ToString()
L_0056: stloc.2
L_0057: ldloc.2
L_0058: ldloca.s i
L_005a: call instance string [mscorlib]System.Int32::ToString()
L_005f: call string [mscorlib]System.String::Concat(string, string)
L_0064: stloc.2
L_0065: ldloc.2
L_0066: ldloca.s i
L_0068: call instance string [mscorlib]System.Int32::ToString()
L_006d: call string [mscorlib]System.String::Concat(string, string)
L_0072: stloc.2
L_0073: nop
L_0074: ldloc.0
L_0075: ldc.i4.1
L_0076: add
L_0077: stloc.0
L_0078: ldloc.0
L_0079: ldc.i4 0xf4240
L_007e: cgt
L_0080: ldc.i4.0
L_0081: ceq
L_0083: stloc.3
L_0084: ldloc.3
L_0085: brtrue.s L_004e
L_0087: ret

Size of Concatenated Values and StringBuilder with Initial Capacity

More questions from Matt: how does the performance curve change if the concatenated values are larger? And what if you seed the StringBuilder object with an initial capacity?

To answer the questions, I wrote some more benchmarks (complete source code at the bottom of this article) to compare three different methods of concatenation:

  • “+” concatenation: This is the traditional a + b + c method.
  • StringBuilder: Create a StringBuilder object using the default constructor and calling Append().
  • StringBuilder/Pre-allocated: Create a StringBuilder object and preallocate the initial capacity so that it does not need to expand later.

String Size = 10

The chart below shows elapsed times (ms) of the three concatenation methods, with the concatenated string size equaled to 10 characters

StringBuilder Benchmark - Elapsed time vs Concatenations - String Size 10

As the chart illustrates, when the size of the concatenated value is small (10 characters in this test), “+” concatenation (blue line) performs faster than StringBuilder until the number of concatenations reaches 6. After 6, StringBuilder starts to work exponentially faster.

However, when compared with the StringBuilder/Pre-allocated method, StringBuilder starts to perform as fast as “+” concatenation much earlier: at 3 concatenations.

Note: The orange line for StringBuilder is not very linear. My guess is that it’s due to the need to allocate space as needed. The memory allocation itself will consume CPU cycles. The default StringBuilder constructor will allowcate 16 bytes initially. Thereafter, it will allocate two times the current capacity whenever needed.

String Size = 100

StringBuilder Benchmark - Elapsed time vs Concatenations - String Size 100

When the concatenated value is 100 characters, the all three methods perform very similarly up to three concatenations, then StringBuilder/Pre-allocated pulls ahead at 4 concatenations.

Concatenated String Size = 1000

StringBuilder Benchmark - Elapsed time vs Concatenations - String Size 1000

At 1000 characters, things begine a little bit more interesting: StringBuilder/Pre-allocated is faster in all cases (although the difference is very small until about 6 concatenations). Since it may not be always possible or practical to know the final string size ahead of time, for this graph, I also added two more series to show what happens if you over-estimate or under-estimate the final capacity. As expected, there is a performance penalty for both. The more inaccurate your estimated capacity is, the higher of a performance penalty you will get.

What about String.Concat?

Lars Wilhelmsen asked “What about string.Concat?” According to my research, string.Concat is basically identical to “+” used on a single line.

This:

string s = "a" + 
                    class="str">"b" + "c";

Is the same (same generated IL) as this:

string s = string.Concat(
 class="str">"a", "b", "c");

But not this:

string s = "a";
s = s + "b";
s = s + "c";

Remember, the “+” must be on the same logical line, otherwise, the compiler will convert each line into a separate string.Concat operation, resulting in slower performance.

AJ has written a post detailing string.Concat here. Thanks, AJ, for pointing it out.

And String.Format?

Flyswat wanted to know about string.Format. I did some quick benchmark code again. The string.Format code below took 58 milliseconds to run 100,000 iterations:

string s = string.Format(
          class="str">"Value: {0}", strVal);

While this code, using “+” concatenation, only took 9 milliseconds (also 100,000 iterations):

string s = "Value: " + strVal;

According to the above numbers, string.Format is significantly slower than “+” concatenations. The difference in speed is similar between s.AppendFormat(“Value: {0}”, strVal) and s.Append(“Value: ” + strVal). I have used String.Format a lot in my code and I have not thought about this performance penalty. It does make sense. String.Format (or StringBuilder.AppendFormat) has to scan the string looking for format specifiers… that takes time. String.Format is very useful to make the code easier to read or when you actually need to format numbers. Even with this new data, I will not neccessarily shy away from using string.Format. I will however definitely be much more observant when using it, especially when used inside a loop or performance critical code path.

Conclusions

The new benchmarks do point to StringBuilder/Pre-allocated as the fastest method regardless of number of concatenations, when the concatenated string value is large (1000 characters).

With that in mind, here are my slightly modified rules of thumbs for string concatenation. Remember, “rules of thumb” are short statements to provide general princicles, and may not be accurate for every single situation. For performance criticial code, you should consider running some benchmarks/profiling yourself.

  • For 1-4 dynamic concatenations, use traditional “+” concatenation.
  • For 5 or more dynamic concatenations, use StringBuilder.
  • When using StringBuilder, try to provide the starting capacity as close to the final string size as possible.
  • When building a big string from several string literals, use either the @ string literal or the + operator.
  • For performance critical code, consider running your own benchmarks

Additional Reading

Notes

The benchmarks in this article were run on a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz CPU, with 2GB of RAM. With .NET framework: 2.0.

Source Code for Benchmarks

Source code here.

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11 Visual Studio 2005 IDE Tips and Tricks to Make You a More Productive Developer

Here are my top 11 tips and tricks for getting things done faster with the Visual Studio 2005 IDE (without using third-party add-ins or upgrading hardware… that’s another article). Yes, some of these tips and tricks may fall into the "obvious" category, but I think they are worth repeating. I continue to see too many .NET developers not taking advantage of even the basic time-saving techniques.

I work mostly with C# so some of these tips may not apply to, or work differently with other Visual Studio languages such as Visual Basic.NET.

(1) Express Yourself with Regular Expressions

Regular Expressions is a powerful and portable text search/replace/transformation language. Learning basic Regular Expressions will immediately make you a more productive developer/power user. Regular Expressions is supported in Visual Studio’s various Search/Replace dialogs. Any Regular Expressions skill you learn will also be useful in numerous other applications and settings: other text editors, unix shell/egrep, PowerShell, input validation, and Google search (heh, just kidding on that last item).

You can also use Regular Expressions with macros and automation via the Regex class.

Here’s an example of how you can save time with Regular Expressions in Visual Studio. Say, you just wrote and tested a SQL in a Query Tool and you want to turn it into a  string variable in your C# class? Here’s how:

First, paste the SQL text into the editor. Make sure to remove any unwanted indentation on the left side of the text (SHIFT-Tab):

Regular Expressions Example - 1 

Then hit CTRL+H to bring up the Find and Replace Dialog and fill it out like this:

Regular Expressions Example - 2 

Note: For VB.NET, in the “Find and Replace Dialog Window”, change the value in
“Replace With” box: from {[ + “\1″ ]}… to {[ & “\1″ _ ]}. Thanks to berkx for this info.

Choose Replace All. Fix a couple of lines, sit back and admire your beautiful work:

Regular Expressions Example - 3 

Explanation? Basically, the "Find what" expression above matches the content of each line and give it a numbered "tag". The "Replace with" expression then replaces each line with the first tagged value (\1), wrapped around in + " ". Click the fly-out (triangle) button next to each box to display a cheat-sheet of frequently used expressions. Oh, and don’t worry about the "+" string concatenations in the example, the compiler knows to optimize that syntax.

Once you’ve created a few Search/Replace expressions like the above, create macros out of them and assign to shortcuts.

Here are some of the Regex transformations I use most often when writing code:

  • Surrounds each line with (example above).
  • Transform a list of values separated by newlines into a coma-delimited list (used in array initializers or SQL where clause).
  • Put double quotes around each value in a coma-separated list.

Tools to help you write/test Regular Expressions:

(2) Take (Keyboard) Shortcuts

Using keyboard shortcuts is the best way to get things done faster in Visual Studio (and most other computer applications for that matter).

Below are my favorite Visual Studio keyboard shortcuts (I am leaving out the really obvious ones like F5).

  • CTRL+ALT+L: View Solution Explorer. I use Auto Hide for all of my tool windows to maximize screen real estate. Whenever I need to open the Solution Explorer, it’s just a shortcut away. Related shortcuts: CTRL+ALT+X (Toolbox), F4 (Properties), CTRL+ALT+O (Output), CTRL+\, E (Error List), CTRL+\, T (Task List).
  • F12: Go to definition of a variable, object, or function.
  • SHIFT+F12: Find all references of a function or variable.
  • F7: Toggle between Designer and Source views.
  • CTRL+PgDn: Toggle between Design and Source View in HTML editor.
  • F10: Debug – step over. Related debugging shortcuts: F11 (debug – step into), SHIFT-F11 (debug – step out), CTRL-F10 (debug – run to cursor). F9 (toggle breakpoint).
  • CTRL+D or CTRL+/: Find combo (see section on Find Combo below).
  • CTRL+M, O: Collapse to Definitions. This is usually the first thing I do when opening up a new class.
  • CTRL+K, CTRL+C: Comment block. CTRL+K, CTRL-U (uncomment selected block).
  • CTRL+-: Go back to the previous location in the navigation history.
  • ALT+B, B: Build Solution. Related shortcuts: ALT+B, U (build selected Project), ALT+B, R (rebuild Solution).
  • CTRL+ALT+Down Arrow: Show dropdown of currently open files. Type the first few letters of the file you want to select.
  • CTRL+K, CTRL+D: Format code.
  • CTRL+L: Delete entire line.
  • CTRL+G: Go to line number. This is useful when you are looking at an exception stack trace and want to go to the offending line number.
  • SHIFT+ALT+Enter: Toggle full screen mode. This is especially useful if you have a small monitor. Since I upgraded to dual 17" monitors, I no longer needed to use full screen mode.
  • CTRL+K, X: Insert "surrounds with" code snippet. See Snippets tip below.
  • CTRL+B, T: Toggle bookmark. Related: CTRL+B, N (next bookmark), CTRL+B, P (prev bookmark).

The complete list of default shortcuts is available from VS 2005 Documentation. You can also download/print reference posters from Microsoft: C# Keyboard Reference Poster, VB.NET Keyboard Reference Poster.

(3) Make New Shortcuts

There is something you do a lot in Visual Studio and there is no shortcut for it? Create one. Here’s how:

  • Choose Tools/Options and select Environment/Keyboard.
  • Type in something into "Show commands containing" to get a list of matching commands. If there is already a shortcut for the selected command, it’ll be displayed in "Shortcuts for selected command".
  • To assign a new shortcut to the selected command, put the cursor in "Press shortcut keys" and press the shortcut key or key combinations desired.

Visual Studio Options - Keyboard 

Have a custom Macro that you run often? Assign it to a keyboard shortcut. Here are some of my custom keyboard shortcuts:

  • CTRL+Num, T: Show the Test View.
  • CTRL+Num, D: Start debugging the selected Unit Test in Test View.
  • CTRL+’, L: "Collapse all in Solution Explorer " macro (see Macros section below).
  • CTRL+’, S: "Surrounds each line with" Macro.
  • CTRL+’, C: Compare with previous Source Control version.

(4) Use Code Snippets

Save time typing repetitive code by using Code Snippets. There are two types of Snippets in Visual Studio 2005: Expansion and SurroundsWith. To use Expansion Snippets, type the Snippet shortcut (not to be confused with keyboard shortcuts), and press Tab twice.

For example, the "for" Snippet is an Expansion Snippet. To use it, type "for"…

'for' Expansion Snippet Step 1 

Then press Tab, Tab:

'for' Expansion Snippet Step 2 

I find SurroundsWith Snippets more useful though. An example SurroundsWith Snippet is "#region". First, select a block of code:

SurroundsWith Snippet Step 1 

Then, type CTRL+K, CTRL+S and "#re":

SurroundsWith Snippet Step 2 

Then hit Enter:

SurroundsWith Snippet Step 3 

Here are my favorite Snippets:

  • #region: Regions is a great way to organize your code.
  • using: If you create an IDisposable object, you should use the "using" pattern. In addition to the basic "using" Snippet, I also created several variations for TransactionScope, and IDataReader.
  • try/catch
  • {}
  • /// <summary>$end$</summary>

More info:

(5) State Your Preferences

Find yourself constantly switching to the Design view every time you create/open an ASPX page? Cannot locate your current file in the Solution Explorer? Easy… just change the right settings and never think about it again.

Here are the some settings in Visual Studio that can save you time:

  • Open HTML pages in Source View: Tools/Options/HTML Designer/Start pages in.
  • Track the current file in Solution Explorer: Tools/Options/Projects and Solutions/Track Active Item in Solution Explorer.
  • Change the Start page or get rid of it: Tools/Options/Environment/Startup.
  • Change the default font-size to a smaller size so you can see more code. My editor font setting is ProFontWindows at size 9.
  • Turn of animations: Uncheck Tools/Options/Environment/Animate environment tools.

(6) "Attach to Process" to Start Debugging ASP.NET

Most ASP.NET developers use the standard F5 (Debug/Start Debugging) to start debugging from Visual Studio. However, there is a much faster way to start debugging if you already have an instance of your web application running. Just attach to it instead:

  • Choose Debug/Attach to Process.
  • Select the "aspnet_wp.exe" process and choose Attach.

Or, for keyboarders:

  • ALT+D, P, "as", Enter.

Debugging this way is faster because you skip the often-lengthy compilation step, and you don’t have to navigate from the start page to the actual page that you want to debug.

(7) Stop Conditionally (Conditional Breakpoints)

How often have you found yourself repeatedly stepping through a loop while debugging, waiting to get to a specific loop value (because the bug only occurs with that specific value)? With Conditional Breakpoints, you don’t have to do that. Just set a Breakpoint Condition.

Set the Breakpoint. Right click on the Breakpoint indicator (red circle), and choose Condition:

Breakpoint Condition Step 1 

Set the condition (any valid C# expression):

Breakpoint Condition Step 2 

Another debugging productivity trick I use is to override ToString() to return a useful summary of your objects. The Debugger uses the value returned by ToString in various Debug windows such as Watch Window. You can also use the DebuggerDisplay attribute.

(8) Employ Task List Tokens

Use Task List tokens such as TODO and HACK to quickly mark incomplete code or code that requires further attention. This allows you to keep flowing and skip over the details, but at the same time ensures that you will not forget to go back and finish up.

A shortcoming with Visual Studio 2005’s Task List is that it only shows the items in the current file. You can get around this by using the Find in Files feature and search for "// TODO".

(9) Go Directly to Any File with the Find Combo Box

This is the Find dropdown that is on the Standard Toolbar, not the Find dialog. Use the shortcut CTRL+D to activate the Find dropdown in normal mode. Use CTRL+/ to activate the Find dropdown in command mode (with ">" prepended… this doesn’t work sometimes for me).

Find Combo 

To quickly go to a file, type CTRL+D, >open  <start of file name>. Intellisense works here just like in the Command Window. "of" (short for "open file") can be used instead of open. Compare this with opening Solution Explorer, expand the correct folder/project, and visually hunt for the file you need.

With the Find Combo, you can also execute commands, macros, find text, etc. More info:

(10) Type Ahead (Incremental Search) in Lists

Type-ahead search works in many Visual Studio lists such as Solution Explorer, Active Files Combo (CTRL+ALT+Down Arrow), Add References, Class View, Attach to Process, Test View, etc.

To see how it works, it’s best to try it yourself. Open the Solution Explorer and start typing the first few letters of a visible file.

(11) Automate with Macros and Visual Studio Automation

I save this for last because I think macros and Automation have the potential to give you the biggest productivity booster, but also require the most initial time investment.

For many developers, the most effective way to take advantage of macros is to find and use or customize someone else’s macros.

If you want to get started with writing your own macros, the first feature you should get familiarize yourself with is the Macro Recording feature (shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+R).

For more info:

Here are some useful macros for you to start with:

Additional reading

It’s OK to Be Lazy

At least when it comes to instantiating objects.

Even in today’s environment, when the typical amount of RAM on each server is in the gigabytes, it’s still wise to pay attention to memory usage. As a developer or architect, you need to be aware of the trade-offs between eager instantiation and lazy instantiation. Yes, it’s rather pointless to consider an Int16 versus an Int32 for a variable if it’s just going to be created and used a few times in the lifetime of your application. However, if that same variable is instantiated thousands of times or more, then the potential improvement in either memory usage or performance (whichever is more important to you) is definitely worth a look.

Eager/Lazy Instantiation Defined

With eager instantiation, the object is created as soon as possible:

Example – Eager Instantiation

public class Customer
{
    // eager instantiation
    private Address homeAddress = new Address();
    public Address HomeAddress
    {
        get
        {
             return homeAddress;
        }
    }
}

With lazy instantiation, the object is created as late as possible:

Example – Lazy Instantiation

public class Customer
{
   private Address homeAddress;
   public Address HomeAddress
   {
       get
       {
           // Create homeAddress if it’s not already created
           if (homeAddress == null)
           {
               homeAddress = new Address();
           }
           return homeAddress;
        }
    }
}

Eager/lazy instantiation also applies to classes, singletons, etc. The principles and potential advantages/disadvantages are similar. For this article, I am only discussing the instantiation of class members.

CPU Cycles vs. Memory Usage

Eager vs. lazy instantiation is the classic performance/memory trade-off. With eager instantiation, you gain some performance improvement at the cost of system memory. Exactly what kind of performance/memory trade-off are we talking about? The answer depends mostly on the objects themselves:

  • How many instances of the parent object do you need?
  • What is the memory footprint of the member object?
  • How much time does it take to instantiate the member object?
  • How often will the parent object/member object be accessed?

Calculating the Memory Footprint of an Object

According to my own experiments (using DevPartner Studio and .NET Memory Profiler), each reference-type object (class) has a minimum memory footprint of 12 bytes. To calculate the total memory footprint of each reference-type object, add up any other memory used by members in the object. To get the exact memory footprint, you also need to take into consideration “boundaries” but for our purpose that’s probably not important.

The memory foot-print of an object can be closely approximated using the following table (from MSDN Magazine):

Type Managed Size in Bytes
System.Boolean 1
System.Byte 1
System.Char 2
System.Decimal 16
System.Double 8
System.Single 4
System.Int16 2
System.Int32 4
System.Int64 8
System.SByte 1
System.UInt16 2
System.UInt32 4
System.UInt64 8

Using the example Customer class above, let’s say that each Address object take up 1 KByte, and my application frequently needs to instantiate up to 10,000 Customer objects. Just by creating 10,000 Customer objects, we would need about 10 Megabytes of memory. Now let’s say that the HomeAddress member is only needed when the user drills down into the details of a Customer, and we are looking at a potential saving of 10 Megabytes of memory by using lazy instantiation on HomeAddress.

Memory Usage Can Also Impact Performance

Another important consideration with .NET managed code is garbage collection. In .NET managed code, memory usage has a hidden impact on performance in terms of the work the garbage collector has to perform to recover memory. The more memory you allocate and throw away, the more CPU cycles the garbage collector has to go through.

Recommendations

  • Pay closer attention to classes that get instantiated multiple times, such as Orders, OrderItems, etc.
  • For light-weight objects, or if you are not sure, use lazy instantiation.
  • If a member object is only used some of the times, use lazy instantiation.

Additional Reading

Rediscover the Lost Art of Memory Optimization in Your Managed Code

System.Transactions: New and Improved Transaction Management Model for .NET 2.0

Ok, so System.Transactions is not new to many .NET developers but it’s new to me. We have just started to research transaction management in my current .NET 2.0 project at work and  System.Transactions is looking beautiful. It gives us exactly what we need without the overhead of the old EnterpriseServices model (registering with COM+, having a strong name key, etc.) or the high maintenance of manual transaction management.

System.Transactions is more light-weight compared to EnterpriseServices. The programming model is relatively simple. You use the TransactionScope class to wrap your code inside a transaction. TransactionScope can be nested and can be assigned different transaction options such as Required or RequiresNew, similar to the various transaction attributes for EnterpriseServices.

using (TransactionScope scope = new TransactionScope()) 
{ 
  // do some work here (like executing a SQL, calling a method, etc.) 

  // The Complete method commits the transaction. If an exception has been thrown, 
  // Complete is not  called and the transaction is rolled back. 
  scope.Complete(); 
}

In my brief testing with Enterprise Library 2.0 and an Oracle database via Oracle Data Provider, I found that System.Transactions always enlist my transactions in MSDTC (Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator). I am sure there is some overhead associated with this. I will do some more performance test later to find out exactly what the overhead is. I was hoping that for a transaction involing a single database/connection string, that MSDTC would not be needed. But further research indicated that the non-MSDTC/light-weight transaction only works with SQL Server 2005.

If your transaction management needs extend beyond databases, you can even write your own resource manages so that operations such as copying a file can be wrapped inside a transaction as well. Look into the IEnlistmentNotification interface.

Here are some good articles about System.Transactions for your further reading:

StringBuilder is not always faster – Part 1 of 2

How often have you been told to use StringBuilder to concatenate strings in .NET? My guess is often enough. Here is something you may not know about string concatenation: StringBuilder is not always faster. There are already many articles out there that explain the why’s, I am not going to do that here. But I do have some test data for you.

When concatenating three values or less, traditional concatenation is faster (by a very small margin)

This block of code took 1484 milliseconds to run on my PC:

for (int i = 0; i <= 1000000; i++) 
{ 
    // Concat strings 3 times using StringBuilder 
    StringBuilder s = new StringBuilder(); 
    s.Append(i.ToString()); 
    s.Append(i.ToString()); 
    s.Append(i.ToString()); 
}

And this one, using traditional concatenation, took slightly less time (1344 milliseconds):

for (int i = 0; i <= 1000000; i++) 
{ 
    // Concat strings 3 times using traditional concatenation 
    string s = i.ToString(); 
    s = s + i.ToString(); 
    s = s + i.ToString(); 
}

The above data suggests that StringBuilder only starts to work faster once the number of concatenations exceed 3.

Building strings from literals

When building a large string from several string literals (such as building a SQL block, or a client side javascript block), use neither traditional concatenation nor StringBuilder. Instead, choose one of the methods below:

+ operator

// Build script block 
string s = "<script>" 
       + "function test() {" 
       + "  alert('this is a test');" 
       + "  return 0;" 
       + "}";

The compiler concatenates that at compile time. At run-time, that works as fast as a big string literal.

@ string literal

I sometimes use the @ string literal which allows for newlines (I find this syntax is harder to maintain, formatting-wise, than using the + operator):

string s = @"<script> 
        function test() { 
        alert('this is a test'); 
        return 0; 
        }";

Both methods above run about 40 times faster than using StringBuilder or traditional string concatenation.

Rules of Thumb

  • When concatenating three dynamic string values or less, use traditional string concatenation.
  • When concatenating more than three dynamic string values, use StringBuilder.
  • When building a big string from several string literals, use either the @ string literal or the inline + operator.

Updated 2007-09-29

I have posted a follow-up article to provide more detailed analysis and to answer some of the questions asked by readers.

Google Co-op

Google Co-op allows you to create customized search engines to fit your search interests. .NET developers, you may want to give the following pre-customized search engines a try:

For me, Co-op is a good idea but for now I will stick with just regular Google, at least for .NET related searches. I gave SearchDotNet.com a try and was initially underwhelmed my the number of matches. For example, searching for “EntryAssembly” using the DotNetSearch engine above yielded two pages of matches. Regular Google returns 387 pages.

Test Your Web Site in Internet Explorer 6 Using Microsoft IE6 Virtual Test Image

We all know that it’s a good idea to test our web pages in all popular browsers (to me that’s the various current versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox). It’s also a good idea to back up your data frequently, to listen to your elders, to not take a bath right after dinner, etc. Ok, so I admit I didn’t test my latest WordPress theme in IE6. While browsing the web on a friend’s PC, I discovered that my blog did not render correctly in IE6. It was broken in a major way. The right side bar completely disappears. Ouch!

I needed a way to test my site in Internet Explorer 6 at home, and since I have upgraded all of my PC’s at home to IE7, it seems like it’s a good time to give “virtual appliances” a try.

It took me about an hour to download the Internet Explorer 6 Application Compatibility VPC Image, install it, and have the virtual machine up and running. It helped that I already had Virtual Server installed. Yes Virtual Server works with Virtual PC disk images just fine. The current IE6 image expires on 4/1/2007 but I am sure Microsoft will replace it with another one when the time arrives. There is a blog entry on IEBlog about the image here.

Now I can reproduce the problem on my PC using IE6. That’s going to be the easy part I am afraid.

IE6

Update (2/8/2007): I fixed the IE6 problem. Apparently I had some sort of error in my sidebar.php file which messed up the HTML code, causing problems with IE6.

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