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Thu, Nov 5 2009 20:01

What's in a name (again)?

I have possibly foolishly decided to stop resisting the urge to port Joda Time to .NET. For those of you who are unaware, "use Joda Time" is almost always the best answer to any question involving "how do I achieve X with java.util.Date...
Posted by skeet | 53 comment(s)
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Fri, Oct 30 2009 22:14

MVP Again

I'm delighted to be able to announce that I'm now an MVP again. Google has reconsidered the situation and worked out a compromise: I now receive no significant gifts from Microsoft, and I'm not under NDA with them. While that precludes me...
Posted by skeet | 28 comment(s)
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Thu, Oct 1 2009 6:21

MVP no more

It's with some sadness that I have to announce that as of the start of October, I'm no longer a Microsoft MVP. As renewal time came round again, I asked my employer whether it was okay for me to renew, and was advised not to do so. As a result...
Posted by skeet | 84 comment(s)
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Fri, Sep 4 2009 0:08

Recent activities

It's been a little while since I've blogged, and quite a lot has been going on. In fact, there are a few things I'd have blogged about already if it weren't for "things" getting in the way. Rather than writing a whole series...
Posted by skeet | 15 comment(s)
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Tue, May 12 2009 17:54

Language proliferation

I've always been aware that .NET supports multiple languages (obviously) and that Microsoft has been experimenting with this to some extent. It's only recently struck me just to what extent this is the case though. Here's a list - almost certainly...
Posted by skeet | 18 comment(s)
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Mon, Mar 16 2009 18:48

Breaking Liskov

Very recently, Barbara Liskov won the Turing award , which makes it a highly appropriate time to ponder when it's reasonable to ignore her most famous piece of work, the Liskov Substitution (or Substitutability) Principle . This is not idle speculation...
Posted by skeet | 32 comment(s)
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Fri, Feb 27 2009 11:29

What's in a name?

T.S. Eliot had the right idea when he wrote "The naming of cats" : The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn't just one of your holiday games ... When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the...
Posted by skeet | 23 comment(s)
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Tue, Feb 17 2009 17:50

Answering technical questions helpfully

I'm unsure of whether this should be a blog post or an article , so I'll probably make it both. I've probably written most of it before in Stack Overflow answers, but as I couldn't find anything when I was looking earlier (to answer a...
Posted by skeet | 18 comment(s)
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Mon, Feb 2 2009 20:10

Benchmarking: designing an API with unusual goals

In a couple of recent posts I've written about a benchmarking framework and the results it produced for using for vs foreach in loops . I'm pleased with what I've done so far, but I don't think I've gone far enough yet. In particular...
Posted by skeet | 8 comment(s)
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Thu, Jan 29 2009 20:28

Programming is hard

One of the answers to my "controversial opinions" question on Stack Overflow claims that " programming is so easy a five year old can do it. " I'm sure there are some aspects of programming which a five year old can do. Other parts...
Posted by skeet | 22 comment(s)
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Sat, Jan 24 2009 19:28

RFID: What I really want it for

This isn't really coding related, but it's technology related at least. There's been a lot of fuss made about how great or awful RFID is and will be in the future, in terms of usefuless and privacy invasion respectively. There's one use...
Posted by skeet | 9 comment(s)
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Fri, Jan 23 2009 21:42

Quick rant: why isn't there an Exception(string, params object[]) constructor?

This Stack Overflow question has reminded me of something I often wish existed in common exception constructors - an overload taking a format string and values. For instance, it would be really nice to be able to write: throw new IOException( "Expected...
Posted by skeet | 26 comment(s)
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Thu, Jan 15 2009 22:39

Stack Overflow reputation and being a micro-celebrity

I've considered writing a bit about this before, but not done so for fear of looking like a jerk. I still think I may well end up looking like a jerk, but this is all stuff I'm interested in and I'll enjoy writing about it, so on we go. Much...
Posted by skeet | 44 comment(s)
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Fri, Nov 7 2008 17:09

How much do you care about blog tags?

Occasionally I feel that my collection of tags is somewhat lacking. For instance, I've been thinking of adding "language design" and "public speaking" tags - and then going through previous posts and retagging where appropriate...
Posted by skeet | 10 comment(s)
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Thu, Nov 6 2008 17:15

Jaffa bugs

Currently I'm working on a problem found by one of our testers. Unfortunately, it's hard to reproduce. Inspired by the fact that yesterday our micro-kitchen had jaffa cakes in, I propose that if we're going to be frustrated by bugs like this...
Posted by skeet | 4 comment(s)
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Tue, Oct 7 2008 17:33

DotNetRocks interview

Last Monday evening I had a chat with the guys from DotNetRocks , and today the show has gone live . I wouldn't claim to have said anything particularly earth-shattering, and regular readers will probably be familiar with many of the themes anyway...
Posted by skeet | 5 comment(s)
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Sun, Sep 28 2008 8:23

New addiction: Stack Overflow

This may be old news to many readers, but there's a relatively new development Q&A site called Stack Overflow . I'm not generally a fan of web forums as opposed to newsgroups, but Stack Overflow just works . In particular, the post/answer...
Posted by skeet | 3 comment(s)
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Sat, Sep 6 2008 16:55

Annoying IE8 beta 2 CSS breakage

Okay, firstly let me make it very clear that I know very little about CSS. The nuances of layout in CSS fill me with fear, particularly in terms of trying to get all browsers to behave sensibly. Until recently, I thought that the C# in Depth web site...
Posted by skeet | 9 comment(s)
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Wed, Sep 3 2008 20:21

With apologies to Flanders and Swann

If you don't know The Gas Man Cometh then this will probably make very little sense. If you haven't heard any Flanders and Swann at all, please find some. It's ever so funny. Tomorrow morning, my boiler is being serviced. A couple of colleagues...
Posted by skeet | 1 comment(s)
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Fri, Aug 29 2008 19:20

Holiday blogging

Assuming I manage to get the publication order (and also assuming that you're reading this blog in publication order to start with) you'll see a number of posts seemingly written very shortly after this one. As I type this, I am on holiday in...
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