January 2010 - Posts

Parallelism in .NET – Part 7, Some Differences between PLINQ and LINQ to Objects
Thu, Jan 28 2010 15:02
In my previous post on Declarative Data Parallelism, I mentioned that PLINQ extends LINQ to Objects to support parallel operations.  Although nearly all of the same operations are supported, there are some differences between PLINQ and LINQ to Objects...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Parallelism in .NET – Part 6, Declarative Data Parallelism
Tue, Jan 26 2010 19:26
When working with a problem that can be decomposed by data, we have a collection, and some operation being performed upon the collection.  I’ve demonstrated how this can be parallelized using the Task Parallel Library and imperative programming using...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Parallelism in .NET – Part 5, Partitioning of Work
Tue, Jan 26 2010 11:34
When parallelizing any routine, we start by decomposing the problem.  Once the problem is understood, we need to break our work into separate tasks, so each task can be run on a different processing element.  This process is called partitioning...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Parallelism in .NET – Part 4, Imperative Data Parallelism: Aggregation
Fri, Jan 22 2010 19:14
In the article on simple data parallelism, I described how to perform an operation on an entire collection of elements in parallel.  Often, this is not adequate, as the parallel operation is going to be performing some form of aggregation. Simple...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Parallelism in .NET – Part 3, Imperative Data Parallelism: Early Termination
Fri, Jan 22 2010 13:08
Although simple data parallelism allows us to easily parallelize many of our iteration statements, there are cases that it does not handle well.  In my previous discussion, I focused on data parallelism with no shared state, and where every element...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Parallelism in .NET – Part 2, Simple Imperative Data Parallelism
Wed, Jan 20 2010 19:15
In my discussion of Decomposition of the problem space, I mentioned that Data Decomposition is often the simplest abstraction to use when trying to parallelize a routine.  If a problem can be decomposed based off the data, we will often want to use...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Parallelism in .NET – Part 1, Decomposition
Tue, Jan 19 2010 17:50
The first step in designing any parallelized system is Decomposition.  Decomposition is nothing more than taking a problem space and breaking it into discrete parts.  When we want to work in parallel, we need to have at least two separate things...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Parallelism in .NET – Introduction
Tue, Jan 19 2010 14:50
Parallel programming is something that every professional developer should understand, but is rarely discussed or taught in detail in a formal manner.  Software users are no longer content with applications that lock up the user interface regularly...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Better User and Developer Experiences – From Windows Forms to WPF with MVVM
Thu, Jan 7 2010 16:24
This series introduces the Model-View-ViewModel Pattern from the point of view of a Windows Forms developer. The goal is not to introduce WPF, but to demonstrate some of the new features within Windows Presentation Foundation, and show how they should...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Better User and Developer Experiences – From Windows Forms to WPF with MVVM: Conclusion
Thu, Jan 7 2010 16:16
Windows Presentation Foundation provides us with new opportunities to build applications that are very flexible to design, easy to maintain, and clear to understand.  By taking advantage of Data Binding, Commands, and Templating, we can rethink the...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Better User and Developer Experiences – From Windows Forms to WPF with MVVM: Part 7, MVVM
Wed, Jan 6 2010 19:40
I mentioned in the introduction that a new architectural pattern has emerged for Windows Presentation Foundation: Model-View-ViewModel.  As I mentioned, MVVM can make developing applications in WPF efficient, quick, and highly maintainable. ...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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Better User and Developer Experiences – From Windows Forms to WPF with MVVM: Part 6, Templating
Mon, Jan 4 2010 19:02
In order to rethink how we architect and write client applications, there is one last important concept Windows Presentation Foundation introduces, beyond the excellent Data Binding and Commanding support I’ve already discussed.  WPF adds an entire...
by Reed Copsey, Jr.
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