Get your facts right.

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Kristof

I just read this article: http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-framework/10-reasons-why-visual-basic-is-better-than-c/ . And I’m pissed. Why? Allow me to elaborate

First of all, because on the top right there is “a service from redgate”. You’d expect to get their facts right.

And that’s the main issue with this article. There will always be fights among developers about which language is better, VB.NET or C#. I don’t care. Use what works best for you. And I’m always interested in a well argumented comparison between the two. (and I’m not going to show my preference here, I worked in both languages, and I like to think I know what I’m talking about).

Alright, let’s take a look at Andy Brown’s points:

Point number 1

Not a good point to start with, very personal point, so I’m like: ‘whatever dude’

Point number 2

Again, bad point, it’s a language feature, I have no problem with typing out an if else statement. However the second part of your argument is utterly wrong. C# doesn’t allow fall through in a case statement, meaning the compiler will complain if you omit the break statement:

Point number 3

If I change the name of my control in the designer it just updates everything. I guess your Visual Studio 2010 is broken.

Point number 4

The one I hate the most. Not only are you PUSHING your personal preference to other people, you’re doing it with the wrong arguments. Allow me to explain:

&& in C# is NOT And in VB.NET. The && is a Contitional And, the And operator is logical, meaning it will execute both sides. We can read this on the MSDN page on this topic.

Let me prove it to you with an example:

As you can see it only executes the Foo one, it completely omits the Bar!

If we follow the ‘comparison’ Andy wrote this would translate to the following VB.NET code:

Well, it seems that we need the AndAlso operator in VB.NET to get the same behavior. You can get the And behavior in C# by using a single & instead of a double.

The same is for the || and the Or, you need the OrElse to achieve the || result, or, to use the Or in C#, you need the single | instead of a double.

Point number 5

First of all this is a IDE feature, not a language feature. But fine, I’ll bite: you have that too in C#. Type prop+<tab>+<tab> and you’ve got your property.

Point number 6

You are relying on the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace. If you want to you can even add it to your C# project. The issue with this function is the following: reading the documentation doesn’t give me a single clue on what the restrictions are, what culture does it use?

You can always do int.TryParse or double.TryParse. Hec, you can even do a Regular Expression like ^[0-9]$ and then something else for the commas. I’m not a Regex Expert, and probably never will be Smile with tongue out .

And for your PMT function (click, decompiled from the dll):

Point number 7

Language feature, personal preference. No argument there.

Point number 8

First you start off by writing how to declare and define variables and then you come up with the out keyword? And if you have problems with the out keyword, you do realize that VB.NET doesn’t offer a way to the programmer to restrict him to give either an initialized variable or a non initialized variable. VB.NET only supports ByVal and ByRef, where the first is always a pointer (like in C#) and the second one is ref. No out available Sad smile . And then there is this behavior: Force an Argument to Be Passed by Value.

Point number 9

An enum in C# is an enum, even though it inherits from int. It’s just the compiler that complains. Of all the things you mentioned you have a fair point here. I’ll give you that.

Point number 10

You say it yourself, the whole point of an array is that it is fixed size. Use a list. They’re there for a reason.

I do not want to rant. I just want to get the facts right. And I feel bad. From your bio I read that you are a trainer. While they don’t have to go too deep for an introduction, you should get your facts right.

Signing off,

-Kristof

Thoughts on a Resharper 6 refactoring

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Kristof

Consider the following code:

If we want to know if there are no items in the list we have 3 possibilities (probably more, but I’ll limit myself to 3 possibilities in this scope).

Which just uses List’s implementation of ICollection.Count.

Second option is:

Last option is:

As you might know, since ReSharper 6, the second option is suggested to be refactored to the last option.

However it is not the same to do an Enumerable.Count() and a Enumerable.Any() on an ICollection.

If we take a closer look using a decompile tool (Reflector, Resharper Decompile, JustDecompile, …) at the Count() and Any() extension methods we see the following:

Count:

Any:

We can clearly see that when using the Count() extension method the system actually first tries to see if the the IEnumerable<TSource> is an ICollection<TSource> or an ICollection, and using the Count property if possible, before enumerating over the entire list.

So I say: not everything Resharper says is correct, always use it carefully, think before you do an automatic refactoring. And more importantly: think about the design of your code. Is it needed that you pass in an IEnumerable? Is a ICollection<TSource> or an IList<TSource> more useful?

Have a good one!

Silverlight 4: Bug in TabControl.TabStripPlacement = Dock.Left and OnApplyTemplate

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Kristof

At work I ran into a bug with the Silverlight TabControl, more specifically when setting the TabStripPlacement to Dock.Left and hiding one of the TabItems in the parent’s OnApplyTemplate.

The way to get to this bug is quite specific. For example, you can’t do it when you’re using a UserControl, since in that kind of class OnApplyTemplate is never called.

You need to build a class which inherits from Control.

public class TabControlTest : Control

Then we have the style of this particular class:

<Style TargetType="TabControlTest:TabControlTest"> <Setter Property="Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate TargetType="TabControlTest:TabControlTest"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> <RowDefinition Height="38" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <sdk:TabControl TabStripPlacement="{TemplateBinding TabStripPlacement}" Grid.Row="0"> <sdk:TabItem Header="First"> <sdk:TabItem.Content> <TextBlock Text="A" /> </sdk:TabItem.Content> </sdk:TabItem> <sdk:TabItem Header="Second" x:Name="middleTabItem"> <sdk:TabItem.Content> <TextBlock Text="B" /> </sdk:TabItem.Content> </sdk:TabItem> <sdk:TabItem Header="Last"> <sdk:TabItem.Content> <TextBlock Text="C" /> </sdk:TabItem.Content> </sdk:TabItem> </sdk:TabControl> <Button HorizontalAlignment="Center" Grid.Row="1" Content="{TemplateBinding ShowOrHide}" Command="{TemplateBinding ShowOrHideCommand}" /> </Grid> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style>

As you can see I’ve named the middle TabItem (“middleTabItem”) so I can retrieve it in the OnApplyTemplate:

public override void OnApplyTemplate()
{
    this._middleTabItem = (TabItem) this.GetTemplateChild("middleTabItem");
    this._middleTabItem.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;

    base.OnApplyTemplate();
}

Now if the following 2 conditions are matched:

TabStripPlacement is set to Dock.Left (it doesn’t happen on ‘Top’)
We set the Visibility of the said TabItem to Collapsed in the OnApplyTemplate of the surrounding Control

Then we cannot make the TabItem Visible anymore.

To show or hide I use the following code:

this.ShowOrHideCommand = new Command(() =>
                                         {
                                            this.ShowOrHideText = string.Format(SwitchTo, this._middleTabItem.Visibility);
                                            this._middleTabItem.Visibility = this._middleTabItem.Visibility == Visibility.Visible ? Visibility.Collapsed : Visibility.Visible;
                                         });

The solution to this is to call the OnApplyTemplate of the TabControl itself so that it recalculates it’s children’s location (or something, I’m not sure):

Give the TabControl a name, fetch it in OnApplyTemplate of your Control:

<sdk:TabControl TabStripPlacement="{TemplateBinding TabStripPlacement}" x:Name="TabControl" Grid.Row="0">

public override void OnApplyTemplate()
{
    this._middleTabItem = (TabItem) this.GetTemplateChild("middleTabItem");
    this._middleTabItem.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
    this._tabControl = (TabControl) this.GetTemplateChild("TabControl");
    base.OnApplyTemplate();
}

And call the _tabControl’s OnApplyTemplate after switching the Visibility to Visible:

this.ShowOrHideCommand = new Command(() =>
                                         {
                                            this.ShowOrHideText = string.Format(SwitchTo, this._middleTabItem.Visibility);
                                            this._middleTabItem.Visibility = this._middleTabItem.Visibility == Visibility.Visible ? Visibility.Collapsed : Visibility.Visible;
                                            this._tabControl.OnApplyTemplate();
                                         });

This will make the UI respond correctly. For your convenience I’ve added the SL project, and you can download it here.

Visual Studio 2010 SP1: DebuggerTypeProxy works again! yay

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Kristof

A while ago I bumped into a bug in Visual Studio 2010 + Silverlight 4.

While working with a List / Dictionary / … it didn’t show the items in the list, instead it showed the normal ‘raw view’:

As you can see, there was no view to see the items.

What you would expect to see is this:

I reported the bug (many others did too!). The problem was that it was fixed in SL3, but not ported to SL4.

Now it’s fixed! This makes my work a lot easier. When we get SP1 @ work too that is!

Cheers!

Dictionary<TKey, TValue> finding key: try/catch vs TryGetValue

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Kristof

Today I saw some code where the developer accessed a dictionary like this:

void Foo(int keyToFindInDictionary)
{
    Dictionary<int, string> dictionary = new Dictionary<int, string>();
 
    try
    {
        DoSomethingWithTheResult(dictionary[keyToFindInDictionary]);
    }
    catch (KeyNotFoundException)
    {
        // fallback
    }
}
 
private void DoSomethingWithTheResult(string s)
{
    // do something
}

As you can see he catches the exception to handle the fact that the given key was not found in the dictionary.

I told him that there was a better way, i.e. Dictionary<TKey, TValue>.TryGetValue.

And then the curious part of me started thinking, how much better is it? Is it faster? Slower?

So I wrote the following small piece of code to test my statement that TryGetValue is better than catching the KeyNotFoundException.

namespace DictionaryTryGetValueVersusException
{
    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.Diagnostics;
 
    internal class Program
    {
        private static void Main()
        {
            // create a dictionary with some values
            Dictionary<string, string> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();
 
            // add 10,000 items
            for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
            {
                if (i == 5000)
                {
                    // skip
                    continue;
                }
 
                dictionary.Add(string.Format("Key{0}", i), string.Format("Value{0}", i));
            }
 
            Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();
 
            stopwatch.Start();
 
            const string keyToFindInDictionary = "Key5000";
 
            for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
            {
                // 5000 does not exist
                try
                {
                    // execute a method on the variable, so that he compiler doesn't optimize it.
                    dictionary[keyToFindInDictionary];
                }
                catch (Exception)
                {
                    // ignore
                }
            }
 
            stopwatch.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine("Dictionary lookup with try/catch took: {0}", stopwatch.ElapsedTicks);
 
            stopwatch.Restart();
 
            for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
            {
                string notFound;
                // 5000 does not exist
                dictionary.TryGetValue(keyToFindInDictionary, out notFound);
            }
 
            stopwatch.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine("Dictionary lookup with TryGetValue took: {0}", stopwatch.ElapsedTicks);
 
            Console.WriteLine("Done, press enter to exit");
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

As you can see we add 10,000 items to the dictionary, skipping the 5000th item, and then we do a lookup in the dictionary, 10,000 times, on the key that doesn’t exist, to measure the performance difference between the 2 previously discussed methods.

To run this test I did a Release Build in Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4.0, Any CPU, and this is the result:

Dictionary lookup with try/catch took: 1069625
Dictionary lookup with TryGetValue took: 864
Done, press enter to exit

As you can see there is a HUGE difference. The TryGetValue-way was about 1237 faster!

Exception throwing is very heavy! Don’t forget that. It doesn’t mean that you need to program without exceptions, but when you EXPECT that a Key is not present in a given dictionary, don’t use the exception. Use the TryGetValue. If you always expect it to be there then it’s normal to catch the exception, because it’s exceptional that the key was not found.

PS: I tried the code again by skipping the 9999th item, and the results were about the same, take or leave a few milliseconds. So searching in the dictionary is very performant (close to O(1), as written in the Remarks section on this page.)

Windows Phone 7 TextBox, binding and ApplicationButton

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Kristof

Consider a Windows Phone 7 application with a textbox and an ApplicationButton.

UI:

<Canvas x:Name="ContentGrid" Grid.Row="1" Height="545" Width="480">
    <TextBlock Text="Enter text here" Canvas.Left="6" Canvas.Top="187" />
    <TextBox x:Name="myTextBox" Text="{Binding Test, Mode=TwoWay}" Height="69" Width="480" Canvas.Left="0" Canvas.Top="209" />
</Canvas>

Backend:

namespace WindowsPhoneApplication1
{
    using System;
    using System.ComponentModel;
    using System.Windows.Controls;
    using Microsoft.Phone.Controls;
 
    public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage, INotifyPropertyChanged
    {
        private string _test;
        // Constructor
        public MainPage()
        {
            this.InitializeComponent();
 
            this.DataContext = this;
        }
 
        public string Test
        {
            get
            {
                return this._test;
            }
            set
            {
                if (value != this._test)
                {
                    this._test = value;
                    this.PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("Test"));
                }
            }
        }
 
        #region INotifyPropertyChanged Members
 
        public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
 
        #endregion
 
    }
}

The textbox is bound to a property on the backend (two way binding) and when you click the bottom button the text is saved/send/encrypted/whatever.

Now the problem is that clicking the button doesn’t do a UI –> source binding update as it would do with a normal button.

I enter the text ‘test’ on the TextBlock and IMMIDIATLY click the ApplicationButton. I don’t do anything else. This is a common user practice, he changes something and clicks the save/send/whatsoever button.

This is the result:

Check the Watch 1. As you can see the value is still null. The value is not sent to the _test value. How do we solve this?

You can add the following line to the click event handler:

this.myTextBox.GetBindingExpression(TextBox.TextProperty).UpdateSource();

So the result will look like this:

private void AppbarButton1Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    this.myTextBox.GetBindingExpression(TextBox.TextProperty).UpdateSource();
 
    // handle save/send/encrypt/whatever here
}

There are 3 downsides I think:

You need to name your TextBlock which (I think) unnecessarily clutters your scope with otherwise unused variables (that’s why we use bindings too!)
Your UI and ViewModel (in my case) aren’t decoupled 100% anymore. In Windows Phone 7 this is no issue though, since WP7 has no ICommand and I have to couply my UI and ViewModel anyway
You need to remember to write this line! Which can be quite cumbersome with a lot of application buttons.

And items in a ApplicationBar.MenuItems (ApplicationBarMenuItem) have the same problem. The UI doesn’t push the update to the ViewModel.

I hope this will be fixed in the final version, and I will post this to Microsoft Connect. If anybody has a better solution please feel free to share it.

A more general INotifyPropertyChangedHandler extension method for strongly typed reflection

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Kristof

static class ExtensionMethods
{
    public static void Raise<TValue>(this PropertyChangedEventHandler handler, Expression<Func<TValue>> propertySelector)
    {
        var memberExpression = propertySelector.Body as MemberExpression;
 
        if (handler == null || memberExpression == null)
        {
            return;
        }
 
        var sender = ((ConstantExpression)memberExpression.Expression).Value;
        handler(sender, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(memberExpression.Member.Name));
    }
}

Use this as an extension method like this on a class that implements INotifyPropertyChanged

class SomeClass : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
    private string _someProperty;
 
    public string SomeProperty
    {
        get
        {
            return this._someProperty;
        }
        set
        {
            if (value != this._someProperty)
            {
                this._someProperty = value;
                this.PropertyChanged.Raise(() => this.SomeProperty);
            }
        }
    }
 
    public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
}

Good luck

-Kristof

MvvmLight: strongly typed INotifyPropertyChanged

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Kristof

Since MvvmLight exposes it’s own ViewModelBase you cannot use this little script to raise the INotifyPropertyChangedEventHandler, because .NET doesn’t allow you to raise events in derived classes. This is because the compiler generates a private delegate (it’s in VB.NET but that doesn’t matter).

And since the ViewModelBase only exposes a protected RaiseProperty(string propertyName) I cannot use strongly typed reflection.

So I found some code, and rewrote it like this.

Now you can create a class that inherits from ViewModelBase, and make your ViewModels inherit from your just created class.

Now you have a pattern like this:

ViewModelBase <—DefaultViewModel <—MainPageViewModel

And your DefaultViewModel should look like this:

public abstract class DefaultViewModel : ViewModelBase
{
    protected void RaisePropertyChanged<TValue>(Expression<Func<TValue>> propertySelector)
    {
        var memberExpression = (propertySelector.Body as MemberExpression);
 
        if (null != memberExpression)
        this.RaisePropertyChanged(memberExpression.Member.Name);
    }
}

And your MainPageViewModel (for example):

public class MainPageViewModel : DefaultViewModel
{
    private decimal _remainingCredits;
 
    /// <summary>
    /// Remaining credits of the current account
    /// </summary>
    public decimal RemainingCredits
    {
        get
        {
            return this._remainingCredits;
        }
 
        set
        {
            if (this._remainingCredits != value)
            {
                this._remainingCredits = value;
 
                this.RaisePropertyChanged(() => RemainingCredits);
            }
        }
    }
}

You can use the form of RaisePropertyChanged(() => NameOfProperty);

This way, when you rename a variable in your code the refactor engine picks it up and renames it accordingly. (it forget strings

Good luck,

Kristof

Windows Phone 7, adding and displaying icons.

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Kristof

Hi all,

I tried to display an icon in my Windows Phone 7 application:

<shell:ApplicationBarIconButton x:Name="appbar_button1" IconUri="/Images/appbar.feature.settings.rest.png" Text="Settings" />

By default, when you add an image to the solution folder it sets the build action as Resource, as shown below:

But when you run the application with the Build Action as Resource you will get a result looking like this:

While I really meant an icon looking like this:

How do we fix it?

Set the Build Action to Content!

And this is the result:

Silverlight 4 debugging and Firefox 3.6.4+

Posted on July 5, 2010 by Kristof

I’ve been stuck on this for a few days.

At the moment, Firefox 3.6.4 (and newer) have a new functionality called ‘Crash protection’, which is quite nice.

For customers.

…

It now runs the plugins in a separate process called ‘plugin-container.exe’ (look in your task manager).

But for developers it’s quite the hassle, since Visual Studio attaches itself to Firefox but NOT to this process. So no more Silverlight debugging for you!

Luckily there are two options for you!

The first option is the most straight forward, but has to be done each time. Use Visual Studio to attach itself to plugin-container.exe, refresh the website, and BAM, you’re up and running!

On the next screen click ‘plugin-container.exe’. There might be 2, if so, select the one with ‘Silverlight’ in the ‘Type’ column:

And hit ‘Attach’.

While this solution is adequate for when you need to debug it one time at a day, but for me, I only debug in Firefox, and when necessary I use Internet Explorer. For that you can go to your ‘about:config’ in Firefox, disable ‘dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll’ (set it to false).

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Kristof's blog

A blog on my experiences in programming, work, and life!

Category Archives: C#