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• Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today Nokia and Microsoft had an event to officially introduce the Lumia 920.  Below is a rundown of some of the things I found interesting. As a person who likes photography there was a lot to drool over.  The main feature that caught my attention was PureView with its optical stabilization.  This alone should improve the majority of you pictures.  Add to that the SmartShoot Object remover that uses multiple images to remove unwanted people or objects that move through your picture and you never have to accept reality again. For the most part the lenses concept introduced in Windows Phone 8 just makes the usability of leveraging camera better.  Of course that is Microsoft’s selling point.  One lens that caught my attention was the Bing lens.  I have to say it is about time that we can take pictures and use them to search for answers using Bing. There were a couple of features shown that involved augmented reality.  One was similar to the yapf application that is already in the market which overlays restaurants and other destination over live camera views.  The other was using the navigation directions with a live view. Then you get down to some of the physical features of the Lumia 920.  The one that got the most stage time is that it has a great 2000mah battery which can be charged wirelessly.  They also pointed out the improved glare reduction of the 4.5 in. curved glass screen.  This hardware improvement is improved further with software that detects glare conditions and adjusts the display attributes to enhance viewing ease. Adding to the wireless cool factor of the Lumia 920 is the general NFC capabilities.  This was demonstrated with NFC docking stations as well as JBL speakers and headphones. There was one more hardware feature that I applauded.  The super sensitive touch screen did away with one of my pet peeves with capacitive touch screens.  You will never have to remove you gloves to operate your phone again.  The mittens that they did the demo with looked more like boxing gloves. I was disappointed with Joe Belfiore said that they were only going to show a couple of new features of the Windows Phone 8 and would hear more at future events.  One of the things he did show is the ability to customize which buttons you preferred as defaults in IE10.  For example you could have the folders button where the refresh button normally is.  He also showed that at long last you can natively take screenshots on your phone.  Hopefully he will be back quickly to give us the rest of the features. The most disappointing part of the event was that we never found out when they would be released or how much they would cost.  Let’s hope this comes soon.  Even with these couple of items still left on my wish list I can’t wait to get my hands on a Lumia 920.  del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Windows Phone 8,Nokia,Lumia,Lumia 920,Microsoft

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• Hidden Features of C#?

  - by Serhat Özgel

  This came to my mind after I learned the following from this question: where T : struct We, C# developers, all know the basics of C#. I mean declarations, conditionals, loops, operators, etc. Some of us even mastered the stuff like Generics, anonymous types, lambdas, linq, ... But what are the most hidden features or tricks of C# that even C# fans, addicts, experts barely know? Here are the revealed features so far: Keywords yield by Michael Stum var by Michael Stum using() statement by kokos readonly by kokos as by Mike Stone as / is by Ed Swangren as / is (improved) by Rocketpants default by deathofrats global:: by pzycoman using() blocks by AlexCuse volatile by Jakub Šturc extern alias by Jakub Šturc Attributes DefaultValueAttribute by Michael Stum ObsoleteAttribute by DannySmurf DebuggerDisplayAttribute by Stu DebuggerBrowsable and DebuggerStepThrough by bdukes ThreadStaticAttribute by marxidad FlagsAttribute by Martin Clarke ConditionalAttribute by AndrewBurns Syntax ?? operator by kokos number flaggings by Nick Berardi where T:new by Lars Mæhlum implicit generics by Keith one-parameter lambdas by Keith auto properties by Keith namespace aliases by Keith verbatim string literals with @ by Patrick enum values by lfoust @variablenames by marxidad event operators by marxidad format string brackets by Portman property accessor accessibility modifiers by xanadont ternary operator (?:) by JasonS checked and unchecked operators by Binoj Antony implicit and explicit operators by Flory Language Features Nullable types by Brad Barker Currying by Brian Leahy anonymous types by Keith __makeref __reftype __refvalue by Judah Himango object initializers by lomaxx format strings by David in Dakota Extension Methods by marxidad partial methods by Jon Erickson preprocessor directives by John Asbeck DEBUG pre-processor directive by Robert Durgin operator overloading by SefBkn type inferrence by chakrit boolean operators taken to next level by Rob Gough pass value-type variable as interface without boxing by Roman Boiko programmatically determine declared variable type by Roman Boiko Static Constructors by Chris Easier-on-the-eyes / condensed ORM-mapping using LINQ by roosteronacid Visual Studio Features select block of text in editor by Himadri snippets by DannySmurf Framework TransactionScope by KiwiBastard DependantTransaction by KiwiBastard Nullable<T> by IainMH Mutex by Diago System.IO.Path by ageektrapped WeakReference by Juan Manuel Methods and Properties String.IsNullOrEmpty() method by KiwiBastard List.ForEach() method by KiwiBastard BeginInvoke(), EndInvoke() methods by Will Dean Nullable<T>.HasValue and Nullable<T>.Value properties by Rismo GetValueOrDefault method by John Sheehan Tips & Tricks nice method for event handlers by Andreas H.R. Nilsson uppercase comparisons by John access anonymous types without reflection by dp a quick way to lazily instantiate collection properties by Will JavaScript-like anonymous inline-functions by roosteronacid Other netmodules by kokos LINQBridge by Duncan Smart Parallel Extensions by Joel Coehoorn

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• Why is this code invalid in C#?

  - by mmattax

  The following code will not compile: string foo = "bar"; Object o = foo == null ? DBNull.Value : foo; I get: Error 1 Type of conditional expression cannot be determined because there is no implicit conversion between 'System.DBNull' and 'string' To fix this, I must do something like this: string foo = "bar"; Object o = foo == null ? DBNull.Value : (Object)foo; This cast seems pointless as this is certainly legal: string foo = "bar"; Object o = foo == null ? "gork" : foo; It seems to me that when the ternary branches are of different types, the compiler will not autobox the values to the type object...but when they are of the same type then the autoboxing is automatic. In my mind the first statement should be legal... Can anyone describe why the compiler does not allow this and why the designers of C# chose to do this? I believe this is legal in Java...Though I have not verified this. Thanks. EDIT: I am asking for an understanding of why Java and C# handle this differently, what is going on underneath the scenes in C# that make this invalid. I know how to use ternary, and am not looking for a "better way" to code the examples. I understand the rules of ternary in C#, but I want to know WHY... EDIT (Jon Skeet): Removed "autoboxing" tag as no boxing is involved in this question.

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• Create Generic method constraining T to an Enum

  - by johnc

  I'm building a function to extend the Enum.Parse concept that allows a default value to be parsed in case that an Enum value is not found Is case insensitive So I wrote the following public static T GetEnumFromString<T>(string value, T defaultValue) where T : Enum { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) return defaultValue; foreach (T item in Enum.GetValues(typeof(T))) { if (item.ToString().ToLower().Equals(value.Trim().ToLower())) return item; } return defaultValue; } I am getting a Error Constraint cannot be special class 'System.Enum' Fair enough, but is there a workaround to allow a Generic Enum, or am I going to have to mimic the Parse function and pass a type as an attribute, which forces the ugly boxing requirement to your code. EDIT All suggestions below have been greatly appreciated, thanks Have settled on (I've left the loop to maintain case insensitivity - I am usng this when parsing XML) public static class EnumUtils { public static T ParseEnum<T>(string value, T defaultValue) where T : struct, IConvertible { if (!typeof(T).IsEnum) throw new ArgumentException("T must be an enumerated type"); if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) return defaultValue; foreach (T item in Enum.GetValues(typeof(T))) { if (item.ToString().ToLower().Equals(value.Trim().ToLower())) return item; } return defaultValue; } }

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• Converting an integer to a boxed enum type only known at runtime

  - by Marc Gravell

  Imagine we have an enum: enum Foo { A=1,B=2,C=3 } If the type is known at compile-time, a direct cast can be used to change between the enum-type and the underlying type (usually int): static int GetValue() { return 2; } ... Foo foo = (Foo)GetValue(); // becomes Foo.B And boxing this gives a box of type Foo: object o1 = foo; Console.WriteLine(o1.GetType().Name); // writes Foo (and indeed, you can box as Foo and unbox as int, or box as int and unbox as Foo quite happily) However (the problem); if the enum type is only known at runtime things are... trickier. It is obviously trivial to box it as an int - but can I box it as Foo? (Ideally without using generics and MakeGenericMethod, which would be ugly). Convert.ChangeType throws an exception. ToString and Enum.Parse works, but is horribly inefficient. I could look at the defined values (Enum.GetValues or Type.GetFields), but that is very hard for [Flags], and even without would require getting back to the underlying-type first (which isn't as hard, thankfully). But; is there a more direct to get from a value of the correct underlying-type to a box of the enum-type, where the type is only known at runtime?

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• Programming test for ASP.NET C# developer job - Opinions please!

  - by Indy

  Hi all, We are hiring a .NET C# developer and I have developed a technical test for the candidates to complete. They have an hour and it has two parts, some knowledge based questions covering asp.net, C# and SQL and a small practical test. I'd appreciate feedback on the test, is it sufficient to test the programmers ability? What would you change if anything? Part One. What the are events fired as part of the ASP.NET Page lifecycle. What interesting things can you do at each? How does ViewState work and why is it either useful or bad? What is a common way to create web services in ASP.NET 2.0? What is the GAC? What is boxing? What is a delegate? The C# keyword .int. maps to which .NET type? Explain the difference between a Stored Procedure and a Trigger? What is an OUTER Join? What is @@IDENTITY? Part Two: You are provided with the Northwind Database and the attached DB relationship diagram. Please create a page which provides users with the following functionality. You don’t need to be too concerned with the presentation detail of the page. Select a customer from a list, and see all the orders placed by that customer. For the same customer, find all their orders which are Beverages and the quantity is more than 5. I was aware of setting the right balance of difficulty on this as there is an hour's test. I was able to complete the practical test in under 30 mins using SQLDatasource and the query designer in visual studio and the test questions, I am looking to see how they approach it logically and whether they use the tools available. Many thanks!

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• RegularExpression-esque search matching Objects in List

  - by Pindatjuh

  I'm currently working on an implementation of the following idea, and I was wondering if there is any literature on this subject. Working with Java, but the principle applies on any language with a decent type-system, I like to implement: matching Objects from a List using a RegularExpression-esque search: So let's say I have a List containing List<Object> x = new ArrayList<Object>(); x.add(new Object()); x.add("Hello World"); x.add("Second String"); x.add(5); // Integer (auto-boxing) x.add(6); // Integer Then I create a "Regular Expression" (not working with a stream of characters, but working with a stream of Objects), and instead of character-classes, I use type-system properties: [String][Integer] And this would match one sublist: {Match["Second String", 5]}. The expression: [String:length()<15] Will match two sublist (each of length 1) containing a String which instance is passing the expression instance.length() < 5: {Match["Hello World"],Match["Second String"]}. [Object][Object] Matches any pair in the List: {Match[Object,"Hello World"],Match["Second String", 5]}, in a streamed manner (no overlapping matches). Ofcourse, my implementation will have grouping, lookahead/lookbehinds and is hierarchical (i.e. matching n elements from Lists in Lists), etc. The above merely illustrates the concept. Is there a name for this principle, and is there literature available on it?

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• Is there a language with native pass-by-reference/pass-by-name semantics, which could be used in mod

  - by Bubba88

  Hi! This is a reopened question. I look for a language and supporting platform for it, where the language could have pass-by-reference or pass-by-name semantics by default. I know the history a little, that there were Algol, Fortran and there still is C++ which could make it possible; but, basically, what I look for is something more modern and where the mentioned value pass methodology is preferred and by default (implicitly assumed). I ask this question, because, to my mind, some of the advantages of pass-by-ref/name seem kind of obvious. For example when it is used in a standalone agent, where copyiong of values is not necessary (to some extent) and performance wouldn't be downgraded much in that case. So, I could employ it in e.g. rich client app or some game-style or standalone service-kind application. The main advantage to me is the clear separation between identity of a symbol, and its current value. I mean when there is no reduntant copying, you know that you're working with the exact symbol/path you have queried/received. And intristing boxing of values will not interfere with the actual logic of program. I know that there is C# ref keyword, but it's something not so intristic, though acceptable. Equally, I realize that pass-by-reference semantics could be simulated in virtually any language (Java as an instant example) and so on.. not sure about pass by name :) What would you recommend - create a something like DSL for such needs wherever it be appropriate; or use some languages that I already know? Maybe, there is something that I'm missing? Thank you!

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• Generic property- specify the type at runtime

  - by Lirik

  I was reading a question on making a generic property, but I'm a little confused at by the last example from the first answer (I've included the relevant code below): You have to know the type at compile time. If you don't know the type at compile time then you must be storing it in an object, in which case you can add the following property to the Foo class: public object ConvertedValue { get { return Convert.ChangeType(Value, Type); } } That's seems strange: it's converting the value to the specified type, but it's returning it as an object when the value was stored as an object. Doesn't the returned object still require un-boxing? If it does, then why bother with the conversion of the type? I'm also trying to make a generic property whose type will be determined at run time: public class Foo { object Value {get;set;} Type ValType{get;set;} Foo(object value, Type type) { Value = value; ValType = type; } // I need a property that is actually // returned as the specified value type... public object ConvertedValue { get { return Convert.ChangeType(Value, ValType); } } } Is it possible to make a generic property? Does the return property still require unboxing after it's accessed?

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• Wrappers of primitive types in arraylist vs arrays

  - by ismail marmoush

  Hi, In "Core java 1" I've read CAUTION: An ArrayList is far less efficient than an int[] array because each value is separately wrapped inside an object. You would only want to use this construct for small collections when programmer convenience is more important than efficiency. But in my software I've already used Arraylist instead of normal arrays due to some requirements, though "The software is supposed to have high performance and after I've read the quoted text I started to panic!" one thing I can change is changing double variables to Double so as to prevent auto boxing and I don't know if that is worth it or not, in next sample algorithm public void multiply(final double val) { final int rows = getSize1(); final int cols = getSize2(); for (int i = 0; i < rows; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < cols; j++) { this.get(i).set(j, this.get(i).get(j) * val); } } } My question is does changing double to Double makes a difference ? or that's a micro optimizing that won't affect anything ? keep in mind I might be using large matrices.2nd Should I consider redesigning the whole program again ?

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• Is there really such a thing as a char or short in modern programming?

  - by Dean P

  Howdy all, I've been learning to program for a Mac over the past few months (I have experience in other languages). Obviously that has meant learning the Objective C language and thus the plainer C it is predicated on. So I have stumbles on this quote, which refers to the C/C++ language in general, not just the Mac platform. With C and C++ prefer use of int over char and short. The main reason behind this is that C and C++ perform arithmetic operations and parameter passing at integer level, If you have an integer value that can fit in a byte, you should still consider using an int to hold the number. If you use a char, the compiler will first convert the values into integer, perform the operations and then convert back the result to char. So my question, is this the case in the Mac Desktop and IPhone OS environments? I understand when talking about theses environments we're actually talking about 3-4 different architectures (PPC, i386, Arm and the A4 Arm variant) so there may not be a single answer. Nevertheless does the general principle hold that in modern 32 bit / 64 bit systems using 1-2 byte variables that don't align with the machine's natural 4 byte words doesn't provide much of the efficiency we may expect. For instance, a plain old C-Array of 100,000 chars is smaller than the same 100,000 ints by a factor of four, but if during an enumeration, reading out each index involves a cast/boxing/unboxing of sorts, will we see overall lower 'performance' despite the saved memory overhead?

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• Linq-to-XML explicit casting in a generic method

  - by vlad

  I've looked for a similar question, but the only one that was close didn't help me in the end. I have an XML file that looks like this: <Fields> <Field name="abc" value="2011-01-01" /> <Field name="xyz" value="" /> <Field name="tuv" value="123.456" /> </Fields> I'm trying to use Linq-to-XML to get the values from these fields. The values can be of type Decimal, DateTime, String and Int32. I was able to get the fields one by one using a relatively simple query. For example, I'm getting the 'value' from the field with the name 'abc' using the following: private DateTime GetValueFromAttribute(IEnumerable<XElement> fields, String attName) { return (from field in fields where field.Attribute("name").Value == "abc" select (DateTime)field.Attribute("value")).FirstOrDefault() } this is placed in a separate function that simply returns this value, and everything works fine (since I know that there is only one element with the name attribute set to 'abc'). however, since I have to do this for decimals and integers and dates, I was wondering if I can make a generic function that works in all cases. this is where I got stuck. here's what I have so far: private T GetValueFromAttribute<T>(IEnumerable<XElement> fields, String attName) { return (from field in fields where field.Attribute("name").Value == attName select (T)field.Attribute("value").Value).FirstOrDefault(); } this doesn't compile because it doesn't know how to convert from String to T. I tried boxing and unboxing (i.e. select (T) (Object) field.Attribute("value").Value but that throws a runtime Specified cast is not valid exception as it's trying to convert the String to a DateTime, for instance. Is this possible in a generic function? can I put a constraint on the generic function to make it work? or do I have to have separate functions to take advantage of Linq-to-XML's explicit cast operators?

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• java number exceeds long.max_value - how to detect?

  - by jurchiks

  I'm having problems detecting if a sum/multiplication of two numbers exceeds the maximum value of a long integer. Example code: long a = 2 * Long.MAX_VALUE; System.out.println("long.max * smth > long.max... or is it? a=" + a); This gives me -2, while I would expect it to throw a NumberFormatException... Is there a simple way of making this work? Because I have some code that does multiplications in nested IF blocks or additions in a loop and I would hate to add more IFs to each IF or inside the loop. Edit: oh well, it seems that this answer from another question is the most appropriate for what I need: http://stackoverflow.com/a/9057367/540394 I don't want to do boxing/unboxing as it adds unnecassary overhead, and this way is very short, which is a huge plus to me. I'll just write two short functions to do these checks and return the min or max long. Edit2: here's the function for limiting a long to its min/max value according to the answer I linked to above: /** * @param a : one of the two numbers added/multiplied * @param b : the other of the two numbers * @param c : the result of the addition/multiplication * @return the minimum or maximum value of a long integer if addition/multiplication of a and b is less than Long.MIN_VALUE or more than Long.MAX_VALUE */ public static long limitLong(long a, long b, long c) { return (((a > 0) && (b > 0) && (c <= 0)) ? Long.MAX_VALUE : (((a < 0) && (b < 0) && (c >= 0)) ? Long.MIN_VALUE : c)); } Tell me if you think this is wrong.

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• Why would one want to use the public constructors on Boolean and similar immutable classes?

  - by Robert J. Walker

  (For the purposes of this question, let us assume that one is intentionally not using auto(un)boxing, either because one is writing pre-Java 1.5 code, or because one feels that autounboxing makes it too easy to create NullPointerExceptions.) Take Boolean, for example. The documentation for the Boolean(boolean) constructor says: Note: It is rarely appropriate to use this constructor. Unless a new instance is required, the static factory valueOf(boolean) is generally a better choice. It is likely to yield significantly better space and time performance. My question is, why would you ever want to get a new instance in the first place? It seems like things would be simpler if constructors like that were private. For example, if they were, you could write this with no danger (even if myBoolean were null): if (myBoolean == Boolean.TRUE) It'd be safe because all true Booleans would be references to Boolean.TRUE and all false Booleans would be references to Boolean.FALSE. But because the constructors are public, someone may have used them, which means that you have to write this instead: if (Boolean.TRUE.equals(myBoolean)) But where it really gets bad is when you want to check two Booleans for equality. Something like this: if (myBooleanA == myBooleanB) ...becomes this: if ( (myBooleanA == null && myBooleanB == null) || (myBooleanA == null && myBooleanA.equals(myBooleanB)) ) I can't think of any reason to have separate instances of these objects which is more compelling than not having to do the nonsense above. What say you?

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• IS operator behaving a bit strangely

  - by flockofcode

  1) According to my book, IS operator can check whether expression E (E is type) can be converted to the target type only if E is either a reference conversion, boxing or unboxing. Since in the following example IS doesn’t check for either of the three types of conversion, the code shouldn’t work, but it does: int i=100; if (i is long) //returns true, indicating that conversion is possible l = i; 2) a) B b; A a = new A(); if (a is B) b = (B)a; int i = b.l; class A { public int l = 100; } class B:A { } The above code always causes compile time error “Use of unassigned variable”. If condition a is B evaluates to false, then b won’t be assigned a value, but if condition is true, then it will. And thus by allowing such a code compiler would have no way of knowing whether the usage of b in code following the if statement is valid or not ( due to not knowing whether a is b evaluates to true or false) , but why should it know that? Intsead why couldn’t runtime handle this? b) But if instead we’re dealing with non reference types, then compiler doesn’t complain, even though the code is identical.Why? int i = 100; long l; if (i is long) l = i; thank you

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• Generic factory of generic containers

  - by Feuermurmel

  I have a generic abstract class Factory<T> with a method createBoxedInstance() which returns instances of T created by implementations of createInstance() wrapped in the generic container Box<T>. abstract class Factory<T> { abstract T createInstance(); public final Box<T> createBoxedInstance() { return new Box<T>(createInstance()); } public final class Box<T> { public final T content; public Box(T content) { this.content = content; } } } At some points I need a container of type Box<S> where S is an ancestor of T. Is it possible to make createBoxedInstance() itself generic so that it will return instances of Box<S> where S is chosen by the caller? Sadly, defining the function as follows does not work as a type parameter cannot be declared using the super keyword, only used. public final <S super T> Box<S> createBoxedInstance() { return new Box<S>(createInstance()); } The only alternative I see, is to make all places that need an instance of Box<S> accept Box<? extends S> which makes the container's content member assignable to S. Is there some way around this without re-boxing the instances of T into containers of type Box<S>? (I know I could just cast the Box<T> to a Box<S> but I would feel very, very guilty.)

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• A generic Re-usable C# Property Parser utility

  - by Shyam K Pananghat

  This is about a utility i have happened to write which can parse through the properties of a data contracts at runtime using reflection. The input required is a look like XPath string. since this is using reflection, you dont have to add the reference to any of your data contracts thus making pure generic and re- usable.. you can read about this and get the full c# sourcecode here. Property-Parser-A-C-utility-to-retrieve-values-from-any-Net-Data-contracts-at-runtime Now about the doubts which i have about this utility. i am using this utility enormously i many places of my code I am using Regex repetedly inside a recursion method. does this affect the memmory usage or GC collection badly ?do i have to dispose this manually. if yes how ?. The statements like obj.GetType().GetProperty() and obj.GetType().GetField() returns .net "object" which makes difficult or imposible to introduce generics here. Does this cause to have any overheads like boxing ? on an overall, please suggest to make this utility performance efficient and more light weight on memmory

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• Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider

  - by Gopinath

  If you going to buy iPhone 4S on a two year contract in USA, Europe or Australia you may not find it expensive. But if you are planning to buy it in any other parts of the world, you will definitely feel the heat of ridiculous iPhone 4S price. In India iPhone 4S costs approximately costs $1000 which is 30% more than the price tag of an unlocked iPhone sold in USA. Personally I love iPhones as there is no match for the user experience provided by Apple as well as the wide range of really meaning applications available for iPhone. But it breaks heart to spend $1000 for a phone and I’m forced to look at alternates available in the market. Here are the four iPhone 4S alternates available in almost all the countries where we can buy iPhone 4S Google Galaxy Nexus The Galaxy Nexus is Google’s own Android smartphone manufactured by Samsung and sold under the brand name of Google Nexus. Galaxy Nexus is the pure Android phone available in the market without any bloat software or custom user interfaces like other Androids available in the market. Galaxy Nexus is also the first Android phone to be shipped with the latest version of Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich. This phone is the benchmark for the rest of Android phones that are going to enter the market soon. In the words of Google this smartphone is called as “Galaxy Nexus: Simple. Beautiful. Beyond Smart.”.  BGR review summarizes the phone as This is almost comical at this point, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is my favourite Android device in the world. Easily replacing the HTC Rezound, the Motorola DROID RAZR, and Samsung Galaxy S II, the Galaxy Nexus champions in a brand new version of Android that pushes itself further than almost any other mobile OS in the industry. Samsung Galaxy S II The one single company that is able to sell more smartphones than Apple is Samsung. Samsung recently displaced Apple from the top smartphone seller spot and occupied it with loads of pride. Samsung’s Galaxy S II fits as one the best alternatives to Apple’s iPhone 4S with it’s beautiful design and remarkable performance. Engadget summarizes Samsung Galaxy S2 review as It’s the best Android smartphone yet, but more importantly, it might well be the best smartphone, period. Of course, a 4.3-inch screen size won’t suit everyone, no matter how stupendously thin the device that carries it may be, and we also can’t say for sure that the Galaxy S II would justify a long-term iOS user foresaking his investment into one ecosystem and making the leap to another. Nonetheless, if you’re asking us what smartphone to buy today, unconstrained by such externalities, the Galaxy S II would be the clear choice. Sometimes it’s just as simple as that. Nokia Lumia 800 Here comes unexpected Windows Phone in to the boxing ring. May be they are not as great as Androids available in the market today, but they are picking up very quickly. Especially the Nokia Lumia 800 seems to be first ever Windows Phone 7 aimed at competing serious with Androids and iPhones available in the market. There are reports that Nokia Lumia 800 is outselling all Androids in UK and few high profile tech blogs are calling it as the king of Windows Phone. Considering this phone while evaluating the alternative of iPhone 4S will not disappoint you. We assure. Droid RAZR Remember the Motorola Driod that swept entire Android market share couple of years ago? The first two version of Motorola Droids were the best in the market and they out performed almost every other Android phone those days. The invasion of Samsung Androids, Motorola lost it charm. With the recent release of Droid RAZR, Motorola seems to be in the right direction to reclaiming the prestige. Droid RAZR is the thinnest smartphone available in the market and it’s beauty is not just skin deep. Here is a review of the phone from Engadget blog the RAZR’s beauty is not only skin deep. The LTE radio, 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM make sure this sleek number is ready to run with the big boys. It kept pace with, and in some cases clearly outclassed its high-end competition. Despite its deficiencies in the display department and underwhelming battery life, the RAZR looks to be a perfectly viable alternative when considering the similarly-pricey Rezound and Galaxy Nexus Further Reading So we have seen the four alternates of iPhone 4S available in the market and I personally love to buy a Samsung smartphone if I’m don’t have money to afford an iPhone 4S. If you are interested in deep diving into the alternates, here few links that help you do more research Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs. Motorola Droid RAZR: How Their Specs Compare by Huffington Post Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Nexus Galaxy: Spec Smackdown by PC World Browser Speed Test: Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II – by Gizmodo iPhone 4S vs Samsung Galaxy S II by pocket lint Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II by techie buzz This article titled,Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Stumbling Through: Making a case for the K2 Case Management Framework

  I have recently attended a three-day training session on K2s Case Management Framework (CMF), a free framework built on top of K2s blackpearl workflow product, and I have come away with several different impressions for some of the different aspects of the framework.  Before we get into the details, what is the Case Management Framework?  It is essentially a suite of tools that, when used together, solve many common workflow scenarios.  The tool has been developed over time by K2 consultants that have realized they tend to solve the same problems over and over for various clients, so they attempted to package all of those common solutions into one framework.  Most of these common problems involve workflow process that arent necessarily direct and would tend to be difficult to model.  Such solutions could be achieved in blackpearl alone, but the workflows would be complex and difficult to follow and maintain over time.  CMF attempts to simplify such scenarios not so much by black-boxing the workflow processes, but by providing different points of entry to the processes allowing them to be simpler, moving the complexity to a middle layer.  It is not a solution in and of itself, development is still required to tie the pieces together. CMF is under continuous development, both a plus and a minus in that bugs are fixed quickly and features added regularly, but it may be difficult to know which versions are the most stable.  CMF is not an officially supported K2 product, which means you will not get technical support but you will get access to the source code. The example given of a business process that would fit well into CMF is that of a file cabinet, where each folder in said file cabinet is a case that contains all of the data associated with one complaint/customer/incident/etc. and various users can access that case at any time and take one of a set of pre-determined actions on it.  When I was given that example, my first thought was that any workflow I have ever developed in the past could be made to fit this model there must be more than just this model to help decide if CMF is the right solution.  As the training went on, we learned that one of the key features of CMF is SharePoint integration as each case gets a SharePoint site created for it, and there are a number of excellent web parts that can be used to design a portal for users to get at all the information on their cases.  While CMF does not require SharePoint, without it you will be missing out on a huge portion of functionality that CMF offers.  My opinion is that without SharePoint integration, you may as well write your workflows and other components the old fashioned way. When I heard that each case gets its own SharePoint site created for it, warning bells immediately went off in my head as I felt that depending on the data load, a CMF enabled solution could quickly overwhelm SharePoint with thousands of sites so we have yet another deciding factor for CMF:  Just how many cases will your solution be creating?  While it is not necessary to use the site-per-case model, it is one of the more useful parts of the framework.  Without it, you are losing a big chunk of what CMF has to offer. When it comes to developing on top of the Case Management Framework, it becomes a matter of configuring what makes up a case, what can be done to a case, where each action on a case should take the user, and then typing up actions to case statuses.  This last step is one that I immediately warmed up to, as just about every workflow Ive designed in the past needed some sort of mapping table to set the status of a work item based on the action being taken definitely one of those common solutions that it is good to see rolled up into a re-useable entity (and it gets a nice configuration UI to boot!).  This concept is a little different than traditional workflow design, in that you dont have to think of an end-to-end process around passing a case along a path, rather, you must envision the case as central object with workflow threads branching off of it and doing their own thing with the case data.  Certainly there can be certain workflow threads that get rather complex, but the idea is that they RELATE to the case, they dont BECOME the case (though it is still possible with action->status mappings to prevent certain actions in certain cases, so it isnt always a wide-open free for all of actions on a case). I realize that this description of the Case Management Framework merely scratches the surface on what the product actually can do, and I dont think Ive conclusively defined for what sort of business scenario you can make a case for Case Management Framework.  What I do hope to have accomplished with this post is to raise awareness of CMF there is a (free!) product out there that could potentially simplify a tangled workflow process and give (for free!) a very useful set of SharePoint web parts and a nice set of (free!) reports.  The best way to see if it will truly fit your needs is to give it a try did I mention it is FREE?  Er, ok, so it is free, but only obtainable at this time for K2 partnersDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Myths about Coding Craftsmanship part 2

  - by tom

  Myth 3: The source of all bad code is inept developers and stupid people When you review code is this what you assume?  Shame on you.  You are probably making assumptions in your code if you are assuming so much already.  Bad code can be the result of any number of causes including but not limited to using dated techniques (like boxing when generics are available), not following standards (“look how he does the spacing between arguments!” or “did he really just name that variable ‘bln_Hello_Cats’?”), being redundant, using properties, methods, or objects in a novel way (like switching on button.Text between “Hello World” and “Hello World “ //clever use of space character… sigh), not following the SOLID principals, hacking around assumptions made in earlier iterations / hacking in features that should be worked into the overall design.  The first two issues, while annoying are pretty easy to spot and can be fixed so easily.  If your coding team is made up of experienced professionals who are passionate about staying current then these shouldn’t be happening.  If you work with a variety of skills, backgrounds, and experience then there will be some of this stuff going on.  If you have an opportunity to mentor such a developer who is receptive to constructive criticism don’t be a jerk; help them and the codebase will improve.  A little patience can improve the codebase, your work environment, and even your perspective. The novelty and redundancy I have encountered has often been the use of creativity when language knowledge was perceived as unavailable or too time consuming.  When developers learn on the job you get a lot of this.  Rather than going to MSDN developers will use what they know.  Depending on the constraints of their assignment hacking together what they know may seem quite practical.  This was not stupid though I often wonder how much time is actually “saved” by hacking.  These issues are often harder to untangle if we ever do.  They can also grow out of control as we write hack after hack to make it work and get back to some development that is satisfying. Hacking upon an existing hack is what I call “feeding the monster”.  Code monsters are anti-patterns and hacks gone wild.  The reason code monsters continue to get bigger is that they keep growing in scope, touching more and more of the application.  This is not the result of dumb developers. It is probably the result of avoiding design, not taking the time to understand the problems or anticipate or communicate the vision of the product.  If our developers don’t understand the purpose of a feature or product how do we expect potential customers to do so? Forethought and organization are often what is missing from bad code.  Developers who do not use the SOLID principals should be encouraged to learn these principals and be given guidance on how to apply them.  The time “saved” by giving hackers room to hack will be made up for and then some. Not as technical debt but as shoddy work that if not replaced will be struggled with again and again.  Bad code is not the result of dumb developers (usually) it is the result of trying to do too much without the proper resources and neglecting the right thing that needs doing with the first thoughtless thing that comes into our heads. Object oriented code is all about relationships between objects.  Coders who believe their coworkers are all fools tend to write objects that are difficult to work with, not eager to explain themselves, and perform erratically and irrationally.  If you constantly find you are surrounded by idiots you may want to ask yourself if you are being unreasonable, if you are being closed minded, of if you have chosen the right profession.  Opening your mind up to the idea that you probably work with rational, well-intentioned people will probably make you a better coder and it might even make you less grumpy.  If you are surrounded by jerks who do not engage in the exchange of ideas who do not care about their customers or the durability of the code you are building together then I suggest you find a new place to work.  Myth 4: Customers don’t care about “beautiful” code Craftsmanship is customer focused because it means that the job was done right, the product will withstand the abuse, modifications, and scrutiny of our customers.  Users can appreciate a predictable timeline for a release, a product delivered on time and on budget, a feature set that does not interfere with the task(s) it is supporting, quick turnarounds on exception messages, self healing issues, and less issues.  These are all hindered by skimping on craftsmanship.  When we write data access and when we write reusable code.   What do you think?  Does bad code come primarily from low IQ individuals?  Do customers care about beautiful code?

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• My Feelings About Microsoft Surface

  - by Valter Minute

  Advice: read the title carefully, I’m talking about “feelings” and not about advanced technical points proved in a scientific and objective way I still haven’t had a chance to play with a MS Surface tablet (I would love to, of course) and so my ideas just came from reading different articles on the net and MS official statements. Remember also that the MVP motto begins with “Independent” (“Independent Experts. Real World Answers.”) and this is just my humble opinion about a product and a technology. I know that, being an MS MVP you can be called an “MS-fanboy”, I don’t care, I hope that people can appreciate my opinion, even if it doesn’t match theirs. The “Surface” brand can be confusing for techies that knew the “original” surface concept but I think that will be a fresh new brand name for most of the people out there. But marketing department are here to confuse people… so I can understand this “recycle” of an existing name. So Microsoft is entering the hardware arena… for me this is good news. Microsoft developed some nice hardware in the past: the xbox, zune (even if the commercial success was quite limited) and, last but not least, the two arc mices (old and new model) that I use and appreciate. In the past Microsoft worked with OEMs and that model lead to good and bad things. Good thing (for microsoft, at least) is market domination by windows-based PCs that only in the last years has been reduced by the return of the Mac and tablets. Google is also moving in the hardware business with its acquisition of Motorola, and Apple leveraged his control of both the hardware and software sides to develop innovative products. Microsoft can scare OEMs and make them fly away from windows (but where?) or just lead the pack, showing how devices should be designed to compete in the market and bring back some of the innovation that disappeared from recent PC products (look at the shelves of your favorite electronics store and try to distinguish a laptop between the huge mass of anonymous PCs on displays… only Macs shine out there…). Having to compete with MS “official” hardware will force OEMs to develop better product and bring back some real competition in a market that was ruled only by prices (the lower the better even when that means low quality) and no innovative features at all (when it was the last time that a new PC surprised you?). Moving into a new market is a big and risky move, but with Windows 8 Microsoft is playing a crucial move for its future, trying to be back in the innovation run against apple and google. MS can’t afford to fail this time. I saw the new devices (the WinRT and Pro) and the specifications are scarce, misleading and confusing. The first impression is that the device looks like an iPad with a nice keyboard cover… Using “HD” and “full HD” to define display resolution instead of using the real figures and reviving the “ClearType” brand (now dead on Win8 as reported here and missed by people who hate to read text on displays, like myself) without providing clear figures (couldn’t you count those damned pixels?) seems to imply that MS was caught by surprise by apple recent “retina” displays that brought very high definition screens on tablets.Also there are no specifications about the processors used (even if some sources report NVidia Tegra for the ARM tablet and i5 for the x86 one) and expected battery life (a critical point for tablets and the point that killed Windows7 x86 based tablets). Also nothing about the price, and this will be another critical point because other platform out there already provide lots of applications and have a good user base, if MS want to enter this market tablets pricing must be competitive. There are some expansion ports (SD and USB), so no fixed storage model (even if the specs talks about 32-64GB for RT and 128-256GB for pro). I like this and don’t like the apple model where flash memory (that it’s dirt cheap used in thumdrives or SD cards) is as expensive as gold (or cocaine to have a more accurate per gram measurement) when mounted inside a tablet/phone. For big files you’ll be able to use external media and an SD card could be used to store files that don’t require super-fast SSD-like access times, I hope. To be honest I really don’t like the marketplace model and the limitation of Windows RT APIs (no local database? from a company that based a good share of its success on VB6+Access!) and lack of desktop support on the ARM (even if the support is here and has been used to port office). It’s a step toward the consumer market (where competitors are making big money), but may impact enterprise (and embedded) users that may not appreciate Windows 8 new UI or the limitations of the new app model (if you aren’t connected you are dead ). Not having compatibility with the desktop will require brand new applications and honestly made all the CPU cycles spent to convert .NET IL into real machine code in the past like a huge waste of time… as soon as a new processor architecture is supported by Windows you still have to rewrite part of your application (and MS is pushing HTML5+JS and native code more than .NET in my perception). On the other side I believe that the development experience provided by Visual Studio is still miles (or kilometres) ahead of the competition and even the all-uppercase menu of VS2012 hasn’t changed this situation. The new metro UI got mixed reviews. On my side I should say that is very pleasant to use on a touch screen, I like the minimalist design (even if sometimes is too minimal and hides stuff that, in my opinion, should be visible) but I should also say that using it with mouse and keyboard is like trying to pick your nose with boxing gloves… Metro is also very interesting for embedded devices where touch screen usage is quite common and where having an application taking all the screen is the norm. For devices like kiosks, vending machines etc. this kind of UI can be a great selling point. I don’t need a new tablet (to be honest I’m pretty happy with my wife’s iPad and with my PC), but I may change my opinion after having a chance to play a little bit with those new devices and understand what’s hidden under all this mysterious and generic announcements and specifications!

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• SerialPort ReadLine() after Thread.Sleep() goes crazy

  - by Mat

  Hi everybody, I've been fighting with this issue for a day and I can't find answer for it. I am trying to read data from GPS device trough COM port in Compact Framework C#. I am using SerialPort class (actually my own ComPort class boxing SerialPort, but it adds only two fields I need, nothing special). Anyway.. I am running while loop in a separate thread which reads line from the port, analyze NMEA data, print them, catch all exceptions and then I Sleep(200) the thread, cause I need CPU for other threads... Without Sleep it works fine, but uses 100% CPU.. When I dont use Sleep after few minutes the output from COM port looks like this: GPGSA,A,3,09,12,22,17,15,27,,,,,,,2.6,1.6,2.1*3F GSA,A,3,09,12,22,17,15,27,,,,,,,2.6,1.6,2.1*3F A,A,3,09,12,22,17,15,27,,,,,,,2.6,1.6,2.1*3F ,18,12,271,24,24,05,020,24,14,04,326,25,11,03,023,*76 A,3,09,12,22,17,15,27,,,,,,,2.6,1.6,2.1*3F 3,09,12,22,17,15,27,,,,,,,2.6,1.6,2.1*3F 09,12,22,17,15,27,,,,,,,2.6,1.6,2.1*3F ,12,22,17,15,27,,,,,,,2.6,1.6,2.1*3F as you can see the same message is read few times but cut. I wonder what I'm doing wrong... My port configuration: port.ReadBufferSize = 4096; port.BaudRate = 4800; port.DataBits = 8; port.Parity = Parity.None; port.StopBits = StopBits.One; port.NewLine = "\r\n"; port.ReadTimeout = 1000; port.ReceivedBytesThreshold = 100000; And my reading function: private void processGps(){ while (!closing) { //reconnect if needed try { string sentence = port.ReadLine(); //here print the sentence //analyze the sentence (this takes some time 50-100ms) } catch (TimeoutException) { Thread.Sleep(0); } catch (IOException ioex) { //handling IO exception (some info on the screen) } Thread.Sleep(200); } } There is some more stuff in this function like reconnection if the device is lost etc.. but it is not called when the GPS is connected properly.. I was trying port.DiscardInBuffer(); after some blocks of code (in TimeoutException, after read..) Did anyone had similar problem? I really dont know what I'm doing wrong.. The only way to get rig of it is removing the last Sleep... Thanks in advance! Best Regards, Mat

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• [C#] Problems with implementing generic IEnumerator and IComparable

  - by r0h

  Hi all! I'm working on an AVL Tree. The tree itself seems to be working but I need a iterator to walk through the values of the tree. Therefore I tried to implement the IEnumerator interace. Unfortunately I get a compile time error implementing IEnumerator and IComparable. First the code and below that the error. class AvlTreePreOrderEnumerator<T> : IEnumerator<T> where T :IComparable<T> { private AvlTreeNode<T> current = default(T); private AvlTreeNode<T> tree = null; private Queue<AvlTreeNode<T>> traverseQueue = null; public AvlTreePreOrderEnumerator(AvlTreeNode<T> tree) { this.tree = tree; //Build queue traverseQueue = new Queue<AvlTreeNode<T>>(); visitNode(this.tree.Root); } private void visitNode(AvlTreeNode<T> node) { if (node == null) return; else { traverseQueue.Enqueue(node); visitNode(node.LeftChild); visitNode(node.RightChild); } } public T Current { get { return current.Value; } } object IEnumerator.Current { get { return Current; } } public void Dispose() { current = null; tree = null; } public void Reset() { current = null; } public bool MoveNext() { if (traverseQueue.Count > 0) current = traverseQueue.Dequeue(); else current = null; return (current != null); } } The error given by VS2008: Error 1 The type 'T' cannot be used as type parameter 'T' in the generic type or method 'Opdr2_AvlTreeTest_Final.AvlTreeNode'. There is no boxing conversion or type parameter conversion from 'T' to 'System.IComparable'. For now I've not included the tree and node logic. I anybody thinks is necessary to resolve this probleem, just say so! Thx!

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• Learning... anything really

  - by WebDevHobo

  I'm particularly interested in Windows PowerShell, but here's a somewhat more general complaint: When asking for help on learning something new, be it a small subject on PHP or understanding a class in Java, what usually happens is that people direct me towards the documentation pages. What I'm looking for is somewhat of a course. A deep explanation of why something works the way it does. I know my basic programming, like Java and C#. I've never seen C or C++, though I have seen a bit of assembler. I know what the Stack and Heap are, how boxing and unboxing works, why you have to deep-copy an array instead of copying the pointer and some other things. Windows PowerShell on the other hand, I know nothing about. And I notice that when reading the small document or some code, I usually forget what it does or why it works. What I am looking for is preferably, a nice tutorial that explains the beginnings, the concepts, and goes to more difficult things at a steady pace. The only thing documentation can do is explain what a function does. That's no good to me since I don't know what I want to do yet. I could read about a thousand functions, and forget about most of them, because I don't need to implement them right after it. Randomly wandering through the documentation doesn't do me any good. So conclude, what is a good tutorial on Windows Powershell? One which explains in clear language what is happening, one which builds on previous things learned. I don't think googling this is a good idea. Doing a Google search on this would turn up numerous tutorials. And experience tells me that you have to look long and hard to find the gem you're looking for. That's why I'm asking here. Because this is the place where you can find more experienced people. Many of the PowerShell guys among you will know the good ones already, and by asking you, I avoid wasting time that could be spent learning. So to summarize: I will not google this!

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• C#/.NET Little Pitfalls: The Dangers of Casting Boxed Values

  - by James Michael Hare

  Starting a new series to parallel the Little Wonders series.  In this series, I will examine some of the small pitfalls that can occasionally trip up developers. Introduction: Of Casts and Conversions What happens when we try to assign from an int and a double and vice-versa? 1: double pi = 3.14; 2: int theAnswer = 42; 3:  4: // implicit widening conversion, compiles! 5: double doubleAnswer = theAnswer; 6:  7: // implicit narrowing conversion, compiler error! 8: int intPi = pi; As you can see from the comments above, a conversion from a value type where there is no potential data loss is can be done with an implicit conversion.  However, when converting from one value type to another may result in a loss of data, you must make the conversion explicit so the compiler knows you accept this risk.  That is why the conversion from double to int will not compile with an implicit conversion, we can make the conversion explicit by adding a cast: 1: // explicit narrowing conversion using a cast, compiler 2: // succeeds, but results may have data loss: 3: int intPi = (int)pi; So for value types, the conversions (implicit and explicit) both convert the original value to a new value of the given type.  With widening and narrowing references, however, this is not the case.  Converting reference types is a bit different from converting value types.  First of all when you perform a widening or narrowing you don’t really convert the instance of the object, you just convert the reference itself to the wider or narrower reference type, but both the original and new reference type both refer back to the same object. Secondly, widening and narrowing for reference types refers the going down and up the class hierarchy instead of referring to precision as in value types.  That is, a narrowing conversion for a reference type means you are going down the class hierarchy (for example from Shape to Square) whereas a widening conversion means you are going up the class hierarchy (from Square to Shape).  1: var square = new Square(); 2:  3: // implicitly convers because all squares are shapes 4: // (that is, all subclasses can be referenced by a superclass reference) 5: Shape myShape = square; 6:  7: // implicit conversion not possible, not all shapes are squares! 8: // (that is, not all superclasses can be referenced by a subclass reference) 9: Square mySquare = (Square) myShape; So we had to cast the Shape back to Square because at that point the compiler has no way of knowing until runtime whether the Shape in question is truly a Square.  But, because the compiler knows that it’s possible for a Shape to be a Square, it will compile.  However, if the object referenced by myShape is not truly a Square at runtime, you will get an invalid cast exception. Of course, there are other forms of conversions as well such as user-specified conversions and helper class conversions which are beyond the scope of this post.  The main thing we want to focus on is this seemingly innocuous casting method of widening and narrowing conversions that we come to depend on every day and, in some cases, can bite us if we don’t fully understand what is going on!  The Pitfall: Conversions on Boxed Value Types Can Fail What if you saw the following code and – knowing nothing else – you were asked if it was legal or not, what would you think: 1: // assuming x is defined above this and this 2: // assignment is syntactically legal. 3: x = 3.14; 4:  5: // convert 3.14 to int. 6: int truncated = (int)x; You may think that since x is obviously a double (can’t be a float) because 3.14 is a double literal, but this is inaccurate.  Our x could also be dynamic and this would work as well, or there could be user-defined conversions in play.  But there is another, even simpler option that can often bite us: what if x is object? 1: object x; 2:  3: x = 3.14; 4:  5: int truncated = (int) x; On the surface, this seems fine.  We have a double and we place it into an object which can be done implicitly through boxing (no cast) because all types inherit from object.  Then we cast it to int.  This theoretically should be possible because we know we can explicitly convert a double to an int through a conversion process which involves truncation. But here’s the pitfall: when casting an object to another type, we are casting a reference type, not a value type!  This means that it will attempt to see at runtime if the value boxed and referred to by x is of type int or derived from type int.  Since it obviously isn’t (it’s a double after all) we get an invalid cast exception! Now, you may say this looks awfully contrived, but in truth we can run into this a lot if we’re not careful.  Consider using an IDataReader to read from a database, and then attempting to select a result row of a particular column type: 1: using (var connection = new SqlConnection("some connection string")) 2: using (var command = new SqlCommand("select * from employee", connection)) 3: using (var reader = command.ExecuteReader()) 4: { 5: while (reader.Read()) 6: { 7: // if the salary is not an int32 in the SQL database, this is an error! 8: // doesn't matter if short, long, double, float, reader [] returns object! 9: total += (int) reader["annual_salary"]; 10: } 11: } Notice that since the reader indexer returns object, if we attempt to convert using a cast to a type, we have to make darn sure we use the true, actual type or this will fail!  If the SQL database column is a double, float, short, etc this will fail at runtime with an invalid cast exception because it attempts to convert the object reference! So, how do you get around this?  There are two ways, you could first cast the object to its actual type (double), and then do a narrowing cast to on the value to int.  Or you could use a helper class like Convert which analyzes the actual run-time type and will perform a conversion as long as the type implements IConvertible. 1: object x; 2:  3: x = 3.14; 4:  5: // if you want to cast, must cast out of object to double, then 6: // cast convert. 7: int truncated = (int)(double) x; 8:  9: // or you can call a helper class like Convert which examines runtime 10: // type of the value being converted 11: int anotherTruncated = Convert.ToInt32(x); Summary You should always be careful when performing a conversion cast from values boxed in object that you are actually casting to the true type (or a sub-type). Since casting from object is a widening of the reference, be careful that you either know the exact, explicit type you expect to be held in the object, or instead avoid the cast and use a helper class to perform a safe conversion to the type you desire. Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Pitfalls,Little Pitfalls,BlackRabbitCoder

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