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  • Book Giveaway: We Have 10 Free Copies of the 4-Hour Chef (The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life)

    - by The Geek
    The 4-Hour Chef isn’t just a cookbook. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure guide to the world of rapid learning from the best-selling author of the 4-Hour Workweek, and we’ve got 10 free copies for How-To Geek readers. Want more information? Here’s the description of the book, from the Amazon page. The 4-Hour Chef is a five-stop journey through the art and science of learning: 1. META-LEARNING. Before you learn to cook, you must learn to learn. META charts the path to doubling your learning potential. 2. THE DOMESTIC. DOM is where you learn the building blocks of cooking. These are the ABCs (techniques) that can take you from Dr, Seuss to Shakespeare. 3. THE WILD. Becoming a master student requires self-sufficiency in all things. WILD teaches you to hunt, forage, and survive. 4. THE SCIENTIST. SCI is the mad scientist and modernist painter wrapped into one. This is where you rediscover whimsy and wonder. 5. THE PROFESSIONAL. Swaraj, a term usually associated with Mahatma Gandhi, can be translated as “self-rule.” In PRO, we’ll look at how the best in the world become the best in the world, and how you can chart your own path far beyond this book. Still not sold? There’s more information and pictures over on the Amazon page for the book. The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life Why Your Android Phone Isn’t Getting Operating System Updates and What You Can Do About It How To Delete, Move, or Rename Locked Files in Windows HTG Explains: Why Screen Savers Are No Longer Necessary

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  • Whats a good host for an active vBulletin site?

    - by Kyle
    I've been switching hosts using a VPS each time and I'm just really not sure I'm finding the right VPS's. I've used a VPS from burst.net & rubyringtech and I just feel like it's slowly killing my site because of the slow speed. I really don't know if it's the network or the VPS itself but I really wish to fix this. When I TOP into the VPS peak times it shows this: top - 03:18:56 up 16:33, 1 user, load average: 1.33, 1.40, 1.33 Tasks: 30 total, 1 running, 29 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 27.2%us, 13.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 59.2%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1048576k total, 679712k used, 368864k free, 0k buffers Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached And pages take atleast a good 2-3 minutes to load. I have only like 50-60 members on the forum also. I had a shared hosting account and the forum was lightning fast.... Is a VPS a bad idea? :\ What should I do to fix this? I'm running lighttpd with xcache, and the latest mysql + php version. The server is a intel i7 2600 w/ 1gb uplink (I think the 1gb uplink is a lie because I've tested the network and the highest download speed I've seen was 20mb/s from a code.google page) All in all I've seen people talking about linode. Should I try them? I honestly don't need a dedicated server yet it's only 50-70 members online. What should I do? I really want a VPS because I enjoy root access. Does anyone have any suggestions?

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  • what's a good approach to working with multiple databases?

    - by Riz
    I'm working on a project that has its own database call it InternalDb, but also it queries two other databases, call them ExternalDb1 and ExternalDb2. Both ExternalDb1 and ExternalDb2 are actually required by a few other projects. I'm wondering what the best approach for dealing with this is? Currently, I've just created a project for each of these external databases and then generated Edmx and entities using the entity-framework approach. My thought was that I could then include these projects in any of my solutions that require access to these databases. Also, I don't have any separate business layers. I just have a solution like below: Project.Domain ExternalDb1Project.Domain ExternalDb2Project.Domain Project.Web So my Domain projects contain the data access as well as the POCOs generated by Entity Framework and any business logic. But I'm not sure if this is a good approach. For example if I want to do Validation in my Project.Domain on the entities in the InternalDb, it's fine. But if I want to do Validation for entities from either of the ExternalDbs, then I wonder where it should go? To be more specific, I retrieve Employees from ExternalDb1Project.Domain. However, I want to make sure they are Active. Where should this Validation go? How to architect a project like this at a high level? Also, I want to make sure that I use IoC for my data contexts so I can create Fakes when writing tests. I wonder where the interfaces for these various data contexts would reside?

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  • How to build a good service layer in ASP.NET?

    - by Swippen
    I have looked through some questions, technologies for building a good service layer but I have some questions regarding this that I need help with. First some information of what I have for requirements. We currently have a number of web applications that talk to each other in a spiderweb looking way (all talking to each other in a confusing way via webservices and database data). We want to change this so that all applications go through a service layer where we can work more with cache and encapsulate common functionality and more. We want this layer to also have a Web API so that 3rd party clients can consume information from the service. The problem I see is that if we build the service layer with say MVC4 Web API don't we need to communicate between the application using the webAPI meaning we have to construct URLs and consume JSON/Xml. That does not sound too effective. I assume a better method would be working with entities and WCF to communicate between the application but then we might loose the Web API magic? So the question is if there is a way to consume a service layer as both a Web API (JSON/XML) and as a more backend service layer with entities. If we are forced to use 2 different service layers we might have to duplicate some functionality and other bad things. Hope the question is clear enough and please ask if you need any more information.

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  • Is it a good idea to dynamically position and size controls on a form or statically set them?

    - by CrystalBlue
    I've worked mostly with interface building tools such as xCode's Interface Builder and Visual Studio's environment to place forms and position them on screens. But I'm finding that with my latest project, placing controls on the form through a graphical interface is not going to work. This more has to do with the number of custom controls I have to create that I can't visually see before hand. When I first tackled this, I began to position all of my controls relative to the last ones that I created. Doing this had its own pros and cons. On the one hand, this gave me the opportunity to set one number (a margin for example) and when I changed the margin, the controls all sized correctly to one another (such as shortening controls in the center while keeping controls next to the margin the same). But this started to become a spiders-web of code that I knew wouldn't go very far before getting dangerous. Change one number and everything re sizes, but remove one control and you've created many more errors and size problems for all the other controls. It became more surgery then small changes to controls and layout. Is there a good way or maybe a preferred way to determine when I should be using relative or absolute positioning in forms?

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  • Isn't Java a quite good choice for desktop applications?

    - by tactoth
    At present most applications are still developed with C++, painfully. Lack of portability, in compatible libraries, memory leaks, slow compilation, and poor productivity. Even if you pick only a single from these shortages, it's still a big headache. However the surprising truth is that C++ remains the first choice for desktop applications. Compared to C++ Java has lots of advantages. The success in server side development shows that the language itself is good, Swing is also thought to be as programmer friendly as the highly recognized QT framework (No, never say even a single word about MFC!). All the disadvantages of C++ listed above has a solution in Java. "Performance!", Well that might still be the problem but to my experience it's a slight problem. I'd been using Java to decode some screen video and generate key frames. The video has a duration of more than 1 hour. The time spent on an average machine is just 1 minute. With C++ I don't expect even faster speed. In recent days there are many news on the JIT performance improvements, that make us feel Java is gradually becoming very suitable for desktop development, without people realizing it. Isn't it?

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  • Any good reason to open files in text mode?

    - by Tinctorius
    (Almost-)POSIX-compliant operating systems and Windows are known to distinguish between 'binary mode' and 'text mode' file I/O. While the former mode doesn't transform any data between the actual file or stream and the application, the latter 'translates' the contents to some standard format in a platform-specific manner: line endings are transparently translated to '\n' in C, and some platforms (CP/M, DOS and Windows) cut off a file when a byte with value 0x1A is found. These transformations seem a little useless to me. People share files between computers with different operating systems. Text mode would cause some data to be handled differently across some platforms, so when this matters, one would probably use binary mode instead. As an example: while Windows uses the sequence CR LF to end a line in text mode, UNIX text mode will not treat CR as part of the line ending sequence. Applications would have to filter that noise themselves. Older Mac versions only use CR in text mode as line endings, so neither UNIX nor Windows would understand its files. If this matters, a portable application would probably implement the parsing by itself instead of using text mode. Implementing newline interpretation in the parser might also remove some overhead of using text mode, as buffers would need to be rewritten (and possibly resized) before returning to the application, while this may be less efficient than when it would happen in the application instead. So, my question is: is there any good reason to still rely on the host OS to translate line endings and file truncation?

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  • What's a good algorithm for a random, uneven distribution of a fixed amount of a resource?

    - by NickC
    Problem I have X, a positive integer, of some resource, R. There are N potential targets. I want to distribute all of R to the N targets in some "interesting" way. "Interesting" means: Some targets may not get any R. It should rarely be near even (with a majority of target getting near X/N of the resource). There should be at least a small chance of one target getting all of R. Bad solutions The naive approach would be to pick a random target and give one R to it and repeat X times. This would result in too even of an approach. The next idea is to pick a random number between 1 and X and give it to a random target. This results in too large of a number (at least X/2 on average) being given to one target. Question This algorithm will be used frequently and I want the distribution to be interesting and uneven so that the surprise doesn't wear off for users. Is there a good algorithm for something in between these two approaches, that fits the definition of interesting above?

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  • Do I have to change my company to make sure I'm good enough? [closed]

    - by superM
    I have been working as a developer since my fourth year of university until now. I'm getting my master's degree next year (in math modeling). I've worked for the same company all the time, first on .Net, then on Android, and now .Net again. It seems I'm doing quite well in my current company. Some of my coursemates have tried to work in my company, but they failed after some time. This (and not only this) makes me think that I'm really worth something. But we're working on a very specific project. I was wondering if I am good enough and if I can make it in another company. I love my current job, but sometimes I have a feeling that I'm not moving on. So, is it possible to keep improving when working at the same company with the same technology and at similar tasks? I know that most of the programmers go from one place to another very frequently. Is it the only way?

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  • Is the Joel Test really a good gauging tool?

    - by henry
    I just learned about the Joel Test. I have been computer programmer for 22 years, but somehow I never heard about it before. I consider my best job so far to be this small investment managing company with 30 employees and only three people in the IT department. I am no longer with them, but I had being working there for five years – my longest streak with any given company. To my surprise they scored extremely poor on the Joel Test. The only two questions I would answer “yes” are #4: Do you have a bug database? And #9: Do you use the best tools money can buy? Everything else is either “sometimes” or straight “no”. Here is what I liked about the company however: Good pay. They bragged about it to my face, and I bragged about it to their face, so it was almost like a family environment. I always knew the big picture. When writing code to solve a particular problem there were no ambiguity about the business nature of that problem. Even though we did not always had written specifications we could ask business users a question anytime, often yelling it across the floor. I could even talk to executives any time I felt like doing it: no appointment necessary. Immediate feedback. Once we implement a solution and make business users happy they immediately let us know that, we (programmers) become heroes of the moment. No red tape. I could always buy any tools I deemed necessary, and design solutions the way my professional judgment dictates. Flexibility. If I had mid-day dental appointment that is near my house rather than near the office, I would send email to the company: "FYI: I work from home today". As long as one of three IT guys was on the floor (to help traders in case their monitors go dark) they did not care where two others were. So the question thus becomes: How valuable is the Joel Test? Why bother with it?

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  • How can a solo programmer become a good team player?

    - by Nick
    I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. Question: What are some steps that I can take to begin "integrating" with everyone else? Thanks!

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  • In a state machine, is it a good idea to separate states and transitions?

    - by codablank1
    I have implemented a small state machine in this way (in pseudo code): class Input {} class KeyInput inherits Input { public : enum { Key_A, Key_B, ..., } } class GUIInput inherits Input { public : enum { Button_A, Button_B, ..., } } enum Event { NewGame, Quit, OpenOptions, OpenMenu } class BaseState { String name; Event get_event (Input input); void handle (Event e); //event handling function } class Menu inherits BaseState{...} class InGame inherits BaseState{...} class Options inherits BaseState{...} class StateMachine { public : BaseState get_current_state () { return current_state; } void add_state (String name, BaseState state) { statesMap.insert(name, state);} //raise an exception if state not found BaseState get_state (String name) { return statesMap.find(name); } //raise an exception if state or next_state not found void add_transition (Event event, String state_name, String next_state_name) { BaseState state = get_state(state_name); BaseState next_state = get_state(next_state_name); transitionsMap.insert(pair<event, state>, next_state); } //raise exception if couple not found BaseState get_next_state(Event event, BaseState state) { return transitionsMap.find(pair<event, state>); } void handle(Input input) { Event event = current_state.get_event(input) current_state.handle(event); current_state = get_next_state(event, current_state); } private : BaseState current_state; map<String, BaseState> statesMap; //map of all states in the machine //for each couple event/state, this map stores the next state map<pair<Event, BaseState>, BaseState> transitionsMap; } So, before getting the transition, I need to convert the key input or GUI input to the proper event, given the current state; thus the same key 'W' can launch a new game in the 'Menu' state or moving forward a character in the 'InGame' state; Then I get the next state from the transitionsMap and I update the current state Does this configuration seem valid to you ? Is it a good idea to separate states and transitions ? And I have some kind of trouble to represent a 'null state' or a 'null event'; What initial value can I give to the current state and which one should be returned by get_state if it fails ?

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  • What is a good strategy for binding view objects to model objects in C++?

    - by B.J.
    Imagine I have a rich data model that is represented by a hierarchy of objects. I also have a view hierarchy with views that can extract required data from model objects and display the data (and allow the user to manipulate the data). Actually, there could be multiple view hierarchies that can represent and manipulate the model (e.g. an overview-detail view and a direct manipulation view). My current approach for this is for the controller layer to store a reference to the underlying model object in the View object. The view object can then get the current data from the model for display, and can send the model object messages to update the data. View objects are effectively observers of the model objects and the model objects broadcast notifications when properties change. This approach allows all the views to update simultaneously when any view changes the model. Implemented carefully, this all works. However, it does require a lot of work to ensure that no view or model objects hold any stale references to model objects. The user can delete model objects or sub-hierarchies of the model at any time. Ensuring that all the view objects that hold references to the model objects that have been deleted is time-consuming and difficult. It feels like the approach I have been taking is not especially clean; while I don't want to have to have explicit code in the controller layer for mediating the communication between the views and the model, it seems like there must be a better (implicit) approach for establishing bindings between the view and the model and between related model objects. In particular, I am looking for an approach (in C++) that understands two key points: There is a many to one relationship between view and model objects If the underlying model object is destroyed, all the dependent view objects must be cleaned up so that no stale references exist While shared_ptr and weak_ptr can be used to manage the lifetimes of the underlying model objects and allows for weak references from the view to the model, they don't provide for notification of the destruction of the underlying object (they do in the sense that the use of a stale weak_ptr allows for notification), but I need an approach that notifies the dependent objects that their weak reference is going away. Can anyone suggest a good strategy to manage this?

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  • Attaching new animations onto skeleton via props, a good idea?

    - by Cardin
    I'm thinking of coding a game with an idea of mine. I've coded 2D games before, but I'm new to 3D programming, so I'd like to ask if this idea of mine is feasible or out of my depth. I'm making a game where there are many different characters for the player to choose from (JRPG style). So to save time, I have an idea of creating many different varied characters using a completely naked body mesh and animation skeleton, standardised across all characters. For example, by placing different hair, boots, armor props on the character mesh, new characters can be formed. Kinda like playing dress-up with a barbie doll. I'm thinking this can be done by having a bone on the prop that I can programmically attach to the main mesh. Also, I plan to have some props add new animations to the base skeleton, so equipping some particular props would give it new attack, damage, idle animations. This is because I can't expect the character to have the same swinging animation if he had a big sword or an axe. I think this might be possible if the prop has its own instance of the animation skeleton with just only the new animations, and parenting the base body mesh to this new skeleton. So all the base body mesh has are just the basic animations, other animations come from the props. My concerns are, 1) the props might not attach to the mesh properly and jitter a lot, 2) since prop and body are animated differently, the props and base mesh will cause visual artefacts, like the naked thighs showing through the pants when the character walks, 3) a custom pipeline have to be developed to export skeletons without mesh, and also to attach the base body mesh to a new skeleton during runtime in the game. So my question: are these features considered 'easy' to code? Or am I trying to do something few have ever succeeded with on their own? It feels like all these can be done given enough time and I know I definitely have to do a bit of bone matrix calculations, but I really don't want to drag out the development timeline unnecessarily from coding mathematically intense things or analyzing how to parse 3D export formats. I'm currently only at the Game Design stage, so if these features aren't a good idea, I can simply change the design of the game. (Unrelated to question) I could always, as last resort, have the characters have predetermined outfit and weapon selections so as to animate everything manually.

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  • Are there any good Java/JVM libraries for my Expression Tree architecture?

    - by Snuggy
    My team and I are developing an enterprise-level application and I have devised an architecture for it that's best described as an "Expression Tree". The basic idea is that the leaf nodes of the tree are very simple expressions (perhaps simple values or strings). Nodes closer to the trunk will get more and more complex, taking the simpler nodes as their inputs and returning more complex results for their parents. Looking at it the other way, the application performs some task, and for this it creates a root expression. The root expression divides its input into smaller units and creates child expressions, which when evaluated it can use to build it's own result. The subdividing process continues until the simplest leaf nodes. There are two very important aspects of this architecture: It must be possible to manipulate nodes of the tree after it is built. The nodes may be given new input values to work with and any change in result for that node needs to be propagated back up the tree to the root node. The application must make best use of available processors and ultimately be scalable to other computers in a grid or in the cloud. Nodes in the tree will often be updating concurrently and notifying other interested nodes in the tree when they get a new value. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to discuss my actual application, but to aid understanding a little bit, you might imagine a kind of spreadsheet application being implemented with a similar architecture, where changes to cells in the table are propagated all over the place to other cells that need the result. The spreadsheet could get so massive that applying multi-core multi-computer distributed system to solve it would be of benefit. I've got my prototype "Expression Engine" working nicely on a single multi-core PC but I've started to run into a few concurrency issues (as expected because I haven't been taking too much care so far) so it's now time to start thinking about migrating the Engine to a more robust library, and that leads to a number of related questions: Is there any precedent for my "Expression Tree" architecture that I could research? What programming concepts should I consider. I realise this approach has many similarities to a functional programming style, and I'm already aware of the concepts of using futures and actors. Are there any others? Are there any languages or libraries that I should study? This question is inspired by my accidental discovery of Scala and the Akka library (which has good support for Actors, Futures, Distributed workloads etc.) and I'm wondering if there is anything else I should be looking at as well?

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  • what would be a good way to implement/render a 2d tiled map for a browser game?

    - by jj_
    I've made this little rpg ruby game I did while learning and now I'd like to make it into a browser game. I've already set up Sinatra framework to serve it, so what I am looking for, before everything else, is a way to represent the game map in browser (location attributes are stored in db). A new map is randomly generated by code for each new game at each game start. For now forget db, and let's say a map (say 100x100 "squares") is stored as a tridimensional array. (x,y, ...) Last "dimension" of array stores who & what is at that map cell: a player, a building, whatever. So all I have to do is render those "squares" or array cells to a 2d tiled map in the browser. The map does not need to refresh or be dynamically fetched as you scroll it, (at least at this stage of development) but, a technology which would allow me to do so in future would be a good reason for choosing it. Things that I thought of: html tables, html5 canvas, some js framework which is designed exactly with this purpose (which I do not know of = please advice). Yes I know about gamequery-js framework, but I've never used it, and I don't know if it's going to slow down everything down to inusability as I'm adding new features (scrolling, ajax). I really don't know of any other alternatives.. maybe there are lighter approaches? Easier or more minimalistic ways ? More targeted js framework which is the right tool for the job? Maybe just some html canvas code, or even simple image maps, or images with absolute positioning will be enough? The thing is I'd like to start simple, and then gradually make it better, so, as I said before, I'd prefer something that will give me room for improvement or is headed toward new web tendencies but which will also give me a bit of gratification in the beginning :) So.. advices are needed! And appreciated! :) Thanks p.s. Flash is excluded because I don't like it.

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  • gcc : Is using -Werror and -pedantic considered good practice?

    - by Helper Method
    I'm just digging into the gcc manual and some things are still unclear to me: When specifying a std, should I always use -pedantic in conjunction? When using -g, it the standard level sufficient or should I specify level 3, i.e. -g3? Is it good practice to use -Werror to promote all warnings to errors and -pedantic-errors to promote all pedantic warnings to errors?

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  • Is it poor practice to build an SQL query using WHERE 1=1 AND ...

    - by Rob
    I'm writing a script that builds an SQL query by concatenating the string and adding conditions to the WHERE clause as needed. Would it be better practice to use WHERE 1=1 so that the first condition is satisfied and the script can just concatenate an AND x = 'y' to the query, or should I write the extra code to check if a clause has been added and if not, add the AND ? Confusing question, I know. Let me know if I need to be more clear. Rob

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  • What is the best practice of using return keyword?

    - by Artic
    What is the best practice of using return keyword? If i need to return something from method which pattern is better to use? public boolean method(){ if (case1){ return true; } if (case 2){ return false; } return false; } or public boolean method(){ boolean result = false; if (case1){ result = true; } if (case 2){ result = false; } return result; }

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  • Using the using statement with WinForms... Good Practice?

    - by Nate Heinrich
    I understand the concept and reasons behind using the using statement, and I use it with things like file resources and remote connections, I was wondering if it is good practice to use the using statement with WinForm forms and dialogs? using (MyDialog dlg = new MyDialog()) { if (dlg.ShowDialog() == EDialogResult.OK) { // Do Something } } Thanks!

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