SharpDevelop Comin' At Ya, newsgroup spellers and Sparkle!

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Mike Krueger (developer of Sharp ZipLib) and his crew have been working hard on SharpDevelop 2.0, the open-source IDE for .NET 2.0, and it looks really nice.

The Beta 1 is quite feature - complete, and VIsual Studio.NET developers will find it very familiar to work with. I just checked it out because one of our messageboard posters was complaining that C# Express has no project template for a Windows Service. Well, SharpDevelop does! And that's not all: it has a IL project template if you are interested in getting close to the metal with working breakpoints and a lot more!

If you would like to read up more about the features, here's a good recent review.

>>>>Snag yourself a copy at Sourceforge.net<<<<


NewsGroup Spellers


I don't know about you, but I've been frequenting the MS C# language group and also the ASP.NET group. Most of the people in the C# group seem to be able to spell. However, a sizeable number of the posters at the ASP.NET group seem to be having difficulty with English. Examples:

"Link in gridbiew"
"Loop threw datalist"
"Treeview Control. No selected Treenode wanted..."
"SMLDataSource problem"
"Please help - Remot name could not br resolved"
...and my favorite,
"Need help immediatly"

Boy!! I wonder what their web pages must look like!

Answering Public Newsgroup Posts

On a related note, posting answers to public newsgroup questions has been very instructive for me. Among other valuable lessons, I've started to learn:

1) To be courteous, no matter how ridiculous someone's post may seem.
2) To read the original poster's (OP's) post carefully so as to be sure to completely understand their problem or question.
3) To not post an answer in haste, but to take the time to carefully consider and if necessary research a proper answer.
4) To accept from and give corrections to others graciously.
5) To not attempt to answer a post where I am not completely sure of the answer.

These are good qualities we all could use more of, and they spill over into one's professional daily life. In particular, the C# newsgroup is frequented by studious, knowledgable MVPs and other professionals who set the tone and an example for everyone by their exemplary behavior. Among these are Jon Skeet, Nicholas Paladino, Willy Denoyette, Ignacio Machin, and others.

Carefully reading posts by other professionals, many of whom may be more advanced than you are, is the most instructive of all. And, you can even learn to spell if you work at it!



Sparkle CTP is out!


Sparkle is the Graphical UI designer that was presented at the MVP Summit last September (requires Windows Presentation Foundation).

Content is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confers no rights. Opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Microsoft, The Republican Party, or the patrons of the Blind Pig Saloon.
Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous4:38 AM

    I suppose they are only developers and QA can correct all these small mistakes. In terms of SharpDevelop 2.0 it will be great to have intellisense for IL project :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous1:30 PM

    I also try to keep in mind that many posters are from other countries. Their Web pages are probably in other languages.

    For example, the gridbiew mistake looks like either finger trouble (b an v being next to each other on the keyboard), or a Spanish speaker (b and v being pronounced the same, particularly in Mexico).

    The ones who drive me insane are the warez typers, who post questions like: "Can u hlp me 4 ListView prob? Can't set cur itm 4 view. Thnx 4 u hlp." Are these guys posting from a cell phone, are they functionally illiterate, or do they think that typing like a dyslexic monkey makes them look cool?

    I'm a patient guy, but reading that kind of crap is just too much for me. Maybe I'm getting old. :)

    ReplyDelete

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