Under Used VS Feature - Column Select

It is quite often that I'll find myself wanting to duplicate a whole bunch of text, or wanting to copy and paste a vertical "column" of code. You can do this by holding down the ALT key while selecting/dragging your cursor, or you can hold ALT and SHIFT and use the arrow keys to create your selection. I know this is kind of hard to understand just what exactly column select does for you, so I created a 20 second screencast.

Just know that I start off by holding ALT then dragging down, then I start typing "list.Add...". Once I'm done, I select the "column" of "1"s and paste them in the first name field. These same shortcuts even work in Notepad++!

For those of you with overzealous corporate overlords, the file streams directly from our server so you shouldn't have any problem with blocked content.

Scrum board images

I created a couple of images to print off and use on our scrum board when we hit road blocks or when we're having some major issues. I wanted to share them here in case you too could use them on your scrum board.

Introducing MachineLang.Net

We hope you enjoyed our little April Fools joke this year

Do you want to code with the sheer simplicity of x86 Machine Code without all of the complicated “features” of 4th, 3rd or even 2nd generation languages, all the while being able to run on top of .Net’s CLR? Well, this post is for you!

Let’s start with the current problems with “modern” programming languages today:

4th Generation Language? Who needs declarative markup or domain specific languages? Sounds like a bunch of academics are just trying to get their next PhD instead of helping me write awesomely fast code. Drowning a sack full of puppies is more fun than debugging a slow stored procedure.

3rd Generation Language? OO? Structured Programming? Yeah, right, they should come see the projects I’ve had to work on in the past, it was more like an object oriented scaffolding to the depths of hell. I’d rather gouge my eyes out with salt covered rusty fork than look at one more inheritance chain 30 levels deep.

2nd Generation Languages are getting closer, the speed is mostly there. But do we really want to dumb down our craft just so some stupid people can “read” and “understand” better? What does that say about our profession? If you can’t convert “XOR CL, [12H]” to “00110010 00001110 00010010 00000000” in your head, please give up on life because you will never amount to anything.

It is simple really, just write all of your machine language in a single .ml file, and run the machine lang compiler (mlc.exe) and you’ll have a new .net executable waiting for you in the same directory as your .ml file, than can run on any machine with the .Net framework on it.


Then just open up your command line and run the following command:
You can AND SHOULD download and run the HelloWorld example here. You'll smile when you're done, I promise.

If you're afraid that you may have some duplicate code in your next MachineLang.Net project, be sure to check out Atomiq Duplicate Code Finder.

Nitriq Pro Is Now Totally Free!

After a long thought processes, we've decided to make Nitriq Pro completely free!.

Just use the discount code "ANALYZEFORFREE" when checking out and Nitriq Pro will go from $39 to $0. Unlike the previous free version of Nitriq, Nitriq Pro doesn't have any feature restrictions at all. This you can analyze as many assemblies as you'd like at the same time for free.

If you've already purchased Nitriq Pro in the past year, we'll be emailing you a complementary license of Nitriq Console so you can integrate Nitriq Code Analysis into your automated build machine.

If you like Nitriq, please be sure to check out our other product - Atomiq Duplicate Code Finder.

Free Licenses for Microsoft MVPs

If you're a Microsoft MVP and would like a free license for Nitriq or Atomiq all you have to do is shoot an email to mvp [at] nitriq [dot] com. It is our way of saying thanks for helping the community.

"I Didn't Know You Could Do That" - .Net Tips and Tricks Notes

I've given my .Net Tips and Tricks presentation a few times the past couple months and thought I'd share the notes that I used. Sorry it has taken me so long to get these posted.

.Net Tips and Tricks Notes

Developer's Guide to Blend Cheat Sheet

I was lucky enough to present "A Developer's Guide to Expression Blend" at St. Louis Day of .Net a couple of weekends ago. And I created a cheat sheet to hand out to everyone.

Download and feel free to distribute, just please link back to this blog post in case I release a new version. (I am a developer, not a designer, so it isn't the prettiest thing in the world but it gets the job done).

Developer's Guide to Blend [PDF]

I'll be giving the same presentation at Heartland Developer's Conference next week as well as at Minnesota Developer's Conference at the end of September. I hope to run into some of you there!

[Edit: Fixed pdf link, doh!]
[Edit #2: Actually fixed pdf link, I can tell it is Friday]