Parallelism in .NET – Introduction
Parallel programming is something that every professional developer should understand, but is rarely discussed or taught in detail in a formal manner. Software users are no longer content with applications that lock up the user interface regularly, or take large amounts of time to process data unnecessarily. Modern development requires the use of parallelism. There is no longer any excuses for us as developers.
Learning to write parallel software is challenging. It requires more than reading that one chapter on parallelism in our programming language book of choice…
Better User and Developer Experiences – From Windows Forms to WPF with MVVM: Part 1, The Model
Before we can make a user interface for a program, we need to know what the program is going to do. Hopefully, we have some logic we’re going to be exposing to our users. Underneath all of the beautiful user interfaces we build there is something that we’re trying to accomplish, some data we’re editing or information we’re conveying. Before we can discuss how to make an effective user experience, we need to define the core information with which we are working.
Better User and Developer Experiences – From Windows Forms to WPF with MVVM: Introduction
I frequently talk to people trying to decide, for a new project, between Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation. After spending time with WPF, I feel there is no reason to choose Windows Forms for new development. WPF, when used correctly, is far superior, both in terms of user experience, but also developer productivity.
I feel that the confusion around choosing WPF really stems from a lack of understanding about WPF. Even people on my own team have been overwhelmed trying to understand how the different pieces of WPF fit together, and how to apply the new concepts introduced with WPF effectively. In order to address this, I’m going to break this down into a few simple pieces, and show the migration in terms of thought required to transition from being a good Windows Forms developer to an effective WPF developer.
About Big-O Notation – The good, the bad, and the confusing
Often, prior to using a specific algorithm, it helps to understand information about how the algorithm scales. In order to document this, computer science has borrowed a notation from mathematics called Big-O notation.
Understanding Big-O notation is critical in making good decisions about algorithms or libraries used to implement routines. However, there is often a lot of misunderstanding about what it means, and I frequently see this used as justifications for poor decisions.
