So you’re the sort of person who works best if you know there’s a reward at the end of the battle – or better yet, you do best when you know you’re competing against someone else for the biggest amount of stars, goals, or flags – you’re in luck if you’re a developer working [...]
If you’re a .NET dev who likes the sound of predictive bug-squashing, you might want to give Armadillo a shot. This handy tool runs in the background and analyzes your code, flagging lines that need to be corrected. It follows you as you test your code and creates a safety net, protecting your work from regression bugs. Armadillo creates validation scenarios that are continuously verified as you modify your code. If a bug is found, Armadillo pinpoints it so you can debug the code in question without running the whole app. And best of all, as the software learns more scenarios, it is able to prevent more bugs. Armadillo will also show you unverified code so you can add validation scenarios yourself. Armadillo works on Windows machines and can be used with Visual C# on Visual Studio 2010 to prevent bugs in WPF, WinForms and Console applications. ASP .NET and SharePoint scenarios protection is coming soon for web app support. You can get a 21-day free trial, or you can subscribe for $25 each month. Commercial licenses, ideal for .NET shops, are $299 plus a $99 annual maintenance fee. More About: armadillo , bugs , code , developers , development For more Dev & Design coverage: Follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Dev & Design channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad
When working with a solution that contains numerous projects, I find myself often wanting to only build and run the currently selected project. Other projects in the solution might have build errors that I don’t want to resolve at the current time. By default though, trying to do a CTRL+F5 on the currently selected project will cause Visual Studio (VS) to build all of the projects in a solution. Let’s walk through how to tweak this behavior. We’ll start with a solution that has two projects – WebApplication_1 and WebApplication_2. First, we’ll configure VS to set the “Startup Project” as the “Current selection” in the “Solution Explorer” window. You can configure this via the Properties settings of a solution file (right click on it) and then setting the “Startup Project” to “Current selection”. Now, the project highlighted in the “Solution Explorer” is the one that’s run by default. Let’s run WebApplication_1 by selecting it in Solution Explorer. Next, we’ll do a CTRL+F5. The VS output window shows: Notice that we’ve built two projects yet I only wanted to run one of them and there’s no dependency configured between the two. Visual Studio by default builds all of the projects in a solution. You can imagine the delay you might incur if you had a solution with numerous projects and if some of these included pre- or post-build tasks. Thankfully, there’s a way to change this. Under “Tools –> Options”, “Projects and Solutions” (might need to check “Show all settings”), there’s a setting called “Only build startup projects and dependencies on Run”. Check that box. Now, if we return to our solution and repeat trying to run just WebApplication_1, we see that VS only builds that project and not the other one as well. Hope this helps. Mark Berryman – ASP.NET Team
snydeq writes with an editorial in InfoWorld about the resurgence of native code. From the article: “Modern programmers have increasingly turned away from native compilation in favor of managed-code environments such as Java and .Net, which shield them from some of the drudgery of memory management and input validation. Others are willing to sacrifice some performance for the syntactic comforts of dynamic languages such as Python, Ruby, and JavaScript. But C++11 arrives at an interesting time. There’s a growing sentiment that the pendulum may have swung too far away from native code, and it might be time for it to swing back in the other direction. Thus, C++ may have found itself some unlikely allies.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Nearly the entire text of The Art of Assembly Language Programming has been posted online for the Processing Systems and Structures course at Washington University. The book begins with machine organization and then works through basic to advanced assembly language. A while back we asked whether all programmers should learn assembly language . Most of you thought either all or most programmers should learn assembly. Sponsor From the introduction, here’s a list of why someone would want to learn assembly: Your major requires a course in assembly language; i.e., you’re here against your will. A programmer where you work quit. Most of the source code left behind was written in assembly language and you were elected to maintain it. Your boss has the audacity to insist that you write your code in assembly against your strongest wishes. Your programs run just a little too slow, or are a little too large and you think assembly language might help you get your project under control. You want to understand how computers actually work. You’re interested in learning how to write efficient code. You want to try something new. Programming from the Ground Up is another assembly language book available for free online. Discuss