Most of network programming I do is Web/HTTP oriented. So it has been a while since I had to work with TCP and Socket programming directly. Yesterday I needed to write a quick TCP Server. C# and .NET made this really easy to do:

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Sockets;

public class TCPServer
{
    private static int port = 8001;

    public static void Main()
    {
        IPAddress ipAddress = IPAddress.Any;
        TcpListener listener = new TcpListener(ipAddress, port);
        listener.Start();
        Console.WriteLine("Server is running");
        Console.WriteLine("Listening on port " + port);
        Console.WriteLine("Waiting for connections...");
        while (true)
        {
            Socket s = listener.AcceptSocket();
            Console.WriteLine("Connection accepted from " + s.RemoteEndPoint);
            byte[] b = new byte[65535];
            int k = s.Receive(b);
            Console.WriteLine("Received:");
            for (int i = 0; i < k; i++)
                Console.Write(Convert.ToChar(b[i]));
            ASCIIEncoding enc = new ASCIIEncoding();
            s.Send(enc.GetBytes("Server responded"));
            Console.WriteLine("\nSent Response");
            s.Close();
    }
}

Joe Duffy (from Microsoft) talking about the .NET 2.0 CLR:

"It's also worth noting that the threadpool throttles its creation of threads to 2/second once the count has exceeded the # of CPUs."

Yuck...  I don't like throttling like that behind the scenes.  It can make performance problems *very* hard to diagnose.

Good to know..

See all the exceptions you are swallowing in .NET (Visual Studio debugger):

Turn on 'all exceptions' and watch the fireworks fly

One of the most glaring differences for me between Java and .NET is the difference between Checked/Unchecked Exceptions, so stuff like this has been helpful to me in figuring out how exception handling in C#/.NET really works.

IronPython is the Python implementation that runs on the .NET platform... originally created by Jim Hugginin, but later backed (overtaken?) by Microsoft.

Microsoft's ambivalence towards Free software is a bit hard to follow sometimes and it really makes me question their entire approach to the software community  (wait.. have I ever *not* questioned that? :).

As a Python advocate and *nix geek trying to make my way working in a .NET shop, I am really excited about IronPython.  I was also initially impressed with Microsoft's embracement of the Python community and toe dipping into Open Source.  But then I hear Microsoft will not take patches from non-Microsoft developers and will not bundle IronPython with other applications which have certain Free licenses(LGPL, BSD). To me, this is really a shame. That is not how you approach a community.

Well... at least somebody has stepped up and is maintaining IronPython Community Edition (IPCE).

props.

So check out IPCE and the FePy Project!

I am developing some small ASP.NET 2.0 web applications.  They are stateless and I am not doing anything with Session State.  However, I noticed that ASP.NET enables Session State by default (In-process mode is the default setting).  Therefore, if you have a truly stateless site or application, session state does nothing more than slow down performance.

In-process session state is still relatively fast, as the memory used to handle session is allocated by the same process on the local machine (no cross-process calls or data marshaling).  But this is needless overhead if you are not using your Session State.

So... to turn it off for the whole application, add the following line to your web.config, inside the system.web section:

Anders Hejlsberg on LINQ and Functional Programming

This is a good video of an interview with Anders Hejlsberg on LINQ and Functional Programming.  He is the designer of C# and talks about some of the upcoming features in Orcas (the next Visual Studio with C# 3.0).

I think it is very interesting (and good) that Microsoft (and many other modern language designers) are adding functional programming features.  If functional programming, lambda expressions, list comprehensions, and set processing, are your bag.. watch this.

SELECT count(*) FROM :: fn_trace_getinfo(default) WHERE property = 5 and value = 1

SELECT * FROM :: fn_trace_getinfo(default)

EXEC sp_trace_setstatus 1, @status = 0
EXEC sp_trace_setstatus 1, @status = 2

using System;
using System.Threading;

public class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        ThreadStart job = new ThreadStart(ThreadJob);
        Thread thread = new Thread(job);
        thread.Start();

        for (int i=0; i < 5; i++)
        {
            Console.WriteLine ("Main thread: {0}", i);
            Thread.Sleep(1000);
        }
    }

    static void ThreadJob()
    {
        for (int i=0; i < 10; i++)
        {
            Console.WriteLine ("Spawned thread: {0}", i);
            Thread.Sleep(500);
        }
    }
}

private void Execute()
{
    Process proc = new Process();
    
    proc.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = @"C:\scripts";
    proc.StartInfo.FileName = "python.exe";
    proc.StartInfo.Arguments = "foo.py";
    proc.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
    proc.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = false;
    proc.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
    proc.Start();
    proc.WaitForExit();
    proc.Close()
}

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    HtmlGenericControl Include = new HtmlGenericControl("script");
    Include.Attributes.Add("type", "text/javascript");
    Include.Attributes.Add("src", "dojo/dojo.js");
    Page.Header.Controls.Add(Include);

    HtmlGenericControl Include2 = new HtmlGenericControl("script");
    Include2.Attributes.Add("type", "text/javascript");
    Include2.InnerHtml = "dojo.require('dojo.widget.FisheyeList');";
    Page.Header.Controls.Add(Include2);
}

string[] fileList = Directory.GetFiles(@"c:\temp");
Random random = new Random();
string fileName = fileList[random.Next(fileList.Length)];
StreamReader sr = File.OpenText(fileName);
string contents = sr.ReadToEnd();