performance

Two of my colleagues (one from work and one from a user group) kindly pointed out to me that in my last post I omitted Continuation Tasks as a means of Error Handling for the TPL. As such, I will expand upon my last post with an example of handling errors via a Continuation Task. Continuing where we left off last, the following code will utilize a Task Continuation to handle errors within Tasks. [Read More]

As of .NET 4.0, the TPL or Task Parallel Library is king when it comes to parallelization. It allows for smooth, easy multi-threading for any application. There is a slight learning curve, however, and a major part of this is understanding how Exceptions bubble-up while using the TPL. Let’s partake in a simple example. This code will create and run a task that throws an Exception, and then attempt to catch it: [Read More]

As of .NET 3.0, LINQ (and the often related Lambda Expressions) have been available for our use and abuse. LINQ stands for Language INtegrated Query, and is a method of modelling OO data in a more or less relational sense that is not unlike databases. And just like databases, it comes with a cost. To offset this cost, LINQ uses Deferred Execution. Deferred Execution means that the code is not executed until it is needed. [Read More]

Sorry for the delay in posts, May has been a very busy month. In order to accurately debug or profile an external assembly or library (AKA one you’re not directly compiling), you need the associated PDB files to accompany each of the DLLs. These files give the debugger some information about the compiled assembly so that your debugger or profiler can become aware of function names, line numbers, and other related meta data. [Read More]

The topic at hand is interning. More specifically, string interning. “What is string interning?” you ask? Good question. As you may or may not know, strings are immutable reference types. This means that they are read-only and a pointer will refer to the string’s location on the heap. Typically, a new string is created and stored within your application’s memory each time that you assign a string – even if the same string is defined repeatedly. [Read More]

Something which I feel carries a lot of confusion in the .NET realm is virtual methods. During interviews, I tend to ask candidates about virtual methods: why and when they’d use one, what the purposes is, how a virtual method “works” under the hood, and how it differs from “shadowing”. Surprisingly, in what has probably been over one hundred interviews with senior-ish candidates, I don’t believe that more than one or two of them have answered anything about virtual methods correctly. [Read More]