.NET Concurrent Collections

Oh ConcurrentQueue, where have you been all my life! - Why have I only just found out that you exist? I know, I know… It seems I’m late to the party. But it turns out that the new System.Collections.Concurrent namespace was only introduced in .NET Version 4.0 It’s no secret that when it comes to data processing, adding more threads mean you can process data faster. But adding multiple threads...

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My Winform "HTML Toast Notification" Library

The other day/week/month (gee, where does the time go!), I wanted to include toast style notifications inside a Winform's application I was working on. Basically, I wanted some kind of on-screen-display (OSD) that notifies the user when an event happens in the app. I also wanted something non-obtrusive...

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Measuring CPU performance from the CommandLine using PerfMon

In a previous post, I talked about viewing "coarse grained CPU performance" of an application using Process Explorer. It's a great way of checking "at a glance" how a process is performing CPU wise. However, if you want to get down with the nitty-gritty details of your server's performance, you...

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Yo! - I'm a Lambda.

I've just been reading up on the new JavaScript/ECMAScript 6 features and in particular the new fat-arrow syntax for lambdas. It's funny, but whenever I see this syntax () => { } in C# code, my mind always shouts to me "Yo!! - I'm a Lambda". - Okay, I understand that might sound weird... It is weird and I don't know how to stop it! Let me explain! What I mean is, as programmers, when we read...

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Windows Command Line Goodies

With the news that Microsoft is bringing Bash to Windows (what a crazy world we live in!), it looks like I'm going to add "bash" to my "one more thing to learn" list. In the meantime, I thought it would be good to list the common daily windows cmd.exe tools that I use and find useful. You can't beat...

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Observations on Software Package Managers

It’s interesting to watch the landscape of software development evolve over time. One of those evolution's is the advent of package managers. As an application developer, having access to a global library of code packages which can be pulled down in an automated way, is such a valuable addition to the development experience. They are everywhere! For example: JavaScript has the NPM C# has...

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Quick and Easy Analysis of Website AJAX calls using Chrome Net Events

There are times when you need to find out what background "ajax/web endpoint calls" a webpage is making under the covers. As it happens, the other day was one of those times! - I needed to find out which Web Endpoints an internal website was calling over an HTTPS connection. Now, we all know we could use Fiddler or the fantastic Wireshark for analysing network traffic but I didn't have either...

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Modern JavaScript Development

Welcome to Client-Side tales from a Server-Side Developer. If your background is server-side development like me, then visiting the land of JavaScript can be quite daunting. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about the JavaScript language itself. Whilst the language has recently been updated to ES6, I'm talking about everything else that comes along with it. Honestly, as an outsider looking in...

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Coarse Grained CPU-Profiling for Applications using Process Explorer

Today I wanted to quickly graph an applications CPU performance and compare how different start-up flags affected the CPU performance of the application. I didn't want to open perfmon.exe and go through the rigmarole of selecting the correct perf counters yadda-yadda.. I just wanted something quick...

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To-do or Not-to-do?.. That is the question.

"Note to Self: Remember to write a to-do list" As a full-stack, dev-ops software developer we have to juggle a lot of moving parts. We work on multiple projects with multiple time-frames in addition to looking after servers, performing system-administration and keeping up with the constant changes...

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C# Dynamic Types & Expando Object

Let me get this straight!! You want to declare an Object but you don't know what member variables you need ahead of time. Have you gone mad? JavaScript Land You've got to love the dynamic nature of JavaScript and how the language allows you to mutate objects at run-time. You don't need to define...

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Ho-Ho-Ho.... Now I have a Blog!

Come out to the internet... We'll get together, have a few laughs... Is it me or does anyone else suddenly feel claustrophobic? Hello World! - I am a software developer with over 15 years of experience, but as we all know, in this industry there is always something new to learn. As software developers,...

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