The Wayward WebLog

Everyone’s trying to figure out the next big software gimmick that’s going to make utilizing your multi-core machines super easy. Let’s face it, having to write code with locks and threads is not going to be it. We’ve had that capability for a long time and only the cream of the crop developers even dared to tread there, and even fewer were actually capable of getting it right. The average programmer, including me on most days when I’m not hyper caffeinated, need a better mouse trap to make writing and executing code in parallel an everyday task. Read More...

I love the IQueryable interface, but it’s got a dark checkered past that most of you might not know about. IQueryable is a great way to expose your API or domain model for querying or provide a specialized query processor that can be used directly by LINQ. It defines the pattern for you to gather-up a user’s query and present it to your processing engine as a single expression tree that you can either transform or interpret. It’s the way LINQ becomes ‘integrated’ for many LINQ to XXX products. Yet it was not supposed to be that way; with all that ease of use, plugging automatically into LINQ with an abundance of pre-written query operators at your disposal. You were not supposed to use it for your own ends. It was not meant for you at all. Read More...

LINQ to SQL, possibly Microsoft’s first OR/M to actually ship in ten years of trying, was never even supposed to exist. Read More...

Everywhere I turn, all I read about is dynamic languages. Apparently, there is a small yet growing contingent of programmers that think dynamic is the only way to go. These guys are frustrated with the shackles of static type systems that force them to Read More...

I have been working a long time to bring queries into a modern programming language. Seven years ago I looked beyond ORM and saw the next horizon, a new world where boundaries between data are blurred and popular paradigms from different disciplines combine. Read More...

“LINQ is totally awesome. It’s like this thing that you use to condense your entire application into one line of demo code. Sweet!” - Stanley Morgan “LINQ is divine but DLINQ is a delinquent. It gives programmers too much power and makes programming against Read More...

In our never ending quest to provide you with better, faster, more powerful products and tools, we some time find it necessary to redo a little of what was done before, to revamp it so-to-speak, to spruce it up, to splash on a new coat of paint and add Read More...

The first time I ever saw code written in Java, it scared me. The code looked awful. I mean it. There was no way this stuff could be for real. The source code I saw looked as bug prone as anything I could imagine. There were 'new's flying around everywhere, Read More...

It's been difficult to focus on work lately, let alone find the time to contemplate something worthy of a blog post. The distraction of the presidential race is too compelling. My wife and I are glued to the television, CNN, FOX, MSNBC. I'm starting to Read More...

The top level management at Microsoft spend a lot of time keeping the rest of us focused on the mission, making sure that we never lose sight of the end goal, and that its all about the 'customer', not the fantastical whims of a few developers. Still, Read More...

Aspect oriented programming uses a technique called 'weaving' to merge together and/or modify portions of functional/procedural code, to produce code that at the same time is both highly efficient and easy to understand in cases where normal procedural Read More...

I got a surprise in my inbox this morning. An email from Erik Meijer read: The impossible has happened: X# became Xen, Xen became Comega, and Comega has shipped. http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/default.aspx . Enjoy Matt Read More...

Been writing in C++ lately. Man, I feel disconnected, alone, naked. So many pointers, deref'ing, addresses, pseudo-maniacal linked lists all over the place. Where's ArrayList when you need it, or managed arrays. I want my managed code back. Please, give Read More...

The X#/Xen (newly renamed c-omega) programming language has built in facilities to query data structures and databases. I had the pleasure to work on that project, implementing all the query features. The XML query features looked a bit like OPath from Read More...

I've been thinking of bits lately. You know, those fiendish critters that skitter around under the structures of our data. Take a peek. Look in the field and you'll see them; thirty-two in every integer. They are packed closely together, kind of like Read More...