The Code Spot

Forgot to mention …

2011-08-02T16:04:00.001-04:00

In the past couple of months I have had the opportunity to pursue a different career path. After almost twenty years of developing for some flavor of Microsoft Windows and eleven years working with .Net on the desktop I have decided to pursue a career doing mobile application development.

This isn’t the first time I have done mobile application development. My third job out of school I worked at Telxon creating applications for rugged hand-held devices. In fact I worked on an application AVIS used, perhaps still uses.

I have already started to learn to program Windows Phone 7, an easy transition for me having three years of WPF experience, and I really enjoy the platform and the device. I should have an application or two in the store next month. I have several applications planned.

As much as I love Windows Phone 7 and feel that it will be a major player in the coming years, I cannot ignore iOS. I read that last year the AppStore generated three billion dollars in revenue while Android’s Market generated one hundred million. As a result I am also learning iOS development. I do plan on picking up Android as well, I can only handle so much.

It has been a long time since I have worked with native code, (I worked with C++ for 9 years), and I am enjoying it. Working with the two platforms is giving me valuable insights and is making me a better programmer.

Finally, my family is moving to Austin Texas. My wife got an amazing offer from Dell as a Senior Test Engineer on a new Cloud service they will be rolling out.

The future’s so bright, I gotta where shades. – Timbuk 3

Windows Phone 7 Rocks!

2011-08-02T15:03:00.001-04:00

This is a great phone and many folks that have used an iPhone or an Android agree. I really enjoy it’s ease of use. Better yet, with eleven years of experience with .Net, transitioning to develop for the Windows Phone is cake: The development environment for the Windows Phone is Silverlight or XNA.

A Few Years Late But …

2011-07-29T12:10:00.001-04:00

Git rocks!

I’m finally getting around to see what all the buzz is about and I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. I’m a fan of TFS with all its features and customization options, but MS really needs to consider supporting distributed source control, if for no other reason than it’ll block adoption.

Git has really changed the way I work, unfortunately the few tools to integrate Git with Visual Studio are fairly weak. TortoiseGit is handy though.

C# .Net Parse URL for Machine Name and Port

2009-09-26T09:00:00.002-04:00

The title represents the words I used to search for a means to parse the machine name and port given a URL. All the results provided solutions using RegEx. I knew there had to be a class in the .Net FCL that provided this.

If you need to get the machine name and port specified in a URL, using the .Net FCL, you are looking for the Uri class.

1: string url = "tcp://machinename:54550/blah/blah";
2:
3: System.Uri uri = new System.Uri(url);
4:
5:// get the port (545550)
6: int port = uri.Port;
7:
8: // get the host name (machinename)
9:string host = uri.Host;

Of course after I write this I do another search using the same words and this post popped up: C# : Parsing a URL for its Component Parts

Hello World!

2009-08-20T08:12:00.004-04:00

Two words that are part of a programmer's psyche. For me these two words remind me of the times I explore new technology and programming languages.

I feel the words are appropriate as I begin this blog that I hope will help me grow as a person as well as a software developer.

I plan on contributing interesting solutions to problems I run into as well as discuss technologies, theory and code that I am interested in.