DevBlog

Recently I Freemaned my work PC. Everything worked fine for a few weeks, but over the past month, Windows Update hasn't worked. The updates would download, but when the install started, things would just sit there. The PC was usable, but updates never installed. I did some web searched but didn't come up with anything specific. I finally posted a message in a newsgroup and got help from Steve Wechsler (aka MowGreen), a Windows MVP. He suspected some part of Windows Update didn't start correctly and had me reregister the Windows Update DLLs. Here's what I did, all from the command window.

net stop wuauserv
regsvr32 wuapi.dll
regsvr32 wuaueng.dll
regsvr32 wuaueng1.dll
regsvr32 wuauserv.dll
regsvr32 wucltui.dll
regsvr32 wups2.dll
regsvr32 wups.dll
regsvr32 wuweb.dll
net start wuauserv

Sure enough, that fixed things. My work PC is now up to date.

As part of my .Net research I needed a quick introduction to Windows Workflow and selected Foundations of WF: an Introduction to Windows Workflow Foundation. However, I quickly abandonded this book. In fact, I never made it through Chapter 2.

The author is a VB guy and it shows. Not that there's anything wrong with VB, but all the examples are given first in VB, then in C#. The author discusses the C# code by saying "You'll notice how this differs from VB", assuming the reader read through the VB code first. I wanted to go straight to the C# code, but kept getting frustrated with all the "it's different". I finally gave up and purchased a different book. If you want to learn about WF, this is not the book to buy.

For the past few months I have been tasked with learning .Net, researching frameworks, and a whole lot more related to .Net. In those few months, read lots of books (in fact, I'm still reading). This entry is the first of several book reviews coming in the next few days.

We struggled with the build vs. buy arguement in regards to a framework and in the ended decided to build. So, I pulled down a book I've had on my shelf for sometime, Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries.

This is a book that is full of great advice on how to design a framework. Think of it as coding and design standards. However, it really is a book that belongs on the shelf of every .Net developer as it gives insight into how the .Net Framework was designed, why things are named like they are, and how you should name things in your own application.

It covers the normal stuff you would expect in a coding standard. Things like naming conventions and usage guidelines, but goes further to talk about when to use standard exceptions or custom exceptions, which datatypes to use when, how common design patterns were applied in the .Net Framework, and much more.

If you're doing any .Net development, get this book. It has place on my shelf within easy reach from keyboard.

Once again, I have been selected to speak at the German FoxPro DevCon. I'm very excited about returning to what is one of the best conferences I've ever attended. Oh, and don't forget the food. It's coming up November 8-10 in Frankfurt. Unlike other conferences, the conference price includes all meals. Did I mention the food?

I will be presenting four topics:
- Continuous Integration
- Integrating .Net Winforms with Visual FoxPro
- New UI Techniques with Windows Presentaton Foundation
- From COM+ and VFP web services to Windows Communication Foundation

All four are either new or updated sessions from last year. See you in Frankfurt.