Fabulous Adventures In Coding

Eric Lippert's Erstwhile Blog

Color Color

Pop quiz: What does the following code do when compiled and run? class C{ public static void...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 07/06/2009

The correct answer is "no"

No technology today. I have not done a post on relationship advice in ages! Compare and contrast...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 07/02/2009

The void is invariant

[UPDATES below] A while back I described a kind of variance that we’ve supported since C# 2.0....

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 06/29/2009

Iterators at the Summer Games

Ed "Scripting Guy" Wilson was kind enough to ask me to be a guest commentator at this years Summer...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 06/26/2009

Mmm, Curry

A recent comment asked why Haskell programmers sometimes write C# lambdas in this style:...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 06/25/2009

Why Doesn't C# Implement "Top Level" Methods?

C# requires that every method be in some class, even if it is a static method in a static class in...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 06/22/2009

Use your legs, not your back

In C# you can "lift", "raise" and "hoist", and they all mean different things. To "lift" an operator...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 06/18/2009

Making it easier

I read an article in a technology column on MSNBC a while back, the upshot of which was “I have...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 06/15/2009

What does the optimize switch do?

I was asked recently exactly what optimizations the C# compiler performs when you specify the...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 06/11/2009

Fabulous Adventures In Russian

I am pleased to announce that a bunch of our Russian MVPs who (1) are awesome people and (2)...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 06/05/2009

Alas, Smith and Jones

We have a feature in C# which allows you to declare a "friend assembly". If assembly Smith says that...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 06/04/2009

Bug Psychology

Fixing bugs is hard. For the purposes of this posting, I’m talking about those really...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 06/01/2009

When Five Hundred Posts You Reach

… look this good you will not. But man, I tell you, the memory goes. In the July 1985 issue...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 05/28/2009

What Would Tufte Do?

What is this a chart of? I'll post the answer tomorrow. UPDATE: Someone has already correctly...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 05/27/2009

Null Is Not Empty

Back when I started this blog in 2003, one of the first topics I posted on was the difference...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 05/14/2009

Reserved and Contextual Keywords

Many programming languages, C# included, treat certain sequences of letters as...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 05/11/2009

Zip Me Up

Suppose you’ve got a sequence of Foos and you want to project from that a sequences of Bars....

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 05/07/2009

The Stack Is An Implementation Detail, Part One

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Author: Eric Lippert Date: 04/27/2009

Five-Dollar Words For Programmers, Part Five: Reification

Today, another in my series on awesomely arcane words for programmers. Reification is the process of...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 04/17/2009

Comma Quibbling

[UPDATE: Holy goodness. Apparently this was a more popular pasttime than I anticipated. There's like...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 04/15/2009

Restating the problem

A problem statement: I am trying to loop though a sequence of strings. How can I determine when I am...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 04/13/2009

Many Happy Returns

Happy birthday Channel Nine! In this episode I finally discover why it is that Charles picked me to...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 04/07/2009

Good Names

Imagine a door with an unusual handle. The handle is five feet off the ground and rotates upwards to...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 04/06/2009

A Book By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

As you might have gathered from my previous posts on the subject, I occasionally edit technical...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 04/02/2009

Reposting Information

A number of people have asked me questions like "can I quote your blog in my blog?", "can I post...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 03/27/2009

Five-Dollar Words For Programmers, Part Four: Boustrophedonic

Here’s an almost useless but thoroughly delightful five-dollar word. English of course is read...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 03/26/2009

Five-Dollar Words For Programmers, Part Three: Homoiconic

Jeff Atwood was kind enough to once more give me the shout-out in his blog the other day. Thanks...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 03/23/2009

Loops are gotos

Here's an interesting question I got the other day: We are writing code to translate old mainframe...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 03/10/2009

VSTO Book News

I am pleased to announce that my co-author Eric Carter has made significant updates to our VSTO...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 03/09/2009

Locks and exceptions do not mix

A couple years ago I wrote a bit about how our codegen for the lock statement could sometimes lead...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 03/06/2009

What are the horns for?

(Technology of a different sort today, just for a change of pace.) The first time I saw a picture of...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 03/05/2009

References are not addresses

[NOTE: Based on some insightful comments I have updated this article to describe more clearly the...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 02/17/2009

Properties vs. Attributes

Here is yet another question I got from a C# user recently: I have a class that represents a...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 02/02/2009

Long division

A thing that makes a reader go hmmm is why in C#, int divided by long has a result of long, even...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 01/28/2009

Why no var on fields?

In my recent request for things that make you go hmmm, a reader notes that you cannot use "var" on...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 01/26/2009

Reading Declarations

Wow, lots of good "hmm" moments in the comments to yesterday's post. Keep them coming! Many of these...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 01/22/2009

Things That Make You Go Hmmm

As you might have gathered from the number of times I make a blog post beginning with "I got the...

Author: Eric Lippert Date: 01/21/2009

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