A really good run through on “welcome screens” by SOFA.

Oh yeah, a great read. Also, use code documentation comments and code documentation generators!

I didn’t call this one a gem for a couple reasons.

1. It’s really stupid to do this — especially compared against other more modern and secure techniques.
2. I don’t use C/C++ at the moment.
3. The code is ugly.  Most C++ is though.

A flexible charting library for .NET

Another Stack Overflow gem in “How to use Office from Visual Studio C#?“  The question was exhausting but one of those who responded had some sagely advice:

The answer is to “Copy Local” whatever assembly dll you get for the interop. Once you have the assembly dll in your output folder, add a reference to it, and check it into source control.

Now everyone has the referenced assembly dll.

—anonymousstackoverflow

Now I’m sure to some that may sound like kindergarten learning but it never dawned on me to put external dependencies under source control.

In this fashion a set of legacy developers can maintain legacy code while emerging standards developers can maintain the latest emergent standard — both separated from the other one’s development.

I’ve had a light bulb and it’s warm.

How to: Test for Reference Equality (Identity) (C# Programming Guide)

How to: Define Value Equality for a Type (C# Programming Guide)

“The Elder” is apparently a freaking genius.  Tip #2 changed my life although apparently I was already doing this.

I freaked out at first — I thought I was guilty of it. Rather, in the IDE I use for PHP code I group similar projects in same name spaces or work spaces. I got to thinking though, and I NEVER plan to develop any PHP for deployment into executable bytecode or encoded somehow. So grouping projects under one general solution label is fine.

Brainsick Solutions for example is a namespace in most of my C# and PHP code. That’s where:

• blog.* WordPress widgets and blog development takes place.
• portfolio.* modifications to the portfolio gallery and development of separate galleries.
• …several more app.*s in development.