With the new SDK format for .NET projects, it’s much easier to manage with the project’s dependencies. In most scenarios references added with standard mechanism (Visual Studio or dotnet cli) result in sufficient content in the output directory. However, sometimes we want to do something non-standard that requires a slightly different set of components in the output dir - simply speaking we expect to see there either more or fewer files. ... Read More

Two weeks ago .NET Core 3.0 was officially published. Together with the new framework version, Visual Studio 2019 got support for a long-awaited C# 8.0. The complete list of the new language features is available here on the MSDN, but the one that deserves special attention is Nullable reference types. This is a very important change in the language semantic, because from now we will be able to eliminate certain class of errors related to reference nullability on the compilation stage. ... Read More

Multithreading is one of the most difficult aspects of programming and can cause a lot of headaches. The main source of problems is often the improper usage of synchronization mechanisms, which can result in deadlocks or a complete lack of synchronization despite our expectations. The effect of the broken synchronization can be analyzed with various runtime tools, but it would be nice to have an asset that is able to report all those issues in the design time right on the stage of writing code. ... Read More

I’m a programmer but I don’t like to write code. OK, it’s not the whole truth. I don’t like to write the code that is repeatable. Whenever I need to do something more than twice, I start thinking about automation. Hopefully, this problem can be addressed with code snippets. Visual Studio provides a predefined set of snippets that can be extended, but if you are a Resharper user you should definitely get to know LiveTemplates because it’s more powerful and easier to configure. ... Read More

Multithreading is one of the most difficult aspects of programming and can cause a lot of headaches. The main source of problems is often improper usage of synchronization mechanisms, which can result in deadlocks or a complete lack of synchronization despite our expectations. The infamous deadlocks can be detected in runtime thanks to tools like Concurrency Visualizer, Parallel Tasks Window or with WinDBG !dlk command. However, these tools are often used only after some unexpected behavior is observed, but it would be nice to reduce the feedback loop and detect these issues in design time. ... Read More