From Andrew Webb: PowerToys for Visual Studio .NET 2003.

"Chris talks with Carl and Mark about Longhorn, Working at Microsoft, his book with Don Box, his new Windows Forms book, dealing with Printer Margins, passing command-line arguments to auto-deployed applications, linking assemblies, the new Matrix movie, what's new in Ghengis, and answers the age old question 'to GAC or not to GAC?'"

From : A handy ComboBox control for developers!

From Guy Incognito: As I was falling asleep, I heard Chris Sell's name mentioned on Coast to Coast AM Radio by William Poundstone as he was discussing his book "How Would You Move Mt. Fuji: Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle".

From Keith Wedinger: Java SDK 1.5 (code named Tiger) is going to support variable length argument lists. In C#, this is accomplished via the params keyword. In Java, they are going to use an ellipsis token.

From Bernard Vander Beken: A new list where Agile Software Development using the .NET Framework can be discussed. Example topics: Unit Testing, Refactoring and Continuous Integration.

I'm walking down the hall this morning after a successful meeting in building 40. I'm wearing shorts 'cuz it's sunny in Seattle (!) and the shorts have 6 pockets, the two extras in front and below the two standard pockets. Because I'm away from home, my pockets are filled with my wallet, cell phone, keys, a few days worth of change, my sun glasses and a PAA (Personal Analog Assistant) that I'm carrying. Since most of the stuff is in my lower pockets, I'm more sauntering than walking. Also, at each step, I jingle, because of the change and the keys, ching-ching-ching... Then I realize that I'm humming. While this isn't unusual (I'm generally a happy fellow), after a few seconds, I realize the tune and bust out laughing. The tune? I’ve Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle...

I just got this email from Chris Tavares (who’s doing the lion’s share of the implementation work to add ref-counting to Rotor):

using System;
class FinalizerObj {
  int n;

  public FinalizerObj(int n) {
    this.n = n;
    Console.WriteLine(“Created Finalizer object {0}”, n);
  }

  ~FinalizerObj() {
    Console.WriteLine(“Finalizing finalizer object {0}”, n);
  }
}

class TestApp {
  public static void Main() {
    for( int i = 0; i < 5; ++i ) LeakAnObj(i);
  }

  static void LeakAnObj( int i ) {
    FinalizerObj obj = new FinalizerObj(i);
  }
}

Under the desktop CLR, I get this:

C:\Home\Chris\Projects\Rotor\src\tests>FinalizerTest
Created Finalizer object 0
Created Finalizer object 1
Created Finalizer object 2
Created Finalizer object 3
Created Finalizer object 4
Finalizing finalizer object 4
Finalizing finalizer object 0
Finalizing finalizer object 3
Finalizing finalizer object 2
Finalizing finalizer object 1

But when I run under Rotor, now I get this:

C:\Home\Chris\Projects\Rotor\src\tests>clix FinalizerTest.exe
Created Finalizer object 0
Finalizing finalizer object 0
Created Finalizer object 1
Finalizing finalizer object 1
Created Finalizer object 2
Finalizing finalizer object 2
Created Finalizer object 3
Finalizing finalizer object 3
Created Finalizer object 4
Finalizing finalizer object 4
Finalizing finalizer object 4
Finalizing finalizer object 0
Finalizing finalizer object 3
Finalizing finalizer object 2
Finalizing finalizer object 1

I obviously still need to figure out how to pull the object off the finalization queue, but that will have to wait until tomorrow night.

Even though they’re being called by us and by the GC, this is the first time we’ve been able to get finalizers working. Wahoo!