Development for Windows *

It's not a secret that Microsoft has been working on the 8-th version of C# language for quite a while. The new language version (C# 8.0) is already available in the recent release of Visual Studio 2019, but it's still in beta. This new version is going to have a few features implemented in a somewhat non-obvious, or rather unexpected, way. Nullable Reference types are one of them. This feature is announced as a means to fight Null Reference Exceptions (NRE).

Support of Visual Studio 2019 in PVS-Studio affected a number of components: the plugin itself, the command-line analyzer, the cores of the C++ and C# analyzers, and a few utilities. In this article, I will briefly explain what problems we encountered when implementing support of the IDE and how we addressed them.

MessageBox — useful window for different GUI frameworks, but you can't find it in AvaloniaUI.
Let's try to do it.

February 2019 marked the release of ReactiveUI 9 — the cross-platform framework for building GUI applications on the Microsoft .NET platform. ReactiveUI is a tool for tight integration of reactive extensions with the MVVM design pattern. You could familiarize yourself with the framework via a series of videos or the welcome page of the documentation. The ReactiveUI 9 update includes numerous fixes and improvements, but probably the most crucial and interesting one is integration with the DynamicData framework, allowing you to work with dynamic collections in Reactive fashion. Let’s find out what we can use DynamicData for and how this powerful reactive framework works under the hood!

Last week, Microsoft held its Build 2019 conference at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. Build is a large event with several thousand people from around the world attending to learn all about the current, newest, and future developer-oriented tech coming from Microsoft.

We had the pleasure of meeting so many of you at our booth and answering all your questions!

We are beyond excited to announce Windows Terminal! Windows Terminal is a new, modern, fast, efficient, powerful, and productive terminal application for users of command-line tools and shells like Command Prompt, PowerShell, and WSL.

Windows Terminal will be delivered via the Microsoft Store in Windows 10 and will be updated regularly, ensuring you are always up to date and able to enjoy the newest features and latest improvements with minimum effort.

In .NET Core 3.0 we are introducing a new type of application template called Worker Service. This template is intended to give you a starting point for writing long running services in .NET Core. In this walkthrough we will create a worker and run it as a Windows Service.

We recently shared the public preview of the Windows Virtual Desktop service on Azure. Now customers can access the only service that delivers simplified management, multi-session Windows 10, optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and apps. With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can deploy and scale your Windows desktops and apps on Azure in minutes, while enjoying built-in security and compliance.

Static analysis methodology involves various technologies. One of them is preprocessing files right before analyzing them. Preprocessed files are created by the compiler that runs in a special working mode. Unfortunately, our long-standing experience of developing a static analyzer shows that this mode is not great for testing. In this note, I'll give the example of a fresh bug in the C++ compiler from Microsoft.

The Object base type and implementation of interfaces. Boxing

It seems we came through hell and high water and can nail any interview, even the one for .NET CLR team. However, let's not rush to microsoft.com and search for vacancies. Now, we need to understand how value types inherit an object if they contain neither a reference to SyncBlockIndex, not a pointer to a virtual methods table. This will completely explain our system of types and all pieces of a puzzle will find their places. However, we will need more than one sentence.

Now, let's remember again how value types are allocated in memory. They get the place in memory right where they are. Reference types get allocation on the heap of small and large objects. They always give a reference to the place on the heap where the object is. Each value type has such methods as ToString, Equals and GetHashCode. They are virtual and overridable, but don’t allow to inherit a value type by overriding methods. If value types used overridable methods, they would need a virtual methods table to route calls. This would lead to the problems of passing structures to unmanaged world: extra fields would go there. As a result, there are descriptions of value type methods somewhere, but you cannot access them directly via a virtual methods table.

This may bring the idea that the lack of inheritance is artificial

This chapter was translated from Russian jointly by author and by professional translators. You can help us with translation from Russian or English into any other language, primarily into Chinese or German.

Also, if you want thank us, the best way you can do that is to give us a star on github or to fork repository github/sidristij/dotnetbook.

Our team provides quick and effective customer support. User requests are handled solely by programmers since our clients are programmers themselves and they often ask tricky questions. Today I'm going to tell you about a recent request concerning one false positive that even forced me to carry out a small investigation to solve the problem.

Good day to you!

My name is Stanislav and I like to write code. This is my first english article on Habr which I made due to several reasons:

• Habr is now in English
• Lack of technical articles in the ReactOS hub
• Recent return of Geektimes to Habr
• Possibility of building ReactOS in ReactOS
• Quite interesting case of fixing the problem in ReactOS in which I was directly involved

This article is an english version of my very first article on russian.

Let me introduce the main figures in this story who actually fixed the bug preventing Git from running in ReactOS — the French developer Hermès Bélusca-Maïto (or just Hermes with hbelusca nickname) and of course me (with x86corez nickname).

The story begins with the following messages from the ReactOS Development IRC channel:

Jun 03 18:52:56 <hbelusca> Anybody want to work on some small problem? If so, can someone figure out why this problem https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-12931 happens on ReactOS? :D
Jun 03 18:53:13 <hbelusca> That would help having a good ROS self-hosting system with git support.
Jun 03 18:53:34 <hbelusca> (the git assertion part only).

I have a directory with old images which I collected in the noughties. I move it with all my other files from one computer to another on every upgrade. Every now and then, when I feel a bit nostalgic, I open it and look through the pictures. There are a few GIF files with animation, and every time I notice that the default image viewer from Windows 7 does not support it. I remembered, that the image viewer from Windows XP was able to play GIF animation properly. So, I spent a bit of time to overcome a few obstacles and to run the old image viewer on modern Windows, a small launcher was created for this purpose. Now I can watch these old images in authentic interface of the old image viewer from Windows XP.


Download: shimgvw_xp32.7z (includes a binary and source code of the launcher, and the shimgvw.dll from English Windows XP SP3).

Last year we announced ML.NET, cross-platform and open ML system for .NET developers. During this time, it has evolved greatly and has gone through many versions. Today we are sharing a guide on how to create your first ml.net application in 10 minutes.

Author of the original post in Russian: frsamara

I always loved playing with things and testing them under all sorts of wacky conditions as a kid and even considered getting a job as a tester, but I never did. Nevertheless, I still like taking things made by someone else and poking them for vulnerabilities.

I remember, when first self-service payment terminals started popping around town, I saw one of them put up a browser window while updating, and the game was on — I broke it almost immediately. There’s been a lot of discussion about it since then and developers have started to pay a lot more attention towards security in these machines.

Recently, fast-food joints have started installing these terminals. Obviously, it’s quite convenient: just tap a couple of virtual buttons, place an order, pay with a bank card and wait for your number to show on the screen.

Also, nearly every big mall has these interactive boards with floor plans and information on various sales and discounts.

How secure are they?