/Dan/.NET - Dan Robey's .NET Dumping Spot : /mono

BigInts, C#, Crypto

dsrobey — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 03:29:00 GMT

I take back what I said here about the C# BigInt class. It actually is very well put together. I take issue with the fact that .Equals() does not take an Object, but aside from that it does everything you'd really want a bigint class to do. I'm wondering what the mono guys are using for all the security classes in .NET. Surprisingly (or maybe not), .NET already has a lot of the typical security functions built in. Check out System.Security.Cryptography. if you're interested. A lot of those functions are in there to do code signing, but are generic enough to use for other things. Since .NET has AES (Rijndael) built in, I wonder how they get around the strong crypto export restrictions.

eclipse

dsrobey — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 03:17:00 GMT

been playing with eclipse for a couple days now. Very nice development environment, and it's written in such a way that it is easily extended. There's a kind of Intellisense for both Java and C#, and probably more, although those are the only two languages I've played around with. There are a few quirks which leaves Visual Studio its better, but for a free tool, it's great.

The only issue I really have is that sometimes the intellisense drops out if you type too quickly. Other than that, it's amazing. It reads off the javadocs/c# documentation for intellisense tooltips, highlights errors dynamically, and all the other little features that make VS.NET helpful to use. It surprised me quite nicely. Anyone thinking of linux programming should take a look at it. I haven't seen whether it does things like web services or different C# project modes yet, but I'm sure that if they're not all there, someone's working on it.

.NET more secure than Linux?

dsrobey — Mon, 06 Oct 2003 17:31:00 GMT

@stake recently published a survey claiming that the .NET framework is more easily secured than Linux. Their methodology includesa list of actions system admins needed to perform to harden the web server. Their criteria mainly hinges on usability and the availability of wizards to guide admins through the tasks. However, while they do not evaluate the actual security provided by the systems, they do bring up a nice point: building a secure web server on linux is a pain. There are too many points in the install and hardening process that a user has to google instructions on how to turn on features, or write the config files that will allow you to do things. I'm sure this will come back to haunt me endlessly when I'm trying to do web services with mono.

pros and woes of Intellisense

dsrobey — Mon, 29 Sep 2003 16:50:00 GMT

Ever since I started using mono to do my 1.124 problem sets, I've noticed that my honed programmer's edge has been dulled by years of working with Intellisense. If I need to take a sqare root of a number, I no longer can remember where to find the function. While Intellisense speeds up programming tenfold, it also frees the programmer's mind from having to remember exactly what the syntax is. I know that any time I have to do a ToString() anymore, I just type in ".tost" and hit tab. I shave a couple seconds off implementation, keeping the overall design in my mind, but it allows me to get lazy.

While this is a godsend for high-speed implementation, it preys on code correctness. Without the crutch of Intellisense, I take so much more time to try and remember which casing is correct, where the proper functions to call are. If mono gives me an error, usually it turns out to be some unintelligible internal debug line filled with "expected: THIS DEBUG SEMICOLON NEW OPENPAREN", which tells me little about what the real syntax of the line should be.

The real impact of the dependence on Intellisense comes not in your personal coding, but when you want to program for others. Take for example the standard interview. When the interviewer wants you to sit down and write some example code illustrating reversing a string in place, or inserting an item into a linked list, your dependence on Intellisense becomes painfully obvious.

Maybe that's why Don Box programs in Emacs.

1.124 mono plans

dsrobey — Mon, 08 Sep 2003 17:50:00 GMT

I decided in class today that to keep 1.124 interesting, for the first half of the class - until we start writing web services - I will write all the code under linux using mono. Since I've already seen most if not all of the concepts, this will allow me to learn about some of the intricacies of mono. And maybe by the time web services roll around, they'll be fully implemented. I'll keep a log of all my mono goings-on so others can have a step-by-step guide.