Best of 2005

Article
12/13/2005

It is traditional, at the end of the year, to look back and take stock of the previous twelve months. On the .NET Compact Framework team, we recently posted our "Greatest Hits". I'd like to do something similar today. The topics below are what I consider to be my "Best of 2005". This was an interesting list to compile. My goal was to find between ten and fifteen topics that I felt particularly good about -- informative, useful, etc. In the end, I had a list of seventeen posts that covered a variety of topics.

At the top of my list are posts that talk about frequently used software engineering terms / phrases.

What is a First Chance Exception?

What is a Race Condition?

Next up is what I think of as my "MEDC 2005 collection". These posts cover, in detail, the main topics I spoke about in the Debugging .NET Compact Framework Applications session I presented with Mark Ihimoyan.

Enabling Attach to Process support in NetCF v2

Attaching the Managed Debugger to a Running NetCF v2 Application using Visual Studio 2005

Debugging the Managed and Native Code during a P/Invoke call on NetCF v2 using Visual Studio 2005

Just-In-Time Debugging on the .NET Compact Framework Version 2

Debugging Multi-Threaded Applications I - Deadlocks

Three Common Causes of Memory Leaks in Managed Applications

MEDC was a great experience for me. It was my first large scale presentation and my first opportunity to meet so many mobile and embedded developers . I was amazed at how many people knew me through this weblog. Thanks again to all who attended and spent time talking with me.

The .NET Compact Framework's Platform Invoke (P/Invoke) feature allows applications to call unmanaged (native) functions to access functionality not provided by the base class libraries. These posts cover a couple of handy device-centric P/Invokes that I used on more than one occasion this past year.

Is my device running on battery or AC power?

Checking for Screen Rotation Support Using NetCF

Checking for Screen Rotation Support Using NetCF version 2

Lastly, I'll finish with a collection of tips, tricks and other morsels.

Exploring the NetCF Web Crawler sample (Visual Studio .NET 2003) - Part II: Updating the UI

Switching the Target Device in Visual Studio 2005 .NET Compact Framework Projects

Configuring How the Visual Studio Debugger Handles Custom Exceptions

Debugging Multi-Threaded Applications III - Thread Specific Breakpoints

Monitoring Application Performance on the .NET Compact Framework Part I - Enabling performance counters

Is your application running on version 2 of the .NET Compact Framework?

Well, that's it for 2005... If 2006 is half as much fun, it's going to be great too. Thanks for reading and have a happy and safe New Year!

Take care,
-- DK