My recent .NET programming

A month ago I was writing about bugs in Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. All in all I've escaped trouble and for a month I was using it. Professional edition to be exact. Of course when the Beta will expire I'll be forced to move to free Express Edition. And know I'm studying .NET and C#.

Book of Andrew Troelsen is almost at the end: only 2.5 chapter remain for me. They are all about ASP.NET and Web.

Moreover my text editor became much better. Though it is still have not vast functionality. I have an idea of turning it into IDE for any computer language (Python and Ruby are first candidates), but as I think this is not the matter of near future.

Programming for .NET on C# was good and effective, though there are some things that I don't like in it and want to replace them by equivalents from scripting languages. Of course that relates to new computer language. I made it to parse arithmetic expressions with integer numbers and make *.exe file that performs all these calculations. Not very much and I've stopped on trying to implement print function. The problem is not in the implementing particular built-in function but much more in whole mechanism of implementing functions. I've decided not to make thinking about it, but to take a pause. Though this idea firmly seats in my head so I think I'll return to it after gaining some experience. And moreover I'll need some time to feel pace of study on second year!

Furthermore now I'm working on .NET library to create diagrams. I've wanted to have one to make colourful diagrams from my data which is output from scripts, not in Excel format. For now it already can make proper diagram! So in future I need to add much more customisation to it.

Moreover, I've tried Ruby. It looks rather interesting and has simple solutions for problems which I've already faced in other languages(and not yet faced). I'll study it more deeply and try use it in my projects. For now if I need to make some routine tasks I prefer Python. Hope in near future I'll write more on computer languages.

— Buy! :)

Egnoly Text Editor

For about one year ago, I bought my first book about programming — it was "C++ How to Program" by H.M.Deitel and P.J.Deitel. I've read 4th edition and now they are preparing to publish 6th edition. I think that's rather a good book for starter, all in all I've learned much from it, in despite of that it is about C++ — not very easy language. For that year I've learned basics of Python, Perl, Java, Ada, C#, Visual Basic and in university I've studied Turbo Pascal for one year. All of I've programmed were console applications. The only exception was working with Microsoft Access on courses were I used VB for modules, but that was not "normal" programming of GUI — all in all it is Access not Visual Studio. And after the year of programming I've changed the situation.

Now I'm working in Visual Studio on my first "normal" GUI application — text editor which I've called Egnoly. I'm writing it on C#. Yesterday I finished first version of it (0.0.1). It can open and save file. Plus built in Windows Forms TextBox class abilities of cut/copy/paste. Not very much. But it works! Moreover development GUI apps is rather unfamiliar task for me, so Egnoly hasn't any tests written and strong system of exceptions. Furthermore I don't know C# well.
To resolve the last problem I've bought Andrew Troelsen "Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform, Third Edition". I think after reading it I'll be comfortable with developing GUI, e.g. modifying classes from System.Windows.Forms (as a understand that what I need to make a color syntax highlight).

So I've started my way to become a GUI wizard :) For now Egnoly is only a program to develop my programming skills from bad to "something better" :), bit what it will be in future?.. Time will show... :)