Debug and Release

I'm on a kick with future predictions , so why not one about image file formats. There always seems to be a new one every week (kidding!). Let's dig into what I think will be the image format of the future - FLIF. Looks about right.. ? Just another file format? I'm sure this has been many times over, but I truly think FLIF has the potential to take over all other image file formats. Before we dig into the reasons why, let's call out that FLIF stands for Free Lossless Interchange Format . The format was created by Jon Sneyers and Pieter Wuille as described in their paper . FLIF has been around since 2015 , but since I live under a rock, I've first heard about it now. It is a lossless format, which means that you don't lose data quality as you compress images, opposed to jpegs . PNG images are lossless, which means they won't lose any quality as you compress them. What makes FLIF great? Taken from the official www site , FLIF does it all: ...

I recently spoke to an incredibly wise co-worker who shared with me his vision of data security, and his explanation was so insightful I couldn't help but share it with you all. Securing our data Our data has no value Today, a fundamental problem is our data has no value. Let me explain why this is a problem. To choose an example, when we use Facebook , we offer the platform access to our basic data (gender, age, name, other attributes we choose) as exchange to use the service for free. This is fair, or at least most of us would come to believe. I would certainly consider an alternative if I had to pay to use Facebook. Regardless, this information about ourselves gets used ad infinitum  in algorithms that match advertising ads that may be most relevant to you on Facebook, even when you aren't on Facebook . As your information is shared throughout Facebook (to show you ads), what additional value are you getting? What benefits are you getting from the companies who...

This post isn't necessary advocating for dropping out of school  to get your first programming job, but rather a list of things I wish I had a better understanding of before I started my first job as a programmer outside of school (college). Graduating from school; the only time we can wear this cool hat How you view your work We know you are working on homework all the time , but it is different in the real world. You can't approach working in a job the same way as you work on homework in school. At school, the assignments you do are against you; one on one. A duel. In a real job, work isn't simply something to get done, it is means to an end . Other people are now counting on you to get your work done. You become a dependency to others, your team, and the organization as a whole. You become a necessary lynch pin in your job. So that is what a lynch pin looks like If this raises the stakes, good. That's how you need to begin thinking at a rea...

What's the one thing I'm most excited about that is coming in Visual Studio 2019? All of it! Get ready IntelliCode This is Visual Studio's AI'd approach to coding. It has been learning on good code  and remembering patterns that might be applicable to coding in general. So, as you are coding, it would likely suggest the right method you need to use, as demonstrated in the sample below. IntelliCode in action The tool has been available in Visual Studio 2017 , but in Visual Studio 2019 - it is baked in from the start. What's even better is that IntelliCode will learn from your own code ! Very cool in my opinion. Big thumbs up to Microsoft. Code cleanup I really like the thought of having my editor clean my code up for me. It's not being lazy, it's being smart . Visual Studio 2019 has this built in too. I'd be very excited to see if certain options could be auto-configured to run on Build or Release, but we might have to wait so...

It's important to improve your skills , but you can't neglect your health as a programmer. Here are four, very easy steps you can take to maintain your health at your desk job. I am fully charged Protect your eyes You can read the full American Optometric Association paper , or you can simply wear eye protection. Bottom line, is UV light harms your eyes. That must be why I really enjoy looking at deep-blue Christmas lights ...   I would recommend any pair of glasses while on your computer that have blue-light reflective coating, or a blue light filter. I personally have a pair of these , and I immediately noticed a difference at the end of the day - my eyes didn't feel sore or tired (that is what long exposure to UV light does to your eyes). This is also a good article on the subject. Worth the investment You can also consider monitors that have built-in blue light filters, but they tend to be more on the expensive side of things. Follow the 20...

I'll be the first to admit, programming was never something I found easy. My very first experience in programming was when I got this book at the ripe age of 11. I liked playing my Nintendo 64  and wanted to make games on my own. The book that changed it all for me My ability was far under sub-par. Somewhere in these  forums I wrote a post asking for help trying to understand a while loop - needless to say I got defensive because I felt I was being talked down by people smarter than me, telling me that I should start and learn more simpler things first (than dive right into making a PC game). Forums did actually look like this (circa 2005) The truth was, I was being too ambitious. BUT - TwisterMan was not going to code itself! (All drawn in glorious Microsoft Paint :)). Animation frames of TwisterMan doing some whirlwind attack Watch out for spikeo ! *rawr* And whoever this boss was called... Baaaa? The point I'm trying to get across i...

What do we get more than anything, notifications . I'm a fan of turning them off (when I can), but if you wanted to show notifications through Powershell, here's a way how to do that. A notification in Windows 10 Adding Windows Forms We are going to leverage the NotifyIcon class built into Windows Forms in order to display our notification in Powershell. This is possible through the Add-Type cmdlet available in Powershell. With the Add-Type cmdlet, we can add the Windows.Forms assembly directly into our Powershell instance and use types like we would in code. This can be done with the following code. Add-Type -AssemblyName System . Windows . Forms Once this assembly is loaded into memory, we can begin to set the properties of the NotifyIcon and display it from Powershell. Setting the properties Before we set the properties on our notification, we need to create a NotifyIcon first. This can be done with the New-Object cmdlet. $notification = New-Obje...