shinyPlasticBag

Last week, out of sheer boredom — reaching extreme levels, in fact — I decided to mess with Mono. For those of you who have social lives, I’ll take the time to explain what that is. When Microsoft released its .NET Framework, geeks around the world realized that, hey, this isn’t such a bad idea. Some open source folks jumped right on it and created an open source version of the framework, complete with new compilers for a lot of the languages. Since I’m always on the look out for new languages to learn, I decided that it might be cool to mess with C#. C# was widely derided as Microsoft’s latest attempt to kill Java, and indeed, there are some similarities. However, there is one key difference:

C# kicks ass. I really like it. It’s a testament to the usability of a language when I can go from never using it (except for a “Hello, World!” thing I did last week) to creating a functional program with it in a single afternoon. Today, I created a replacement version of the spindexml_add component for my SpindeXML program which uses a C#-based search component (graphical interface is still written in Visual Basic, but it’s just a front-end for the C# component). Doing so boosted performance significantly, making it about three times faster. The built-in functions for parsing XML documents are absolutely amazing, and I highly recommend that any serious geeks — especially those using Microsoft’s .NET Framework — give Mono a go. It’s really good.

Anyway, I spent the day lounging around with Janet and Steve. At one point, Vanessa and TJ came over with Logan, who crawled around the living room and tried to eat my mouse. Several times. We watched The Last Starfighter, a delightfully bad eighties movie with a great storyline, and then Keddy wandered over for the Friends finale. My vote: great ending, but the show bit the shark a few years back. The first three seasons were some of the most amazing pieces of television ever, but once Ross started dating Emily, things went downhill. And I’m surprised they didn’t find a way to work Janice back in there somehow for the ending. I don’t, however, wish to be like every other blog on the planet for the next few days, so that’s all I have to say about that.

At this point, it’s almost time for sleep. So I’m going to mess around with Mono a bit more and wander upstairs. Ciao.