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I have a project i am working on currently and would like to implement some sort of software tracking in the code. ideally, stuff like how often its launched. how long it runs for, feature tracking, etc. I already use Exceptioneer for unhandled exceptions, but would like something similar for usage tracking.
this data should all be anonymous and ideally run as a service by someone else. and i would like to give the users the option to turn it off, if they so wish to... So, is this something i should implement myself, or are there third parties out there that do this sort of things? i know it might be a sticky area, but i have seen stats about iPhone app usage. they do it, so why cant we? (if the user agrees, of course)
[Update] Based on the comments, i should have been more clear. this is a Winforms .NET 4. application, though i am thinking of updating it later with WCF. i would only be tracking my own application, though i would also want to know minor information about environment (Windows OS Version, SP, maybe proc and ram...)
+1 to deskmetrics. There is an library for .net apps. Check out: https://github.com/deskmetrics/NET
I've heard they're investing pretty hard on others platforms (like Adobe Air and Mac/Cocoa). It is worthy to keep eyes on them.
Well, i've seeing watching fantastic user feedback on DeskMetrics, a company that calls itself 'Google Analytics for Desktop Software'. They've been profiled recently on TechCrunch, so i'd recommend to keep an eye at their product.
There are several third party products that do this kind of software analytics. One of the better ones is called Aternity.
See: http://www.aternity.com/
It seems after a bit more digging, i have found a couple of sites that offer this. any extras, please leave a comment:
Premeptive Runtime Intelligence: Free community version
DeskMetrics: free for one app, $49 for more...
any other suggestions?
You can also use google analytics to track your app usage.
GaDotNet is a free library to integrate Google analytics tracking in your application:
more info here : http://www.diaryofaninja.com/projects/details/ga-dot-net
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I'm currently learning C# and was wondering if there are any sites that provide like an assigment to build working basic program, but has the full code available, so you could use it if you're completely lost.
I did maybe 20 ProjectEuler questions, but they're mostly math questions and I really need some practice in building actual programs, because now after reading few C# books i still have very limited understanding how to make the whole interconnected systems.
Thanks for any suggestions
This type of question is a good case for 2 things that are useful. One: an imagination. Think very carefully of normal tasks you do every day that could be accomplished or simplified by writing a program. If none exist (which is likely) then this is where the second option comes in to play. It requires a little explanation though. One practice that is starting to become more popular (but also has a lot of discussion about how to do it properly) is Test Driven Development (TDD). Now I'm not going to tell you how to do TDD, nor am I going to say go down that path. One of the excercises though to get used to TDD is what is helpful though. They call it a Kata. In America we would call it a drill, or excercise. Something we repeate frequently to drive home the point. (Anyone remember multiplication table drills?)
Anywho. What is nice about this is that the test framework (NUnit) is a very easy to understand system of pass or fail. You'll know if you got the code right. Since the majority of all programs is the logic and implementation, and in comparison little is on the view of the program it isn't a bad place to start. To help with this if you look into NuGet you can download two very small packages. Nunit, and Nunit test runner. With those two packages you can run a Nunit test inside Visual Studio easily and with hardly any setup. One of my favorite Kata's to do is the Bowling Score Keeper. In my opinion writing tests to learn a language is a very effective tool in learning it. You'll learn by doing, and you'll have the same language telling you if you did it right or not.
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I'm in the process of learning C# and have a firm grasp of Java, and almost two decades ago VB6. I'm jumping straight into Windows desktop applications and wonder what alternatives there are to WPF?
Anything recent, that would be more relevant to spend time learning?
I did find a thread here, but wonder if there has been any changes. For instance, Silverlight is all, but seemingly abandoned.
Background: I hold a BS degree in Computer science, but it has been about 5-years since I have been in the technology industry and would like to jump back into a programming career. As a start I would like to build a portfolio.
In general, WPF is the best option for Desktop development on Windows. There is nothing else that comes close.
The main "alternative" would be if you wanted to target Windows Store applications, in which case you'd use the Windows Store development model. This is still XAML based (as are all of the new Microsoft UI technologies), so WPF knowledge transfers over fairly well.
If you are solely looking at c# native UI development, I think your only alternative would be WinForms. Personally I think that WPF is a lot more flexible and easier to work with when you get a grasp on it, and it's very friendly to expansion if you want to write your own extensions. WinForms can arguably be more basic and easy to learn, but you won't achieve the same level of flexibility and extension.
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We are looking for a way to scan a check in, like the banks do, and be able to read the check information to send to the bank. We'd like to integrate this into our software so it's seamless.
I am not sure what I'd be looking for at this point. I know I don't have the knowledge to write anything like that but I'm sure there are companies who do this. If you know of a class or api, open source or paid, can you please give me some direction as to where I should be looking?
Thanks!
What you are looking for either a scanning library, and a OCR library, or a MICR library. MICR is (was?) the standard for reading checks (and there are many specific MICR scanners, with check standards like VersaScan, etc.)... much better than standard OCR.
I have never done anything like that in C# so I can't provide any concrete proven SDK, but most check scanners (MICR ones) should have available SDK's on their manufacturer's websites, so that's a place to start.
One option is to use a scanner with built-in MICR support, but these tend to be expensive and I'm not sure if there are any common libraries for programming with them.
Another option is to use any low-cost quality scanner and recognize the text from the scanned pages using software. There are some free scanning and OCR libraries but they tend to be hard to use and usually give low recognition rates. There's an SDK that I used before for scanning and OCR of regular documents (not bank check) and they had a special module for MICR.
I haven't tried the MICR module but there's a demo project for it on this forum.
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I have only ever used VSS (uggh, I know) and Team Foundation Server for source control management on windows. I develop in c# using Visual Studio 2010 as my IDE. I now have a requirement to use Git on my next project.
Can you please recommend a Git tool out there? I know this question has been asked before on SOF but it seems to be a bit dated. Also considering that I have only ever used repositories coming out of the MS stable, I was hoping there is a similar GUI or VS add-on from a GIT that helps me adapt.
Thanks for the help.
GitExtensions is very complete and it also integrates very well in Visual Studio 2010.
For a comparison between TortoiseGit and GitExtensions, take a look to this StackOverflow question
Both TortoiseGit and GitExtensions are open source.
Here you can find a list of available frontends.
I personally suggest GitExtensions, which also have a decent set of shortcuts (I hate to switch from keyboard to mouse while developing).
Take a look to this other question as well, you may find it useful.
Update
I quit using GitExtension when I discovered SmartGIT. I highly suggest to take into consideration it as well: it does not integrate with Windows File Explorer (which now I consider a benefit) and it has a very polished and smart GUI.
I still use the command line from Git-bash. Use TortoiseGit as sometime.
Git-bash make you powerful on Git in advance, and you still have the knowledge when you have other system which not Windows. For TortoiseGit, I like to see graph virtualization -- it will show the relation between code branch that make you easy to understand, also statistic.
SmartGit is awesome :) We use it where I work and it really helps streamline merge conflicts and resolution. Otherwise, you can always download eclipse and use eGit, but it's relatively buggy.
I highly recommend reading through the Git Guide on StackOverflow:
Git for beginners: The definitive practical guide
It covers all the GUI Tools, processes, references, and other resources.
Never been a fan of Git (I prefer using SVN and hg), but considering both TortoiseSVN and TortoiseHG are quite good, I'd recommend trying TortoiseGit, which is a port of TortoiseSVN to work with Git instead of SVN.
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I'm looking for a technique or tool which we can use to obfuscate or somehow secure our compiled c# code. The goal is not for user/data security but to hinder reverse engineering of some of the technology in our software.
This is not for use on the web, but for a desktop application.
So, do you know of any tools available to do this type of thing? (They need not be free)
What kind of performance implications do they have if any?
Does this have any negative side effects when using a debugger during development?
We log stack traces of problems in the field. How would obfuscation affect this?
This is a pretty good list of obfuscators from Visual Studio Marketplace
Obfuscators
ArmDot
Crypto Obfuscator
Demeanor for .NET
DeployLX CodeVeil
Dotfuscator .NET Obfuscator
Semantic Designs: C# Source Code Obfuscator
Smartassembly
Spices.Net
Xenocode Postbuild 2006
.NET Reactor
I have not observed any performance issues when obfuscating my code. If your just sending text basted stack traces you might have a problem translating the method names.
There are tools that also 'deobfuscate' obfuscated DLLs - I'd suggest turning the piece that needs to be protected into an unmanaged component.
http://xheo.com/products/code-protection
Done the job for me in the past.
You are wasting your time going down that path. If you have code that you don't want anyone to see, you need to keep it behind closed doors. For example, only execute that code on your own server using a web service interface.
Obfuscating your code only deters the most casual of people. As the video game industry leaned a long time ago, no code is safe from cracking.