Archive for the ‘ Software Engineering ’ Category

Marshalling a Variable-Length Array From Unmanaged Code In C#

I recently spent time working on some C# code to interact with a simple DNS-SD system. This requires using DNS TXT records, which are not supported in the System.Net.Dns class. After a few google searches failed to turn up a pure .Net client library that met my needs, I settled on an approach based around [ READ MORE ]

Project Euler Problem 8

Problem 8 “Find the greatest product of five consecutive digits in the 1000-digit number. 73167176531330624919225119674426574742355349194934 96983520312774506326239578318016984801869478851843 85861560789112949495459501737958331952853208805511 12540698747158523863050715693290963295227443043557 66896648950445244523161731856403098711121722383113 62229893423380308135336276614282806444486645238749 30358907296290491560440772390713810515859307960866 70172427121883998797908792274921901699720888093776 65727333001053367881220235421809751254540594752243 52584907711670556013604839586446706324415722155397 53697817977846174064955149290862569321978468622482 83972241375657056057490261407972968652414535100474 82166370484403199890008895243450658541227588666881 16427171479924442928230863465674813919123162824586 17866458359124566529476545682848912883142607690042 24219022671055626321111109370544217506941658960408 07198403850962455444362981230987879927244284909188 84580156166097919133875499200524063689912560717606 05886116467109405077541002256983155200055935729725 71636269561882670428252483600823257530420752963450″ The first step here is to find a representation for that fairly humungous number. Obviously it’s not going to fit into a paltry 32-bit int…but then we don’t need it to. The problem description requires us to think in terms of smaller (5-digit) [ READ MORE ]

Macros: You Oughta Know

One of the most useful tools available in any decent text editor is the macro recorder, but it’s criminally underused. It seems most people either don’t know the functionality exists, or simply ignore it. This is a shame, since it’s a great timesaver. I don’t know why macros are so underused. It might be a mindset [ READ MORE ]

OOD – The Second Coming?

Over the last couple of months I’ve been burning up my free time on a pet project (hence the scarcity of posting here). This particular project is a web application, and since I’ve always been a desktop or middle-tier dude in my day job, it’s a bit of a step out of my normal environment [ READ MORE ]

Project Euler Problem 7

Problem 7 By listing the first six prime numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and 13, we can see that the 6th prime is 13. What is the 10001st prime number? Ah, what a nice, straightforward, unambiguous spec! If only business software specifications were so precise. Way back in problem 3, I took a bit of a wander off-topic [ READ MORE ]