I’m reading this morning that OpenSilver has support for VB.NET on their roadmap. OpenSilver is an open-source reimplementation of Silverlight using WebAssembly to help developers who have Silverlight code-bases. This quote from Userware (the CEO of the company behind OpenSilver) is spot on:

David Ramel at Visual Studio Magazine recently asked “Did .NET MAUI Ship Too Soon? Devs Sound Off on ‘Massive Mistake’”

I’m not really in the market for another bike, but I came across the Grasshopper fx today, which is a folding recumbent. One of the challenges of recumbents is how bulky they can be, making them hard to transport. (I can get my Burley Hepcat inside my 2008 Honda Element, but it is unclear how many more years I’ll be driving that car.) It also appears that the Grasshopper fx has same size wheels, which is a nice feature because it simplifies the tubes you need to carry. With my Hepcat, I need to carry two different tube sizes. And they even have an electric assist option, if I wanted to turn it until an e-bike. I didn’t even think that was an option for recumbents.

I spoke with Jason Haley last month on his No Availability Podcast about invoicing, tools, and long term clients as a freelancer. This was a lot of fun. I’ve been enjoying Jason’s new podcast a lot – it is fun to hear other ideas and perspectives on freelance software development.

I’ve been riding my bike a lot this summer. I’ve created some great routes near my house that often feature trails with wood bridges that cross creeks. I’ve heard previously that these bridges can be slippery if they are wet. I found out first hand the truth of this yesterday. It wasn’t raining but it had the night before, and one long bridge in particular was still pretty damp. In fact as I entered the bridge I decided to change my line a bit to avoid some standing water, and apparently that was a mistake – the bike slid out from under me. Ouch! No permanent damage to my bike, and I seem to have escaped mostly unscathed. But it was not any fun, that’s for sure.

People often refer to the polarization of our culture, and it seems to me that this polarization extends to more than just politics. You see it in things as mundane as software development, where various thought leaders will make statements such as “if you aren’t using <X methodology/framework/etc.>, then you are doing it wrong”.

I continue to experiment with learning ASP.NET Core Razor Pages with RemObjects Mercury. The other day I was having a problem using Visual Studio 2022 – I would add a new Razor Page to the project, and then add an Anchor element with an asp-page reference to the in my _Layout.cshtml file, but when I tried to test the project, the resulting hyperlink didn’t work. For example, if I added a new “About.cshtml” page, and then added this link in my _Layout.cshtml file:

This piece by Ben Delimarsky is dead on about the ridiculous priorities currently in use at Microsoft for Windows. The UX inconsistencies are bad enough, but Ads in Explorer and requiring a Microsoft Account makes Windows 11 a non-starter for me, even if I wanted any of its “features”, which I don’t. In fact, their lack of focus on implementing anything I actually care about has left me wondering if I should switch to MacOS, and that is really saying something, given the fact that the software I write runs on Windows.

Quick tip: If you are using SQL Prompt and suggestions don’t seem to be working in a new database (but ARE working in other databases), it may be that you have it set up to only show suggestions for certain databases:

So I guess we are supposed to be celebrating the 20th anniversary of .NET this week. I found the Twitter hashtag that we are supposed to be using particularly grating: #dotNETLovesMe