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Working with strings is probably one of the earliest things we get to do as C# developers. In fact, if you consider that most of us start with the "Hello, World!" example, you're being exposed to the string type right away. But as you continue to use strings, you'll quickly find that you want to work with strings that span multiple lines and how we define multiline strings might be a tricky topic for beginners. No sweat! In this article, we'll look at some simple code examples that demonstrate how to define multiline strings. I'll also link over to GitHub where you can see this code committed and pushed up to a public repository. Finally, the last example contains a special bonus that I think you'll like (even if it's a slightly more advanced topic). Read until the end! The…
In C# 9.0 we received access to a great quality of life type called the record. You can read more about that from Microsoft here. Record types allowed us as dotnet programmers to skip a lot of boiler plate code, thereby saving us time and making code more readable. Wins all around! Before record types, we might have simple data transfer objects (called DTOs) that would look something like the following: public sealed class MyData { public MyData( string value1, int value2) { Value1 = value1; Value2 = value2; } publc string Value1 { get; } publc int Value2 { get; } } And for a simple class with two properties... I think we can all agree that the verbosity here is just over the top. With the record type that we were given access to, we can now write…
You're an intermediate dotnet programmer and you mostly know your way around using Tasks. You sprinkle async and await through your code, and everything is working just as expected. You've heard time and time again that you always want the return types of your asynchronous methods to be a Task (or Task<T>) and that async void is essentially the root of all evil. No sweat. One day you go to wire up an event handler using the syntax myObject.SomeEvent += SomeEventHandler, and your event handler needs to await some asynchronous code. You take all of the right steps and change your method signature to get that beautiful async Task added in, replacing void. But suddenly you get a compile error about your event handler not being compatible. You feel trapped. You're scared. And then you do the unspeakable... You change…
As a C# developer, understanding the different simple data types in C# and when to use them is crucial for writing efficient and maintainable code. I've been trying to spend more time this year putting together some content aimed at really introductory level programming. There's plenty of resources available online, but I want to do my part to ensure I can help break down some of the barriers for people getting started on their programming journey. In this beginner's guide, we will look at the basics of the most commonly used simple data types in C#, including int, float, double, byte, char, bool, and string. We will also look at how these data types differ from each other and when to use them in your C# programming! Integer Data Types The most commonly used integer data types in C# are…
(This article is intended to be a spiritual successor to this previous entry, and now includes Tasks!) Even if you're new to C#, you've probably come across at least one of Tasks, Threads, or BackgroundWorkers. With a bit of additional time, it's likely you've seen all three in your journey. They're all ways to run concurrent code in C# and each has its own set of pros and cons. In this article, we will explore how each one operates at a high level. It's worth noting that in most modern .NET applications and libraries you'll see things converging to Tasks. The Approach I've gone ahead and created a test application that you can find here. Because this is in source control, it's possible/likely that it will diverge from what we see in this article, so I just wanted to offer…
Python is a powerful and versatile programming language that has become increasingly popular. For many, it's one of the very first programming languages they pick up when getting started. Some of the highest traffic posts on my blog many years after they were written look at using C# and Python together. Today we're going to explore how you can use Python from inside a C# .NET Core application with much more modern approaches than my original articles. Enter Pythonnet! Pythonnet Package & Getting Started We're going to be looking at Python for .NET in order to accomplish this goal. This library allows you to take advantage of Python installed on the running machine from within your .NET Core applications. You must configure it to point at the corresponding Python DLL that you'd like to use, and after a couple of…
If you have an internet connection then you have probably heard of ChatGPT from OpenAI by now. Odds are you might have even given it a whirl to see what it's all about. Personally, I know that I was quite skeptical at first but I've been blown away at how well it's able to converse about topics I ask it. I've even asked it to generate various scenarios for me and it will conclude by explaining why the different facets it chose were good choices. Incredible stuff. I'll be using this to help chip away at content for my role playing game. When it comes to using OpenAI effectively, I have a great deal to learn. It's all very new to me, especially with respect to how to structure prompts and get the most out of the interactions with such…
(You can check out the prior week of RPG development here) Well, so far not so great for getting weekly posts on RPG development! It's probably better for me to aim to do these periodically and summarize the last week or so of work. Fewer commitments that way and it's a bit more realistic for me to achieve. With that said, let's dive into it! Entity Filtering in an RPG Our RPG has had some notion of entity filtering for a long time, but to understand the current state of filtering, it's important to understand the two major sets of entities and components we have: Game Objects + Behaviors: Everything in our RPG game world is represented as a "game object" and the properties/capabilities are captured by components called "behaviors" Definitions + Generator Components: The content for our game is…
If you're building a 2D game in Unity3D, odds are you've come across the TileMap component. The TileMap is a powerful tool that allows you to create a grid of tiles that you can render your tiles with instead of hand-placing individual game objects with sprites. It has a host of built in functionality that you might otherwise find yourself manually writing, like mapping coordinates to particular cells on a map. And what's even cooler about using a TileMap? You don't need to handroll your own editor to paint tiles! I think I'd pass on having to do that. But have you found yourself in a situation where you want to get all of the painted tiles on a TileMap? You may have found it's not quite as obvious as you'd have hoped! What We Have To Work With On…
Here's a super quick peek into unit tests compared to functional tests. And full disclaimer here is that depending on your circle of influence, these might be given slightly different names. Try not to dwell on that but instead the comparison and contrast presented! Unit Tests Coded tests that take a white-box visibility approach to exercising and asserting that written code, generally a specific function/method, works as it was designed. Pros: Generally very programmer-focused Very granular coverage (breaks can identify exact lines where an issue occurs) (Should) run extremely quickly Have very little test setup in ideal cases Provide full control (generally via ‘mocking’ dependencies) to exercise very specific logical paths Cons: Generally more challenging to convey coverage to other stakeholders By nature these are brittle and break with refactoring Require sets of design patterns to help ensure tests are…
