You didn't read it wrong on the title, it is “Colussus” and not “ENIAC”. Like every one else I too remember the world's first electronic computer to be “ENIAC” (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer).

But in a BBC TV Program last month, “Colussus” and not “ENIAC” was named as world's first programmable electronic computer. Then I reaserched on the Internet and learned more about Colussus.

Colossus was built by the British Secret Service during World War II in 1944 for breaking Germans' secret codes. The chief creator of Colossus was “Tommy Flowers”, a British Post Office engineer!. Since it was a Military Invention, its existence itself was kept secret till late 1970's.

Read more about Colossus from Wikipedia here and from Encarta here.

You might have already read about the cool things coming in ASP.NET 2.0. The question is there how do I be prepared for it, when I design/development in ASP.NET 1.x. Though still ASP.NET 2.0 is in development, lot of the fundamental blocks are in place.

Check out this article from MSDN Magazine on migrations tips to move ASP.NET 1.x to 2.0.

In so many of my ASP.NET presentations I get this question. How to do dynamic compliation of a code-behind .vb/.cs file used in a ASPX file?.

The situation is like this: "We have deployed a project developed with ASP.NET/Visual Studio to the data centre. After going live, we have done a small bug-fix in one of the .vb file, now we don't want to recompile the whole-project in VS.NET to get a new DLL for deployment" or "We have lots of test pages that are half-done in a Web Project. If we compile in VS.NET, all of this code gets into the DLL. How do we avoid it?"

The answer for this lies in understanding the Attributes available for the @Page tag of ASPX. When you create a .aspx file in Visual Studio, for linking to the appropriate code-behind files, VS.NET uses the tag Codebehind. For example, if you have a ASPX file “Welcome.aspx”, you will have codebehind=”Welcome.aspx.vb”. According to MSDN Documentation for @Page Tag, if you use the codebehind tag, ASP.NET runtime requires the classes in .vb file to be compiled and present in dll in the /bin folder. To avoid this, you can use an alternate tag src, which has very similar syntax src=”welcome.aspx.vb”, except that src will automatically compile the refererred file. The downside to this approach is that, you got to ship or deploy source code of all your code-behind files as well.

In the same web project, you can mix and match codebehind and src tags in various .aspx files, but in a single .aspx file there can be only one of them.

When I first did this demo, it failed!. Then I realized I got to change the namespace used in the Inherits tag. If you are using the Codebehind/VS.NET approach, VS.NET automatically uses the project name as the namespace. So Inherits for a web-project named “Venkat” will look like Inherits=“venkat.welcome”. But when you use src, it simply becomes Inherits=“welcome”.

Download a sample - DynamicCompile.zip (1.1 KB) which demonstrates the use of src tag. Extract the files into a web folder, run it from browser. Change the source in the .vb file and reload from browser to see the changes without manual recompilation.

In the late 1990s and especially during dot-com boom days, the corporate dress around the world went through a major change. This was first seen in US Software Firms, then in US corporates, and then in firms around the world. Indian IT firms who modeled their companies, work culture on the USA also followed the same trend.

During this, Ties, Suits and any kind of formal dressing was given a big “No“; Jeans, Collar-less T-Shirt with some crazy message was the in-thing.

Now according to this Reuters Report, Suits and Ties are making a come-back in the US Corporate world.

Personally, I always like to wear relaxed formals (Neatly pressed cotton shirt, trouser and a simple leather shoe) for work. Once in a while I like to have a good silk tie for meetings and on important occassions with a formal suit. Of course, during weekends or late night-shifts, I love the feel of a Blue Jean, T-Shirt & a Sports shoe.