Expression trees are one of the more powerful features of C#. They let you manipulate code in ways that almost remind you of LISP macros (but at runtime instead of compile time). Since I discovered them, I managed to eliminate almost completely the usage of reflection in my code, replacing it with much faster code using techniques similar to what Roger Alsing described in Linq Expressions - Creating objects. Expression trees also made possible something that I find myself using a lot these days: what Jom[...]

.NET includes a managed MSMQ API (System.Messaging) to send and receive messages, but unfortunately there's a key functionality missing: obtaining the number of messages currently in the queue. Yoel Arnon talks about this problem with more detail here and here. After reading that, we learn that there are three ways to overcome this limitation: using the MSMQ performance counters (with the .NET Performance Counter API or via WMI), using the MSMQ COM wrapper, or using the MSMQ Admin API directly. The first[...]

Welcome to my blog. My name is Gustavo Guerra and I'm a software developer at OutSystems R&D. I've been wanting to enter the blogosphere for a long time now, but I always kept postponing it with the excuse that I was too busy with other things. But today I decided that it would be now or never, so here it goes... I won't be very consistent in the subject of the posts, as I have a few unrelated interests. Some things I plan on talking about are WPF, functional programming, parser development, XML proces[...]