One of the big misses for the VB.Net 2005 release was the lack of refactoring support in the editor.  C# has this built-in and the vb team, I believe, realised too late that it was a mistake to leave it out of VB. Well Developer Express Inc., in partnership with Microsoft have now saught to remedy the situation:  They have released a free plug-in that works with Beta 2, and it looks to offer a richer refactoring experience than the c# standard fare.http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/refactor/ Of course they want you to register to get the full functionality, and they are going to try...

Today I saw a signpost on a motorway that stated: "This signpost not in use", which is plainly false. I was trying to think of other things that exist only to deny that they do.  Government leaks maybe?  Those pages you find in some manuals that say "This page left intentionally blank" which is another bare faced lie.  It got me thinking of other signs you see, like "Part-Time Signals" (it's coming to something when not even a traffic light can get a full-time job) or "Oncoming traffic in the middle of the road" (why not have a sign in the...

Is it just me or does the fact the our industry consistently invents new forms of English for no real benefit bug everyone else too?  I'm not taking about all jargon, some of it is very useful, reducing a complex idea or description down to a single word or phrase (e.g. it's easier to say "Backup" than "An extra copy of your work, eg documents, pictures etc, saved onto floppy disk/CD/tape, so that if your computer is stolen or breaks down you don't lose everything." ), but who came up with these gems: Performant  - is it really so hard to...