C# Conventions and Project MRU Cleaner

I had a lively conversation with my manager yesterday afternoon about C# programming conventions. I was arguing for clarity and readability, and he was arguing for consistency with prevailing C# coding conventions. I'm a big fan of using white space to aid readability, in all forms of written communication, and I've always felt source code should be written for humans first, compilers second. (Back in the old days, this was derisively referred to as "pretty-printing" by those who didn't agree.)

But after pondering this a bit more, I've decided he's right. I don't want my code samples to stand out as being anything unusual in their syntactical details -- if that's true, then the presentation itself is interferring with readability by distracting the reader. When in Rome, as they say.  So I looked at some internal references, and I got online and ordered a copy of Krzysztof Cwalina's "Framework Design Guidelines" this morning.

Then I went through my current projects and started cleaning up a few things. One thing was messier than I expected, though: cleaning up my "Recent Projects" list in Visual Studio. But I did a bit of searching, and found an simple handy add-in tool for doing exactly that: Project MRU Cleaner.

Check it out if you're interested in tidying up your projects list. It's quick and simple, and it just adds a "Clear Recent Projects" entry to your File menu in VS. Each project has a checkbox next to it, and you can check off which ones to remove from the list. There's even a "Clear and Restart" button, since VS requires a restart to refresh the list.

If you're doing a demo, this tool is a handy way to remove all those things like "MyDemoVersion47" from the list and make it look like you got it right the first time. :-)

Speaking of which, I'm hoping to have my CreateXlsx code ready to post "real soon now" ...