Things that caught my attention, v 8.28

All right, so I'm back at RPI. With my junior year underway and a set schedule, hopefully we'll see more regular postings.

First, a succinct, yet very informative post on computer workstation ergonomics by Jeff Atwood. Got me thinking about investing in a decent chair... These school provided wooden chairs can't be very healthy, and they're not very comfortable either.

Then Scott Dorman gave a nice distinction of the different meanings of the 'using' keyword in C#.

Scott Hanselman continues his series on LINQ to SQL. I hadn't payed much attention to LINQ to SQL but I am taking a Database Systems course this semester, so this popped out at me.

And completely unrelated, we have the completion of how email really works, as told by gmail users.

Now for something not from the web. In one of my classes, the professor was giving us a quick list of what programming languages he saw as important for varied reasons. Among many others, two that came up were Java and C#. He made the comment, half-jokingly, that Java was Sun's attempt to get programs working on any platform and operating system, while .NET was Microsoft's attempt to get programs working on any Windows platform and operating system. I say 'half-jokingly' because even though he did not mean to really be taken seriously, you could still understand that he was somewhat dismissive of C# for being so similar to Java, and the closed approach of .NET solely for Windows. Is this the common view of .NET?

And so starts Wednesday...