This error is self explanatory in itself, but I was going nuts as my code behind file was all correct and still the browser was throwing this error back.

I had just migrated my blog and was trying to run it for the first time. This made me believe that some settings at the server side are going wrong. I tried all possible tweaks and wasted good amount of hours over this. Reconfigured everything again, but no luck!

Finally, I decided to remove the file because of which this exception was being thrown. It was an extension, so I removed all of the associated code files from the server and tried it again. And! It worked as if nothing happened ever.

Confused, and unable to understand the cause, I thought of redeploying those file from my previous backup. I did that and nothing broke! I guess there was some problem with the files that I migrated from my old server to new server.

Technically, not sure what it was. If you happen to know the issue / cause / resolution, please leave a comment about it. Thanks.

Owing to C++ background, I 'assumed' that C# has a keyword called 'Friend' and which is similar to 'Friend' in VB.NET. Well, my assumption was wrong. The C# equivalent of VB's 'Friend' is 'Internal'.

Well, this time I was converting a small snippet from C# to VB and so came across need of using 'Virtual' in VB. I had absolutely no clue, what this must be, but found after a little googling that its 'Overridable' which makes a method or property Virtual in VB.net.

[suggested reading]

Sending an email using .NET is very easy and is just few lines of code. So not much of a trouble in coding it. But, actual problem starts when one tries to run it and specially on a new / non configured SMTP server. Debugging these few lines can make anyone go crazy as there is not much to do and can take days to be resolved.

Though we have a detailed documentation on MSDN and good examples, I would like to mention here another very good resource for FAQ on sending email - www.systemnetmail.com. This website hosts a detailed FAQ which you comes really handy while resolving email related issues.

In .NET 2.0, we use classes in System.Net.Mail namespace for this purpose and hence the name comes - 'systemnetmail.com'. For .NET 1.1 we had System.Web.Mail and, yes you guessed it, we have www.systemwebmail.com for referring to old style of sending email.

Overall, a nice and handy email FAQ compilation from Dave Wanta.

There is a white paper on "Differences Between VB.NET ad VC#.NET" from Microsoft which can be downloaded from here.

Interesting enough to read, one of the related Microsoft's support kb article [kb308470] states :

Because of the previous differences between Visual Basic and C/C++, many
developers assume incorrectly about the capabilities of Visual Basic .NET. Many Visual Basic developers think that Visual C# is a more powerful language than Visual Basic. In other words, Visual Basic developers assume that you can do many things in Visual C# that you cannot do in Visual Basic .NET, just as there are many things that you can do in C/C++ but cannot do in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 or earlier. This assumption is incorrect.

Although there are differences between Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET, both are first-class programming languages that are based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, and they are equally powerful. Visual Basic .NET is a true object-oriented programming language that includes new and improved features such as inheritance, polymorphism, interfaces, and overloading. Both Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET use the common language runtime. There are almost no performance issues between Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET. Visual C# .NET may have a few more "power" features such as handling unmanaged code, and Visual Basic .NET may be skewed a little toward ease of use by providing features such as late binding. However, the differences between Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET are very small compared to what they were in earlier versions.

The "Differences Between Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual C# .NET" white paper describes some of the differences between Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET. However, remember that the .NET Framework is intended to be language independent. When you must select between Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET, decide primarily based on what you already know and what you are comfortable with. It is easier for Visual Basic 6.0 developers to use Visual Basic .NET and for C++/Java programmers to use Visual C# .NET. The existing experience of a programmer far outweighs the small differences between the two languages.No matter which language you select based on your personal preference and past experience, both languages are powerful developer tools and first-class programming languages that share the common languageruntime in the .NET Framework.

The white paper was published in Feb 2002 and has undergone revisions since then, latest being in April 2007. It is a 19 page MS Word document that has a similar introduction to above text from kb and fairly covers the basic differences that a VB/C# programmer must know.

 

 

By scope, here, I mean 'value' type or 'reference' type.

The parameters are passed almost as in VB.net, by default a parameter is passed as 'value' type (ByVal in VB.net). In C# we don't use any specifier to indicate a 'value' type parameter.

For reference types we have specifiers 'ref' and 'out' with a subtle difference between both, which is, all 'ref' parameters must be initialized before being passed as an argument while 'out' parameters need not, whereas, all 'out' parameters must be assigned a value before the method ends. Properties cannot be passed as reference type parameters.

A method can be overloaded by chaging parameter type from value to reference and vice versa. (note that a change by 'ref' to 'out' or vice versa will not overload a method)

For more on this and sample code check this on MSDN online.