NLog vs log4net vs Serilog: Compare .NET Logging Frameworks

Simon Timms Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

Logging information in .NET, or really in any production application, is invaluable. In many cases, developers don’t have direct access to the production environment to debug issues. Good quality logs are the difference between solving problems like Sherlock Holmes and stumbling upon solutions like Inspector Jacques Clouseau. As you can imagine, we’re pretty big on logging here at Stackify, and …

Microsoft IIS Web Server

IIS Web Server

Phil Vuollet Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

In this post, we’re going to take a close look at IIS (Internet Information Services). We’ll look at what it does and how it works. You’ll learn how to enable it on Windows. And after we’ve established a baseline with managing IIS using the GUI, you’ll see how to work with it using the CLI. Let’s get started! What Is …

Entity Framework vs NHibernate: Understand the Similarities and Differences

Ricardo Peres Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

A long time before Entity Framework (EF) Core was around – or any other Entity Framework for that matter – we already had NHibernate. In this article, I’m going to review Entity Framework and NHibernate, what approaches and differentiates them. History of NHibernate and Entity Framework NHibernate is a port of Hibernate from Java, one of the oldest and most …

SSL authentication logging with web debugging proxies

Debugging Tricky HTTP Problems with Fiddler and Charles

Simon Timms Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

Almost every application these days communicates over HTTP: websites, RESTful services, and even SOAP APIs all make use of Hypertext Transfer Protocol. For the most part, we don’t worry too much about what is happening at the network level when we’re building these applications. However, from time to time a problem will show up that needs us to drop to …

Retrace now supports Azure WebJobs

How to Monitor Azure WebJobs: Performance, Errors, Usage

Matt Watson Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

Azure Cloud Services and App Service made it relatively easy to run web applications in the cloud. Developers still need a simple way to run tasks on a schedule at pre-defined  times or specific intervals . We commonly use simple console apps via the Windows Task Scheduler to handle these needs. WebJobs were released as part of Azure App Service …

3 New C# Features We're Excited About

3 New C# 8 Features We Are Excited About

Simon Timms Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

C# is rapidly approaching its third decade of life. Originally released in 2000, the language has grown and changed across 7 major versions. Once a knock off of Java in all but name has jumped out ahead on many aspects. Throughout its life, the release of a new version of the language has been highly coupled with releases of new …

Top C# Tools

The Ultimate List of C# Tools: IDEs, Profilers, Automation Tools, and More

Angela Stringfellow Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

C# is a widely used programming language in enterprises, especially those that are heavily Microsoft-dependent. If you build apps using C#, you most likely use Visual Studio and have explored some of its extensions to supercharge your development. However, this list of tools might just change the way you write C# code for good. Best tools for C# programming in …

The Best C# Tutorials

Learn C#: Tutorials for Beginners, Intermediate, and Advanced Programmers

Angela Stringfellow Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

If you’re a beginner developer or someone looking to learn a new language, C# is a great choice for a number of reasons. Unlike C++, for instance, C# offers automatic memory management, and it also offers solid Type Safety compared to JavaScript and node.js. C# has robust base class libraries; the .NET framework includes hundreds of libraries for working with …

Stackify ASP.Net Performance Monitoring

ASP.NET Performance Monitoring: A Developer’s How to Guide

Matt Watson Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources, Popular

Monitoring hasn’t traditionally been designed for developers or applications. With the rise of cloud computing, PaaS and even serverless applications, developers need to be much more involved in application monitoring. Comprehensive ASP.NET performance monitoring requires monitoring your application multiple ways, from server CPU usage, identifying slow web requests, slow SQL queries, garbage collection metrics, and much more. In this guide, …

What is ViewBag?

ViewBag 101: How It Works, When It’s Used, Code Examples, and More

Stackify Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

ViewBag is a property – considered a dynamic object – that enables you to share values dynamically between the controller and view within ASP.NET MVC applications. Let’s take a closer look at ViewBag, when it’s used, some limitations, and other possible options to consider. What is ViewBag? The Microsoft Developer Network writes that the ViewBag property allows you to share …

What is C# Reflection?

How C# Reflection Works With Code Examples

Stackify Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

Reflection is when managed code can read its own metadata to find assemblies. Essentially, it allows code to inspect other code within the same system. To illustrate, Java’s static typing system isn’t designed to support the “doSomething” method unless the object conforms to a known interface. But with reflection, your code can view the object and find out if it …

What are OOP Concepts in C#?

OOP Concepts in C#: Code Examples and How to Create a Class

Stackify Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

Object oriented programming (OOP) is a programming structure where programs are organized around objects as opposed to action and logic. This is essentially a design philosophy that uses a different set of programming languages such as C#. Understanding OOP concepts can help make decisions about how you should design an application and what language to use. Everything in OOP is placed …

Visual Studio Online/Team Services

What is Visual Studio Team Services? A Look at Its Features, Uses, Tutorials and More

Stackify Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

At Stackify, we’re big fans of tools that make developers’ lives simpler, and one such tool is Visual Studio Online, which is now known as Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), an extension of the Visual Studio architecture that covers development teams. It has special tools and roles for software developers, testers, and specialists. These include tools for collaboration, reporting, development, and measurement. …

List of top features and tips for ASP.NET

Advanced ASP.NET Trace Viewer – WebForms, MVC, Web API, WCF

Matt Watson Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources, Stackify Product & Company Updates

What did my code just do? That is a critical question that developers always need to know. Application logging, tracing, and profiling are the primary ways that developers can answer this question. In this article, we’ll review ASP.NET tracing and how to view your tracing statements with Prefix. Intro to ASP.NET Tracing Tracing is built into the .NET framework and has …

Learn how to support and show performance

Understanding & Profiling C# Async Await Tasks

Matt Watson Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources, Stackify Product & Company Updates

Microsoft and the .NET community have made asynchronous programming very easy with their implementation of async await in C#. The latest versions of ASP.NET heavily utilize it to improve performance. Many performance monitoring and profiling tools struggle to support and visualize the performance of asynchronous C# code. Stackify’s Prefix & Retrace products both have excellent support for applications using C# async await. …

Unhandled Exceptions

How to Catch All Exceptions in C# & Find All Application Errors

Matt Watson Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources

Exception handling is a critical component of every software application. The last thing you want is your users to see weird errors, or even worse, your application keeps crashing. In this article, we are going to discuss how to find and catch all exceptions in C# applications. .NET provides several different ways to catch exceptions and view unhandled exceptions. Topics …