Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

Post by this author

Candidate for most obscure keyboard shortcut: Shift+F8

August 8th, 2006
One of the most obscure keyboard shortcuts has got to be Shift+F8, which is used for listbox discontiguous extended selection. Man, what a mouthful. KB article Q301583 doesn't help matters by listing this keyboard shortcut under "Dialog box keyboard shortcuts" even though it isn't a dialog box keyboard shortcut. It's a listbox keyboard ...

Even more about C# anonymous methods, from the source

August 7th, 2006
If you want to know still more about C# anonymous methods, you can check out the web site of Grant Richins who has an entire category devoted to anonymous methods, and he should know, since he actually implemented them. Now that CLR week is over, I'm curious what you all thought of it. Would you like to see another CLR week at some point...

The day Tully's ran out of coffee

August 7th, 2006
Today, Tully's coffee shops begin offering free Wi-Fi (in shops where Wi-Fi is available). Tully's isn't as widespread as Starbucks, but it's the best of the major chain coffee shops in the Seattle area, according to a highly unscientific poll of my friends. Seeing Tully's name back in the news reminded me of an incident that occurred to one...

The implementation of anonymous methods in C# and its consequences (part 3)

August 4th, 2006
How local variables are captured.

News Flash: Big houses also cost more to cool

August 3rd, 2006
Perhaps as a counterpart to the fact that big houses have bigger heating bills, NPR yesterday pointed out that bigger houses use more electricity for cooling. (NPR looks not at the "surprise" of big-house owners over the cost of energy, but rather the consequences of these big houses on the energy grid. But the headline was hard to pass up...

The implementation of anonymous methods in C# and its consequences (part 2)

August 3rd, 2006
When the anonymous class becomes visible.

The implementation of anonymous methods in C# and its consequences (part 1)

August 2nd, 2006
First we'll look at how they're implemented.

C# nested classes are like C++ nested classes, not Java inner classes

August 1st, 2006
When you declare a class inside another class, the inner class still acts like a regular class. The nesting controls access and visibility, but not behavior. In other words, all the rules you learned about regular classes also apply to nested classes. The keyword in an instance methods of a class (nested or not) can be used to access ...

Christmas gift idea for your favorite glasses-wearing geek

July 31st, 2006
Yes, I'm talking about Christmas gifts (or "winter solstice gifts" if you prefer) in July. I'm one of those people for whom buying Christmas gifts is a brain-wracking ordeal, and I'm always on the lookout all year round for the "perfect gift". Last Christmas, a friend of mine gave me a micro-fiber lens-cleaning cloth that comes in a pouch you...

Just because I don't write about .NET doesn't mean that I don't like it

July 31st, 2006
Some people have inferred that I don't write about .NET because I don't like it. That's not true. I use it myself. The reason I don't write about .NET is because I'm not an expert on it and there are plenty of other .NET blogs out there, written by people who are actual experts. (Such as Maoni Stephens, whose little finger contains more ...