Comments by Chris Trelawny-Ross (Top 28 by date)

'backing store' is the name given to the private field that is used to actually store the value that a property represents. So, for your ScoreCounter property, the backing store is the 'scoreCounter' variable. The naming comes from the fact that the variable is real storage, that 'backs' the property (i.e. does the real work of the property!) - since the property itself is not truly storage although it is used as if it is a variable of some kind.

Have you tried putting a breakpoint in the timer event handler? If you also put a breakpoint in the mouse move, and set the timer period to, say, 10 seconds, you can (a) force a value into the ScoreCounter (when the mouseMove breakpoint is hit) then (b) when the timer breakpoint is hit look to see if the value is still there.

Am I right in thinking that the mouse move handler is the only place that the score is modified? If not, you should put breakpoints on all the other places that the score is modified. If one of those breakpoints is hit you may have discovered the cause of the problem.

Let me know what you discover.

Bobjanova is right - RTF only uses single backslashes. The following expression works to match a an underlined passage in RTF with ONLY ONE UNDERLINED PASSAGE - but it does not falsely trigger on \ul or \ulnone in the 'real text': (?<=(?<!\\)\\ul ).*(?=(?<!\\)\\ulnone). (The nested '(?<!\\)' expression rejects the '\' that escapes the '\' in the 'real' text.

Unfortunately, this breaks if there are more than one underlined passage in the RTF. However, this can be remediated by performing a second regex pass on the matched text, capturing only the text preceeding the first '\ulnone' (if any).

I regret to say that delegates don't actually help make your code thread safe, but they do make it type safe. A delegate is an object (can be passed as a variable into a method, can be assigned to a property, etc.) that encapsulates a method - but as well as encapsulating the method it encapsulates the signature of the method. This prevents a method that, say, takes a string as its paramter being used where a method that takes a List is required.

Sure, it will convert it to a string. Now do int.Parse(theString) to get the string as an int.

With that much data, I wonder if any out-of-the-box grid(-like) control will give you the performance you need. I would consider creating a "full" custom control - i.e. where you implement OnPaint to render the visible content. Since you're rendering from a uniform XY grid you can filter the data to be drawn based upon the scroll position (and cell size) - so you'll not be attempting to render the whole grid on every adjustment of the scroll bar.

I think you'll ultimately need to use both parts, but certainly start with part 1 - perhaps it'll be sufficient. Using an Int32 instead of 32 distinct bool values is a memory and performance optimization. I would start using bool and, when you have your algorithm working, change it to 'pack' 32 bools into a single Int32. If I get some time I'll add an answer with sample code. Regarding using a dictionary - I do NOT recommend using a dictionary; an array will be far more efficient - but you may have to experiment with bool [x,y] and bool [x][y] to see which gives better performance.

You found the very words I was looking for, Dave. Do you think he's started writing his program yet? :)

I also recommend Googling Double Dispatch and Visitor Pattern. If you really want to learn OO programming, reading the Wikipedia articles, and figuring out what they mean, will serve you far better in the long run than having one of us provide the answer to a test your teacher has set.

Sound like you're asking us to solve a problem your teacher has set you. Perhaps asking one of your fellow students what the teacher said in class about Double Dispatch would be the way to go?

"why did I ever decide to do software!" ... because in software accidents are generally not fatal? :)

Reason for my vote of 1
a. This question was about how to do the first/last thing, so using Linq OrderBy does not address the question at all.
b. Linq OrderBy would not allow the OP to force items into first and last places
c. The OP indicated that his compare routine is significantly more complex than his sample, which would make for an overly large anonymous method.

If two items being compared score equally, won't that suppress the sorting on FirstName? The OP also indicated that his sample was simplified compared to his actual Compare routine ... so perhaps adding a trigger on, say, a non-zero score before the score is actually used in the comparison?

"Turns out that programming sometimes means writing code, not just using a designer." Who'd have thought?

I guess I could call extension methods arcane - but they're totally awesome and as more people get to understand what they offer I suspect that they'll become commonplace.

I find that I'm using them more and more when they improve readability - such as

... if (someString.DoesNotContain("some search text")) ...

which I find to be clearer and safer than the alternative:

... if (!someString.Contains("some search text")) ...

which can be inverted by one accidental character deletion. I consider that the '!' character nestled inside an extension method to be safer because I'm far less likely to be editing the extension method after it's written than I am to be editing the code that uses/would use it.

You need to be more specific about what environment you're working in (Windows Forms, or Web) and more descriptive of what you're wanting to do for anybody to be able to help you.