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Following (in alphabetical order) are the best C# sites active on the Web today.  Also included is the “About” section of the site (edited for space and clarity).  Please comment if you can recommend other excellent C# web sites that didn’t make my list.

Blocks4.NET

Blocks4.NET is a .NET community site for those who buy and sell .NET products and components.

C# Corner

C# Corner was formed and maintained by professionals, who strongly believe in sharing their piece of code with other developers.  It is a free source site for C# and .NET developers.  C# and .NET developers can meet and exchange their ideas, code and expertise on the site through discussion forums or submissions.

C# Help

The site doesn’t even have an “About” section, so I’ll let the content speak for itself: 55,000+ forum postings, 700+ technical articles, and 62,000+ active subscribers.

C# Practical Learning

Lessons with step-by-step instructions and a patient detail-oriented approach, accentuated by various useful examples in every section.  To make it easy to learn effectively, the lessons are organized in topics so you can jump to the particular part you are interested in.

CodePlex

CodePlex is Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site.  You can use CodePlex to create new projects to share with the world, join others who have already started their own projects, or use the applications on the site and provide feedback.

Code Project

The Code Project was formed to provide developers with a place to meet and exchange ideas.  We provide developers with all the resources they need to help them in their day-to-day programming, as well as helping them keep current with the latest technologies.

Code Search Engines

There are three good code search engines available, but it’s still too early to determine the best: Google Code Search, Krugle and Koders.  Which is your favorite?

DotNetKicks

DotNetKicks.com is a community-based news site edited by our members. It specializes in .NET development techniques, technologies and tools including ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET, C++, Visual Studio, SubSonic, Open Source, SQL Server, Silverlight & Mono.  Individual users of the site submit and review stories, the most popular of which make it to the homepage. Users are encouraged to ‘kick’ stories that they would like to appear on the homepage.  If a story receives enough kicks, it will be promoted.

MSDN Forums

No “About” section here either, so some statistics:  There are 1,005,870 users, 461,109 threads, and 1,739,557 posts in these forums. 

MSDN Library

The MSDN Library is an essential resource for developers using Microsoft tools, products, and technologies.  It contains a bounty of technical programming information, including sample code, documentation, technical articles, and reference guides.

MSDN Newsgroups

Ask questions, share information, or exchange ideas with others, including experts from around the globe.  MSDN Subscribers can post .NET product and technology questions to the newsgroup community and get an answer from the newsgroup community or a Microsoft support professional within 2 business days.  Managed newsgroup support is currently available for more than 200 English newsgroups related to .NET technologies.

PInvoke.net

PInvoke.net is primarily a wiki, allowing developers to find, edit and add PInvoke signatures, user-defined types, and any other information related to calling Win32 and other unmanaged APIs from managed code (written in languages such as C# or VB.NET).  .NET developers worldwide can easily contribute to the community, sharing their valuable knowledge, whenever they have time to do so.

SourceForge.net

SourceForge.net is the world’s largest Open Source software development web site, hosting more than 100,000 projects and over 1,000,000 registered users with a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications, and code.  SourceForge.net has the largest repository of Open Source code and applications available on the Internet, and hosts more Open Source development products than any other site or network worldwide.  SourceForge.net provides a wide variety of services to projects we host, and to the Open Source community.

Windows Forms FAQ

The Windows Forms FAQ has been collected from newsgroup posts, various mailing lists and the employees of Syncfusion.

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• Useful news, information, tips and code samples
• Regular updates
• Original content, not a splog or news feed
• Good organization, including categories and tags
• Healthy discussion and user comments
• Personal insight and humor, but not too much personal drivel

Following are the some of best C# blogs active on the Web today.  Also included is the "About" section of the blog (edited for space and clarity) and a link to a recent interesting post.  Please comment if you can recommend other excellent C# blogs that didn’t make my list.

The best C# blogs today are (in alphabetical order):
 

B# .NET Blog

Bart De Smet’s blog about Microsoft .NET technologies, including Microsoft in general, CLR and MSIL internals, C# and the future of the language, .NET Framework tips and tricks, SQL Server, and Microsoft events such as TechEd and IT Forum.  (Recent Post: C# 3.0 Object Initializers Revisited)
 

Bill Blogs in C#

Bill Wagner discusses C#, LINQ, and other items of interest.  (Recent Post: Creating Dynamic Queries in LINQ)
 

Brad Abrams

Design Guidelines, Managed code and the .NET Framework.  (Recent Post: What is new in the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview)
 

Charlie Calvert’s Community Blog

There is no job in the computer industry Charlie would rather have than that of Community Program Manager for the C# group.  (Recent Post: LINQ and Deferred Execution)
 

David Hayden

David is an ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server Developer and Microsoft MVP with over 10 years experience.  [Disclosure: I worked with Dave a decade ago at Procter & Gamble.  He's a sharp guy.]  (Recent Post: Check All CheckBoxes in a GridView Using Client Side Javascript)
 

Developing for .NET

Home of Joel Cochran and Jim Burnett.  The reality of .NET is that with the thousands of classes available, there is simply too much to know.  No one can be an expert in everything, so we frequently hit the Search Engines looking for help and solutions to our problems.  Hopefully, this blog can help with that.  Topics will be simple solutions to common problems, some of them will be cries for help themselves.  In either case, everything posted here will be from Joel and Jim’s real world experiences.  (Recent Post: Upgrade your C# Skills part 3 – Lambda Expressions)
 

DevTopics

Blog by Timm Martin about software development topics, with a focus on C# and the Microsoft .NET framework. DevTopics also discusses the creation and management of software companies, the software development process, and improving the computer experience for the average user and people with disabilities. And you should also find a healthy dose of programming tips, techniques and code.  [Disclosure: This is my blog, of course!]  (Recent Post: C# Object Initialization)
 

DotNetGuts

Discussion topics for ASP.net, C#, VB.net, .Net Framework, OOPs Concepts, and Programming.  (Recent Post: Design Patterns in ASP.NET 2.0)
 

ISerializable – Roy Osherove’s Blog

Unit Testing, Agile Development, Architecture, Team System & .NET.  (Recent Post: IL Debug Visualizer for Compiled Lambda Expressions, MethodBase and DynamicMethod)
 

The Moth

By Daniel Moth, software developer, former MVP, and now a Microsoft employee.  (Recent Post: ThreadPool in .NET Framework v2.0 Service Pack 1)
 

OmegaMan’s Musings

As a contract Architect/Developer/Programmer in the software industry, OmegaMan creates tools and architects code that never sees the light of day. This blog is a way to transfer some information to the community as a whole.  OmegaMan is a moderator on Microsoft’s MSDN forums with over 2000 posts.  (Recent Post: Smart Resource Locking in C# .Net for Thread Safe Code)
 

Omer van Kloeten’s .NET Zen

Programming is life, the rest is mere details.  (Recent Post: WPF’s Use of Partial Classes’ Access Modifiers)
 

ScottGu’s Blog

By Scott Guthrie, General Manager within the Microsoft Developer Division.  Scott runs the development teams that build the following products/technologies: CLR and the core .NET Base Class Libraries, ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, IIS 7.0, and Visual Studio Tools for ASP.NET, WPF and Silverlight.  (Recent Post: .NET Web Product Roadmap)
 

Switch on the Code

By Brandon Cannaday, Charlie Key, and Michael Kuehl, software engineers who graduated from the fabulous Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.  These are three guys who work full time but in their spare time run their fledgling company.  (Recent Post: C# Snippet Tutorial – Performance Timers)
 

Non-C# Blogs

The following blogs are not C#-specific but nonetheless can be quite useful for C# developers:
 

10X Software Development

By Steve McConnell.  Numerous studies have found 10:1 differences in productivity and quality among individuals and even among teams. This blog contains Steve’s thoughts about what is needed to be on the "10" side of that 10:1 ratio, i.e., what it takes to be a 10x developer or a 10x team. Naturally, this blog focuses on Steve’s specific interests: executive management, project management, high performance teams, estimation, reducing time to market, software development methods, construction practices, and related topics.  (Recent Post: Classic Mistakes Updated)
 

Coding Horror

By Jeff Atwood.  Why does Jeff blog?  Mostly for selfish reasons, he says. "I needed a way to keep track of software development over time–whatever I am thinking about or working on. I can research things I find interesting, document my research in public with a blog post, then easily find and refer to these blog posts later." (Recent Post: Hashtables, Pigeonholes, and Birthdays)
 

Joel on Software

By Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, Joel has been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site.  (Recent Post: How to Demo Software)
 

Pawel Brodzinski on Software Project Management

Blog about the software development lifecycle. You can find here a range of topics from software design, to project management, to team-building, to management of a software development company.  (Recent Post: Usability is Made of Small Things)

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3. FAT .NET

This is because .NET is backward compatible.  This means that an application compiled on .NET v1.1 should run OK on .NET v2.0 and v3.0.  But an application compiled on .NET v2.0 will not run on .NET v1.1.

• To determine the .NET version on which an assembly was compiled, use the ImageRuntimeVersion property of the executing assembly. 
   
• To determine the .NET version on which an assembly is currently running, use the Environment.Version static property. 

See the following code:

Assembly asm = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
Console.WriteLine( "Compiled on .NET Version: {0}", 
    asm.ImageRuntimeVersion.ToString() );
Console.WriteLine( "Running on .NET Version: {0}", 
    Environment.Version.ToString() );

Note that the code above does not return the version of .NET against which it was compiled if you attempt to load the assembly through one of its types using the GetAssembly method as shown below.  Instead it loads the version of .NET on which it is currently running, which is not the expected result.  Getting the assembly with the GetExecutingAssembly method as shown above solves this problem.  Please comment if you know why this is.

Assembly asm = Assembly.GetAssembly( typeof( Form1 ) );

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<script language=”JavaScript” type=”text/javascript”>
var a = navigator.userAgent.match(/\.NET CLR [0-9.]+/g);
if (a == null)
  document.write( “Microsoft .NET is not installed on your PC” )
else
{
  document.write( “The following versions of Microsoft .NET are installed on your PC:<br/>” )
  for (i = 0; i < a.length; ++i)
  {
     document.write( a[i] )
     document.write( “<br/>” )
  }    
}
</script>

Here is the code in action:

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What is Obfuscation? 

Obfuscation is the process of scrambling and encrypting your .NET software so that it cannot be easily reverse-engineered.  The goal is to stop all casual hackers and as many serious hackers as possible from trying inspect and crack your code. 

Obfuscation often includes the following processes:

• Rename symbolic metadata–such as class, field, event, and method names–into meaningless characters
• Convert compiled IL code into “spaghetti code,” inserting decoy branches and re-ordering instructions to confuse hackers and crash decompilers
• Encrypt text strings
• Strip all debugging information and PDB symbol references from your assembly

Why Obfuscate?

To protect your valuable intellectual property.

Programs written for .NET can be reverse-engineered quite easily.  Anyone with a decompiler such as the free .NET Reflector can look at your application or component assemblies and literally see almost your entire original source code, including names, logic and flow.  Your copy protection mechanisms, proprietary business logic, and any embedded license keys or passwords are available for all to see.  Anyone can inspect your software to find and exploit security flaws, steal unique ideas and license keys, or to pirate your application.  To plug this massive security hole and protect your software, you should obfuscate it. 

Obfuscation Costs

There are some downsides to obfuscating your software:

• Can break code that depends on reflection, serialization, or remoting
• Can make it more difficult to diagnose and debug problems in your code
• Adds another step and potential error source to your build process
• Increases your assembly size, from 2K-200K or more depending on your original assembly size and the level of obfuscation that you use
• Good obfuscation tools are expensive

How to Obfuscate

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET includes a free community edition of one of the popular commercial obfuscators.  Unfortunately, this version does not encrypt text strings and has other limitations.  You get what you pay for, so you probably don’t want to skimp when it comes to protecting your valuable intellectual property.

There are many good commercial obfuscators, but you will find them to be quite expensive, ranging from $400-$2000.  We use Xenocode at Mini-Tools and are quite happy with it.  For a list of .NET obfuscators, be sure to check out this amazing How-To Select Guide for Obfuscators.  Software distributor SharpToolbox also lists many popular obfuscators.

Seeing is Believing

The following example shows how .NET applications are like an open book without obfuscation.

Consider this simple method that returns a specified number of characters from the start of a text string.  Here is the original C# source code:

/// <summary>
/// Returns the specified number of characters from the start of a string.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="s">Any string. OK if null.</param>
/// <param name="count">Number of characters to get. Ignored if zero or less.</param>
static public string Left( string s, int count )
{
    string left = null;
    if (s != null && count > 0)
    {
        if (count > s.Length)
            count = s.Length;
        left = s.Substring( 0, count );
    }
    return left;
}

When the application is compiled into an executable file–but is not obfuscated–this is what the method looks like in Reflector.  Note that the only thing missing from this reverse-engineered code are the comments:

public static string Left(string s, int count)
{
    if ((s == null) || (count <= 0))
    {
        return null;
    }
    if (count > s.Length)
    {
        count = s.Length;
    }
    return s.Substring(0, count);
}

And here is what the method looks like after it has been obfuscated:

public static string x72d92bd1aff02e37(string xe4115acdf4fbfccc, int x673be0868c5231b1)
{
    // This item is obfuscated and can not be translated.
}

Notice a difference?  As you can see, obfuscation is essential to protect your original source code.

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Visual Studio “Orcas” will enable developers to write programs that can run on Windows Vista, Longhorn Server, Office 2007 and the Web.  The .NET Framework v3.5 will provide better support for Web 2.0 and AJAX applications.  Microsoft has been planning to release Orcas this year, but a corporate VP recently told ZDNet that it may not happen until 2008.

Visual Studio “Orcas” delivers key advances for developers in three primary areas:

1. Improve Developer Productivity
2. Manage the Application Life Cycle
3. Employ the Latest Technologies

The technology improvements in Visual Studio “Orcas” focus on five critical areas:

1. Windows Vista and .NET 3.0 Development
   Orcas unlocks the new features found in Windows Vista and .NET 3.0 and allows developers to incorporate Windows Presentation Foundation features into existing and new Windows Forms application.  New tools include a UI designer, XAML editor, project templates, debugging support, and deployment support for rich desktop and web applications.  You can also select which version of .NET to target, rather than being tied to the same version of .NET as Visual Studio.
2. Create Microsoft Office Applications
   Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is now fully integrated into the Visual Studio IDE.  VSTO enables developers to customize Office applications such as Outlook and PowerPoint.  Office UI elements such as the ribbon and task pane are available to use in your applications.  Developers can have Office manage the access and navigation of enterprise data.
3. Handle Data More Smoothly
   Using Language Integrated Query (LINQ), developers can write queries natively in C# or Visual Basic without having to use specialized languages, such as SQL and XPath.  The Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET provide an API to synchronize data between data services and a local store.
4. Enable New Web Experiences
   Developers can use Orcas to build expressive AJAX-enabled Web applications.  Orcas also provides RAD tools to easily create client connections and proxies to web services and test them without writing code.
5. Improve Application Life-Cycle Management (ALM)
   New capabilities include integrating the database professional into the development life-cycle, extending unit test capabilities, improving enterprise load testing, and providing performance tuning and diagnostics.

Read more in the Microsoft whitepaper.  Download the beta version of Visual Studio Orcas and .NET 3.5.

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