…so I’ve crossed the threshold, and now I’m writing VB code in .NET 2.0. It’s been a fascinating experience – going through fits and starts of trying to find a project motivating enough to keep me working on it through the inevitable “slump”.
For anyone who’s new to coding, and self-taught (like me), there’s the initial rush of being able to construct whatever it is your favoured “for morons” teaching book walks you through. Then there’s the first tentative steps into adding something for which you don’t have stepwise instructions – which is just about anything else that might be useful – which is quickly followed by the frustration of knowing that you *should* be able to construct that next section of code, but having no idea why it doesn’t work the way you want it to work.
I’ve done this probably a half-dozen times, and every time I get discouraged that the damned code just doesn’t flow from my fingers. I’ve been stymied by, in no particular order:
- How to cast an Object to (as? into?) an Interface
- How to use a GetEnumerator method
- What the hell goes into a DataGrid
- How to Dim an Object as something other than a String
- When and where to define and instantiate an Object (e.g. inside the For loop? outside the Private Sub? Inside a Public Sub?)
- How to write code in separate classes and still be able to take advantage of variables defined in the “other” Class
However, I think I’ve come up with sufficiently self-interested projects to complete at least ONE of them before I let myself fail at this AGAIN.
The latest fiasco was the last three attempts in which I’ve been trying to filter out only those processes that were launched in my user context (e.g. Run key, Startup folder, Start menu). I’ve been failing to (a) identify an actual username from the info supplied in the System.Diagnostics.Process class, (b) construct an equivalent username to what comes from the My.User.Name property, and most recently (c) actually filter out the processes started in other users’ context (e.g. svchost.exe, wininet.exe, csrss.exe).
Here’s the current code mess I’ve constructed:
Dim process As New System.Diagnostics.Process
Dim dictionary As New System.Collections.Specialized.StringDictionary
Dim entry As New System.Collections.DictionaryEntry
Dim UsernameFromProcess As String = “”
Dim DomainFromProcess As String = “”
Dim Username As String = My.User.Name
Dim MyApplications As New Collection
dictionary = process.StartInfo.EnvironmentVariables
For Each entry In dictionary
If entry.Key.ToString = “username” Then
UsernameFromProcess = entry.Value.ToString
End If
If entry.Key.ToString = “userdomain” Then
DomainFromProcess = entry.Value.ToString
End If
Next entry
Dim QualifiedUserName As String = “”
QualifiedUserName = DomainFromProcess + “\” + UsernameFromProcess
If QualifiedUserName = Username Then
MyApplications.Add(process)
EndIf
So why does this always result in adding the process to the MyApplications collection? I woulda figured that the environment variables for processes started in other users’ contexts would reflect that user’s environment. E.G. if csrss.exe starts in the SYSTEM context, then it should have USERDOMAIN = [nul] and USERNAME = SYSTEM. Whereas, when I launch Word from the Start Menu, its environment will include USERDOMAIN = REDMOND and USERNAME = mikesl.
If you’d like to see how I finally solved/worked around this little mystery, check out the CacheMyWork project on Codeplex.
The rattled cough of a Hyper-Empathetic PM 