Scott Hanselman

I've long said You should be customizing your PowerShell Prompt with PSReadLine. Go to your PowerShell prompt, and

Install-Module PSReadLine -AllowPrerelease -Force

Then, after running code $profile or nodepad $profile, add

Import-Module PSReadLine

Sure, but next, add these:

Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionSource History
Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionViewStyle ListView
Set-PSReadLineOption -EditMode Windows

This means that PSReadLine (and hence, your prompt in general) will use your prompt history to make predictions on what you want to see next. These predictions can be on one line in light gray (full details on Jason's blog) but I like them to pop down in a ANSI style ListView. Then you can edit them with up and down arrows (or Emacs or VI soon).

I'm loving PSReadLine an will be doing a video on setting up your best prompt soon.

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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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One of the best parts of the .NET ecosystem is the excitement around experimentation. Someone is always taking .NET to the next level, trying new things, pushing the envelope.

Michal Strehovsky has an interesting experiment on his GitHub called "bflat." This is not a product, it's a playground.

bflat is a concoction of Roslyn - the "official" C# compiler that produces .NET executables - and NativeAOT (née CoreRT) - the experimental ahead of time compiler for .NET based on CoreCLR's crossgen2. Thanks to this, you get access to the latest C# features using the high performance CoreCLR GC and native code generator (RyuJIT).

bflat merges the two components together into a single ahead of time crosscompiler and runtime for C#.

I find this characterization funny:

bflat is to dotnet as VS Code is to VS.

Michal is basically stripping .NET down to the bare minimum and combining the official compiler and and the experimental AOT (Ahead of Time) compiler to make single small EXEs that are totally self-contained.

Michal says you can get involved if you like!

If you think bflat is useful, you can leave me a tip in my tip jar and include your GitHub user name in a note so that I can give you access to a private repo when I'm ready.

Hello World today is about 2 megs. He says it's because:

By default, bflat produces executables that are between 2 MB and 3 MB in size, even for the simplest apps. There are multiple reasons for this:

• bflat includes stack trace data about all compiled methods so that it can print pretty exception stack traces
• even the simplest apps might end up calling into reflection (to e.g. get the name of the OutOfMemoryException class), globalization, etc.
• method bodies are aligned at 16-byte boundaries to optimize CPU cache line utilization
• (Doesn't apply to Windows) DWARF debug information is included in the executable

So when I ran bflat build, here was my output.

But when I run

bflat.exe build --no-reflection --no-stacktrace-data --no-globalization --no-exception-messages .\hello.cs

I end up with a 750kb file!

Sure, it's not C code because it'll never be C code. You get access to a LOT MORE with C#.

This could be a useful system for creating tiny apps in C# for Linux or Windows command line administration. It also showcases how the open pieces of .NET can be plugged together differently to achieve interesting results.

I'm sure there's lot of AOT limitations around Reflection, Attributes, and more, but this is still a very cool experiment, go check it out at https://github.com/MichalStrehovsky/bflat!

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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Go get .NET 5 for Windows, Mac, or Linux, over at https://dotnet.microsoft.com/

Then install Jon Sequeria's "dotnet repl" with this one line global tool install:

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-repl 

Then just type dotnet repl at the command line. Use the Windows Terminal ideally. That will drop you here!

With .NET Interactive/.NET Notebooks at the heart, consider this command-line experimental REPL (Read Evaluate Print Loop) to be a text-based notebook!

Start typing! If you make a mistake and press enter, type Ctrl-UpArrow to bring that line down to try again.

You can even add NuGet packages with #r "nuget:YourPackage"

Go learn more and give feedback at https://github.com/jonsequitur/dotnet-repl. You can even run .NET Notebooks with this, as a script! This REPL supports #F and C#. Love it.

Sponsor: Extend your runway and expand your reach. Oracle for Startups delivers enterprise cloud at a startup price tag with free cloud credits to help you reel in the big fish—confidently. Learn more.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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There's something happening in the E Ink space, somewhat quietly, but consistently. It's going to be interesting to see if it's a fad or if E Ink tablets are here to stay. I love my Amazon Kindle and I love its E Ink display. I'd say 90% of my reading in the last 5 years has been on a Kindle with E Ink. They are bright in direct sunlight, and the newer ones have color temperature settings. The starter Kindle is about $90 and you'll often find sales.

For mostly static content like books or magazines, E Ink is an amazing paper-like technology. We seem to be putting a huge amount of technology and work into creating displays to replace paper. First the look, and most recently the feel of writing on paper. These one page digital devices promise to act as Infinite Paper.

E Ink is easier on the eyes than OLED and iPads and the like. How does it work? The simple explanation is that there's tiny capsules of negatively charged black pigment and positively charged white pigment. We can apply negative or positive charge and the black or the white pigments will jump to the top. It's kind of like an Etch a Sketch, except with electricity rather than a surface covered in aluminum powder. These displays are as close to paper as you can get, today, digitally.

This week I did a LIVE Review of three really interesting "E Ink" tablets on my YouTube.

• The reMarkable 2 - This is the second-gen reMarkable. It's a dedicated and distraction-free note taker. It has no browser, no apps to speak of, but an enthusiastic community of hackers and 3rd party projects. This device is NOT an iPad and if your first thought is, "but I have an iPad" then this isn't for you. However, if you like Moleskine notebooks and have filled many a year and your shelves are filled with many years' worth, then take a good look. This 10.3 inch unlit screen is the best device for taking notes, reading PDFs, and...taking notes. It's incredibly well built, feels high quality, is light but substantial, it doesn't warp or feel cheap. If you pair it with a their Marker Plus that includes an eraser, the feeling is top notch. It has a great Desktop App that also has a Beta "Live View" feature where you can share your screen in Teams or Zoom and see what you're writing on your reMarkable. There's so much potential here if they'd open up the APIs and integrate into things like OneNote, Teams, etc. I'd love to see someone be able to connect two of these and write as a shared whiteboard!
  -  One small downer, I did drop a Marker and it landed just right and broke off not just the tip (no big deal, it comes with a dozen replacements) but also the tiny hole the tip goes into (not replaceable). So, treat the pens with reverence.
• Onyx Boox Note Air - This could pass for the reMarkable from a distance, but it's actually an Android 10 devices that can have Google Play added. Also 10.3" and E Ink but adds a backlight, this hybrid device is a note taker and PDF viewer until you are suddenly installing Microsoft Office or Netflix. The surreal part is that what the device thinks its displaying doesn't always jive with what is being displayed. For example, it's a black and white device, so some shading and subtleties are lost...but they are there, in video memory. That means you can easily share this Android Device's screen to your TV or monitor and it's...Android! There is some ghosting which is a feature, not a bug, but the Onyx Boox Note Air has a surprisingly large array of basically "ghosting display choices" that allow you to select the right balance between ghosting and eventual consistency. It takes a moment to figure out but it's quite good when dialed in. Combine the Note Air with a Bluetooth Keyboard and you've got an E Ink Word Processor. If you have $500 and can't decide between a reMarkable and a Boox Note Air, it comes down to the fact that the Note Air is Android. You're getting more functionality, if slightly less software policy. As a note taker, the polish of the reMarkable 2 is the winner. But the Note Air is the best general purpose E Ink Tablet.
  • Onyx Boox Nova3 Color - This device is just 7.8" but has a color Kaleido Plus E Ink screen. COLOR E Ink is really something to see. Do check out my video review on YouTube - here's a link right to the color parts. It's not a rich deep marker type color, it's a muted older comic book type color...but it works. It adds something, and reading comics on it in Comixology is magical, albeit with some ghosting. This device is also Android so consider it a 2 inch smaller version of the Note Air. It's the "color iPad Mini" to the Note Air's "black and white iPad Pro."
    

Later this month I'll take a look at Supernote which already has a enthusiastic community and promises to have a rich API for 3rd parties to explore and expand.

E Ink and "E Paper" are becoming more prominent on sites like Kickstarter and IndieGogo. This India-based company called paperd.ink is creating a low power E-paper development board. The rise of inexpensive E-paper/E Ink displays along with ESP32s with WiFi is creating tiny low power computers that blur the user's perception of what a Microcontroller can do.

What are your thoughts and opinions about E Ink? Will your next tablet be an E Ink display?

I often use Amazon Affiliate links and you're helping this blog when you use them, thanks!

Sponsor: Extend your runway and expand your reach. Oracle for Startups delivers enterprise cloud at a startup price tag with free cloud credits to help you reel in the big fish—confidently. Learn more.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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We had a great time at the BUILD 2021 conference this year. My team and I worked really hard to put together a great Application Development Keynote and I think we did it in a way that might surprise you. Check it out!

There has never been a time where developers had more access to tools and services to be more productive. Join Scott Hanselman and some of his friends show all the innovative ways for developers to be successful.

• 00:00 - Application Development with Scott Hanselman & Friends Keynote
• 00:10 - Full video of Scott's trip to Seattle is here on TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeGvytrE/
• 02:40 - To learn more about the Surface Hub 2S for business, go here
• 04:40 - You can now set Windows Terminal as the default prompt. Learn more here
• 05:30 - Want to learn more about the new Windows Package Manager? Check out the docs here
• 06:35 - Visual Studio 2019 offers deep integration to your Git Repos, learn more here
• 10:50 - You can easily apply multiple repeated edits to your codebase in Visual Studio 2019 using IntelliCode. Check out the link for more information
• 12:00 - Blizzard builds and debugs production issues in Diablo IV using Visual Studio 2019 and Windows Subsystem for Linux. To learn more about this great partnership, go here
• 13:30 - To learn more about about what's new in Windows 10, check out the Build session in the catalog
• 16:00 - .NET 6 Preview 4 is out and it has some great features for developers to check out. Learn more here
• 18:25 - The Visual Studio team is working on making the next version even better, including making it 64-bit. Read this blog post to learn more
• 25:05 - To learn more about GitHub Codespaces, visit the docuementation here
• 26:30 - The new Python Language Server "Pylance" is now stable, learn more about it here
• 27:20 - Build amazing IoT solutions with Pylance and Visual Studio Code on LumiCube: https://www.abstractfoundry.com/
• 32:00 - Window Swap is a great example of building fun apps using Visual Studio Code: https://www.window-swap.com/

Starring:

• Scott Hanselman: https://twitter.com/shanselman
• Filisha Shah: https://twitter.com/FilishaShah
• Isaac Levin: https://twitter.com/isaacrlevin
• Leslie Richardson: https://twitter.com/lyrichardson01
• Abel Wang: https://twitter.com/AbelSquidHead
• Golnaz Alibeigi: https://twitter.com/Golnaz89
• Megan Overton, Nelson Palmer, PJ Meyer, and Kaitlin McKinnon the TikTok Video Editor: https://twitter.com/KaitlinMcKinnon

Enjoy!

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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

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