[Zigon]

Hi there!
I'm new to this forum and C# itself.
While trying to learn some basic stuff, I stubled into a problem I just do not understand. I am trying to to output some text to a textBox char by char (using the method described in the snippets section). The problem is, that when I redirect the output to the Debug window, everything works just fine, but when I'm directing it to the textBox control, nothing happens until the loop is finished - then the desired text appears.

Here is the code I'm using:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;

namespace Typewriter_effect
    {
    public partial class Form1 : Form
        {
        public Form1()
            {
            InitializeComponent();
            }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            {
            string message = "HELLO THERE!";
            foreach (char x in message.ToCharArray())
                {
                //Debug.Write(x);
                textBox1.Text += Convert.ToString(x);
                
                System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(300);
                }

            }
        }
    }

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

[tlhIn`toq]

Thread sleep is evil and should not be used casually.

It does NOT mean "do everything else you're supposed to like updating the GUI, but sit here and wait 300 ms"

It DOES mean "Do absolutely nothing on this thread. Not a fraking thing. Don't respond to events. Don't update the GUI."

So what's happening is you're sleeping the thread without giving the GUI a change to update.

If you want an active delay try something more like this

void Wait(int DelayInMS)
{
   DateTime timeout = DateTime.Now.AddMilliseconds(DelayInMS);
   while (timeout > DateTime.Now) Application.DoEvents();
}

Then call that from any of your methods.

[Toadill]

Sleep is bugged

[Zigon]

tlhIn`toq, on 25 January 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

Thread sleep is evil and should not be used casually.

It does NOT mean "do everything else you're supposed to like updating the GUI, but sit here and wait 300 ms"

It DOES mean "Do absolutely nothing on this thread. Not a fraking thing. Don't respond to events. Don't update the GUI."

So what's happening is you're sleeping the thread without giving the GUI a change to update.

If you want an active delay try something more like this

void Wait(int DelayInMS)
{
   DateTime timeout = DateTime.Now.AddMilliseconds(DelayInMS);
   while (timeout > DateTime.Now) Application.DoEvents();
}

Then call that from any of your methods.

Thanks a ton! It works great!
Would it be safe to use this method any time I want my App to wait for a specific time? What I mean is would it be usefull to put this in some common library of my own for later re-use or is there any bulit-in funcion available (stability, memory leaks,...)?

[tlhIn`toq]

Toadill, on 25 January 2012 - 11:21 AM, said:

Sleep is bugged

Not sure what that is supposed to mean or how it is helpful or how you feel it is buggy. It does exactly what it says it does: It sleeps the thread.

Its just that most rookies don't know what that really means. If one does not understand their GUI is on the same thread as their computations then it might seem buggy.

So its not that sleep is buggy, its that someone's understanding is.

This is why we so often say that the GUI should be on its own thread. It should then react to events on work threads.

[tlhIn`toq]

Zigon, on 25 January 2012 - 11:36 AM, said:

Thanks a ton! It works great!
Would it be safe to use this method any time I want my App to wait for a specific time? What I mean is would it be usefull to put this in some common library of my own for later re-use or is there any bulit-in funcion available (stability, memory leaks,...)?

Is it safe-ish. Yes.

Should you continue to code like this? No. Your GUI should be on its own thread, separate from work/computations/processing.

Think of it this way... The GUI is your dashboard. Its only real purpose should be to interact with the user just like your car dashboard only REPORTS what is happening but it really doesn't make anything happen. Your application GUI should be the same way. It should raise events to tell your other threads what to do, and listen for events from those threads so it can update the information it is reporting to you.

Should you be building a library? No. Let's be fair and say you are just learning. You really don't know what you need in a library, possibly the best way to organize such a thing and so on. Or if you are going to go ahead with a library, just realize you are going to re-create it 10 times in the next year.

Should a function like this go in a library? Eh? I suppose it could. It would make for a single place of change if you later find a better way to do a wait. That's good code isolation practice. On the other hand, its the kind of thing I can type faster than I can drill through a library to locate again. "Did I put that under myFunctions.Common.Threading, or did I put it under myFunctions.Forms.Common, or is it under myFunctions.Timing.Wait ?"

If you'd like to look at some examples on separating GUI threads, raising events and so on these should help:
Bulding an application - Part 1
Building an application - Part 2
Quick and easy custom events


For more on threading take a look at FAQ 12

TOP most asked:
What does this error message mean?
FAQ 2: How do I debug
FAQ 3: How do I make Form1 talk to Form2

---

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions - Updated Jan 2012

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  A:
  Spoiler

  We see this a LOT, especially with rookies using textbox for numeric input.
  
  Any input that can't be converted to a number will do this.
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  string.empty cannot become a number
  
  You would be best off changing from a textbox to a NumericUpDown or to inherit from textbox to make a numerictextbox.
  
  There are a LOT of articles on making a NumericTextBox. Try googling "C# NumericTextBox" and you should find a lot, such as this one on the MSDN:
  
  http://msdn.microsof...4(v=vs.80).aspx
  
  Once you study the code you'll see that as each key is pressed it is checked to see if it is a number. If not, then it is ignored. Thus the user can only enter numerically valid values.
  
  
  
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  Spoiler

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• Q:I'm trying to teach myself programming. I'm writing a program to do xyz, rather than following a guided self teaching book or lesson plan or on-line tutorial because I just don't learn from books.
  A:
  Spoiler

  I'm sorry for how this sounds. I tend to take the stance that I can do you more good and give you more long-term meaningful help by being frank and give you adult-level honesty. I don't feel it does anyone any good to coddle them and do nothing but blow sunshine and rainbows up their skirt. I'd rather say something to motivate you than feel my place is to bolster your false high self esteem.
  
  

  Quote

  ]
  I've tried going through those, the only way im learning is through struggling to write code from scratch, the thought process i guess is helping me, i've tried reading sooo much and watching videos but honestly im not learning until i actaully type it.

  
  
  I hear this a lot and the only thing I can think is students are buying the wrong books. Or they read the information and don't feel they need to actually work the lessons/exercises. This argument sounds like there are only two choices:
  

  • Develop from scratch even though they haven't learned the language yet.
    
  • Just read C# dictionaries.

  
  
  Maybe this is from students buying the course textbook and reading it on their own, without the benefit of the teacher and their lesson plan and exercise assignments. When one mis-uses the materials, or only has 25% of the materials, of course they won't learn.
  
  Here's a tip when selecting a book: If it is a dictionary of the language it is not a teaching book. Titles like "C# 4.0, The Complete Language" are not teaching books. If the title includes the words "Learn" or "Master" or "Teach" they might be teaching books. "Learn C# in 21 days", "Master C# in 2 hours a night", "Head First C#, A self-teaching guide" Then they are probably teaching books with a lesson plan and exercises to help you build up skills.
  
  Obviously you didn't read the resources list I posted or get any one of the NUMEROUS self-teaching books.
  
  Self-teaching books HAVE YOU TYPING CODE. They are NOT just reading as you describe.
  
  C# is a language just like Russian or English. You cannot learn Italian by just reading an Italian dictionary. Or even reading an English-to-Italian dictionary. You have to take lessons and do the learning exercises. Those lessons and exercises are developed by professionals to take place in a sequence proven to work, by taking the student from simple to complex concepts. You did not learn how to compose literary works in English by just reading a dictionary. You worked at lessons that taught you the syntactical use of verbs, nouns, additives and so on. You worked lessons that had you build simple things first like "Those are my apples. These are your pencils", and worked up from there.
  
  So why are you trying to "just read" to learn C#? Or why are you insisting on trying to design and code a working program without first learning the language? It makes no sense! Its like saying you have to design and write a mystery novel as your introductory educational process to learn German. Its just a fraking ridiculous argument to try to take or defend.
  
  There are numerous on-line learning series on the internet that have you learning and WRITING code, not just reading. We have them right here on DIC and they have been linked to you several times. There are many good guided self-teaching books, that once again are NOT just reading but teaching through proven methods of:
  

  • Introduce new material
    
  • Have student exercise with new material

  
  
  Yet you insist that you don't need to go the route that has worked for the 3 generation of coders before you: Representatives of which are here TELLING you that is the way to learn this science/skill/art.
  
  

  Quote

  would i be able to take out the private double[] months = new double[12];
  and place it in a method instead of leaving it in a private field, why does it have to be in a private field as opposed to a method in just placing it in the main method?

  
  
  Questions like this last one show just how badly you need to stop trying to write this program and just concentrate on learning the language through some sort of guided lesson plan. This question is filled with so much lack of understanding that it is hard to know where to start in an effort to answer it. To answer this someone would have to back up 5 chapters and help you get a grasp of certain introductory concepts. It's not right to ask that of people that have already devoted tens or hundreds of hours to develop the tutorials we have here. You shouldn't be asking them to repeat themselves because you feel you need special hand-holding or because you don't want to get the right books or because you don't want to actually work the exercises in the books or tutorials.
  
  
  
  
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• Q:

  Quote

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  A:
  Spoiler

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  Spoiler

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  Are all good languages. They all have their pros and cons. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. Some have stronger footholds in some markets than others. Do you want to write for iPhone/iPad then you need Objective-C. Do you want to write for generic mobile phone use then you need JAVA. And so on. If you have no idea what area of programming you want to move to (Gaming, Financial, Windows, Macintosh, Cell phones) then nobody can advise you on a language. Personally, I would point you to C# because, like it or not, Microsoft owns the desktop computer market and C# will teach you good habits of design, OOP (Object Oriented Programming) design, inheritance and so on: Concepts that translate well to all other OOP languages.
  
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  Do you now see why we can't even begin to tell you what is best for you? Only you know what you like and what you don't like. Only you know what area of programming is interesting to you. If you ask me for advice I might tell you video processing for the movie industry is great so you should get a Mac. Someone else is going to tell you cool stories of working on CSI lab equipment so you should do C embedded stuff.
  
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• Q: I'm not really sure what I want to do with my future? Do you guys like programming? I think I kinda like math and games and computers? What should I do or study?
  A:
  Spoiler

  
  You are asking a very vague, generalize question about a broad topic.
  You might as well be asking... What is the best kind of vehicle to buy? Or what is the best kind of plastic to make? It all depends on your needs... Your area of business.
  
  If you are interested in embedded devices like computers that control automobile engines it is still programming - but it is entirely different to writing a point of sale program meant to be used as a self-service kiosk like you see at Home Depot. And that is entirely different to writing a program that is meant to be used on a mobile platform.
  
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• Q: What's your installation like? What sofware do you use? What are your Visual Studio extensions?
  A:
  Spoiler

  
  

  • Host Operating System - 16gig, quadcore, 3x24" Dell LCDs at 1920x1200 (2 landscape, 1 portrait)
    
    • 20 times of on-line update/reboot cycle
      
    • Device Drivers
    • AVG antivirus
      
    • VMware workstation
    
    
    • VM Operating System
      
      • 20 times of on-line update/reboot cycle
        
      • Device Drivers
        
      • Visual Studio
        
        • ReSharper
          
        • Dotfuscator
          
        • nArrange
          
        • XAML regions
          
        • XAML code cleanup
          
        • InstallShield
        
        
      • Expression blend studio
        
      • MS Office
        
      • SnagIt
        
      • Safari
        
      • iTunes
        
      • Fences
        
      • Yahoo messenger
        
      • FoxIt PDF reader
        
      • AnyDVD (I have DVDs from 3 different regions)
        
      • TightVNC
        
      • Dropbox
        
      • AVG anti-virus
        
      • Quicken
        
      • Canon RAW codec
        
      • Shark007 codec pack for Media Center
        
      • Another 20 rounds of on-line update/reboot
        
      • Take a snapshot of the VM machine for easy restoration

  
  
  That is my entire install
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Working for myself/Deploying/Selling software:
  
  
• Q:How do I stay a free lance coder for a living?
  A:http://justcreatived...eelancing-life/
  
  
• Q: How do I become a better coder?
  Read this, and practice a lot.
  How to be a better coder
  
  
• Q: Are there any resources for small C# projects a novice to become a better coder?
  A:
  Spoiler

  There is a novice projects thread here on DIC. But here's my advice whenever this comes up:
  
  Look around. Anyone who can't find a dozen projects a day by just walking through life, is doing so with their eyes closed to the world.
  

  • Do you like the weather? What about a program to get the various weather reports from different web sites? Or to integrate with one of the numerous USB weather station hobby kits on the market?
    
  • Do you like the run? What about a program to log your runs, routes and progress?
    
  • Do you like movies? What about a program to catalog all your DVD's and AVI's?
    
  • Do you like photography? What about a program to browse your images, assign tags and GPS?
    
  • Do you like shooting? What about a program to track your aim and improvement?
    
  • What about every time you walk into a business and someone says "Oh, I'm sorry. The computers are slow/suck. This is going to take 10 minutes and 25 screens." Sounds like an opportunity to make and maybe even sell them a new program. So go home and make it first before you open your mouth. If you succeed in something great. If you fail, then you know where to study more and you haven't embarrassed yourself.

  
  
  What about every time you walk into a business and someone says "Oh, I'm sorry. The computers are slow/suck. This is going to take 10 minutes and 25 screens." Sounds like an opportunity to make and maybe even sell them a new program. So go home and make it first before you open your mouth.
  
  If you succeed in something great. If you fail, then you know where to study more and you haven't embarrassed yourself.
  
  Go to any of the on-line coder for hire sites. Read the new contract descriptions. DON'T BID ON THEM. Just read them. This will tell you what is requested by employers so you know where you have the potential to make money, and tell you where you should study. Then pick a project and build it. TRACK YOUR TIME. If you don't know how long it takes you to build a project then you won't be able to bid on contracts. If you bid $50 for 50 hours of work you're going to starve to death. Again, building projects just to learn the technology and learn your own speed and weaknesses is something we all do/did and you need to do too. Once you can build a project just for the learning experience, fast enough that you could have made a competitive bid... Now you can start considering actually bidding on new contracts that are in your skill set.
  
  
  
  
• Q: How do I sell the software I've developed?
  A:http://www.dreaminco...m_notifications
  
  
• Q: How do I decide how much to charge for my application?
  A: Read this
  
  
• Q: How do I deploy my program / Make an installer?
  A: C# application deployment project
  Include the smallest .NET possible

[Curtis Rutland]

Toadill, on 25 January 2012 - 11:21 AM, said:

Sleep is bugged

It's not bugged at all. It does exactly what it's supposed to do.

Also, for the record, Thread.Sleep(x) also doesn't guarantee that the sleep time will be exactly x. It'll be at least x.

Also, I prefer the Timer method to using Application.DoEvents, just because it fits the event-driven model a bit better. Idling in a while loop is really procedural. Subscribing to an event that'll be fired later is event-driven (though behind the scenes it's doing an idle loop anyway).

[Zigon]

I'm sorry for the delay, but I had to go to work.
Thanks for all replies, they were all helpfull!

I have one question left: Suppose I have some functions stored in in some library of my own, that I would use in allmost every project I make (let it call MyFunctinsIUseOnDalyBases). So the big Q is, is there a way to include that lib in the startup template of the VS? What I mean is when I start new project, that lib would be automaticly added to the "USES" section of the project?

Thatns again, guys!

[Curtis Rutland]

Well, you can edit the template files. I'm not sure off the top of my head which folder those reside in, but you should be able to find it by searching for vs project template files or something in that vein.

However, just adding a using directive isn't going to do you any good. Using directives are for namespaces, not for assemblies. You add a reference to an assembly, which allows it to be used in the project. Then you add a using directive to a code file to tell the compiler that you won't be typing the fully qualified names of the components that belong to a particular namespace (that exists in one or more of your references). VS adds references to several libraries by default. You'll need to edit the project template itself to include a reference to one of your own libraries, I think. I've never tried.

[Zigon]

Oh, I see...

Well, how would I go about doing something like this:
Say I have a procedure, that checkes for the net conectivity (just for the cause of this Q). If I got it right, I would normaly put it in a class lib (compile it into a DLL - or am I wrong again?). Let's say, I want that procedure (or DLL) in each and every project I create. How would I do that?

Or am I on the wrong bank of the river? Probably I am missing something here (I'm still grasping my way around the whole thing, as my background is legacy VB, but not been coding for at least ten years... - shame on me!)

As you can see, this whole idea of OOP is quite new to me (well, not new all together, but I have to think in a much diferent way than in the "old days").

Well, I'm trying to figure out just the basics like "why isn't this working - oh, I must include something in my project! OK! But what? Where is that function defined? How do I find that? And so on... If you know what I mean...

So, I am to be expected to ask some quite silly questions in the near future, so bear with me.

[tlhIn`toq]

Try this....

Make your new solution such as "mySpecialGame"
From the Solution pallet, add... existing project...
Now browse to your library project such as "myCommonStuff"

Add a reference to 'myCommonStuff' inside "mySpecialGame".

Now you can use all your common stuff in you game.


Keep doing this through your next 20 projects because it will allow you to grow your common library easily. When it has grown to the point where you haven't added to it for 6 months you might consider it 'done' enough to make a dll out of it.

[Zigon]

Good idea! I'll try that...
Just one question, if I may: What is the scope (visibility) of this approach? Would procedures be visible/ accesible throuhg my entire project/ solution or do I have to make then somehow Public/ Global?

[tlhIn`toq]

Accessibility is going to be what you make of it for each method.

If you make something public, then it is public.

But basically everything in your library has the potential to be available to all the projects within the solution. I do this all the time. I wouldn't have suggested it if it didn't work for me every day.

From here I would suggest you just do it. Trial and error is the greatest teacher. You will learn more if you build a solution and do it than by trying to visualize it in the abstract.

Some of these concepts are in these two tutorials of mine if you want to see it in practice:

Bulding an application - Part 1
Building an application - Part 2

[Zigon]

OK, thanks! I'll give it a go.