When string literals are better than nameof(id)
In C# programming, magic strings often get a bad reputation. They are seen as a code smell, something to be avoided. The advent of nameof(x) in C# gave us a…
To buy and to hold
Most folks will just buy and hold a cryptocurrency (often referred to as HODLing), waiting for someone else to drive the price up so they can make money. When the…
.NET library for Zcash
My recently released Nerdbank.Zcash library is available on nuget.org and makes the Zcash cryptocurrency accessible to .NET apps. This library exposes all the APIs necessary to generate seed phrases and…
Rust: A C# developer’s perspective
I’ve programmed primarily in C# for over 20 years. Before that, I did a mix of C++ and VB, and a bit of ruby. While I’m a long-time fan of…
Keeping Zcash sync fast while supporting IVKs
Background into IVKs and internal addresses ZIP-32 describes how to derive accounts and keys for Sapling and Orchard pools. Among these are “internal keys” and “internal addresses”. Internal addresses are…
Get rid of your .designer.cs code-behind for .resx
Committing generated files into source control is a shame. Besides bloating your source control database, it creates more opportunity for merge conflicts. And if the computer generated the file in…
New NuGet packages for Zcash and other cryptocurrencies
I recently applied for a grant from the Zcash Foundation to fund a .NET library that would be able to parse and construct Zcash Unified Addresses. You can learn more…
Ban use of System.Console from .NET libraries
Shared libraries should not use System.Console. Besides an assumption that they are running in a process with an attached console, which may not be correct, the library really has no…
Embedded resources in C# projects that retain slashes
.NET assemblies may contain embedded streams of arbitrary data. In an msbuild project this is done by adding an EmbeddedResource item to your project with the path to a file…
Is Zcash really private?
Zcash privacy is best in class. Zcash was the first cryptocurrency to use Zero Knowledge proofs, which allows Zcash to totally hide all information about a transaction (and therefore your…