In this installment of the .NET Nuts & Bolts column we'll be discussing three industry trends that are influencing the next releases of C# and Visual Basic.

Programming is hard,debugging is hard. Doing both well is critical to being a good programmer. To make things easier for us Paul Kimmel demonstrates how to run custom Tracepoint with macros.

The Entity Framework provides a .NET class-based model of a data store, letting you query the model with LINQ, while the model do the background grunt work of contacting the data store to add, update, or delete data.

OP-ED: Unlike the Illuminati, the IEEE exists, and they have a secret. This secret helps them turn out shiny MP3 players, phones, and computers with processing power than we programmers can figure out how to use. This is how they do it. When will developers learn the same truths?

Providing a drop down list in your ASP.NET Web applications help users avoid wasting time with bad data and it's a kinder, gentler thing to do.

Discover how to render an image directly from a database using an IHttpHandler and how to modify the image on its way to the client using GDI+.

You can respond to every HTTP request. Just implement event handlers or an IHttpModule (which is a cool way to write a re-deployable solution for multiple projects).

How do I hide the unneeded features? Don't cut corners just because budgets and staff are being cut.

Old school programming, whereby the programmer reads control values and writes inline SQL, still works, but it's so 90s. If you are new to WinForms or Web programming but experienced, peruse the article and then master LINQ.

With custom applications getting bigger and more involved, there is very often a need to supply updates for them. There is also a need to provide them as quickly as possible. Learn how to do this.

Round those corners and make your user interfaces a little jazzier with a rounded rectangle Panel control; a fun chunk of code to incorporate into your application.

Few projects end up having too much time. Successfully completing a project often depends on tackling core, significant, and risky aspects of any custom solution first—like the long hard march up hill—and finishing with the trim, or cosmetic work, last.

The Records Center is an important MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) component for companies that need to save critical or legally sensitive information. Discover how to create a Records Center then secure its contents with the MOSS Object Model and one of its default WebServices.

Emitted code and the DynamicMethod have the benefit of speed and the emitted code can be unloaded when the DynamicMethod goes out of scope, resulting in the best of all worlds.

Use Reflection.Emit to speed up Reflection intensive processes by writing one general algorithm that emits a specific solution.

One general-purpose algorithm, written one time, is a great time saver for programmers.

Some things that seem hard are actually quite easy, and some things that seem easy take a little work, like that little [X] on a Windows Form, the ControlBox. Learn how to know just when that little bugger is pressed.

The MenuStrip and ToolStripMenuItem are a little harder to use than the Menu from earlier versions of VB. Walk through exercises using the MenuStrip, ToolStrip, and the Command behavior pattern to encapsulate a Recents menu for your applications that operate on files.

Let the .NET Framework write your XML Schema document (XSD) for you.

See how combining SharePoint 2007's API and an Object Model allows for greater program functionality.

Gain a solid understanding of what Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is and isn't and what it can do for you.

William Vaughn clarifies a misunderstanding regarding the ReportViewer Control.

LINQ to SQL eliminates SQL Injection Attacks and is easier to use than straight SQL to boot.

The .NET framework is full of small, discrete, and useful classes and big chunky bits. When you start combining the chunky bits, like LINQ to SQL and Windows Communication Foundation, things get interesting real fast.

Developers working at all levels of experience can take advantage of this technique. Discover how to invoke a stored procedure with parameters using the AddWithValue method of the SqlParameterCollection to define SQL parameters in one step.