Sierpinski triangle, WPF remix

In my last post, I looked into drawing a Sierpinski triangle using F# and WinForms, and noted that the rendering wasn’t too smooth – so I converted it to WPF, to see if the result would be any better, and it is. In the process, I discovered John Liao’s blog, which contains some F# + WPF code examples I found very useful. I posted the code below, as well as on FsSnip. The differences with the WinForms code are minimal, I’ll let the interested reader figure that part out!

One thing I noticed is that the starting point of the Sierpinski sequence is a single triangle – but nothing would prevent a curious user to initialize the sequence with multiple triangles. And while at it, why not use WPF Brush opacity to create semi-transparent triangles, and see how their superposition looks like?

We just change the Brush Color and Opacity, and add a second triangle to the root sequence…

let brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.DarkBlue)
brush.Opacity <- 0.6
let renderTriangle = render canvas brush

let triangle = 
    let p1 = { X = 190.0; Y = 170.0 }
    let p2 = { X = 410.0; Y = 210.0}
    let p3 = { X = 220.0; Y = 360.0}
    { A = p1; B = p2; C = p3 }

let triangle2 =
    let p1 = { X = 290.0; Y = 170.0 }
    let p2 = { X = 510.0; Y = 210.0}
    let p3 = { X = 320.0; Y = 360.0}
    { A = p1; B = p2; C = p3 }

let root = seq { yield triangle; yield triangle2 }

… and here we go:

Sierpinski triangle

I am midway through the highly-recommended “Real-world functional programming: with examples in C# and F#”, which inspired me to play with graphics using F# and WinForms (hadn’t touched that one in a long, long time), and I figured it would be fun to try generating a Sierpinski Triangle.

The Sierpinski Triangle is generated starting from an initial triangle. 3 half-size copies of the triangle are created and placed outside of the original triangle, each of them having a corner “touching” the middle of one side of the triangle.

VSTO: solution organization

This post is part of a series providing commentary on the VSTO Stocks. I initially developed it for theExcel Developers Conference in London, to illustrate some of the benefits or interesting features of VSTO add-ins compared to traditional VBA automation. The add-in is a work in progress, and is by no means production ready, but it is functional; I will update the code and add comments over time. Feel free to ask questions in the comments!

Level: intermediate. Code version: 39134382823e

The straightforward way to organize an Add-In solution is to just create a single project of type Excel 2007 Add-In (or whichever Office application / version you may target). So why would I go through the pain of structuring my Solution into four distinct Projects in the VSTO Stocks add-in? Having a single project is a perfectly valid way to proceed, with things kept simple and tight. However, a drawback of going that route is that it makes it easy to write untestable code, with poor separation of concerns.

Book review: Working effectively with legacy code

I finally finished “Working effectively with legacy code”, reading it a few pages at a time every morning on my way to work. Legacy code is one of these topics you know are important, but which you never really want to hear about, so the book has stayed on the backlog for a while. Recently, I helped out someone establish tests on a legacy code base, and began following Michael Feather’s tweets with great enjoyment, and decided it was time to read it.

VSTO: code traceability with Source Control

This post is part of a series providing commentary on the VSTO Stocks project. I initially developed it for the Excel Developers Conference in London, to illustrate some of the benefits or interesting features of VSTO add-ins compared to traditional VBA automation. The add-in is a work in progress, and is by no means production ready, but it is functional; I will update the code and add comments over time. Feel free to ask questions in the comments!

Level: beginner. Code version: 346c1bd9394e

One of the key benefits I find in using VSTO for Office automation instead of VBA is that it enables using Source Control tools.

During a development effort, regardless of the technology used, lots of things can go wrong. A code change which initially looked like a great idea progressively degenerates into chaos, something goes awry with a file which becomes irrecoverably corrupt, a hard drive suddenly decides it is time to call it quits – all these happen. When they do, it’s nice to have a safety net, and know that somewhere, safe and warm, a snapshot of the code taken in happier times is waiting and can be restored, giving you a safe point to restart from, with only a few hours of work lost.

What I have often seen done with Excel development goes along these lines: on a regular basis, the developer saves the workbook somewhere “safe” with a time-stamp convention, like “MyWorkbook-2010-12-24.xlsx”.