The problem I had was trying to import the .NET Button ListBar Control into my VS.NET Toolbox. The instructions said to import the ButtonListBar.vb file into the project and it should work, but it doesn’t in Visual Studio.NET 2003. I think that is the reason it didn’t work (that it is VS.NET 2003 instead of just VS.NET).

Opening the ButtonListBar.vb file in the Designer threw out an error (see the call for help entry). Dave fixed that with this solution (also via email):

… move the region event argument classes to the end of the ButtonListBar.

He went on to help me compile the source files into a DLL, which I’m familiar with using for importing controls. Below are his instructions (slightly paraphrased). The credit goes solely to Dave (DarkAngel) – I’m merely reproducing it for the benefit of anyone who next comes across this problem.

1. Open up Visual Studio .NET (Visual Studio .NET 2003 to be exact)
2. Create a new project by clicking File -> New Project (I’m using Visual Basic, so I chose Visual Basic Project).
3. Choose “Windows Control Library”.
4. What we’ve done so far is just create a control library project which is ideal for putting new controls in. This will build to a DLL.
5. Remove UserControl1.vb (the default file VS.NET creates) from the Solution Explorer (it’s unnecessary).
6. Right click the project in the solution explorer and select Add -> Add existing item
7. Add the ButtonListBar.vb file in the control source files downloaded.
8. Build the project (choose to build for “Release”).
9. The compiled DLL will then be in the bin/ directory of the project folder. You now have the ButtonListBar control in DLL form. All the remains is to add this control into the Toolbar of the project in which you want to use it.

Using the control:

1. In the project you want to add the toolbar to, right-click your Toolbox and select “Add/Remove items”.
2. Click “Browse” under the .net framework components tab.
3. Browse to the location of the DLL we just created and double click it.
4. Click OK to dismiss the Add/Remove items dialog.
5. The ButtonListBar control should now be the bottom entry on your list. (You can right-click and sort alphabetically if you like).

Having to pick up VB.NET for a Human Computer Interaction course this semester, I’ve been spending some time getting acquainted with the language through a couple of books. Every now and then I get somewhat bemused by how “different” VB syntax is – not that it’s a bad thing, pray. Syntax, as almost everyone agrees, is secondary to semantics.

Anyway, here’s a particularly bemusing bit of trivia you can use to taunt/jibe/provoke your VB.NET/VB programmer friends.

Did you know that VB.NET’s default boolean operators And and Or do not take advantage of short-circuit evaluation? Take for example this snippet of conditional code below:

Now, you’d expect your run-of-the-mill compiler/interpreter to optimize by short-circuiting the 2nd boolean expression, since the 1st expression is already true (and so whether the 2nd boolean expression is true or false doesn’t really matter). For some reason, probably one steeped in history, VB.NET, or rather the JIT compiler, doesn’t short-circuit. It happily goes ahead and evaluates the 2nd boolean expression.

This is logically ludicrous – short-circuit evaluation is how the logical human brain works when confronted with chained boolean conditionals in real life. If the university says I can only get a First Class Honours degree if my CAP is greater than 4.5 AND get a minimum of A- for my thesis, I won’t really fret about not getting an A- for my thesis (and subsequently missing out on a yummy First Class Honours) when my CAP can never hit 4.5.

Now to be fair, there is an alternative OrElse operator which does perform short-circuit evaluation. It is not fair though to expect such an unorthodox operator to be something your common on-the-street (read: non-VB) programmer will expect to exist (unless he reads a VB.NET book and bothers to flip to the introductory chapters).

Come to think of it, it could be an intended design issue. Evaluating the 2nd boolean expression could be always warranted when it produces a side effect. That must be the reason why Microsoft introduced the OrElse and AndAlso operators and leaving the standard And and Or operators as non-short-circuiting to prevent confusing converting VB programmers.

So this then is actually an issue with VB. Hence, we can conclude that they deserve to be taunted/jibed/provoked. Spare the VB.NET programmers. For now.

• ai-junkie is a great website with a GA tutorial written “in plain English”.
• Evolutionary Computation lecture notes by Thorsten Schnier.
• More Evolutionary Computation lecture notes by Riccardo Poli, including a section on Classifier Systems.
• Genetic and Evolutionary Algorithms: Principles, Methods and Algorithms is an introduction to Evolutionary and Genetic Algorithms.
• A GA tutorial with example applets.
• The MAGDON Documentation has a brief introduction to GA, including descriptions of the Pittsburg approach and the Michigan approach.
• GA-Search – the Genetic Algorithms search engine, is a search engine dedicated to only GA-related sites.
• The American Association for Artificial Intelligence “is a nonprofit scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines.”
• The Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research is an electronic journal on AI.
• EvoWeb, the website of Evonet (European Network of Excellence in Evolutionary Computing), is a portal site for Evolutionary Computing.
• The International Society of Artificial Life publishes the Artificial Life journal.

• Genetic Algorithms Warehouse is an excellent resource with collections of links to tutorials, papers, recommended books, software libraries, and essays. Part of AI Depot.
• The Genetic Programming Notebook is a huge collection of links related to GA(Genetic Algorithms) and GP(Genetic Programming). There is also a GP tutorial. *
• Genetic Algorithm Classifiers is a final year project by Gabriel Kevorkian and Marko Milek

that is “study of genetic algorithms and, in particular, of their application in event classification and feature selection”. Their classification algorithm is implemented as a Java applet.

• Darrell Whitley had written a GA tutorial circa 1993. *
• Alexander Schatten also has a GA tutorial.
• PMSI has short GA tutorial. *
• Frederic Dreier has a tutorial about Genetic Algorithms on his website.
• Wendy Williams has some GA tutorial slides. *
• Michael Skinner has a Genetic Algorithms Overview. *
• Eric Martel has an article on Solving Travelling Salesman Problems Using Genetic Algorithms. *
• Alex Champandard writes on Genetic Algorithm Class Design. *
• The GA Playground is a general GA toolkit implemented in Java.
• Collection of Evolutionary Computation links.
• Introduction to Genetic Algorithms slides.
• genetic-programming.org is a “source of information about the field of genetic programming”.

Note to self: * indicates printed in hard copy

Java or .NET — What to Learn??
Head-to-Head: PHP vs. ASP.NET

Also, Harry Fuecks from phpPatterns() has recently written an article on XUL entitled Introducing XUL – The ‘Net’s Biggest Secret: Part 1 for SitePoint. Nice introductory article, but he does seem to make it (XUL programming) more difficult than it actually is by involving the PHP bit.