Grant Winney

I write when I've got something to share - a personal project, a solution to a difficult problem, or just an idea. We learn by doing and sharing. We've all got something to contribute.

Articles of Grant Winney

c#exception handling programming gotchas

Sep 17, 2020

Does rethrowing an exception in C# still reset the stack trace?

All programming languages have gotchas to trip you up. In C#, one of them is the subtle (but significant) difference between "throw" and "throw ex"....

reflection carousel programming

Sep 14, 2020

How do you know when you're a programmer?

How do you know when you've finally arrived, and are officially a programmer? Is it a set of skills, a certain amount of time? Can you ever really arrive, when it's a race of one with no finish line?...

legend of zelda retro html5 nodejs

Sep 09, 2020

Run Link Run (saving Zelda for 30+ years)

A few years ago, on the 30th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda, Scott Lininger and Mike Magee open sourced a 3D version of the original LoZ. The site was taken down, but the code's still available to run!...

pandemic remote work reflection

Sep 05, 2020

Neat Little Boxes

The last 6 months have seen a complete shift in how I work. My life was separated into a series of neat little boxes, I realize, but everything's blended now. Some of it's been great, but other parts, well.. it's a work in progress....

retro concepts

Sep 04, 2020

Whatever happened to the webring? And what was the point?

Once upon a time, search engines stunk, and web surfers couldn't find awful sites. So website owners joined hands in solidarity, and linked to one another's sites. And the webring was born....

privacy microsoft

Jun 23, 2020

Microsoft respects our privacy, shows it by invading our privacy

If you have new software and want to let people know while simultaneously respecting their privacy, there's a long list of things you might do. Abusing your position as their operating system provider isn't on it....

reflection pandemic

Jun 16, 2020

Surviving or Thriving?

There's surviving, and then there's thriving. As things reopen, I find myself a little hesitant to crawl out from under the rock and thrive again....

the little things

Jun 05, 2020

The Little Things #2

It's tough to believe we're in June already. Maybe part of the reason it doesn't feel like it's nearly summer is because our summer rituals haven't really started. There's still a lot to celebrate this week though....

Experience gets you far, but good tools and services keep you moving in the right direction. Here are some of my favorites:

DigitalOcean is a versatile, affordable cloud provider. You can serve up a blog (like this one!), deploy a wiki, try out ansible, or do something much bigger. They host the annual Hacktoberfest too.

Backblaze offers an affordable, unlimited, set-and-forget backup service. They saved me from the click of death a couple years ago, and I've been a grateful customer ever since.