Two disciplines of code, and why AI splits them

Some developers write code to build applications. Others write code to master the craft of the language itself. AI looks like a gift to the first group and a threat to the second, and neither side is wrong. A senior developer's take on why there's room for both, and why the people who understand how applications are built aren't going anywhere.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

I set a pace I couldn't keep

The blog launched in April with twenty-one posts in seven weeks and a promise of a weekly roundup. Then it went quiet for three and a half months. This is me owning that, saying why it happened, and saying how the blog runs from here: less often, on topics I actually want to write about.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

Thermalith: an open-source desktop label designer for NIIMBOT printers

I went quiet on the blog for a month because I was building this. Thermalith is an open-source desktop label designer and driver for NIIMBOT thermal printers: local-first, no account, no cloud, prints over USB or Bluetooth. Cross-platform on .NET 10 and Avalonia, with the reverse-engineered printer protocol pulled out into its own reusable GPL library.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

What's new this week: The calm before Build

Build 2026 is ten days out, and this edition is the calm before. VS 2026 18.6.1 patches a hard ARM64 debugger blocker, System.ClientModel 1.13.0 ships breaking credential changes, GitHub Copilot pushes a pre-cutover changelog flurry, and the Musk v. Altman verdict closes a story two editions in the making.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

VB on Avalonia: the VB6 form-and-handler model, cross-compiled to Linux from Visual Studio 2026

I spent a weekend proving the VB6 loop is alive outside Windows. Visual Basic on Avalonia 11, .NET 10, Visual Studio 2026, two update patterns side-by-side, and the same VB source publishing to a 47 MB self-contained win-x64 .exe and a 47 MB self-contained linux-x64 ELF. No first-party VB template for Avalonia, so the .vbproj is hand-rolled. Everything downstream behaves normally. Full source and two build guides on GitHub.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

Is MAUI another Silverlight? A retrospective on every Microsoft UI framework, and why developers are tired

Microsoft has shipped more UI frameworks than any other vendor in computing history. Win32, MFC, WinForms, WPF, Silverlight, Xamarin.Forms, UWP, WinUI, MAUI, Blazor Hybrid. Each launched with a deck full of reasons this one was the future. Some are still here. Most are not. The real question is not whether MAUI is the next Silverlight; it is why a working developer in 2026 should ever again bet on a Microsoft UI framework as a strategic choice.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

What's new this week: Avalonia, .NET, Visual Basic, and the Microsoft choices that hit developers

A weekly look at what shipped, what shifted, and what Microsoft decided this week in the corner of the ecosystem I actually work in: Avalonia for cross-platform UI, .NET 10 in production, Visual Basic still refusing to die, and whatever decision out of Redmond is going to land on a working developer's desk on Monday.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

Why learn modern system design if the old ways still work?

The old ways do still work. WinForms in VB.NET 10 on Visual Studio 2026 is a perfectly modern stack. Modern system design is not asking you to give up forms, events, or any of the tools that already serve you well. It is a small set of techniques you can add behind them, when a project starts to want them.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

Frugal again - rules for writing code that respects the machine

The hardware curve has flattened. The papering-over is ending. Here are the rules for writing code that respects the machine it actually runs on, with .NET specifics.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

I added an apple-touch-icon by reading my own access logs

Stood up GoAccess on the production logs this morning. Noticed iOS clients 404'ing on /apple-touch-icon.png within minutes. Resized the admin avatar with PowerShell and System.Drawing, dropped the result at wwwroot/apple-touch-icon.png, deployed. Thirty minutes from 'huh, that's a lot of 404s' to live. The story is the loop, not the icon.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

The end of free hardware

Dennard scaling broke twenty years ago. The transistor density curve still has runway. The bill nobody warned us about is the complexity tax, and it is coming due.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up

Starting a long-form history of Visual Basic on EvilGeniusLabs.ca. Chapter 1 covers the BASIC dynasty Microsoft had been running since 1975, the California developer Microsoft bought to put a face on it, and the launch pitch Bill Gates seeded in BYTE Magazine eighteen months before VB shipped. Six articles, focused on the parts of the story that don't get covered.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

What's new this week: Avalonia, .NET, Visual Basic, and the Microsoft choices that hit developers

A weekly look at what shipped, what shifted, and what Microsoft decided this week in the corner of the ecosystem I actually work in: Avalonia for cross-platform UI, .NET 10 in production, Visual Basic still refusing to die, and whatever decision out of Redmond is going to land on a working developer's desk on Monday.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

Good developers learn to program. Most courses teach a language.

A bootcamp can teach you the syntax of a language in six weeks. The part that takes a decade is everything else: where the seams go, where the data flows, which decisions you are stuck with for the life of the codebase. This is a senior developer's argument for what learners should actually be looking for, after thirty years of watching the difference.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

What did you love about VB6, and what frustrates you about modern .NET?

Two open questions for anyone who shipped real work on Visual Basic 6 and is now writing C# against modern .NET. What specifically did VB6 get right that you miss? And what do you find frustrating about the modern toolchain that VB6 didn't make you fight? I shipped about a hundred VB3-through-VB6 line-of-business systems between 1995 and 2010, and I'm trying to get to the root of what was actually good before too much of the institutional memory leaves the room.

evilgeniuslabs.ca

Visual Studio 2026 still ships the form designer Alan Cooper drew in 1987

Every UI framework Microsoft has shipped since WinForms (2002) was sold as its successor. WPF, Silverlight, UWP, MAUI, Blazor desktop. Twenty-four years on, WinForms is still there, on modern .NET, wi...

evilgeniuslabs.ca