Announcing Our Technical Blog - A Windows / C# / COM Development Blog

We have launched the KomuraSoft LLC technical blog. On this blog, we will share insights gained on real Windows application development projects, along with technical information that is useful in day-to-day work.

Who This Blog Is For

We write for readers like these.

• Windows desktop application developers: you work with WPF, Windows Forms, or the Win32 API on the job, and you sometimes get stuck on a design choice or on isolating a defect
• People who have inherited existing assets: you are responsible for COM, ActiveX, VB6, VBA, and similar code that runs but is hard to touch
• In-house system owners: you are the one who decides whether to build in-house or outsource, and whether to keep, wrap, or replace what you already have

flowchart TB
    accTitle: Who this blog is for
    accDescr: A diagram showing that this blog is written for three kinds of readers - developers who work with WPF, Windows Forms, and the Win32 API on the job, people who have inherited existing assets such as COM and VB6, and in-house system owners who decide questions such as build in-house versus outsource.
    r1["Desktop application developers"] --> blog["This blog"]
    r2["People who inherited existing assets"] --> blog
    r3["In-house system owners"] --> blog
    r1 -.-> n1["Design choices and triage"]
    r2 -.-> n2["COM, VB6, VBA"]
    r3 -.-> n3["Keep, wrap, or replace"]

Figure 1: The intended readers are three groups - developers, people who have inherited existing assets, and in-house system owners.

In the diagram a solid line marks a relation that always holds and a dashed line marks a conditional one (the conditions are given per relation on the detail page). The full list of relations (4 in total, with evidence and certainty) and the definitions of the main concepts are collected on the knowledge map detail page (in Japanese). Data: JSON-LD / Turtle

What You Get from This Blog

• Case-based solutions: for problems we actually ran into, we write down how we isolated them and how we fixed them, in a form you can follow
• Practical decision tables: where the call between two options is hard to make, we lay out the conditions and the choices in a table
• Pointers to primary sources: we link to the official material an article rests on, such as Microsoft Learn and IPA, Japan’s Information-technology Promotion Agency

flowchart TB
    accTitle: What you get from this blog
    accDescr: A diagram showing that every article delivers three things - case-based solutions describing how a real problem was isolated and fixed, practical decision tables that lay out conditions and options, and pointers to primary sources that lead to official documentation.
    art["Articles on this blog"] --> g1["Case-based solutions"]
    art --> g2["Practical decision tables"]
    art --> g3["Pointers to primary sources"]
    g1 -.-> d1["Isolation and fix, in a form you can follow"]
    g2 -.-> d2["Conditions and options in a table"]
    g3 -.-> d3["Links to official documentation"]

Figure 2: What you get from an article comes down to three things - case-based solutions, practical decision tables, and pointers to primary sources.

Main Topics We Will Cover

• Windows application development: WPF, Windows Forms, Win32 API
• C# / .NET: language features, performance, design patterns
• COM / ActiveX: integration with and migration of existing systems
• Development tools: Visual Studio, Git, and other handy tools

If you want a single article to start with for each topic, these are the ones (all published after this post).

Everything we have published is reachable from the blog index.

Updates

We publish on an irregular schedule, but whenever we have insights or investigation results that are useful in the field, they go up.

There are three ways to follow updates.

• RSS / Atom feed: register /en/feed.xml with your feed reader
• X (Twitter): we announce new posts at @komurasoft
• GitHub: sample code for the articles lives in komurasoft-blog-samples

flowchart TB
    accTitle: How to follow updates
    accDescr: A diagram showing that the publication of a new article can be followed through three channels - subscribing to the RSS and Atom feed, new-post announcements on X, and the GitHub repository holding the sample code.
    pub["New article published"] --> f["RSS / Atom feed"]
    pub --> x["Announcements on X (Twitter)"]
    pub --> gh["Sample code on GitHub"]

Figure 3: Updates reach you through three channels - the feed, X, and GitHub.

About the Author

Go Komura (Representative, KomuraSoft LLC)

Specializes in Windows software development, technical consulting, and defect investigation. Particularly strong on projects that carry existing assets, and on investigating failures whose root cause is hard to see.

• GitHub
• X (Twitter)

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Go Komura

Representative of KomuraSoft LLC

Focused on Windows software development, technical consulting, and investigations into failures that are difficult to reproduce.