The Tomes Of Experience

This evening I wanted to wish someone a happy birthday. In my infinate geekdom, I figured writing a tiny app to do it would be a nice way to waste 20 mins this evening. I started off writing in Notepad (because this really isn’t worth opening Visual Studio for), and compiled using CSC jsut to make sure it worked in the end (oops, forgot a few semi-colons…)

using System;

public class BirthdayWisher
{
    public BirthdayWisher(string personName, DateTime birthDate)
    {
      this.PersonName = personName;
      this.BirthDate = birthDate;
    }
    public readonly DateTime BirthDate;
    public readonly string PersonName;

    const string BirthdayMessage =
        "\r\nDear {0}! Wishing you a happy birthday for {1}. Congratulations on being {2} years old!";

    public void WishBirthday()
    {
      Console.WriteLine(String.Format(BirthdayMessage, PersonName, BirthDate.ToString("MMMM dd"), DateTime.Today.Year - BirthDate.Year));
    }
}

public class NaomiBirthday
{
  [STAThread]
  public static void Main(string[] args)
  {
    BirthdayWisher naomi = new BirthdayWisher("Naomi", new DateTime(1983, 11, 21));
    naomi.WishBirthday();

    Console.WriteLine("\r\nPress any key to end.");
    Console.ReadKey();
  }
}

So i sent her an IM message with that code and the following instructions to run this:
1. Copy the text above and save it to your desktop as a file called “birthday.cs”
2. Click “Start –> Run” and paste the following into the box and then press enter.

%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /c “%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\csc /out:”%USERPROFILE%\birthday.exe” “%USERPROFILE%\desktop\birthday.cs” > null&&”%USERPROFILE%\birthday.exe”&& del “%USERPROFILE%\birthday.exe” ”

Yes, i am a massive geek, but now I can re-use the same code for someone else’s birthday - yay for reuse! The harsest part about this whole thing wasn’t the code, but in the command-prompt syntax required to chain commands properly and get it to execute as i’d expect. Even after spending maybe 30 mins on it, I don’t think I got it right, and certianly it could be improved upon….I guess that leaves room for Happy Birthday v2

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Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm.
Filed under IT & Software.
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