Flavio de Sousa

This project was written for Windows CE in 1998. Asynchronous calls weren't available yet, so I had to use multithreading. To maximize efficiency, I've created four threads so that reading, writing, sending, and receiving wouldn't block each other:
• one to collect data and queue it for shipment,
• one for shipping,
• one to receive and queue for storage,
• one to store in the WinCE datastore.

Although complex and hard to debug, this approach has proven to be very efficient.

Some processing tasks are not meant to run immediately on a desktop application, nor are they critical. Yet, they could make the application unresponsive. For example, creating threads for them could lead to managing thread pools and hanging the application when trying to exit. Therefore, I devised this queue processor that runs as an internal service, owning a single thread when waiting for tasks.

Clients for this service could take advantage of the new C# closures by changing a code like this:
while (longtime) {
do something...
}

Into:
LongTasksQueueProcessor.Instance.Enqueue(
() =>
{
while (longtime) {
do something...
}
, "long task description");

Before the Internet, I stumbled upon this problem: I had to port an application from a DataGeneral minicomputer to a PC. The application used many special features of the TTY terminals, which could change most of the code. Instead, I decided to make a Video BIOS that would mimic the terminal. This approach took only one week and saved months of changing and retesting the application.