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Reading registry key / subkey vb.net

I'm getting an error I'm very new to vb.net and designing an application with visual studio 2019.

My application is to Read the registry key open subkey to retrieve displayname and displayversion. I would like to add an array to read multiple key values under the key locations for both x86 and x64 and get the values and then determine if the program needs to be upgraded. I also want to import new list of keys and program criteria I was thinking to use xml to allow for this. Is there any good examples of this or is this possible?

2nd Part of my code I haven't written yet is to execute uninstall if the version doesn't match the required criteria

Regkey_app.PNG

Imports System
Imports Microsoft.Win32

Public Class Form1
    Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Dim Key86 As String
        Dim Key64 As String
        Dim rk1 As RegistryKey
        Dim rk2 As RegistryKey
        Dim sk As RegistryKey
        Dim skName As String
        Dim sublist As New ArrayList

        Key86 = "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{{26A24AE4-039D-4CA4-87B4-2F32180301F0}}"
        Key64 = "SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{26A24AE4-039D-4CA4-87B4-2F64180301F0}"


        rk1 = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(Key86, True)
        rk2 = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(Key64, True)


        For Each skName In rk1.GetSubKeyNames()
            sk = rk1.OpenSubKey(skName)
            sublist.Add(sk.GetValue("DisplayName"))
            sublist.Add(sk.GetValue("DisplayVersion"))
        Next skName
        For Each skName In rk2.GetSubKeyNames()
            sk = rk2.OpenSubKey(skName)
            sublist.Add(sk.GetValue("DisplayName"))
            sublist.Add(sk.GetValue("DisplayVersion"))
        Next skName

        ListBox1.Items.Add(rk1)
        ListBox2.Items.Add(rk2)
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Moving mouse cursor with keyboard

What I would like to do is to register a couple of shortcuts to move the mouse cursor. The cursor should jump from the one square area of the screen to the other. The question that comes to mind first is: which keys are not used (or at least not often) so they can be used for this purpose? Of course, the arrow keys stand out as good candidates.

Anybody out there who can enlighten me? Thanks

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Choosing Library To Build Rest API in Java

API is not a new concept in software engineering. In fact, SOAP was invented in 1998 which was very popular back then, it is still used today in large enterprise software. Representational State Transfer (REST) was proposed by Roy Fielding in 2000. Which became very popular due to its simplicity and in the last decade the adoption of RESTful API was tremendously seen in existing enterprise software as well as new software developed.

While building RESTful API in java,  we have many frameworks and libraries to choose from. In this article, we will quickly cover some of the questions that one needs to ask before building RESTful API in java.

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API Testing With Cucumber

An API represents a set of rules that enables services to communicate with each other. It is important to have a shared understanding of the API by the stakeholders. Behavior Driven Development (BDD) allows us to describe behaviors that are understandable to domain experts, testers, and developers through examples. A well-written example serves to represent a balanced view of competing concerns -

  • Shared understanding. An example can be shared among API stakeholders to promote communication and understanding.
  • Tests.  Implement the example as an automated test to check the functionality of the API.
  • Documentation. An example can be used by anyone to understand the system.

BDD is a very apt tool to test APIs. We will use Cucumber that supports BDD to test APIs developed in Java. One advantage of doing so is that the Java developer who implemented the API does not have to learn a new language to test it.

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Micronaut, Quarkus, and Spring Boot Help You Develop Native Java Apps

For decades, Java has been able to invoke native programs on an operating system. JNI (Java Native Interface) and JNA (Java Native API) are commonly used to invoke native programs (Java Native Access). In recent years, Java has gained the ability to run JVM apps natively. In other words, the JVM apps are binary executables with no dependency on the Java runtime.

Now Java apps start up in milliseconds, instead of seconds. seconds. This is a game-changer if you're scaling up to accommodate millions of requests, while saving money by adopting a serverless environment. For years, developers have chosen to use serverless environments with Node.js, Python, and Go. The ability to go serverless with Java (or Kotlin) brings the opportunity to an important developer community.

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Annotation-Free Spring

Some, if not most, of our judgments regarding technology stacks come either from third-party opinions or previous experiences. Yet, we seem to be adamant about them. For a long time (and sometimes even now), I've seen posts that detailed how Spring is bad because it uses XML for its configuration. Unfortunately, they blissfully ignore the fact that annotation-based configuration has been available for ages. Probably because of the same reason I recently read that Spring is bad... because of annotations. If you belong to this crowd, I've news for you: you can get rid of most annotations, and even more so if you're using Kotlin. In this post, I'd like to show you how to remove annotations for different features that Spring provides.

Annotation-Free Beans

The first place where we tend to set annotations is to register beans. Let's see how to move away from them. It involves several steps. We shall start from the following code:

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Replacing Docker Desktop With hyperkit + minikube

MacOS is a Unix but it isn't a Linux so, unfortunately, if/when we need to use Linux-y things like docker we need to install a VM just like in the Windows world. That's of course also true for docker. 

Like most people, I've been using Docker Desktop for a lot of years to get my fix for containers. It works pretty well, good even for almost everything. I don't remember exactly when Docker desktop added support for running Kubernetes. That looks good on paper and technically it works but not without a price... (at least on my Mac) it also comes with fans a-blazing and the soundtrack of a 747 taking off. Luckily, most of the time I have access to remote Kubernetes servers so I rarely used the option but whenever I did (re)try it, I quickly turned it back off. 

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Bash Cheat Sheet: Top 25 Commands and Creating Custom Commands

The command line is something every developer should learn and implement into their daily routine. It has become a Swiss Army knife of features behind deceptively simple commands, which allow you to gain greater control of your system, become more productive, and much more. For example, you can write scripts to automate daily, time-consuming tasks, and even quickly commit and push code to a Git repository with just a few simple commands.

In this post, we’ll look at the Bash Shell (Bourne Again SHell), which is a command-line interface (CLI) and is currently the most widely used shell. This is a light introduction to the most popular commands, when you’re most likely to use them, and how to extend them with options. Later on in this article, you’ll learn how to create your own custom commands (aliases), allowing you to create shortcuts for a single command or a group of commands.

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8 Common API Gateway Request Transformation Policies

API gateway request transformation policies are incredibly powerful. There are many situations when an API developer can take advantage of request transformations to adjust the shape and values of a request to cleanly fit their API.

Let’s say you’re deprecating a certain endpoint for your API, but you still need to support the old specification for a transition period. Request transformations let you accept requests according to the old specification, transform them to fit the new specification and then forward them.