DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by Matt_TCF

Unit Testing in .NET - Asserting That Your Code Rocks

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:54:01 GMT

A thorough rundown of the various assertions that NUnit provides, complete with code examples of how to use them.

Essential Development Team Tools

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:17:58 GMT

If you work as part of a team, here are a few things that will help reduce headaches, improve productivity, and generally just make the act of developing software more streamlined and enjoyable.

Calculating aggregates with Microsoft Parallel Extensions for .NET

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:48:58 GMT

The parallel extensions for .NET make it easy to parallelize your code. Even calculating aggregate values can be easily parallelized.

Using Java APIs in .NET

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:33:20 GMT

Did you know that you can easily convert many Java APIs to native .NET assemblies? Well, you can!

Addressing Two ActiveRecord Annoyances

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:13:40 GMT

ActiveRecord can greatly simplify the headache that is data access code, but it isn't without it's pain points. This post examines two problems you may run into.

Walking a tree with yield return and recursion

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:35:12 GMT

Iterating through the items in a tree can be a chore, but thanks to the yield return statement, it is quite easy to build an IEnumerator for a tree-type data structure in .NET 2.0+.

Creating a reusable GridTreeView with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery, take two

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:23:19 GMT

An HtmlHelper extension method that renders a collapsible gridview (which I now call a GridTreeView) using the MVCContrib Grid HtmlHelper extension and the jQuery ActsAsTreeTable plug-in.

Creating a reusable grid tree view with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:46:52 GMT

My attempt to create a reusable GridView+TreeView control for ASP.NET MVC and jQuery.

Web.config magic: configSource and file attributes

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:06:32 GMT

If you are stuck supporting multiple versions of your application, here's some handy information to help you encapsulate the differences and simplify updates.

Peer Reviews

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:36:43 GMT

Peer reviews seem to be a source of seething hatred for many developers. I can sort of understand why (no one likes rocks being pitched at something they created), but they can actually be very beneficial if done correctly. This post will lay out the case for doing peer reviews as well as an approach to performing reviews that I happen to like.

How to run a software development company (INTO THE GROUND) - Part 4

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:26:21 GMT

Introducing Dragon Management, the best way to insure that a software project will succeed and make you rich. Trogdor Approved!

The importance of testing

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:43:00 GMT

Testing is important. If you make a code change, be VERY sure you test it. If you absolutely positively can't write a unit test for it, be sure you do very, very thorough manual testing. Don't just fire-and-commit and assume it all works, because it probably doesn't. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't prove that it works, it doesn't work, end of story.

How to run a software development company (INTO THE GROUND) Part 3

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 20:34:08 GMT

The third part in the series about how you, too, can successfully captain your software development ship and crash it into an iceberg, killing everyone on board!

Using LINQ to elegantly initialize arrays

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:46:47 GMT

A quick snippet for initializing arrays of objects in a single line of code, no for loops!

Easy testing via ActiveRecord and SQLite

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:51:38 GMT

I have created a base test fixture and a simple utility class that keeps my real NUnit test fixtures very simple and free of ActiveRecord initialize and cleanup code, and it uses an in-memory database so there's no dependency on an external database.

Using LINQ with ActiveRecord

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:44:18 GMT

I'm a huge fan of ActiveRecord (and of all things Castle), but I like the fact that LINQ makes it very easy to do ad-hoc queries with a compile-time safety net. If you follow the steps below, you can build your own LINQ provider for ActiveRecord and get the syntactical sugar of language-integrated query with the simplicity of ActiveRecord.

How to run a software development company (INTO THE GROUND)

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 18:31:02 GMT

The series will cover the things you *shouldn't* do if you hold some sort of managerial stake in a software project. Sadly these tales will be from my own personal experience working for companies that have drifted into disarray. These examples will be embellished somewhat to drive the points home, but by and large, everything you will read in these posts will be true.

Essential Development "Tools"

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:59:56 GMT

While new workstations are great, setting them up and getting them to feel "right" is a challenge. I've found that to perform at my peak, I need some essential tools, utilities, and other misc. items. Some of these are not free, but I've found their cost to be way, way more than justified by how much effort they save me.

Unit testing complex ASP.NET MVC controllers with Moq

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:01:00 GMT

One of the advantages of the new ASP.NET MVC framework is improved testability. Testing simple controllers is as simple as testing any other class. Once you start accessing HttpContext-related things though (such as the request, response, etc), things become much more tricky.