DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by SuperJason

Delayed execution vs ToList() in LINQ Database Queries

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:00:02 GMT

Should you use ToList() in your repository methods, or should you pass the iterator back to the UI to delay the execution of the query? Read on to find out why it's a bad idea to delay execution in this case.

Common Pitfalls when working with DateTime's - DST, Timezones, & More

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:08:54 GMT

Working with DateTime object's and handling multiple time zones, time changes (DST), recurring events, and calendar events.

Practical .NET Unit Testing - Free paper released

Fri, 01 May 2009 07:46:02 GMT

A free unit testing paper that covers why you should write unit tests, the mechanics of unit testing, common testing strategies, designing for testability, and advanced testing techniques. It's an ongoing project, but it's complete enough to hopefully start getting early feedback and suggestions!

ASP.Net - Never again fear publishing your website with debug=true

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:31:02 GMT

What makes the deployment element special is that it is a machine level configuration element. When its retail attribute is set to true, it will disable the <compilation debug="true"> for ALL ASP.Net applications running on that machine. In addition, it turns of detailed errors messages being sent to remote machines and disables the ability to trace output.

Should We Solve Institutional Problems In Our Code?

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:46:02 GMT

Is it okay for us to solve deficiencies in our development teams with code?

ASP.NET MVC Free eBooks

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:16:11 GMT

Here's a list of all sample chapters of ASP.NET MVC books available to the community.

C# Regions are not Useful? Give me a Break

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:46:02 GMT

I often see arguments about use of regions in C# code. And this is one of the most annoying things I see on the Internet in my opinion when it pertains to code structure. Whoever says regions are not to be used, I'd love to see your code and know what standards you have established as a team with your code base. I bet you it's a mess and the reason you don't like regions is because the developers on your team has abused use of them and that there is no logical pattern or team standard established.

Using AutoMapper to map view models in ASP.NET MVC

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:46:03 GMT

Mapping code between Domain Models and Data Transfer Objects/Presentation Models is often boring and tedious to write, so when I first read about AutoMapper it triggered my interest. This post takes a first look at AutoMapper, and show how it can be used to map a complex domain model to a view model in an ASP.NET MVC application.

"int" inherits from object? An investigation into how & why.

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:16:29 GMT

Value types like Int32 ultimately derive from "object". If that's the case, why do they need to be boxed? Whey do they not have the same performance overhead? This post investigates these questions and more.

Unit Testing a LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework Query

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:39:21 GMT

An easy to use strategy for unit testing simple database calls that utilize LINQ (such as LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework).

Introduction to JOINs - A simplest Visual Explanation of Join

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:16:02 GMT

Introduction to JOINs - A simplest Visual Explanation of Join This post is for every developer who just want to make sure that their basics of Join is perfect. Bookmark this for future use or for teaching your friends of Jr. about Joins. Blog about this post if you like it.

ReSharper 4.5 gone gold

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:16:11 GMT

JetBrains has released version 4.5 of their multi purpose productivity plugin for Visual Studio, ReSharper. This updates contains some pretty cool features. For example, solution wide analysis now checks for members that can be made internal. Also, JetBrains promises to have improved performance and memory use. All in all certainly an update that is worth installing, especially because updating from licenses for version 4.0 and above is free

Maintaining Consistent Line Lengths

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:20:41 GMT

A quick Visual Studio tip on maintaining a consistent code line length.

File Uploads in ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTM

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:16:10 GMT

I had not messed around with file uploads in ASP.NET MVC for a while and so when I fired up ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTM I was pleasantly surprised to find out how easy they had made it!

Using the Navigation Framework in Silverlight 3

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:31:04 GMT

In Silverlight 2, one of the challenges faced by developers was navigation between pages. It was not easy to navigate from one Xaml page to the other. In Silverlight 3, Microsoft has introduced the Navigation Framework. In this article, we will explore Step by Step the Navigation Framework in Silverlight 3 and build an application on it.

FizzBin - The Technical Support Secret Handshake

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:46:04 GMT

I hate that 5 minute to 5 hour long "ramp up" when I'm on the phone with any kind of technical support as they realize that we both know what we're doing. Or at least, one of us does.

Slick inline trace logging in ASP.NET using log4net

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:04:20 GMT

Easily configure log4net and ASP.NET to display inline tracing information on your pages for debugging and performance monitoring.

A New Look for Visual Studio 2010!

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:46:02 GMT

At the PDC and TechEd EMEA last year we described our new editor support built on the WPF technology in .NET Framework 4.0. Today I'm happy to reveal the new UI for Visual Studio, also built on WPF:

Joining "IE6: Do NOT want!" campaign

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:01:16 GMT

IE6 users are still too many... it started with a tweet from a Norwegian web developer, and spread like fire across Europe. Joining the campaign is easy: just add a few lines of code to your site or blog. In this post is how to do it and a little more of background on how to do it.

Understand closures with JavaScript

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:46:04 GMT

Closures are a programming concept that can be a bit intimidating but it shouldn't be this way. Hopefully this short article can clarify how that works and how to avoid problems when using it.

Azure - Performance, IoC, and Instances

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:01:04 GMT

My experience so far working with Azure. Some performance testing, IoC container incompatibilities, and frustration with instances.

jQuery Ajax Tooltip

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:01:04 GMT

Example of using jQuery 1.3 and the new live() method for creating an ajax tooltip.

Infinite Lists With C# Yield

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:01:07 GMT

What we are about to talk about here may seem like a purely academic exercise, but hopefully I will convince you that this isn't exactly the case. There are several situations in real-world applications where infinite lists can appears if only we were to think about them in the right way.

Using C# "Yield" for Readability and Performance

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:46:30 GMT

I must have read about "yield" a dozen times. Only recently have I began to understand what it does, and the real power that comes along with it. I'm going to show you some examples of where it can make your code more readable, and potentially more efficient.

Extension Methods

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:01:03 GMT

The single responsibility principle (SRP) is a strategy for structuring our code to make it more maintainable and testable. In this post, I'm going to discuss how we can use extension methods to make our code easier to read and satisfy the idea behind SRP.