DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by alunharford

Why I Abandoned Silverlight for ASP.NET MVC

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:42:22 GMT

Why? Because even though Silverlight has a super-cool UI model, gives you mini .NET framework, and let's you program in C#, it still can't give me what I really want: my domain objects. So now I'm using ASP.NET MVC, and I'm loving it. I can build a clean, testable UI layer that leverages the full power of my domain model. Add in some jQuery for AJAX, and I can leverage the client to get partial page updates while still leveraging the server to generate the UI. From my perspective, a beautiful compromise.

Coddling is considered harmful

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:30:41 GMT

Ayende makes a point about the skill levels required to produce software

Not doing TDD is worst than doing it wrong in the beggining.

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:16:02 GMT

Check this out, and make a learn from it.

Vexing exceptions

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:29:48 GMT

A typology of exceptions (fatal, boneheaded, vexing and exogenous), and how you should handle them.

Learning PRISM - Unity Redux

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:48:33 GMT

A article highlighting where unity is commonly used in PRISM!

Comparing .NET DI (IoC) Frameworks, Part 2

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:46:03 GMT

A second part of popular IoC frameworks comparison.

7 Agile Leadership Lessons for the Suits

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 07:30:07 GMT

Most of the 400 presentations at the Agile 2008 conference, held last month in Toronto, were geared for developers and testers. But the event held more than a few revelations and "Aha!" moments for IT managers, particularly revolving around team workflow, business value, company culture and the new role of the manager. Here are the key messages communicated by and to the Agile community.

Documenting Coding Standards - Less is More

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:31:11 GMT

A colleague and I were recently invited to provide feedback on a client's coding standards and were sent a 60+ page document to review. In preparation for the meeting I diligently started to go through each section providing comments and suggestions as I went. But after about page 30 my concentration began to wane and my comments grew more and more sparse. The moral of this story... If someone that's being paid to review your coding standards is struggling to get through them then you can bet your bottom dollar your development team won't be reading them either. This post reflects on the things to consider when documenting your company's standards.

ASP.NET Themes Don't Like IE8's X-UA-Compatible header; Neither Do I

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:31:02 GMT

"I ran into an interesting issue a few months ago with IE8 support on sites which use ASP.NET Themes. I'll talk about the issue and how to fix it. More important, though, I'll talk about how this small example fits into the whole IE8 / X-UA-Compatible thing, and why I think the way that turned out was bad for everyone."

Hammett is joining the MEF team at Microsoft

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:01:03 GMT

Hamilton Verissimo, aka Hammett is joining MS as PM inside the MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) team, but will keep on working on Castle.

Meet the C# 4.0 team

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:16:05 GMT

... and some dude from the VB team. Anders and the guys in room 2543, building 41 (where C# was born) talk about the new features that will be in the next version of C#. I so wanted to blogspam this one. Enjoy your direct link.

IDictionary's missing methods

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:14:19 GMT

A set of extension methods to make any IDictionary-implementing collections easier to work with: TryGetValue, ContainsKey, and RemoveAll.

Get Vista to Boot faster

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:16:02 GMT

Great trick to use all your processors

CheckForNull() extension method

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:35:26 GMT

An [evil] extension method to easily check if an an argument is null (and to throw a meaningful exception if it is).

A Great Visual Studio Add-on You Must Have

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:01:03 GMT

Recently I found out this great add-on for Visual Studio 2008 called PowerCommands. PowerCommands Extends the functionality of Visual Studio 2008 by adding some features which we all want built into Visual Studio. PowerCommands provides the following...

Video: Intro to Spec# - Future of development

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:53:35 GMT

The future of development. True design by contract. Even less time in the debugger. I'm excited!

Pash - cross platform PowerShell

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:16:15 GMT

Pash is a portable PowerShell implementation written using pure .Net 2.0. It compiles on VS 2008 as well as on Mono. Provide a rich shell environment for other OSes, as well as a hostable scripting engine for rich applications. The user experience should be seamless for people who are used to PowerShell on Windows.

The importance of System. Environment.NewLine

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:46:03 GMT

When using \r\n can screw you!

Mike Snow's Silverlight Blog

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:01:02 GMT

Blog containing a tutorial series on developing a game using Silverlight. Hot!

Using aliases for better code readability

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:46:02 GMT

Here's a quick way to reduce overall code bloat while making your code even more readable.

The changing definition of "rock star"

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:04:47 GMT

"Rock star," at least in IT and programming circles, used to mean "master of this domain." But is it coming to mean, "We want a miracle worker, because we have no idea what we're doing?

A case where Resharper will break your code with a "quick fix"

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:45:01 GMT

Be careful: a case where Resharper will break your code with a "quick fix"

Resharper NHibernate Plugin

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:08:38 GMT

A plugin for resharper which assists you in writing NHibernate mapping files.

PowerShellTunnel - script your app from PowerShell at runtime

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:40:58 GMT

Use an ordinary PowerShell console to access your application's objects (explicitly hosted in a PowerShell runspace) at runtime, including tab expansion and piping objects into and out of your application. (This is a C#/PowerShell MSDN Code Gallery project with source.)

The One Single Tip to Comment Your Code

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:01:02 GMT

You've heard about 13 tips to comment your code, but what about the One Single Tip?