DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by daveschinkel

Baking requirements - Developing with raw ingredients is waste

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 07:29:46 GMT

have learned an important lesson from my combined experiences at all the places I've worked. That is: raw requirements cause waste. A term I've used (and have heard others use) is that requirements are either "baked" or "not baked". For a development team to plan an iteration, or a scope of delivery, the requirements need to be baked. If we pull the development team into a planning session, we ensure the requirements are fully baked before the meeting. Developers will be asking specific questions about the details of the requirements, and answers need to be readily available.

Developer Poetry Series: SharePoint How Sad Are We

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:36:48 GMT

SharePoint SharePoint how sad are we Your marketing promise me everything under the sun & as far as my eyes can see A hidden cost, a nasty toss, a huge 5 year loss Go hire a whole team, 3rd party pugs-ins, SharePoint consultants with nothing BUT cost

Developer Poetry Series: SharePoint How Sad Are We

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:22:11 GMT

SharePoint SharePoint how sad are we Your marketing promise me everything under the sun as far as my eyes can see A hidden cost, a nasty toss, a huge 5 year loss Go hire a whole team, 3rd party pugs-ings, which ends up to very high cost

Programming Asp.Net MVC by O'Reilly

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:16:07 GMT

Well, it is about time we (Tim, Chris and myself) actually made this announcement. We will be doing a MVC book with O'Reilly titled 'Programming MVC'. We are super excited and super pumped to get this out the door. All three of us are huge fans of the MVC framework and know that this is framework going to be smashing success.

Using TDD to create a new Feature for DimeCasts.net

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:31:03 GMT

A pairing session where Kyle and Derik use TDD to create a new Feature for DimeCasts.net

Learning how to turn an Anonymous object into a Dictionary

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:31:17 GMT

Learning how to turn an Anonymous object into a Dictionary via a short screencast

Update on Silverlight 2 - and a glimpse of Silverlight 3

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:16:21 GMT

ScottGu unveils the plans for Silverlight 3, shipping next year

Questions every Candidate should ask a potential new employer

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:07:23 GMT

Over the years I have conducted my fair share of interviews with potential new employees for the different companies I have worked for. In fact my company is currently looking for a few good developers now. What has always confused me is the lack of questions asked by the potential candidate. Sure they ask the standard stuff like vacation, benefits (pay, 401k, insurance), work/life balance, company history. However, most fail to even mention anything about the team, the environment or the companies philosophy towards software development. If you ask me, knowing how the team is structured/ran is more important in some respects then 'standard questions'.

Testing is hard but debugging just sucks A$$

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:31:02 GMT

"At the users group I asked the question to the group 'who creates automated tests as part of their daily development cycle?'. After I asked this question I followed it up with, and if you don't WHY, WHY, WHY, WHY...... Below are some of the answers I received (btw, not the first time I have heard these reasons)."

Introduction to the AutoMocking Conatiner in StructureMap

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:16:06 GMT

A short screencast introduction on how to use the AutoMocking Conatiner in StructureMap

Creating an ItemDataBound Event Delegate for a Nested Repeater

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:56:17 GMT

Today I needed to create a nested grid using repeaters. Pretty common but always a pain in the ass with all Microsoft controls. I needed to nest my repeaters just like you'd nest any other control like the DataGrid or GridView. The issue came up for me when I wanted to create a delegate for my nested repeater (repeater inside my parent). Since a nested control within a control (the nested repeater in this case) is not available at the page level, Intellisense or the compiler will not know that it exists. Because it's nested inside a parent, it becomes pat of that parent's collection of objects.

KaizenConf - Open Communication, Resistance to Change, Going with the

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:46:28 GMT

Another session that I sat in on today was "Open communication, Resistance to change, Going with the status quo with reference to the various roles on the team " If I could wrap up the entire session in a phrase it would be the following: When your team feels empowerment and has passion they will be successful Below are my notes, sorry they are not in a long descriptive form, but they are notes :)

Partial Mocks with the StructureMap AutoMocker

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:45:05 GMT

If you have not checked out the new AutoMocking Container that is part of StructureMap 2.5 I would highly suggest you do, it rocks. I thought I would show how simple it is to create a PartialMock on the Class under Test (CUT) when using the RhinoAutoMocker. Our Class we want to mock

Removing words like Convince, Convert and Persuade from our vocabulary

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:42:51 GMT

One of the common themes of this years KaizenConf was how to move a towards being a lean organization. During most of the sessions and conversations that I was part I cannot tell you how often I heard words like Convince, Convert and Persuade said.

The simplicity that is the Asp.Net MVC

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 11:56:19 GMT

Today I was browsing my list of RSS feeds and I stumbled upon a posting that showed some Asp.Net code. This code was nothing out of the ordinary, it was simply someone building a table with a repeater. . .

Setting up Castle Windsor for Auto Registration

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:46:04 GMT

A short screencast on how to set up Castle Windsor for Auto Registration by using convention based registration.

Initial Server 2008 Pains - Infamous UAC

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 03:50:13 GMT

Remember to do one of two things if using Server 2008 for the first ti

Leveraging Cecil to inject code into your Assemblies

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:16:07 GMT

A short screencast on how to leverage Cecil to inject code into your Assemblies

Silverlight Toolkit Released on CodePlex!

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:46:07 GMT

The Silverlight Toolkit is a collection of Silverlight controls, components and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle. It adds new functionality quickly for designers and developers, and provides the community an efficient way to help shape product development by contributing ideas and bug reports. This first release includes full source code, unit tests, samples and documentation for 12 new controls covering charting, styling, layout, and user input.

Leveraging the power of ActionName and AcceptVerbs in Asp.Net MVC

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:16:04 GMT

A short screencast on how to leverage the power of ActionName and AcceptVerbs in Asp.Net MVC

Getting Your AT&T 2Wire 2701-b to Talk to SlingBox

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 07:45:38 GMT

I've seen a lot of threads out there on 2Wire and Slingbox internet connection pains and I agree it's a royal pain in the ass. Connecting my Slingbox to my old Linksys router that I had just gotten rid of was a piece of cake. This post is not code related but this experience was such a pain, I decided to hopefully help others by posting my experience here and really tell you how to set this up with full details which I did not find out on the net or at Slingbox.com.

Essential Visual Studio Tips & Tricks that Every Developer Should Know

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:01:02 GMT

In this blog entry, Stephen Walther lists the essential tips and tricks that every developer who uses Visual Studio 2008 should know. The list is kept brief. The list focuses on only those tips and tricks that can be used on a daily basis. Almost all of these tips and tricks are just as useful regardless of whether you are building an ASP.NET Web Forms or ASP.NET MVC application.

Visual Studio/Intellisense Doesn't Recognize Web Controls & Code

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:50:16 GMT

Intermittently at times, Visual Studio for some odd reason, refuses to recognize web controls or C# syntax during a build/compile that you know is fine. You've included all the right usings, assembly or project references, and the syntax you know worked before, but for some reason it just decides to piss you off when you try to compile by stating it is not familiar with the syntax or control. There are a slew of things one can try in order to sort of kick Visual Studio in the pants when you try to build, and it still can't seem to notice those web controls even when they are in the designer file and there are no conflicts or syntax issues. Today I has such an issue again. When you exhaust all the tricks of the trade, the next best thing to do is ultimately just recreate the file itself and paste back in your code.

Why Sharepoint development sucks!

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:00:23 GMT

In this blog post on the zorilla.dk blog, Dan is sharing his frustrations with the Sharepoint platform. His main critique points is an inconsistent and developer unfriendly API, combined with an over complex platform in general. Please have a read, and see if you agree.

Form Validation Simplified w/ Asp.Net MVC

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:16:11 GMT

A short screencast on how to simplify form validation w/ Asp.Net MVC