DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by hexy

The "Sim City" effect

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:30:00 GMT

What happens when you turn your back on a software development project.

LINQ to SQL is NOT dead!

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:00:03 GMT

Ever since Microsoft announced that the Entity Framework was their ORM of choice, people everywhere have been saying, "LINQ to SQL is dead!" A lot of people feel like they're not allowed to use LINQ to SQL anymore and that they have to use Entity Framework instead. In fact, LINQ to SQL is not only alive and well, Microsoft has even announced LINQ to SQL improvements in .NET 4.0, including finally adding using ITable<T> for tables instead of Table<T>, which makes it much easier to test. Combine that with this open source tool that will create an IDataContext interface for you and you're on your way to testable LINQ to SQL. So no, LINQ to SQL is not dead!!

Should We Return Null From Our Methods?

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:15:06 GMT

I read a interesting article recently about the potential perils of Null Check Hell. The author's suggestion? Stop allowing any of your methods to return nulls, ever . No nulls returned, no null checks necessary. Problem solved, right?

Automatically minify and combine JavaScript in Visual Studio

Thu, 21 May 2009 05:06:38 GMT

As you begin developing more complex client-side functionality, managing the size and shape of your JavaScript includes becomes a key concern. It's all too easy to accidentally end up with hundreds of kilobytes of JavaScript spread across many separate HTTP requests, significantly slowing down your initial page loads. I hope you'll find that this technique is a good compromise between the tedium of using manual minification tools and the overwrought complexity of setting up some of the more "enterprisey" automation solutions.

No bandwidth MSDN: Reflector

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 01:01:17 GMT

How you can use Reflector to browse the insides of the .NET framework classes and why choosing Reflector over MSDN will make you a better developer.

ELMAH: Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET (and MVC too!)

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:01:11 GMT

ELMAH has been one of the most useful tools for ASP.NET developers to log errors on their web applications. Now Scott has a nice talk on how to use it even in your ASP.NET MVC applications. Cool!

A new breed of magic strings in ASP.NET MVC

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:01:02 GMT

One of the common patterns in Ruby on Rails is the use of hashes in place of large parameter lists. Instead of hashes, which don't exist in C#, ASP.NET MVC uses anonymous types for quite a few HTML generators on the view side. This is a trick used by the MVC team to simulate hashes. Since the dictionary initializer syntax is quite verbose, with lots of angly-bracket cruft, anonymous types provide a similar effect to hashes. However, don't let the magic fool you. Anonymous types used to create dictionaries are still dictionaries.

The Perfect Storm Botnet

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:16:02 GMT

Rob Conery talks about the power of a bot net and why developers should be aware of XSS attacks and other nasties should an app be allowing users to post into the system.

Oxite: OpenSource CMS from Microsoft Built on ASP.NET MVC

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:16:18 GMT

Simone Chiaretta writes about the recent announcement by Microsoft Evangelist, Jeff Sandquist, about Oxite which is an open source CMS built by Microsoft as a showcase and sample for ASP.NET MVC.

How To Guarantee That Your Software Will Suck

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:31:10 GMT

Do you bad software and unhappy developers? Well, it isn't that hard...

Implementing a red black tree in C#

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:01:08 GMT

This article talks about how to implement a red-black tree in C#. The implementation is generic, and it also implements IEnumerable<T>.

Tip about jQuery $.extend

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:46:18 GMT

The story, about how to use $.extend jQuery method, to derive classes

Boy Scout Check-ins

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 06:16:02 GMT

How to leave your code campground cleaner than you found it.

Neptune (personal SMTP testing server)

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:46:13 GMT

Neptune is a SMTP Development Server targeted for use in automated testing. It's a SMTP server that does not relay the message and allows you to query for messages and their content.

3 themes adapted for Blogengine.NET

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:46:03 GMT

3 wp themes: Notepad Chaos, FreshCitrus and Scruffy adapted for Blogengine.NET 1.4.5... more to come ;-)

Client Templating with jQuery

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:16:05 GMT

Client templating in Javascript can be a great tool to reduce the amount of code you have to write to create markup content on the client. There are a number of different ways that templating can be accomplished from a purely manual approach to a full templating engine. In this entry I'll look at several different approaches.

Pluggable ASP.NET CacheManager

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:01:04 GMT

A CacheManager class that you can easily write your own providers (memcached, Velocity, etc.) for. Includes providers for request-length caching and ASP.NET's built-in Cache object.

Late Binding in C# using Dynamic Compilation

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:16:02 GMT

Steve goes through his approach to using reflection, making the code easier to read, making it easier to maintain, discusses the "middle-class multiple inheritance", and provides a zipped project of the AdapterCompiler.

Storing Contextual Data in Web and non-Web applications - Joel Varty

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:24:09 GMT

Article on storing data in HttpContext.Current.Items for web verses a static variable for non web use. Joel makes use of the [System.Threading.ThreadStaticAttribute] to provide thread safety for multi-threaded applications.

Share anonymous types between functions

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:06:23 GMT

The first step is to create a seemingly innocent method: public static T CastByExample<T>(this object o, T example) { return (T) o; } Seems innocent enough right?

Trick-hot command pattern in C#

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:32:48 GMT

An lightweight, idiomatic implementation of the command pattern in C#. Especially well suited for 'undo'.

Custom LINQ to SQL code generation templates

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:16:07 GMT

Free templates to allow full customization of the DBML to C#/VB.NET code generation phase of LINQ to SQL without additional tool dependencies!

StackOverflow

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:16:04 GMT

StackOverflow - - is in public beta.

Algorithm to Detect Blank Images

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:50:41 GMT

Nice piece of code to help with detecting blank images.

Tips & Tricks: Use DebuggerDisplayAttribute for easier debugging

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:01:02 GMT

When debugging, it's common to hover over an object to get a quick view of what its properties are. This is where DebuggerDisplayAttribute comes in. The format string looks similar to normal .NET format strings in that the values to replace are between curly braces, but instead of being told what to substitute the debugger treats these values as expressions and attempts to evaluate them using the current context.