DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by justin_etheredge

What is Unit Testing?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:45:02 GMT

good introductory article explaining what unit tests are (and are not) and why you should use them

Creating Custom Functions w/ NAnt

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:00:03 GMT

Taking a look at how to create a custom function for your NAnt script. After you have the basics of NAnt down you may quickly find out that there are features you need, but they are not part of the core library. The good news for you is that in very little effort or coding you can create your own custom assembly which will expose your newly created NAnt functions

Never worry about ASP.NET AJAX's "d" again

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:30:00 GMT

Since a lot of people are having trouble with it, I want to share one method you can use to completely isolate your code from the ".d" problem. In this post, I will show you how to detect the ".d" and how you can completely isolate your $.ajax success handler from it.

Learning the Decorator Pattern

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:15:00 GMT

Taking at how we can use the Decorator Pattern in our application. The decorator pattern is a structural pattern which allows you to attach new or additional actions to an object dynamically. Using the decorator pattern provides a very clean and flexible alternative to subclassing (via inheritance) your object and thus creating an unwanted inheritance tree

Ajax survey 2009: jQuery and MS Ajax are almost tied

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:45:00 GMT

Simone posts the results of the survey about ajax adoption among .NET developers. jQuery gained 58% since 2007 and now is almost tied to the MS Ajax stack (Control toolkit and ajax core)

Exploring Code Contracts: Taking a look at Pre/Post Conditions

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:15:00 GMT

Taking a look at the new Code Contracts library which is out of MS Research and will be part of .Net 4.0/Vs2010. Contracts allow for many different ways to perform language agnostic code validation and in this episode we are going to focus on how to setup pre and post condition validation.

Life After Loops

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:15:00 GMT

Eliminating cumbersome looping code using Linq

Return of the PagedList<T>

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:00:21 GMT

It has been nearly a year since I posted an updated version of the PagedList<T> functionality originally created by Scott Guthrie and posted by Rob Conery. Since then I have used the class in a number of projects and find it indispensable. A few days ago, Craig Stuntz reported an interesting observation: when the first page is returned, the class performs a Skip(0). Suprisingly, this is not free. With that in mind, I set out to correct that issue as well as incorporate a few changes I've made over the past year. The result is nearly identical to the last posted version, just a bit more readable.

Is Programming A Generic Skill?

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:38:23 GMT

This is a good article that presents some valid points regarding programming being easily translatable across platforms and languages.

Exploring how to use Global Variables and ViewData (Strongly typed and

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:15:03 GMT

Taking a look at how to utilized both global variables and local variables. We will also take a look at how to create and use both strongly typed viewdata and weakly typed view data.

The Most Powerful Development Tool Ever Made

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:00:03 GMT

Justin Etheredge wrote a great blog post about not inventing the wheel everytime a classic programming problem shows up.

SubSonic 3.0: The SimpleRepository « Rob Conery

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:45:01 GMT

Rob is adding a very nice simple repository to SubSonic 3.0 that will give SubSonic top-notch POCO support and very slick migrations. Mapping files be damned!

Zen and the Art of Project Management

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:15:00 GMT

Nate Kohari, the developer of Ninject, announces Zen, a project management system based around lean/kanban.

Friends Don't Let Friends catch (Exception)

Tue, 19 May 2009 02:05:15 GMT

Catching Exception, SystemException, or ApplicationException; or coding empty catch blocks, aren't just bad practices - it's just plain wrong. Here's why you shouldn't do it.

How Do You Deal With Exceptions?

Fri, 15 May 2009 04:01:09 GMT

A little post on my ideas about handling exceptions within applications. How do you handle them?

Learning the State Pattern

Thu, 14 May 2009 19:06:50 GMT

Taking a look at how you can use the State Pattern in your applications to solve design issues. The State pattern is designed to allow you to create a way to reset or change how an object will act when its state is changed. By utilizing this pattern you can cleanly and easily setup your application to be state away and be able to make decisions based on the given state

Checking XML for Semantic Equivalence in C#

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:07:49 GMT

Does what it says on the tin

Code Generation Should be the Nuclear Option

Wed, 06 May 2009 09:16:02 GMT

So let me first just start off by saying: I do not like code generation. In certain cases I think it can help greatly, but many people are far too eager to jump to this solution. I don't think that there is anything particularly evil about the process of generating code, but I do feel like using code generation as a day to day tool is a very bad practice. Code generation should be the tool of last resort when there is no good way to cleanly implement a solution which doesn't require code to be spread out everywhere.

Testing MVC Routes

Wed, 06 May 2009 00:16:28 GMT

Taking a look at how you can test your routes in an MVC application. We will start the process of creating new functionality for our application in this episode by showing how to create the tests for the routes first by using MvcContrib project. In the next episode we will continue creating our routes to make the tests pass.

Introduction to Mixins For the C# Developer

Fri, 01 May 2009 05:39:00 GMT

If you are a C# developer then you may keep hearing about all the cool kids from Smalltalk, Ruby, Python, Scala using these crazy things called mixins.

Learning the Adapter Pattern

Fri, 01 May 2009 08:31:02 GMT

Taking a look at how you can use the Adapter Design Pattern in your applications.

Free Chapter of Beginning ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Published

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:46:05 GMT

Simone Chiaretta announces the availability of chapter 9 of Wrox Beginning ASP.NET MVC 1.0 book about Testing ASP.NET MVC Applications and shares some good news about the release date of the book.

Getting your Func<T> along with your Action<T> on

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:31:02 GMT

Taking a look at how you can utilize Func<T> along with your Action<T> to replace the usage of typed delegates in your application

Static Method Interception in .NET with C# and Mono.Cecil

Sat, 02 May 2009 04:01:02 GMT

Interested in Mono.Cecil? A very short introduction to a very cool and powerful tool.

How to improve HtmlHelper.RenderPartial perf: don't run in debug mode

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:01:01 GMT

There has a been a lot of talking on a possible "big design flaw" in ASP.NET MVC: partial view path resolution was not cached. After a bit of testing I found out that caching kicks in only in release mode. So probably all the other tests were run in debug mode.