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One of the things I run into regularly is naming objects, entities, classes, operations, parameters, variables, etc. I am fully aware that it is very important to get the name right because once chosen it will always be named like that in the back of your head and when it is wrong it might cause a lot...
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A few years ago I advocated the addition of a Minister of IT to our government in a column. One of the main reasons for supporting this (or even being up for the position myself) is the apparent lack of thorough knowledge of information technology amongst our leaders. I still think that IT is so fundamental...
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Whenever you test it is vital that you pick correct test data. Suppose you need to verify that you implemented an Add method correctly and you test it by passing 2 and 2 to be added. There are many implementations that would respond with 4. Here are a couple: return num1 + num2; return 4; return num1...
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A while ago I attended a presentation and in the slideshow I noticed a picture with very interesting attributes. The background of the slide was pure white and the picture had a white background too so there was a perfect blending in of the image however, the object in the image was white as well so...
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Normally I do not like companies that create user interface controls because they: Make all applications look the same Invent stuff that should have been in the framework Don't think out of the box (and, to be honest, I simply envy them because it's such a cool job to create them) Infragistics...
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A recent podcast of Joel "On Software" Spolsky and Jeff "Stackoverflow" Atwood stirred up a bit of a debate. Joel goes into a big rant against Unit Tests and the SOLID design principles . Robert "Uncle Bob" C. Martin, author of both the SOLID design stuff and also professional...
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Sticking to industry standard interfaces can safe your life... Last week I found out that an interface that I have been using for years and years might become more common than expected. For years manufactures created weak implementations that most of the time didn't stick to the original interface definition...
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I was going to buy a new dinner table anyway so: I want this at home, right now! The only negative thing about it is the site, which should have been made with Silverlight. Link to Microsoft Surface
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It's official! WPF/E has been named Microsoft Silverlight. (Yet another meaningless name...) Flash, eat your heart out! Link to Microsoft Silverlight
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I have been reading a book on Object-Oriented Analysis & Design from O 'Reilly[1]. Now, O 'Reilly publishes books that, in my opinion, are most of the time good reads and contain a lot of in-depth information. This book appears to be different. Actually, it even says so in it's introduction: "How...
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Today Microsoft releases XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 The official link and download page aren't there yet but after digging around I found a link[1]. Here's the official link[2] [1] Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 [2] Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 1.0
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In my previous post about using and Dispose[1] I touched lightly on the Garbage Collector. Indeed very lightly, I never mentioned it but Dispose is very much related to the GC. Today I found Chris Lyon's Weblog which contains excellent info on the GC, ranging from Dispose to WeakReferences. Read the...
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Please note that my explanation in this post is incorrect. I am sorry if I caused any trouble. In .NET 2.0 disposing the SqlConnection DOES return the connection into the connectionpool. In my experience .NET 1.1 acted differently; I will try to investigate this and let you know. In many talks, tutorials...
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During the last few weeks I developed the idea that it would be nice to be able to pull Key Performance Indicators (KPI) data from a data warehouse to the desktop in gadget on the sidebar in Vista. I even asked some colleagues if there are any standard API's or Web Services to access KPI's. Today (the...
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As you might have noticed the Microsoft Expression Products[1] got their final names and a new addition. In true adherence to other naming schemes[2][3] they decided to give Interaction Designer a name that is 'easy' to recognize. I remember it by remembering that it's the one with the non descriptive...