May 2007 - Derik Whittaker - Devlicio.us

UI Thoughts

I was making some changes to our app today based on some user feedback. As I started to implement the changes I had conundrum as to what approach to take. Basically, I needed to implement changes to the UI’s behavior in certain situations based on business...

Published 05-31-2007 3:08 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development

Technical Debt, How we accumulate it, and how we can reduce it

All software projects will amass some amount of technical debt. This is not a necessarily bad thing; it is just he cost of doing business. As developers the only thing we can do is try to control/limit the amount of technical debt we build up. If you...

Published 05-25-2007 9:03 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Methodology, TDD

Some great post on the value of TDD over at Codebetter.com

Today there are some great posts over at codebetter.com about the value of TDD. In my opionion these are a must read for everyone. How can I convince my management/other developers of the value of unit testing? And here's a number you can take to the...

Published 05-23-2007 12:28 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: TDD, Shout-Out

Learning to use Mocks and the power they provide

Up until a few months ago I had never even attempted to use mocks ( NMock , RhinoMock , etc). Every time I would read about Mocking I thought to myself, this is kinda cool, but seems to be a waste of energy. At the time I saw Mocks as only a way to create...

Published 05-23-2007 6:54 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Agile, Methodology, TDD

Roll Your Own vs Use Existing

Ayende has a nice explanation on when to roll your own vs using an existing application over on his blog. What I like most about his post is his very simple explianation about when why he chooses to roll his own some times and use existing products at...

Published 05-22-2007 7:36 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Shout-Out

Shelf Life of a Software Application

How long can we expect the applications we write to live on? What types of things increase or decrease the shelf life of our applications? Is it practical to suggest that software is only good for a certain period of time? Or should software be able to...

Published 05-21-2007 7:03 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Methodology

Coding No - No's

Over time we all evolve as a coder, the code we write today is hopefully better then the code we wrote yesterday. In turn, the code we write tomorrow should be better then the 'great code' we wrote today. If this is not the case then we are not learning...

Published 05-18-2007 7:10 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development

Kinda like performing surgery in the dark

Have you ever needed to make rule changes to an existing application? I am sure you have. Have you ever had to make these changes when you understand the change, but have pretty much no clue about the implementation of the code base you are changing?...

Published 05-15-2007 10:53 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Methodology

Tips for writing clean code

I came across this post about writing clean code. Thought I would share.... Found here Enjoy

Published 05-14-2007 6:40 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development

Definition of 'Done'

What is Done? Done is when the software has been written to address the requirements. No more, no less. has a suite of tests written to exercise and validate that it meets the requirements and is technically valid. source code has been reviewed by a peer...

Published 05-12-2007 10:25 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Methodology

Questions every Candidate should ask a potential new employer

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...

Published 05-09-2007 6:59 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Methodology

Cyclomatic Complexity Measurements: Simple code == Better application

We all know that simpler is better when it comes to software development. Any time there is code that is overly complex it makes it hard to test/debug and it is much harder to interpret in the future when changes/enhancements need to be made. There are...

Published 05-08-2007 7:19 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Development Tools, Methodology

What's wrong with this block of code??? Buellerrrrr, Buellerrrrr

All, just came across some 'interesting' code today. Can anyone point out what is wrong with this? public bool SomeMethodNameHere( bool someParamNameHere ) { if ( this == null ) { return true; } else { .... } }

Published 05-04-2007 9:51 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Fun Code

Object Construction – Constructing for Success

I have finally come to the conclusion that no object should be allowed to be constructed in any way that will allow for the object to be setup in an invalid state. Way too often I see an object that uses the empty constructor which then requires the user...

Published 05-04-2007 6:29 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Methodology

VS 2005 Annoyance -- "Not enough storage is available to complete this operation"

Has anyone else seen this message when trying to compile a solution? My dev box has 2 gigs of memory with about 1 gig free when i get this. I get this about once or twice a week. The only way to get around this is to restart the IDE, kinda annoying.....

Published 05-01-2007 10:06 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: .Net IDE

May 2007 - Derik Whittaker

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UI Thoughts

Technical Debt, How we accumulate it, and how we can reduce it

Some great post on the value of TDD over at Codebetter.com

Learning to use Mocks and the power they provide

Roll Your Own vs Use Existing

Shelf Life of a Software Application

Coding No - No's

Kinda like performing surgery in the dark

Tips for writing clean code

Definition of 'Done'

Questions every Candidate should ask a potential new employer

Cyclomatic Complexity Measurements: Simple code == Better application

What's wrong with this block of code??? Buellerrrrr, Buellerrrrr

Object Construction – Constructing for Success

VS 2005 Annoyance -- "Not enough storage is available to complete this operation"