January 2008 - Derik Whittaker - Devlicio.us

Sometimes I just feel dirty doing this job.....

Many times during our development duties we have to read through code segments to figure out the desired intent of a feature. Today I was doing just this. There is a new feature that I need to implement and to do so, I needed to walk through...

Published 01-08-2008 12:14 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Agile

Object Properties, make them public ONLY when needed.

Sorry we have interrupted your daily blog reading, but we have a special service announcement for all developers. <SpecialServiceAnnouncement> Only make properties public on an object when you KNOW they are needed. Please make all properties private...

Published 01-12-2008 12:59 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Opinion, Best Practice, Rant

On doing take home assignments before getting an interview

<Disclaimer> Before I get into the meat of this, or before I start getting 'your an idiot' replay's I just want to state that I am NOT against asking potential employees to take tests. I just think that there is an acceptable expected...

Published 01-11-2008 12:58 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Opinion, Job Interview Stuff

Things to think about if you want to be a consultant

I was chatting a buddy recently and he was thinking about making the jump to the consulting world (not solo, through a consulting firm). As he has never been a consultant I gave him my 2cents on questions to ask during the interview as well as things...

Published 01-02-2008 3:26 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Opinion, Featured

Defensive Coding best practice

<disclaimer> This posting is purely my personal opinion. I am sure many of you out there will disagree, if this is the case, let me know. </disclaimer> Today, during my bug hunting I stumbled across the dreaded 'Null reference' exception...

Published 01-22-2008 7:05 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Methodology, Opinion, Best Practice

Try-Catch in Sql 2005 is your friend.

I know that SQL 2005 has been out for a while now, but I did not do ANY sql for over a year. Anyway, anyone that has had to write anything more than trival procs knows that error handling can be a pain. In the past you have had to do something along the...

Published 01-18-2008 9:00 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: sql2005, Best Practice

Using lookup values in Stored Procedures

Anyone who has written stored procedures has more then likely done the following (this is a very trivial, simple example): Select Column1, Column2, ...

Published 01-04-2008 8:26 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development

NUnit, Class Assertions or Constraint Assertions

I finally got around to upgrading to the most recent version of NUnit recently (Yea I know, bout time) and found out that there is a new way of doing assertions. The new model is referred to as the 'constraint' model and follows a more fluent...

Published 01-09-2008 6:44 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development Tools, Agile, .Net, TDD

Overuse of #Regions

Before I get started, I personally am a fan of using #regions in my code. I think it cleans up everything, allowing me to only see what I want to see. I also know that many of you disagree with me, and that is fine. Here are 2 posts that voice...

Published 01-15-2008 7:56 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, .Net IDE, Opinion, Best Practice, Rant

Whitebox vs Blackbox testing (location of unit tests)

Over on the Alt.Net mailing list ( here ) the topic of where to put your unit tests was the hot topic a few days ago. This is a topic that I have debated with various people over the past few years. With all the debates I have had, it is clear to me that...

Published 01-28-2008 5:38 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Agile, TDD, Opinion, Best Practice

Using System.ComponentModel Attributes to your advantage

The System.ComponentModel namespace (more information here ) in .Net contains an array of various attributes that every .Net developer should know about. These attributes provide a way for the developer to implement design-time and run-time behavior...

Published 01-30-2008 7:03 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, .Net IDE, .Net, UI, WinForms, HowTo

NHibernate and Automatic Properties gotcha

Just an FYI. If you are using NHibernate and have objects that are using the new Automatic Properties feature of .Net 3.5 make sure that your NHibernate .hbm file does not have 'default-access="field.camelcase-underscore"' in the hibernate...

Published 01-31-2008 8:25 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Agile, NHibernate, HowTo

Visual Studio 2008 Launch Event Announced

Microsoft has announced the dates and locations for their next Launch Event. They are launching VS 2008, SQL 2008 and Windows Server 2008 all here. One nice thing about attending these Launch Events is the FREE SOFTWARE. You can get more information about...

Published 01-19-2008 1:22 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: .Net

My goals for 2008

Since this is the new year I thought I would start of by setting my goals for 2008. I have a strong belief that you cannot obtain success without first defining your objectives and then working towards achieving them. Catchup on new technology/tools Over...

Published 01-01-2008 6:29 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Opinion

.Net 3.5 Framework Namespace posted updated

Brad Abrams announced that there is an updated version of the poster available. You can get more information from Brad here . Till next time,

Published 01-14-2008 7:50 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: .Net, Shout-Out

January 2008 - Derik Whittaker

Sponsors

Syndication

Recent Posts

Tags

News

Blogs I Read

Links

Current Readings

Archives