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Noisy code does not equal clean code

Today I was having a conversation with one of the developers on my team (btw, this guy is going to be a rock star) and I made that statement to him that I thought we had some noisy code. The context around this conversation was with our usage of...

Published 02-25-2010 7:16 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Opinion, Craftsmanship

A new feature request for C# I would like is fall through exceptions

Now before you write off this post as being ‘just another silly request’ hear me out. Right now in C# we can do the following switch( someObject ) { case Option1: case Option2: case Option3: // do something break; case Option4: // do something break:...

Published 01-20-2010 5:58 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, .Net, Feedback, Opinion

It takes real balls to do it right

It does not take a genius to realize that I (and most others on this blog) are fans of JetBrains . But what it may take a genius to realize is it takes balls to do what JetBrains does with their products. You may be asking what exactly I am...

Published 11-06-2009 4:57 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Opinion

Without Context everything is suspect

Over the weekend I was having a conversation with my wife and we were not communicating on the same wave length. After a few minutes of talking in circles it dawned on us that we had not established the context around the conversation and we had...

Published 10-19-2009 7:02 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Opinion, Craftsmanship

Testing only the code of value

I am 99% sure I have had a post like this in the past, but my google-foo was weak today and I could not find it. Do not let anyone blow smoke up your back side, testing is expensive, testing takes time but most importantly testing can help improve...

Published 10-07-2009 6:48 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Agile, TDD, Opinion

The Sky is falling, the Sky is falling…. Or is it?

I assume everyone is familiar with the children's book Chicken Little where the chicken little had an acorn fall on her head and she just assume the entire sky was falling so she ran to the king to tell him such. Well, sadly too many times people...

Published 09-30-2009 9:25 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Opinion

Your unit test may smell if…….!

If you find yourself using reflection in your unit test to push 'stub’ data into it your test just may smell. Now there are times (especially when dealing with legacy code) that you need use reflection to crack open a class to push/pull values...

Published 09-09-2009 12:28 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Agile, TDD, Opinion

Quantity is NOT a measure of Quality

Today I was asked what I thought about asking each of our feature teams to report the total number of new unit tests created during their iteration. My knee-jerk reaction was to ask the person WTF were they thinking. However, my better sense...

Published 08-21-2009 9:08 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Agile, Opinion

Wow, the hatred for ‘var’ lives on

Here we are almost 2 full years since the var keyword was released to the wild, and only a few short months (I hope) till the next release of the .net framework and still the hatred for the var keyword lives on. The other day I woke up to find the following...

Published 08-14-2009 2:41 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Opinion

Tests are not ‘Tasks’ you put on a backlog…

Today I had a conversation with our ‘scrum of scrum’ masters (we have 7 different scrum teams on our product team of 60+) and he asked me why someone would provide ‘developer tests’ as a task for the backlog? Before I go any further, this is NOT a bait...

Published 07-27-2009 7:57 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Agile, Opinion, Craftsmanship

Throw away and rebuild or refactor from within

The other day on Twitter there was a stream whether it is better to completely scrap an applications code base and start over, or refactor from within. Now I do want to state right now: The information here is based on my experiences and is simply...

Published 07-13-2009 2:39 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Agile, Opinion

You know you buy into Testing and Testabilty when you wrap a singleton simply to create an abstraction…

I am a little bored so I thought I would write a nice fluent interface around the Performance Counter crap that is part of .net. I know, I know the world does not really need another Fluent Interface around something, but I am bored and this is...

Published 05-15-2009 5:27 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: TDD, Opinion

Refactoring Project Structure is just as important as Refactoring Code

We talk about how important it is to keep your code in working order, but no one ever really talks about keeping the container for your code in working order --- Your Project Solutions. Per Wikipedia Refactoring code can be defined as: Means improving...

Published 04-15-2009 2:27 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Opinion

Ivory tower policies or mandates are counter productive

I am sure that most of you have heard the term ‘Ivory Tower Architect’ and most of have a mental image of what this means. To me, when I hear the team I think of a person or team of washed up, has been developers who are no longer capable of creating...

Published 03-19-2009 6:31 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Opinion, Rant

If you cannot do a source pull and compile you are doing it wrong!

I know this may seem like old hat to many, but trust me not all organizations/projects are setup to allow you to easily pull the code from your source repository and compile. I know it is sad, but if you ask me, this is just the tip of the ice burg...

Published 03-13-2009 1:38 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Opinion, Rant, Craftsmanship

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Noisy code does not equal clean code

A new feature request for C# I would like is fall through exceptions

It takes real balls to do it right

Without Context everything is suspect

Testing only the code of value

The Sky is falling, the Sky is falling…. Or is it?

Your unit test may smell if…….!

Quantity is NOT a measure of Quality

Wow, the hatred for ‘var’ lives on

Tests are not ‘Tasks’ you put on a backlog…

Throw away and rebuild or refactor from within

You know you buy into Testing and Testabilty when you wrap a singleton simply to create an abstraction…

Refactoring Project Structure is just as important as Refactoring Code

Ivory tower policies or mandates are counter productive

If you cannot do a source pull and compile you are doing it wrong!