Derik Whittaker

Switch Statements with Enums best practice

Over the years I have come to the conclusion when working with switch statements that switches on enum values, a DEFAULT block MUST be required. Not only should it be required, I think it should throw a developer exception. *** NOTE *** My stance on this...

Published 06-26-2007 7:08 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Methodology, .Net, Opinion, Best Practice

Studying for MCTS 70-536, 10 Days In: My Initial thoughts

In a previous post I mentioned that my new company is having all their developers get certified. The goal is to have each developer take and pass both 70-536 and 70-526 by the end of the year. What sucks for me is that the week I started the team was...

Published 06-26-2007 6:00 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, .Net

Response to: Is Microsoft Pushing too much, too quick?

I came across a posting today where the question was raised ‘Is Microsoft Pushing too much, too quick?’ . Original posting can be found here My answer to this is NO. Are they making advances in the technology, YES. Are they doing so simply because they...

Published 06-22-2007 3:04 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Opinion

Feedback Requested on MCTS/MCPD Tests

The company I recently started working for last week is having all of their developers study for and ultimately pass the MCTS tests. Since we are mostly a Client/Server shop we will be taking test 70-536 and 70-526. What I am looking for is the following...

Published 06-21-2007 6:12 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Feedback

Developer Ramp Time, Different ways a company can speed it up

In a previous post , I talked about why some developers ramp up faster than others. In this post I would like to explore ways that a company can aid in the ramp up time. In my opinion it is in the best interest of the company to make sure that all of...

Published 06-20-2007 6:00 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development

Developer Ramp up time, Reasons some developers ramp up faster than others

What does it really cost in terms of time/money to hire in and train a new developer? If you were to ask most in management the answer would be not much. However, if you were to ask most developers, I am sure their answer would be, a LOT. Who is right...

Published 06-19-2007 6:30 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development

Resetting your Default Language Settings in VS 2005

After you have installed Visual Studio 2005 you are prompted to ‘choose’ the default collection of settings for your environment. Depending one what choice you chose will dictate your keyboard mappings, your menu options, etc. What do you do if you don...

Published 06-18-2007 6:09 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: .Net IDE

Bad Data Grid, Bad... Don't swallow your Excpetions

The other day I was working on hunting down an issue in the application at my new company. It appeared to be pretty straight forward find. It was the standard 'Object not set to instance of an object' message. After getting some guidance as to how to...

Published 06-16-2007 6:54 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, WPF

Checking a value against an Enum (Enum.IsDefined)

Here is a simple snippet of code that I always forget and have to look up time and time again. This will check to see if a value (string or int) is a match for a enum. This can be useful when trying to load data from a database which is in key the form...

Published 06-14-2007 4:40 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, .Net, Fun Code

Rhino Mocks vs NMock: Part 1, Stubs

Over the past few months I have really started to believe in the use of Mocks. When I first started using mocks, I started with NMock (mostly because that is what we had at work). Shortly after that I started playing around with Rhino Mocks at home. Since...

Published 06-13-2007 8:49 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Agile, .Net, TDD, NMock, Rhino Mocks

Code Reviews: Rules of the Game

Code reviews are thought to be painful by many, but in my opinion that can be avoided. Code reviews can be a great tool for a project to help keep the code clean and concise. Last time I talked about Code Reviews and how to make them successful , this...

Published 06-12-2007 8:41 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Methodology

Loading an Image via a URL

Recently I needed to grab images via a URL for our project here at work. We basically have a web server the has tons of images for our various products in many different sizes and I wanted to be able to grab the images via a URL. I thought I would throw...

Published 06-12-2007 8:27 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, .Net

Code Reviews: How to be successful

Code reviews are something that not all of us like or do, but they can be very valuable. I thought I would express some of my thoughts/opinions about the benefits and pit falls of performing code reviews. Benefits of Code Reviews Performing regular and...

Published 06-11-2007 9:08 AM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Methodology

Welcome Lou and Ken, 2 new bloggers to Devlicio.us

I just wanted to welcome both Ken and Lou to Devlicio.us. They are both excellent developers with a wealth of knowledge to share. I am looking forward to learning from both of you. Welcome

Published 06-09-2007 4:25 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Shout-Out

What I'm Learning

This post is in response to Sam Gentile's post over at code better I'm Learning Rhino Mocks NHibernate StructureMap Policy Injection Blocks Log4Ne t (yea I know, what took so long. Answer, last few apps use the Logging App Block) MonoRail (about to start...

Published 06-08-2007 5:18 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: Development, Development Tools, Agile, TDD, StructureMap, NHibernate

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