Derik Whittaker : Shout-Out

Another great gift from Red Gate

Derik Whittaker — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:24:28 GMT

Every year Red-Gate sends all for their 'Friends of Red-Gate' a great Christmas basket, this year was no exception. You may be asking 'What is a Friend of Red-Gate'. This is a great program they started a while back to reach out to the development community ad thank them for their support of their products. I was luck enough to become a 'friend' because of my affiliation with Devlicio.us (thanks Brendan).

The basket above is what arrived in the mail today and this year was another great basket of goodies. I would like to send a special Thanks You to Rachel Hawley as she is the one who coordinates all the community effort.

If you are not familiar with any of the products that Red-Gate offers, pull your head out of the sand and head on over to Red-Gate.com and take a look.

Till next time,

Foundations of Programming EBook - Great Read & ITS FREE

Derik Whittaker — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:38:36 GMT

If you have not hear, Karl Seguin has authored a great, short eBook which he is giving away free to the world. This book is based of his blog series of the same title.

Do yourself a favor and go download this book, it is pretty short and is a great read. There are great nuggets of information for developers at every level.

You can browse to Karl's post here.

Till next time,

[----- Remember to check out DimeCasts.Net -----]

First guest author (Kyle Baley) on DimeCasts.net released today

Derik Whittaker — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:28:15 GMT

I am happy and proud to announce that my good buddy (man, hope he feels the same) Kyle Baley aka The Coding Hillbilly is the first guest author to release an episode on DimeCasts.Net.

The timing this release could not have been better as just yesterday he and Donald Belcham released their first .Net Rocks Episode on Brownfield Applications (btw, the episode is great, both educational and funny).

Kyle will be producing a entire DimeCasts series on Brownfield Applications, so be sure to stop by and check them out.

Till next time,

[----- Remember to check out DimeCasts.Net -----]

How did I get started in Software Development?

Derik Whittaker — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:41:38 GMT

Looks like I was tagged by Javier Lozano to explain to the world how how I got started writing code. Hold on tight as this may be a long, bumpy ride.

How old were you when you started programming?
Compared to most of the geeks out there, I was a late comer. I did not code my first application until I was a senior in high school.

What was your first language?
QBasic, in fact I am pretty sure I still have the book in a box in the basement. The first application was some simple little app that would display 'fireworks' on the screen....wow

What was the first real program you wrote?
I am pretty sure it was a web-site for a local business in the town where I went to college. In fact I think it still may be up cause I still get spam email from them.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
Oh hell yea. I mean come on, first off I am too lazy to do a real job and lord knows manual labor is not in the cards for me.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
No, there are a few

Learn to shut up and listen, you just may learn something (still working on this myself)
Do not be afraid to ask questions, the only dumb question is the one you do not ask
Be passionate and have fun, if you can have fun doing this you will be soo much better at it

What's the most fun you've ever had ... programming?
Professionally it was when I was working at a .com working with a group of 12 or so developers that were all great. I was able to learn a ton and grow both as a developer and as a person.

Non-Professionally it is when every I am creating something for my own enjoyment

Who am I calling out?

Till next time,

[----- Remember to check out DimeCasts.Net -----]

Welcome Sergio to Devlicio.us

Derik Whittaker — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:36:49 GMT

All, I would like to be the first to welcome Sergio Pereira to the Devlicio.us family.

I have known Sergio for some time now and I think he will have a lot of great things to say here. He is a fellow Alt.Net as well as being based out of the Chicago are.

Again, welcome and let the good times roll

Till next time,

10 ways to keep employees happy (IT employees)

Derik Whittaker — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:28:00 GMT

Today I came across a nice little list of items that employers can do to keep their employees happy.

While reading through this list, two thoughts kept popping into my head that would truly sum up this list.

Listen to your employees
I know every company says they listen, but that is BS. Most only hear what they want to hear. If companies would take the time to get over their own self inflated egos and listen (not just hear them, but actually listen) and understand what it is their employees need, they would find they could keep most people happy and would reduce turn over.
Respect your employees
Some companies still feel that upper management know what is best for the company. This is BS. If companies would listen to and respect the thoughts and ideas of the lowest level worker they would find out that employees would be happier. Most people simply want to be respected. This is true if you are a janitor, a salesperson, or a coder. We all want to be respected.

Most business know that the customer is always right, and always comes first. However, most companies also don't truly understand who their number one customer is..... Their Employees. Keep their employees happy and see what happens.

Till next time,

.Net 3.5 Framework Namespace posted updated

Derik Whittaker — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:50:39 GMT

Brad Abrams announced that there is an updated version of the poster available.

You can get more information from Brad here.

Till next time,

RedGate you rock, thanks again for the gift

Derik Whittaker — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:39:00 GMT

One of the cool perks of being part of the Devlicio.us group is that we are part of the 'friends of RedGate' program. Every year at Christmas time they send us this great gift basket.

This years basket came loaded with sparkling wine, cheese, chocolate, crackers, cheese biscuits, nuts and salmon.

I just wanted to extend my thanks to both the RedGate and Rachel, they are both great to work with. If you are not familiar with the product line they offer, you should really check them out. I personally use their SQL Prompt (every day) and ANTS Profile, and they both rock.

Till next time,

P.S. Not to sound like I am complaining, but I wish this years basket had another coffee mug, someone took mine :(. Oh well, maybe next year.

Windows Live Writer out of Beta (finally)

Derik Whittaker — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:21:00 GMT

Today I was having an connectivity issue with my Windows Live Writer so I started googling for a solution. I came across the home page for Windows Live Writer, and I noticed that it was finally out of beta. YEA.

I would recommend to anyone using this tool (nice tool by the way) to grab the latest non-beta build. You can find this here .

Till next time,

MS is releasing the .Net Source with VS 2008

Derik Whittaker — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:55:00 GMT

Today Scott Gu announced on his blog that MS will be releasing the source for the .net framework with the VS 2008 release.

You can read his post here.

Till next time,

Great post on how to enable anonymous access in SharePoint 2007

Derik Whittaker — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 02:04:24 GMT

I came across this great post on how to enable anonymous access in Sharepoint (MOSS) 2007 tonight. This was very helpful because I was not able to get it working correctly for me, because I missed a step that this post stated.

Post can be found here

Dell Going Carbon Neutral

Derik Whittaker — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:40:00 GMT

Today Dell announced its plans to go Carbon Neutral (wiki info here). Personally i think this is pretty cool.... However, I am a little skeptical if they (or anyone else) will really follow through.

You can read the article here.

Till next time,

RE: Bug Driven Development

Derik Whittaker — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:11:58 GMT

Today I came across a nice post on 'Bug Driven Development'. This is something that most developers have experienced at one point in their career. I know I have. Kudos to Phil for coming up with this great name (if did not coin this term, then kudos to whom ever did).

I agree with the post when he says it sad that in today's age of technology that development shops and managers (he does not call out managers directly, but I do) still think that fixing bugs is 'software development'

I was once at a company that thought that it was cheaper to hire more QA staff then it was to fix the development process. This particular company had 2 QA for every 1 developer. And the product still spun in the 'QA' cycle for up to 6 months at one point..... Sad thing is, upper management thought this was just fine....:)

Great post Phil, if only 'People in charge' would read this and understand your point...

Till next time

RE: The importance of tools to a software craftsman

Derik Whittaker — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:20:00 GMT

This is in response to a post by my good buddy joeyDotNet (found here). Joey has an obvious but insightful post about how a software craftsman should bring their own tools with them to make them more productive. In his post he specially talks about carrying his own keyboard form place to place (even taking it home every night -- Buy another one for home will you. If you need me to, I can paypal you the cash :) ).

Although I don’t carry my keyboard to and from work, I do bring my own keyboard and mouse (gotta have the TrackMan mouse) to every job I have. I even had a buddy that would carry his own monitor back and forth to work for a while because his company did not provide him with a quality monitor at work.

In all seriousness, joey does make a good point, and that is that all good software craftsman should provide their own tools. You would never catch a good carpenter on a job site without their tools. There is a reason. You are more productive with tools in which you are comfortable.

Anyway, nice post joey, keep them coming.

Till next time,

P.S. Glad to see you posting again, even if it is about Ruby and what not J

Brain Dumpage from Scott Bellware over at CodeBetter.com

Derik Whittaker — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:43:00 GMT

I am not sure what has gotten into Scott, but it appears as if he is doing a brain dump over at CodeBetter.com. I just noticed that over the weekend he pump out a ton of insightful postings. You can find all of Scotts postings at his CodeBetter site here.

Go Scott, Go,

Till next time