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software development
Evidently, Jerry Dennany is a member of the build machine cult: One of the golden rules of modern software development is that one should build all software on a dedicated build machine. A build machine should: 1. Be well documented. This includes Version of the Operating System, Service Pack level,
remote controls
What is it with consumer electronics and the uncontrolled proliferation of remotes? We recently upgraded to an EDTV plasma, which I am very happy with, but the nature of the inputs forced another remote on to the coffee table. That brings us to a total of four: HTPC, Tivo, Receiver,
programming languages
I found two interesting top 10 lists yesterday. From MSDN Magazine, 10 Tips for Writing High-Performance Web Applications, is a fine read. I’ll summarize: 1. Return Multiple Result sets 2. Paged Data Access 3. Connection Pooling 4. ASP.NET Cache API 5. Per-Request Caching 6. Background Processing
refactoring
There was much handwringing last week when Somasegar announced what we already knew: VB.NET 2005 will not have refactoring. This resulted in a few emotional outbursts: We don’t need toys like [the] MY [namespace], we need working tool like Refactoring!! How can Microsoft refuse us those magical software
user experience
There are so many that it’s really hard to choose, but I think this may be my favorite nonsensical dialog in Lotus Notes, our enterprise mail system of choice: Good luck. You’re gonna need it. I’ve given up criticizing Lotus Notes. There’s no point. It’s
asp.net
I just went to the Radio Shack website to look for something, and after every click on the main page, I was greeted with this: If I was running a giant corporation, I think I’d hire coders who could develop a rational error handling strategy for our production website.
programming languages
As McConnell notes in Code Complete: If you haven’t spent at least a month working on the same program – working 16 hours a day, dreaming about it during the remaining 8 hours of restless sleep, working several nights straight through truing to eliminate that “one last bug” from the
.net
To complement my previous post bemoaning the lack of respect for AssemblyInfo, I wanted to illustrate just how easy it is to add a few custom attributes to our AssemblyInfo file: Imports System Imports System.Reflection <Assembly: AssemblyTitle("ASPUnhandledException")> <Assembly: AssemblyDescription("ASP.NET unhandled
c#
All too often, I download sample code with AssemblyInfo files that look like this: // // General Information about an assembly is controlled through the following // set of attributes. Change these attribute values to modify the information // associated with an assembly. // [assembly: AssemblyTitle("")] [assembly: AssemblyDescription("")] [assembly: AssemblyConfiguration("
asp.net
I posted a new CodeProject article, WebFileManager: I often deploy ASP.NET websites to servers that I don’t control. In these situations, I can’t get to the underlying filesystem to do any file maintenance, because I don’t have direct access to the server. For various reasons, I
technology trends
Next week, millions of college students and young professionals will head home for the Thanksgiving holidays. We’ll sit with our families in warm, candle-lit dining rooms eating stuffed turkey, reminiscing over old photographs, preparing holiday shopping lists and... Please. Let's be frank. We are going home
software development
Paul Graham posted an interesting new essay about American culture and software development: This works well in some fields and badly in others. I suspect it works in movies and software because they’re both messy processes. “Systematic” is the last word I’d use to describe the way good