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software development concepts
Reading through this blog, I was just reminded that Code Complete 2* was released. Since this book is the first entry on my prioritized list of Recommended Reading for Developers, and Steve is the patron saint of this web site, you better believe I just placed an order for it!
unix
A few months ago, Eric Raymond, the open source guru best known for his seminal paper, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, posted a rant about the difficulty he encountered with a common user printing scenario in UNIX. The follow-up post is even more intriguing: I am informed that an RFE
error messages
I’m sure I don’t have to explain what is wrong with error messages like this: Catastrophic Failure General Protection Fault Error: The operation completed successfully But as bad as those are, they pale in comparison to what is, hands down, the worst kind of error message: a beautiful,
c#
One of our production web servers keeps deadlocking the ASPNET_WP process, like so: aspnet_wp.exe (PID: 3588) was recycled because it was suspected to be in a deadlocked state. It did not send any responses for pending requests in the last 180 seconds. This is painful. It means
user experience
I just posted a new article on Code Project, User Friendly Exception Handling. This is a set of classes that deal with unhandled and handled exceptions through a consistent UI, as presented in Alan Cooper’s great book, About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design. Anyway, at the time
programming languages
I don’t understand it. I’ve seen this phenomenon over and over in VB.NET, in code from experienced programmers: If dt.DayOfWeek = DayOfWeek.Sunday Then Return dt ElseIf dt.DayOfWeek = DayOfWeek.Monday Then Return dt.AddDays(6) ElseIf dt.DayOfWeek = DayOfWeek.Tuesday Then Return dt.AddDays(5) ElseIf
productivity
I found an interesting blog post about a small, informal multiple monitor productivity study. A number of developers, with some nudging from me, have gravitated to multiple monitor setups over the last year. Based on that experience, I wholeheartedly agree with the study survey results: * On average, people would much
software development concepts
Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free. – Bill Gates We’ve all been reaping the benefits of Moore’s Law for the last 20 years, but there is one unintended consequence of this rule: as hardware becomes cheaper, software
code project
I updated the About Box sample slightly, with a simplified tab interface. I also submitted it as a Code Project article, so if you got here from there, welcome! I still use About Box in every application I write. As a developer, it’s always helpful to know exactly what
text editors
I use notepad.exe dozens of time a day. Given the severely limited functionality of Notepad, it’s incredible that it has taken me this long to find a suitable replacement for what is, evidently, a core part of my developer toolkit. Check out Notepad2: The original Notepad shipped with
user experience
Like any self-respecting geek, I’m a card-carrying member of the Tivo cult. I’ll admit, I have lost some interest in the box since Tivo has taken such a hard-line approach to digital rights management (DRM) – providing virtually no way to copy the shows I’ve recorded to DVD,
software development concepts
Thanks to my friend, Geoff Dalgas, for pointing out an interesting article at kuro5hin.org, which analyzes the comments inside the recently leaked Microsoft Windows NT/2k code. Very amusing, with some surprising insights into the mindset of the coders working at Microsoft: In the struggle to meet deadlines, I