One of my current clients is really embracing all the MS clones of great open source tools like MSTest, Team Build, Entity Framework, etc. Although I love the open source tools like nUnit, Team City (ok not so open source but still free), and nHibernate, I thought I would try MS Test out even though I have not heard many good things about them. First I will say something nice: MSTest has a nice code coverage suite. I really like that it is integrated with visual studio and can even highlight the areas that are covered and not covered which is the...

Recently I have been helping several other developers in the shop I am consulting at and realized another item for this series: Removing Pain. I am amazed by how many times I see developers repeating the same things over and over again. Builds/Deployments Builds should be the simplest and most repeatable thing you do in a day. If you have a checklist on your desk of steps then stop and automate. It is such a time saver to have a script that will do the things you need it to do. Wether it...

I was going to write an ALT.NET recap article but I think James and Donald really said everything I would have said. Instead I thought I would write about what changed since I got back.One of the things I came back with from the ALT.NET conference was a lot of renewed energy in that the way I am trying to develop software is the way a lot of talented industry people are developing software. Now not to say that I want to follow what person xy does dogmatically, I want to combine ideas and techniques into what works for me...

For those of us in the *nix space the whole SCO debacle has been going on for years. They claimed that they bought what was UNIX (UNIX actually does not actually exists as a technology really anymore and is more of a family of products now) and that all sorts of linux distributions stole code from it and were therefore violating copyright infringements. They then seemed to put all of their energy and money into suing distributions of (usually) free. While I can see where they are comming from that it was their code but then they started to sue everyone...

I feel that piracy is a consumer response to poor quality. If only 10% of the movies / music released are good in my opinion. Do I really want to waste 90% of my money for a product you are unhappy with? So going to see a movie that might/might not be good with another person will cost $20-$40 dollars depending on theaters and if you smuggled snacks in with you. That's a lot of money on something you can buy that you will get more use out of. For me that might be a DVD of the movie...

Well .NET 3.0 is out now and I have to play the devils advocate on this one. I really feel that these frameworks are comming out too fast. I am still working in a a place that is on 1.1 mainly and we are finally moving to 2.0 thanks to some microsoft hotfixes that address our migration problems (apparently 1.1 com+ components are not playing well with 2.0 components). I really can not wait to start using 2.0 as there are some really nice things there and am happy they released it. I know that most people who read this...

Everyone has deadlines which keeps us motivated to work. Personally I can not seem to work without one. The problem is that when a deadline approaches quality seems to decline. You start coding faster, testing less, and missing some of the minute points of spec in my experience. Although it is semantics I like to have a target window for a task that allows the developer to feel they have a bit of room to move other than a set date in time. Clients and deadlines are when things get ugly. When something does not get delivered by that date...

Stats for internet usage for 2005 were just released and so I thought I would share some of the interesting facts. Full article can be read here. Also I have a thing against stats so I will play a bit of devils advocate on it.-Alberta has the second highest internet usage in the country at 71%. This does not mean that people use it often. It could mean that someone had used the internet once.-88% of hoseholds with an income over $86,000 use the internet. Compared to 61% below that line. I assume that most people surveyed are under this...

I hate hate hate web development and for some reason I do it all day and night. Maybe I do it so others don't have too. I am such a hero. The reason I hate it is that it was never meant to do what we are doing with it now. The sheer amount of technology introduced to accomplish such a simple thing as showing someones email inbox takes thousands of lines of code and multiple technologies. I know that I have been on projects that get extended way past there initial design (the current app of 3 years I...

I recently attended the Calgary Code Camp and had a few insights into the future of our world.I feel that the need to specialize is comming. As much as I hate specialization as it can make you obsolete pretty quickly (i.e. foxpro specialists are few and far between). I know asp, vb, c#, javascript, sql2000, reporting services, crystal, access, php, networking, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I find that I use a lot of these skills on a regular basis but it is harder and harder to keep up to speed. I feel that I don't know enough...