I remember the time when WebMatrix was this tiny little web editor done in .net that the crazy guys like me used to edit their first asp.net pages (without code behind and moving away from classic asp). [read more]
Last Saturday I had the opportunity to assist the first WindyCityDb. A one day, single track conference on databases technologies that are usually grouped under the NoSql umbrella. In general the conference was very good. [read more]
The title kind of tell it all. I started to use pickle now for filling up and managing my test with cucumber. Fill up data, etc. Pickle creates some step definitions for you to make things easy, what it's much appreciated. [read more]
I have been researching node.js and the ecosystem around it. Yes, node has an ecosystem, a very vibrant one if I may say. Today I tried a simple web framework that resembles Ruby's Sinatra by the name of Express. [read more]
Installing node.js First, you need a supported OS, like Linux, Mac or Solaris. I will be doing the install on Ubuntu.Go to the node.js download page download the Gzipped file and extract in a folder of your choice in your disk. [read more]
Some background information. I'm not a complete newbie to Linux. 12 years ago or so, while still doing lots of IT work I used to admin two Red Hat servers. FTP, file sharing, email, proxy and web servers. [read more]
This is a post on communication, on how developers and technically savvy people think in general and the differences with the archetypical user. Two weeks ago I brought a Kobo. [read more]
Yesterday I presented at Toronto code camp a session on BDD + User Stories and what frameworks to use in the .net work to support the practice. [read more]
In the previous post on this series we manage to get our Insert and a basic Select methods working. Today we need to implement the mapper class for Post. [read more]
I finally got the courage and sent a proposal for speaking at the Toronto code camp. The good news is that it was accepted and I will be speaking this coming May 1st at this year code camp. [read more]
I just finished reading Designing the obvious by Robert Hoekman, Jr. This is a book about how to design good web applications. The subtitle, a common sense approach to web application design, it’s also a good synopsis. [read more]
I pick up the book with a lot of interesting an enthusiasm. My goals were to learn techniques and proper ways to write down user stories, improve my estimation techniques and been able to apply some of those techniques back at work. [read more]
Last Friday I was showing some of the guys at the office how to write user stories with the Gherkin language to been able to use them in either Cucumber or Specflow as executable specifications. [read more]
I attended my first DevTeach in 2008 and I loved the quality of the content and speakers. I have been looking forward at the next one in TO since them. [read more]
Yesterday we created our first method in the MongoDbProvider, our implementation of BlogProvider. We created a few supporting classes, but we don’t have test for those classes. [read more]
If you use Github (Git) or Bitbucket (Mercurial) you are familiar with the ability to fork a project into your own repository in those sites. [read more]
If you, like me, haven’t been able to go to PyCon don’t despair. The videos of the sessions are available at blip.tv. [read more]
This blog is going mobile. [read more]
I’m a proponent of dynamic languages and I love Ruby and Cucumber but I have to admit that this is cool. I was writing a set of specifications with SpecFlow today and suddenly I saw this error in Visual Studio. [read more]
I recently posted about how to integrate Git with Visual Studio. Of course Git is not the only DVCS out there. Mercurial is another source control system similar to Git that is having more and more relevance. [read more]
This is a very short book on a great practice for any agile team. The book walk you through a lot of techniques an exercises that will help you and your team to have successful retrospectives. [read more]
Yesterday I received another box of books from Amazon.ca with 6 more books in it. After taking them out and putting them down into my already filled shelves I sat down and look at the pile of books. 17 computer books in all. [read more]
I started to use Git seriously 5 months ago when I sign up for my Github account on September 1st 2009. Before that I was a very happy subversion user. One of the things that I really like about Git is the speed. [read more]
Last week I wrote about using cucumber to test your web applications outside in. In the post I showed a simple example (actually comes with cucumber) to open a browser, go to a site and perform some actions. [read more]
On my new project I want to start using end to end testing. The idea is to write an specification run it against an outer interface. Gui, Web service, etc. It fails. So you start implementing the feature using TDD until the Spec pass. [read more]
Probably you are aware of Edgecase Ruby Koans. In case you aren't, let me introduce you to them. [read more]
Since I started using Git a few months ago, and particularly GitHub since last September, my life have been good in DVCS land.I used to be a Subversion user and I was happy*, maybe because I didn’t know anything better. [read more]
In case you don’t know what it is. Codemash is a conference put together by volunteers. It has been running for four years now. [read more]
Kazi Manzur Rashid has a post about registering Areas dynamically after the registration of other routes and the problems this has since the order the routes are registered is very important. [read more]
When the Codemash guys announced their API I decided to create an app using it. I wasn’t sure what to do at first but It was pretty obvious anyway. Some kind of scheduling tool. [read more]
Some time ago I wrote a first impressions about ASP.NET MVC in Action from Manning. It was after downloading an reading a few chapters available via the Manning early access program (MEAP). [read more]
I try to be pragmatic in my approach to development and one of the things that change the most are the tools I use to deliver software. There are several reasons why I change tools so often. [read more]
The NoSql movement is gaining more and more inertia. A year or two ago I took a look at CouchDb but this time I wanted to try MongoDB. [read more]
Post from the business insider on a real world use of MongoDB. [read more]
The tag line of the book is refactor your wetware, and after reading it, you will. Andy Hunt explores how the brain works and try to point us (the readers) into ways to improve our use of it. [read more]
I got my tickets the first week the conference was announced, not really knowing what to expect but exited on the opportunity to learn new things and talk to people that work in other languages/technologies beside the .net world. [read more]
Some time ago I heard about the intent of putting together a package manager for .net ala gems or pear. I wasn’t aware that this project was actually under way. The name of the project, Horn. [read more]
The other day at the office my boss took a look at our configuration files and he expressed his concern about breaking DRY with all the ConnectionStrings. One for Ado.Net, one for NHibernate, one for our caching db and another for Log4Net. [read more]
Hopefully gone are the days were you considered ok the use of single letter names for your variables or your arguments and you are giving informative names to all the artifacts in your code. [read more]
On Saturday I pick it up from the post office and next day I was sitting in the backyard going through the pages while preparing a BBQ. [read more]
I think this has been the longest hiatus since I started the blog. I have been busy with life, talking some time of, finishing tons of renovations at home and re-focusing my priorities from a development point of view. [read more]
Gestalt, the new js library release by the MIX Online labs, takes a dependency on jQuery. They use it to do some Dom manipulation (locate tags, modify the Dom). But what happens if you already use prototype.js in your application? [read more]
One new feature in the code editor is the ability to put sticky notes in the code while debugging. This sticky notes are actually attached to a given variable and you can see the actual value of it in the note (similar to using the watch window). [read more]
A few hours ago I saw a Tweet by @shanselman about having Ruby and Python scripts tags in your html pages. [read more]
I needed to do some screen captures for a future post I’m writing. This is usually not a problem but in this laptop I don’t have an screen capture utility installed. [read more]
I have been playing at home for the last few days with different migrations strategies for db development. The one that I like the most so far is Migrator.Net. Here are the things I really like. [read more]
Tonight I added LinqPad to my toolbox. I did try this before but I guess I wasn't very inspired because I didn't stick with it. Let me tell you, that was a mistake. I have been playing with it for an hour or so and I'm loving it. [read more]
Pronghorn is still a work in progress and the architecture+design is changing very fast. At this moment the main focus is on the ViewEngine because... [read more]
In a previous article I mentioned how to integrate VS 2008 with Subversion for free using a few settings and a script. .When I run the script in Windows 7 all the menu items were grayed out. [read more]
This post have been inspired by the talks about controllerless actions. This is NOT an alternative to that. Controllerless actions is an interesting concept that should be study. Actually Jeffrey Palermo has a concept implementation. [read more]
When creating a Silverlight application that will be used as a widget, you need to make sure that it will work in a cross domain scenario. [read more]
These guys are working hard and given us releases almost every month. I ‘m happy to see some of the feedback from the community incorporated into the Framework. [read more]
This is a list of videos I recently watched or have the intention to watch over the next few days. An interview with Eric Evan’s at Qcon San Francisco on the State of DDD. Kent Beck on Responsive Design. Jeremy Miller on the joy and... [read more]
One of the main reasons I got ReSharper originally was for it’s ability to do micro code generation. This is a functionality that I found very useful when doing test first development. [read more]
In the context of this article every time I mention Linq I’m actually talking about Linq To Objects. Although Linq has a very handy method on FirstOrDefault
If you ever played with some language that have the Tuple type I bet you miss it in .Net. Well 4.0 adds it. Let's see what the ubiquitous Wikipedia have to say about it. [read more]
Last weekend was the 2009 edition of the Toronto Code Camp were I had the privilege to participate as one of the many volunteers. [read more]
A very good presentation with lots of code to learn and appreciate some of the niceties of ActiveRecord. [read more]
You can get all the videos (110) [read more]
Common List E-book (free online) Apparently you can also download it from the Apress website’s book page but the link was down for maintenance when I tried. [read more]
I want to be positive in this post. So I will just mention this once. The framework is very extensible but It's more difficult that It should. I guess that the problem is not really with the framework, but me trying to make it do something that is not in the spirit of it. [read more]
I have been silent lately because I have been working on a project based on ASP.NET MVC. The idea is to have the bare minimum to create highly configurable sites. [read more]
Some of the detractors of TDD or testing in general is that you waste time writing test instead of writing "useful" code. Well, writing test just save me a few hours of debugging. [read more]
In a previous post I mention about a fix to been able to open a new window both in IE and Firefox using the Lightweight Test Framework. [read more]
This is a quick post. In the samples for the framework the test are written in the same system to test. [read more]
As I mentioned in a previous post I have been playing with the Microsoft Lightweight Test Automation Framework. The Lightweight framework handle alert and confirms without any problem, both in IE and Firefox out of the box. [read more]
I have been playing with the Microsoft Lightweight Test Automation Framework, that’s a mouthful for the Microsoft’s Web testing framework. [read more]
This is what you see. What makes me think that yahoo is misdetecting IE8? In any case manually adding the site to the compatibility mode fix this. [read more]
Today I have the pleasure to listen to a really good episode of The Herding Code. The episode title was NHibernate performance. In the episode Ayende, David Penton and Ben Scheirman talked about NHibernate and the performance of the tool ... [read more]
If you have been following this blog, you probably saw a few posts about what’s going on behind closed doors once you submit your code to the mercy of the compiler. [read more]
Ok, first let me be really clear, I'm not a JetBrains fan boy. Yes, I use ReSharper and yes, I also use TeamCity at home as my Continuous Integration server for some of my projects. [read more]
I got the book NHibernate in Action a few months ago via the MEAP program. Finally I was able to put my hands in the print version a few weeks ago. I have been reading it mostly in the subway during my commute. I’m very excited about it. [read more]
As you know some types are not nullable like int, decimal, double or DateTime. So if for some reason we need a null int we need to use the nullable types. To define a nullable type we use the question mark notation like this int?, decimal?... [read more]
Today I move the code of LaTrompa.Validation into it’s own package, with no external dependencies (besides the framework of course). I added a class to validate XmlNodes. [read more]
First thing first. This is not bad code. This is a drop that is there and the developer make a point to clarify all the problems "he" has with the code at the moment. [read more]
If your team is comprised by more than one developer you should have some coding guidelines and standards in place. (I can make the case to have this guidelines even if you code along but that can be another post). [read more]
I enjoyed this chapters as well, specially chapter 6 and 7 about extending the framework and preparing your site so it scale. Some of the code examples are using a previous (old) version of the framework. I hope they will be updated for the print version. [read more]
Development teams have two processes- their development process, and the processes of improving their development process. Scott Bellware ... [read more]
I don’t remember if I read this on Clean Code or Refactoring or maybe I just hear it somewhere, but It’s so true. It’s not that you can’t change the code and that you can’t apply refactoring techniques. [read more]
If you ever wonder what the compiler does to make the auto properties work let’s take a look at the code the way Reflector sees it. [read more]
I got a copy of the MEAP edition for ASP.NET MVC in Action. This is the book on the (new?) ASP.NET MVC framework written by Jeffrey Palermo, Ben Scheirman, and Jimmy Bogard. [read more]
Sergio Pereira just posted two videos of Uncle Bob presentation at the Chicago Alt.Net meeting. [read more]
In my previous post I mentioned how to integrate Visual Studio with Subversion for free and without having to install fancy plug-ins. [read more]
Now there is another choice and is a set of configuration options to access TortoiseSVN from inside Visual Studio. The set of configurations provide a tools menus, context menu, and menu bar. [read more]
InfoQ has a video recorded at JAOO on witch Robert Martin talks about craftsmanship and ethics on software development. [read more]
Stefan Tilkov is one of the guys behind the fabulous info.com and is a big REST proponent. The talk is titled REST, an alternative to Web Services. [read more]
In part 1 I talked about using the facade pattern or a wrapper to avoid dependencies to third party libraries. In the second part I talked about taking care of custom exceptions defined in those libraries and how to shield you client code from... [read more]
I try to practice TDD most of the time these days. I don’t write new code without a test first. A few years ago write the test first was something that I understood from an intellectual point of view but it sounded impractical. [read more]
In this post I wrote about wrapping log4net (as an example) in your own logging class and define an interface for the log object that better reflects your domain. [read more]
On episode 20 of the Elegant Code Cast Matt Heusser talks about testing in general and the role of QA in an agile team. [read more]
I just saw this project in Codeplex; CruiseControl.Net build station sounds interesting and very useful if you happen to work in a machine without IIS. [read more]
If you do any Js development at all you may want to consider installing this add in for Visual Studio that brings JSLint to the IDE. [read more]
I have been playing with both Ruby and Rails for maybe two years. Never doing anything really "serious", like an external project for a client. I kind of know my way around it when I need it, but I still consider myself a Beginner. [read more]
I just finished a complete re write of my validation framework. This re write was due to feedback received from some of my co workers so I owe to them my thanks. [read more]
You can find this new ORM framework at http-//code.msdn.microsoft.com/XGENOORM. Starting with it is fairly easy. Just add a reference on your project to the very small (32K) dll (only one!) and you can start playing with it. [read more]
A few moments ago (55 minutes to be exact) Chad Myers made a commit on revision 55 of the FubuMVC enabling this to run using F5 inside Visual Studio, using Cassini. [read more]
The people from Infusion came last Tuesday Jan 13th to present Surface and Surface development. They bring a Surface (device?, table?) and they walk us through some of the things you can do and what you need to develop for the Surface. [read more]
Methods and Tools its a free online magazine [read more]
Herding code on FubuMVC [read more]
If you use Cruise Control.Net you may want to take a look at this project. CC.Net Community PlugIns [read more]
Besides programming against Interfaces and using Dependency Injection to reduce coupling, there is another practice that can/should be used when you consume an external library. [read more]
If you into DSL’s (Domain Specific Languages) or are interested on them, take a look at this DSL book, work in progress by Martin Fowler. [read more]
We are living in very exiting times in the .Net world. Every time I look I find a new framework to do web development. I recently found FubuMVC. This framework is a bit different from Sharp Architecture or the Catharsis guidance [read more]
I found this project on CodePlex called xVal. It’s Steve Sanderson’s take on validation for the ASP.NET MVC framework, more to the point on how to use validation across tiers (validate on the server side, present errors to the client, etc.... [read more]
... [read more]
A coworker uses Google Chrome as her primary browser and she sent me and email about my feeds not working. So I went to her computer and yes, inside Chrome when clicked the Icon on the top of the blog nothing happened. [read more]
Once in a while I like to browse around Codeplex to see what's new and if I found anything interesting. Today I found this Gem of a project called Catharsis. To be able to use it you will need VS 2008 with SP1. [read more]
I was going to write a post about this but my thoughts are exactly the same as Fredrik Normen’s. For example, one thing that creeps me out is seen think like this in the Controller. [read more]
Every time I wrote validation this code I think, I should write a library to do this for me. So I went ahead and wrote this simple class. The idea is to use the Introduce Assertion Refactoring in this cases and write this code in this way. ... [read more]
My previous post got me thinking, what are the things I will considered as minimum requirements for me to work in a project even when I have serious constrains on time? [read more]
Derick Bailey is doing a very good series on Kanban. So far he posted about- The board, queues, order points, pipelines, handling bugs and emergency fixes. You can find all the posts under the Kanban tag. ... [read more]
Igor Brejc with a set of valid points when implementing Continuous Integration. [read more]
Mohammad Azam has a post entitled When Being Agile Kills the Project. He mentions a project were the client gave a one month deadline not negotiable and so, he had to go and start cutting corners to make the deadline ... [read more]
CAT is a Visual Studio Add-in that analyze your code and all the references in your project looking for vulnerabilities to common attacks. [read more]
In my machine at work I can’t install ASP.NET MVC (it installs but fails to install the project templates, I don’t know why and I haven’t had time to look into it). [read more]
At least two really good post today about the future RC1 for the ASP.NET MVC framework. [read more]
Pronounced "Sharp Architecture," this is a solid architectural foundation for rapidly building maintainable web applications leveraging the ASP.NET MVC framework with NHibernate. [read more]
SVN Notifier is a nice little tool that sits on your Tray and let you know when a folder under source control on your system goes out of date. It’s useful is you are working on several projects with several developers or you follow the trunk... [read more]
This is a plug-in for Resharper that allows you to use Reflector and and the .Net framework source code to navigate your code. You can download it from the Google code project page. [read more]
We have been looking forward to implement Kanban for a while and after a few delays we put the board up today. We decided to define our pipeline using five columns. [read more]
Download the patch [read more]
This looks very interesting. (from their site) ELMAH (Error Logging Modules and Handlers) is an application-wide error logging facility that is completely pluggable. It can be dynamically added to a running ASP.NET web application, or... [read more]
Lava lamps, Orbs, led displays, they all have been used and are still being used to show the build status of projects under Continuous Integration. What about using a big flat panel TV? Cruise Control provides information via xml ... [read more]
On Dec 10 the IronPython team made available the version 2.0 on Codeplex. Go download it now and start playing! ... [read more]
I’m sitting besides my 19th month old trying to write some code. Of course he is trying to help me. Let me tell you his C# is not bad --) He was so exited about typing thaT I decided to give him something he could play with. [read more]
There is a nice video on Channel 9 about a study done by Microsoft Research about TDD and it’s impact on a real industry scenario. The study was done post mortem, so the developers were not influenced while developing the product. [read more]
As you may have noted, the blog have changed name, domain and engine. My previous hosting company wasn’t able to fix a problem they created with their install of PHP. [read more]
YAGNI or "You ain't gonna need it", is great. It keep people like me to over design systems. Now, every time that I start to write some piece of code I always have that said in mind. You will be surprised how many times I found myself telling me, YAGNI. [read more]
A few days ago was announced the date for the Professional Developers Conference 2009 or PDC. You can see the announcement or subscribe to the mailing list. The conference will be on November 17-20, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. [read more]
Test your site on multiple versions of IE. [read more]
I have looking for a simple to use, fast, ubiquous to do list for a long time. I used several different solutions. Web and desktop application. So far none of them really worked for me. Some of them are too simple, others too complex. ... [read more]
A month ago or so I was talking to this developer on a party at a friends house. He was telling me how much he hated his work. The guy was telling me about some of his coworkers. The story goes like this. [read more]
In the last year my team was able to successfully adopt the following practices in no particular order- Unit testing, Continuous Integration ... [read more]
They talk about LINQ and the changes needed to support it in c#. There is a very interesting point on Extension methods a feature that fascinate myself and scare me a little bit. It's so cool that I know that we will overuse it at the beginning. [read more]
A month ago or so I found a mention to the Toronto Patterns Study Interest Group in the Toronto XP list. I made contact with them and I was reading the Clean Code book in no time. I have ben to two meetings so far and I can't be any happier. [read more]
I have been looking for a tool to drive my web sites smoke and regression test for quite a while, between the tools I used I want to mention Sahi and Selenium, really good tools. [read more]
I will try to create a simple CMS framework on top of the ASP.Net MVC. This will be mostly an exercise, something that I feel I need to try to see how it works. [read more]
I consider extension methods one of the most interesting features of the .Net framework. I like it so much because It brings some of the strength of JavaScript into the framework. The possibility of write stuff like this.Have fun!!! [read more]
I just came across this series of posts, Architecture by Baseball.This series seems to be writting for me. I'm a baseball fanatic and I use techniques borrowed from baseball to manage my teams.If you are in a Team lead position or doing some arch... [read more]
If you were wondering I just try the MLB streaming in Google Chrome. Silverlight works and I even had video, but the frames don't update and there is an ugly scroll bar at the bottom of the video screen. The audio works fine with no problem, some... [read more]
As you may already know by now, Google released Google Chrome a new web browser. The launch was announce on monday and today everybody I know was going crazy trying to get it. [read more]
After I wrote my last post I remembered that some time ago I did intall an Add-In for Visual Studio called CopySource-AsHTML. So I decided that it was time to try it. I love it almost inmidiatly. The reason I like it better than the previous too... [read more]
C# format is an online tool to format your C#, VB, HTML, XML, T-SQL or MSH code into valid HTML 4.01 complaint code to put online. [read more]
In the last few days two of my favorite pieces of software released new versions. [read more]
There is a feature of Refactor that I really like and is the posibility to re-order the code (grouping fields, properties, private and public methods together) and order them alfabetically. I'm a Resharper user and I was looking for some add-in ... [read more]
First let me said, thanks for this post.I always sustained that you can't do modern web development without using JavaScript. I never understood when in some user group presentation or a Microsoft product launch somebody drag and drop a control ... [read more]
InfoQ published some videos for sessions at Agile 2008. Agile 2008 was held here in Toronto two weeks ago and I participate as a volunteer. It was a great experience and the variety and quality of the talks was really good. [read more]
A few weeks ago Jeffrey Palermo published his notion of an Onion Architecture. The first time I saw it was during his MVC presentation at DevTeach Toronto and I really like it. [read more]
A second list of projects from Codeplex and google code.Visual Studio Comparison Tools- Requires WinMerge to be installed in the machine. Provides contextual methods in VS to make fast comparison between two files or a file and the clipboard.HTML... [read more]
Here is a list of some projects that look interesting. Extension Methods Extravaganza- A collection of some extension methods. You can find extension to the object the ICollection, IEnumerable, IList, String and StringBuilder. I specially ... [read more]
In my previous post I show how to integrate PartCover reports into CC.Net and promise to look into make the reports look a bit nicer and try to integrate the Coverage metrics into the statistics reports. So I dust off my xslt ... [read more]
A few months ago I mentioned that I was using PartCover.Net to measure test coverage in my projects. I have been really busy but I decided that this week I was going to integrate the reports with CC.Net. Cruise Control ships with NCover support o... [read more]
I look at the table of contents and I knew that I have to have it. I ordered two copies right away, one from my team and one for my personal library. The book came two weeks ago and I'm loving it. [read more]
Yesterday I listened to show 115 of Scott Hanselman podcast "Hanselminutes", the title was "Finding passion for Software". [read more]
We were having a problem with our build in the CC.Net server. The problem was that when doing the clean of the build folder sometimes it was failing with the following error. "Can't delete folder is not empty". The first thing was to check that... [read more]
I was helping a colleague at work to debug an old classic asp script that uploads an image to the server, create some folders if they don't exist and copy the image on those folders.He was having a permissions denied error. [read more]
I was creating for the 10th time today a nant build file from Visual Studio when I came to the realization that I needed to automate the process a bit more. So I created an item template to include build files. You just need to copy this zip file... [read more]
During Scott's Hanselmann presentation on Dynamic Data at the TVBUG he show a little trick that I didn't know about and I want to show it here.It always annoy me that every time you click run in a web application using VS it runs using ... [read more]
Jeffrey Palermo gave a great presentation about the ASP.NET MVC framework. If you read my blog you know that MVC is kind of an obsession with me. The presentation used the codecampserver project that use the last drop of the code for MVC [read more]
I seriously believe that REST is a simple and yet powerful architecture that can be used in most scenarios where web services need to be deployed. This week the good guys at infoq.com have an interview with Pete Lacey a fervent proponent of REST ... [read more]
Notes on Beth Massi and Scott Hanselmann presentations at the TVBUG. [read more]
Following to yesterday presentation at the TVBUG, Scott Hanselman gave the keynote on Data Services and Dynamic Data. Both of this two (products?, projects?, solutions?) are focus in different ways to provide access to your data. [read more]
I'm not always exited about Microsoft launches but the 2008 series (Server, Sql, VS) is quite good. So I went to this event with the highest expectation, hoping, for once, to be able to learn something. I chose the Architect track... [read more]
Testing is fundamental to get your code into shape and to be sure that what you are doing is behaving as expected. New methodologies like Test Driven Design (TDD) point to that goal. [read more]
Jeffrey Palermo posted about replacing the ViewData on the MVC framework with a generic container called SmartBag. The advantage is that the container will return an object of a given type, so no more casting and also no more using string keys... [read more]
We are changing our template system at work and my boss ask me to look around for a css parser class. The class needed to load a bunch of css files and parse them to be able to get a value from an attribute of a given key. [read more]
A free tool to do code coverage with a nice GUI for the developers to use, that can be run on the command prompt, that generates nice xml based reports (to integrate with your CC server) and best of all for me) that works fine with Static methods... [read more]
I have been working in different companies where the practice of an Agile methodology is in place, but in most of them the part that is always left behind is pair programming and/or code review. [read more]
Virtualbox is a free open source virtual machine software. I have been using it to run, Ubuntu, Fedora, BDS and a virtual XP machine with all the new stuff for testing and I love it [read more]
I usually use PSPad as my fire up and hack something together editor. I also use it to do a lot of maintenance, I have been even using it to do some c# editing here and there and relying more and more in Nant to do the builds, it even has a plug-in to synchronize with subversion if you want. [read more]
I have found some controversy in some post in the wild where I demostrate how to extend the string object. Sometimes the controversy is around the examples presented. So I decided to make my own example with methods that I wish were included in the framework. [read more]
I keep searching for the right IDE for my Ruby and Ruby on Rails adventures. I keep changing and playing around with the ones I had and lately I keep using NetBeans 6.0. Yesterday I decide to try again and after looking at The usual suspects, I found Eclipse for Rails... [read more]
I went today to the Nant site to check some documentation and I saw that the beta 1 of the new version is available, this version supports the .NET 3.5 framework, Mono 3.5, Silverlight 2.0 and Moonlight 2.0 [read more]
The Javascript library Prototype make use of "prototypes" to extend some internal JavaScript objects like the Array. One of the extension methods that I find myself using the most is the each method. [read more]
Microsoft have a set of videos available to learn about the new features on SQL server 2008. You can find links to those videos here. Another set of videos give helpful information on the new features of VS 2008. [read more]
If you are learning Ruby or if you just wander what is all of that about there are a few free online books that you should jump into. Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book is a free e-book from the guys at infoq.com [read more]
There was something that I wasn't happy with my template system, so I decided to improved it. The algorithm used was wrong, I was checking for all the properties and/or fields of the object instead of check for the variables in the template first... [read more]
Prototype is one of the most popular javascript libraries out there and one of the features I really like is the template implementation. When you create an Ajax application there are multiple opportunities to use templates in the client side. [read more]
They talk about LINQ and the changes needed to support it in c#. There is a very interesting point on Extension methods a feature that fascinate myself and scare me a little bit. It's so cool that I know that we will overuse it at the beginning. [read more]
It's very interesting to notice that 2.0 won't be fully compatible with the previous versions of Rails, I don't have nothing important or too complicated written with Rails so I don't expect to have too much trouble upgrading but I will like to see what is the response of the rails community to this. [read more]
This is a cool example I haven't see before of using LINQ to query and filter an array. I like this use of LINQ, it shows the power of the language and what I think is a much useful "usage"... [read more]
I have been using DooDads, a free, open source ORM architecture for a while now. I like that I can easily use it with any database structure, not matter how bad it is. [read more]
I have been reading a lot about how this framework will better be used in brand new developments. I agree that you won't migrate an existing site to this framework. [read more]
The CTP release of the Microsoft MVC framework is available with the ASP.NET 3.5 extensions. [read more]
I just found this post with detailed instruction on how to make the MVC framework work in IIS. The instructions are very basic and you shouldn't have any problems making it work, but you may not know how to modify the extension handling in IIS 5. [read more]
Yesterday Scott Gu post again about the MVC framework. Don't miss his post about Passing View data from controllers to view. [read more]
I am an entusiast of Test Driven Development but sometimes I have the problem that is difficult to know how to start testing. The problem usually is, very ambiguous requirements provided by the client. [read more]
In this second part we look at the factory methods to handle the different request and the formatters classes. [read more]
If you haven't look at it, take a look at the Subsonic project, is really cool and can generate a ORM infrastructure faster than any other framework I tried out there. It also provides a cool HTTPHandler to expose those objects. [read more]
I just came across Volta in Microsoft live labs. I haven't downloaded or anything but my first impression is that this try to be some kind of AIR. [read more]
I'm working in an application originally programmed in 200 by only one developer. I really clever guy that put in place quiet a bit of base code. The original design of the application is not all that bad, but several waves of developers have done maintenance on it. [read more]
A great presentation from Thomas Fuchs creador the Script.aculo.us at infoq.com. A preview of the new 2.0 version of the Script.aculo.us library on Thomas Fuchs blog. Enjoy! [read more]
In the altnet conference the guys from Microsoft presented an MVC framework that will be released on the spring. It promise to be something really good, it's seems to be so flexible that you can plug into it whatever framework you are used to. [read more]
WM 11 and Firefox don't like each other very much. The infamous squishy bug is plaging the web. It's almost imposible to find a custom player around the work as it's suppose to with WM embeded in Firefox. [read more]
I'm trilled to discover that I'm not crazy and that my search and adoption of alternative tools (alternatives to the Microsoft tools) to develop in .net is a philosophy adopted not only by me but for a lot of people. It even has a name ALT.NET. [read more]
I have been playing with the new version of Flex and I'm very impressed with it's possibilities. I did try Flex when it was first released and even when I like it, the price tag and the needs to install an specific server to use it discourage me. [read more]
I really like the Hacks series form O'Reilly, these are very simple references books. They present a problem and a solution in the form of quick articles and they are usually based on common issues for that technology. [read more]