The dynamic programmer
General

Switching from Jekyll to Metalsmith.

After 6 years of Jekyll it was time to switch.

The DevOps trap, we should all embrace DevOps.

DevOps and the benefits that spawn from it are undeniable, but I'm worry we (the industry) is pushing it in the wrong way.

Mac OSX windows managers, BetterSnapTool and Slate.

Because a good set of tools should help you to be more productive.

Microsoft Volta - AIR.NET?

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.

Supporting WM in Firefox

WM 11 and Firefox don't like each other very much. The infamous squishy bug is plaguing the web. It's almost impossible to find a custom player around the work as it's suppose to with WM embedded in Firefox.

ALT.NET

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.

Flex versus AJAX

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.

Installing node.js on Mac OSX.

Installing node.js in two simple steps.

Improving your Git work-flow with aliases.

The art of reducing strokes, combining commands and improving your life as a developer.

App walls or how to annoy your mobile users.

The ridiculous push of native apps for content sites is ruining the mobile experience for a lot of users.

Converting my iPad into a portable office.

I recently got the Logitech keyboard folio for my trusty iPad 2; couldn't be happier.

Mindfulness, meditation for the busy programmer.

Ten minutes a day can really make an impact on improving your day.

Beautiful new typography, the work of Pablo Impallari.

A list of some beautifully designed (new) fonts created by Pablo Impallari.

Fonts inspired by Buenos Aires signage.

Buenos Aires has a rich lettering culture, in particular the style known as "fileteado". This is a list of fonts that are inspired or that reflect some of that legacy.

Get started with Arduino, A hands-on introductory workshop - video review.

A very well written book that will instill the need to write some F# code.

Maximum number of attendees for an effective stand-up meeting.

This post have been inspired by a tweet I saw today, asking that question.

Introducing Loops, my non technical content at jux.com.

I recently discovered Jux and love it immediately. You can find my non technical content in there.

Windows 8 - first impressions.

During the weekend I decided to go ahead and get the Windows 8 consumers preview release installed on my side laptop. It has been a nice experience so far.

Have fun with your build scripts.

We put Cucumber in our test, use a capybara to automate the browser and we pickler our stories.

Some tomatoes an empty inbox and a todo list, a productivity sauce recipe.

For the last year or so I have been practicing a variety of techniques with different degrees of success. I found a recipe in the last four or five months that seems to work well so far, a mix of GTD, Inbox zero and the Pomodoro technique.

Getting to know HTML 5.

HTML 5 is way more than the highly tooted video tag or the use of canvas, it provides new tags for a more semantic representation of documents.

My link collection for September 9th, 2010.

The art of APIs, Forking with git, Git hooks, UX simplicity, BDD, node.js, Rails 3.1 plans, going offline and ActiveRecord queries.

Migrating the blog from dasblog to jekyll.

Dasblog worked ok, but I wanted more control on the html and something that was more than a blogging platform. Since I have been playing a lot with ruby lately I also wanted my new solution to be based on ruby.

Pickle cucumber steps not recognized before creating the model.

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.

Starting with Node.js.

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.

Living on the dark side. Ubuntu and RoR development from a Windows dev perspective.

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.

Are there a lot of programs for that?

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.

My BDD Session at Toronto Code Camp - slides, code and retrospective.

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.

Speaking at Toronto Code Camp 2010 on BDD + User stories for end to end testing.

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.

Designing the obvious, book review.

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.

Book review- User Stories Applied- For Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn

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.

DevTeach Toronto 2010 personal retrospective.

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.

Videos of the PyCon 2010 sessions.

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.

Going mobile with Mippin.

This blog is going mobile.

Ruby Koans, learning ruby the test driven way.

Probably you are aware of Edgecase Ruby Koans. In case you aren't, let me introduce you to them.

Notes and personal retrospective from my first Codemash.

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.

Codemash Scheduler online; pick and choose sessions to go and export to your calendar.

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.

What I enjoyed at StackOverflow DevDays Toronto.

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.

More than a month without posting - wow!

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.

List of recent InfoQ videos on design, architecture, DSL's and 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...

Toronto Code Camp 2009

Last weekend was the 2009 edition of the Toronto Code Camp were I had the privilege to participate as one of the many volunteers.

The Renaissance in development; Ted Neward at Oredev 2008

You can get all the videos (110)

Yahoo.ca doesn't work on IE8 be default.

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.

Scott Bellware on Twitter

Development teams have two processes- their development process, and the processes of improving their development process. Scott Bellware ...

Auto properties in c#, what the compiler does for you.

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.

More Uncle Bob videos.

Sergio Pereira just posted two videos of Uncle Bob presentation at the Chicago Alt.Net meeting.

Video of Uncle Bob on Craftsmanship an ethics

InfoQ has a video recorded at JAOO on witch Robert Martin talks about craftsmanship and ethics on software development.

Have you ever wanted to learn Rails but you never wanted where to start?

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.

A rant on professionalism by Chad Myers.

Chad Myers goes on in this rant on professionalism.

Chrome doesn't like the feed scheme

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.

Continuous Integration Do's and Don't.

Igor Brejc with a set of valid points when implementing Continuous Integration.

ASP.NET MVC RC 1 coming next January.

At least two really good post today about the future RC1 for the ASP.NET MVC framework.

ELMAH error handler for asp.net applications

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...

Thumbs up to Baby Smash

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.

Goodbye Books and Bits, Hello Dynamic Programmer!

As you may have noted, the blog changed name, domain and engine. My previous hosting company wasn't able to fix a problem they created with their install of PHP.

YAGNI it's not a excuse for badly designed applications.

YAGNI is short for You ain't gonna need it. 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.

PDC 2009 dates and mailing list.

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.

IE Tester - Four IE's in one.

Test your site on multiple versions of IE.

Mediocrity should scare you.

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.

Hurray to my team

In the last year my team was able to successfully adopt the following practices in no particular order- Unit testing, Continuous Integration ...

Building the right team.

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.

Reading a book and sharing with your pairs.

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.

Google Chrome and Silverlight- It kind of works!!!

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...

Google Chrome, The new kid in the browsers block.

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.

Do you need to format the code for your blog?

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.

On Sergio Pereira's - Don't tell me you did that with JavaScript

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 ...

Some interesting looking projects 2.

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...

Some interesting looking CodePlex projects

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 ...

DevTeach day 1 - Scott Hanselman keynote

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.

Heroes happen here - Toronto

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...

Free virtual machine software.

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

PSPad, editors and other tools that I can't leave without.

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.

NAnt 0.86 beta 1 with support for 3.5 is available

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

Fixing IIS 5.0 to work with the MVC

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.