February 2009

Work

I split my time between in-house and client work last month.  The majority of my work was a carry over from January – a customer application featuring .NET 3.5 web site, web services, SQL 2005, WPF, etc and an in-house ASP.NET 3.5 web application.

I also spent time prototyping a ClickOnce deployable WPF client for the internal line of business application. And I also prototyped a WCF RESTful web service for common authentication, business logic and database access. 

Talks

I’ve previously posted about Lightning Talks.  At my company we actually call them "code brews."  Though are meetings aren’t technically code brews, I am very found on the term as it is made up of two of my favorite things.  I did a talk on Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) and I am scheduled to do another talk (which has been pushed out to 3/23) on Functional Programming.

JohnnyCoder

I published a mere 5 articles last month.  Each of which I think provided value and sample code.  I still don’t have a good solution for the ClickOnce Run at Startup problem.  Any ideas?

1. Expand Urls with C# and LongUrlPlease
2. ClickOnce Run at Startup
3. ClickOnce Getting Started Sample
4. Visual Studio and Anonymous Code
5. My Professional Retrospective – 01/09

 
Books

I finished CLR via C#, Second Edition by Jeffrey Richter.  As I previously mentioned, this book is ridiculously good.  If you are at all interested in learning more about the CLR, .NET, even C#, this is the book for you.  Prior to picking up my copy, I heard time and time again that CLR via C# is THE book that every .NET developer needs to own and STUDY. There’s good reason why this book has a 5 star rating on Amazon.com and I highly recommend it. 

I really focused on finishing Richter’s book in February.  Thus the following books remain partially read:

1. Agile Software Development with Scrum (Series in Agile Software Development) by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle
2. Foundations of F# by Robert Pickering
3. Some of jQuery in Action by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz

Podcasts

What was worth listening to last month?  You know what?  I felt that last month didn’t have an awful lot to offer.  By that, if someone told me they were interested in starting to listen to .NET podcasts and which would I recommend, I don’t think I would point them to anything which was recorded last month.  With that said, I think I’ll merely share the list of podcast in my iTunes queue:

• Alt.NET Podcast: http://altnetpodcast.com/
• Deep Fried Bytes: http://deepfriedbytes.com/
• Elegant Code: http://elegantcode.com/
• Hanselminutes: http://www.hanselminutes.com/
• Herding Code: http://herdingcode.com/
• .NET Rocks!: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/
• Pixel8: http://getpixel8ed.com
• Polymorphic Podcast: http://polymorphicpodcast.com/
• Pragmatic Podcast: http://www.pragprog.com/podcasts
• SE Radio: http://www.se-radio.net/
• Spaghetti Code: http://www.slickthought.net/
• Stackoverflow: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/
• The Thirsty Developer: http://thirstydeveloper.com/
• ThoughtWorks – IT Matters: http://www.thoughtworks.com/what-we-say/podcasts.html
• You Look Nice Today: http://youlooknicetoday.com/

As I mentioned last month, I volunteered to compile the show notes for HerdingCode.  The guys recorded 3 shows last month so go ahead and listen to the shows and check out the notes!

Blogs

Like last month, between podcasts and Twitter, my blog consumption has dropped considerably.  I just hit the FeedDemon panic button which marked all posts more than 5 days old as read. I have now gotten though the remaining list of unread post and I plan to crack open FeedDemon every day and clean out “my inbox.”  I’ll have to let you know how this goes next month.

Twitter

I am still not addicted to Twitter although I recently increased the folks I follow by about two folds.  I’m liking it enough to recommend it to fellow coders as a legitimate software development tool.  My current desktop client is still Witty and I use Twitterific on my iPhone.  Again, I’m not addicted.

Open Source

I didn’t do much Witty development in February other than a quick spike to decipher a long URL off of a short URL.  Hence the post about the wrapper class I created for longurlplease.com.

Tools

Installed two multiple computer/monitor/mouse management applications.  The first is Synergy which is super cool as it allows me to share a common keyboard and mouse across two separate machines with different operating systems.  The second is UltraMon which is a tool for multiple monitor support. It particularly comes in handy for those crazy folks running 3+ monitors.

I’ve also gotten myself a little more familiar with SubText as we are now running this blogging software to host our company developer blogs.

Summary

As I mentioned in the Profession Retrospective announcement, it is difficult to remember what I did last week never mind yesterday.  This was a tough exercise to go back a month in time.  I’m sure I missed dozens of things but this is still just an experiment. Let’s see what next month brings.

January 2009

Work

This month I found myself January was a surprisingly busy month as I successfully deployed two production applications:

Project A: Continued Phase 2 Release for an multi-piece application which I initially launched in July.  This release included .NET web, web services, SQL Server 2005 enhancements along with minor tweaks to the WPF client. 

Project B: Put a sizable amount of work into an internal line of business ASP.NET web application which used much of the .NET membership objects and controls, jQuery, parameterized queries, themes and general dynamic gridview fanciness.

Talks

I’ve previously posted about Lightning Talks.  At my company we actually call them “code brews.”  Though are meetings aren’t technically code brews, I am very found on the term as it is made up of two of my favorite things.  I did a talk on Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) and I am scheduled to do another talk on 3/2 on Functional Programming with a focus on F#.

JohnnyCoder

I only published 6 articles last month. If I could encourage you to review just one of the posts, it would be the introduction to AOP.  The post includes a sample web projects and demonstrates how to separate caching functionality from your core implementation: Caching with C#, AOP and PostSharp

On a side note, I noticed my post titles were wrapped in <H2> rather than <H1> tags.  I updated my WordPress templates and now that Google can better spider me, I’m finding views and comments are increasing considerably.  SEO mistake number 1: Don’t let Google work for you.

I also added avatars to comments on 1/9.  Anything to show off my bald spot…
 
Books

I read a free copy of Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review by Jason Cohen from SmartBear Software.  I’ve been interested in code reviews for years.  When this book arrived in the mail, I pushed all my other reading aside and ripped through it. 

I downloaded Data Structures and Algorithms: Annotated Reference with Examples by Granville Barnett and Luca Del Tongo. I haven’t read through the entire eBook yet, but it is very nicely done.  I suggest you add it to your collection.

I’m still plugging along on CLR via C#, Second Edition by Jeffrey Richter.  This book is ridiculously good, but it requires a good amount of focused time which I don’t have a lot of lately.

The following books are partially complete:

1. Agile Software Development with Scrum (Series in Agile Software Development) by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle
2. Foundations of F# by Robert Pickering
3. Some of jQuery in Action by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz

Podcasts

I added two new podcasts to my queue — Elegant Code Codecast and Spaghetti Code Podcast and pixel8.  I’ve handpicked and listened to about a dozen past episodes and I’m going to stick with them. 

What was worth listening to last month?

1. Alt.NET Podcast – Episode 15 – Domain Driven Design
2. Stackoverflow – Podcast #39
3. Stackoverflow – Podcast #38
4. Stackoverflow – Podcast #37
5. Stackoverflow – Podcast #36
6. Elegant Code – Code Cast 19 – Peter Provost on Agile, Visual Studio 2010, and Architecture Tools
7. Hanselminutes – Show #145 – SOLID Prinicples with Uncle Bob
8. Hanselminutes – Show #146 – Test Driven Development is Design – The Last Word on TDD
9. Hanselminutes – Show #148 – MEF with Glenn Block 
10. HerdingCode – Episode 33 – Intertube Inauguration and Questions from Listeners
11. HerdingCode – Episode 32 – WIndows 7 First Impressions
12. HerdingCode – Episode 31 – Chad Myers and Jeremy Miller on FUBUMVC
13. HerdingCode – Episode 30: Year-End Wrap Up
14. SE Radio – Episode 108: Simon Peyton Jones on Functional Programming and Haskell (from 08/08)

I have also volunteered to produce show notes for the HerdingCode crew.  Last week, I sat in on my first show.  Let me know what you think of the show notes starting with Episode 34 once the show is published.

Blogs

Between podcasts and Twitter, my blog consumption has dropped considerably.  This makes me sad.  I think I shall do something about it this coming month.

Twitter

It is fair to call me a casual Twitterer, but I am far from addicted to the service.  In fact, I’ve never once complained or even noticed when the site has gone down.  That said, I’ve started to recognize Twitter for what it is — a valuable resource for an inquisitive software developer like myself.  It’s shocking just how much information can be gathered by merely “listening in” on numerous public conversions/announcements.  Though I see little evidence of it yet, I am confident that micro-blogging (and podcasts) will ultimately kill traditional blogging.  We’ll see. Anyway, I currently follow a dozen or so folks and I check in with Twitter about 4 times a day.  My current desktop client is Witty and I use Twitterific on my iPhone.  Again, I’m not addicted.

Open Source

I’ve continued to commit to the Witty project and submitted patches for 4 issues/enhancements this past month.  All, coincidently, we’re rolled with the 2.1 release on 2/3.

Tools

Installed the free DevExpress Tools (CodeRush Xpress for Visual Studio and Refactor! for ASP.NET) and has since uninstalled.  I started building up VMware machines at work and I’m using the VMware Infrastructure Client to manage the images.

Summary

As I mentioned in the Profession Retrospective announcement, it is difficult to remember what I did last week never mind yesterday.  This was a tough exercise to go back a month in time.  I’m sure I missed dozens of things but this is still just an experiment. Let’s see what next month brings.

December 2008

Work

December was a surprisingly busy month as I successfully deployed two production applications:

Project A: The initial product launch of a .NET web application using jQuery, AJAX, Json and web services.  For the second project in a row, I was paired up with a HTML designer.  Though code merges aren’t always easy, having a dedicated resource (read: anyone other than me) responsible for page layout, usability, css, and browser testing is a luxury.  If you have the means, I highly suggest it.  I was additionally spoiled as the web service and data layer was provided by the customer’s development team.  Since my web development and their remote web service development was happening concurrently, we agreed on the web service contract and I coded exclusively against mocks until it was time to integrate. It was really exciting when it all came together as it was the first practical experience I had with designing for testability/mockability.

Additional, semi-noteworthy project stuff: Caching and the decorator pattern, cache helper class, session helper classes, jQuery and Json eliminated nearly 100% of my code-behind logic, configuration management, ASP.NET themes, email template with embedded resources and why I didn’t use Master Pages.

Project B: A Phase 2 Release for an multi-piece application which I initially launched in July.  This release included .NET web, web services, SQL Server 2005 enhancements along with minor tweaks to the WPF client.  We brought in a second developer to help with Phase 2.  This was great as it gave me opportunity to validate my work and ensure the application could be transitioned to others if need be.  Not so surprisingly, the biggest hurdle in getting the second coder up to speed was the understanding of the domain. After that, a quick run through SubSonic and SSMS Tools Pack was also required. 

I also spent some time working on a internal Silverlight application which I won’t comment on here because I’ve already blogged it to death.

Talks

I’ve previously posted about Lightning Talks.  At my company we actually call them “code brews.”  Though are meetings aren’t technically code brews, I am very found on the term as it is made up of two of my favorite things.  I’ve committed to doing future talks on Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) and Functional Programming with a focus on F# in the near future so I anticipate these two topics will begin to surface on my blog soon.

JohnnyCoder

Speaking of my blog, I’m anything but consistent when it comes to posting content here. However, December was a surprisingly big month for me. I posted 10 articles (many of which included downloadable code) and I couldn’t be more in the posting spirit.  My favorite posts last month:

1. Candid Reaction to WPF and Silverlight
2. jTemplates with jQuery, AJAX and Json
3. C# Cache Helper Class

On a side note, we’re ramping up individual blogs at work.  More than likely, I’ll start dual-posting to JohnnyCoder and my work account.  We evaluated BlogEngine.NET, dasBlog and SubText before settling with SubText. Perhaps I, or a co-worker, will offer up a future post regarding the details of our evaluation.  I will say blog aggregation was a big factor and running SubText in IIS7′s Integrated Pipleline Mode is tricky.
 
Books

I enjoy reading more than ever, but books are expensive.  I have been borrowing books from co-workers, but most often I’m paying Barnes & Noble and Amazon for my education.  As an alternative, I have started looking into options like Safari Books Online through ACM as well as ethically-questionable Scribd.com.  Though I’m not certain my eyes/head can tolerate reading hundreds monitor-hosted pages, I already read a lot online (blogs, code) and I think I’m ready to make the leap.  Though I’m sure I’ll eventually be reading complete books online, I feel the most obvious benefit is having the various reference materials immediately available.

We’ll see if the eBook idea pans out, but for now I’m sticking with tangible books.  Which bring us to the books I read last month:

1. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister
2. Head First C# by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene
3. Head First Design Patterns by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates and Kathy Sierra
4. Reread The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson for the umpteenth time

As well as started last month:

1. CLR via C#, Second Edition by Jeffrey Richter
2. Agile Software Development with Scrum (Series in Agile Software Development) by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle
3. Foundations of F# by Robert Pickering
4. Some of jQuery in Action by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz

Podcasts

Since books are pretty tough to read while driving, I’ve continued to listen to nearly one podcast per day. The following is a list of December and late November’s Top 10 episodes.  They are listed in no particular order although my very favorites are at the top of the list:

1. Hanselminutes – Show #138 – Paint.NET with Rick Brewster 
2. .NET Rocks – Show #402 – Catching up with Oren Eini
3. Hanselminutes – Show #139 – Moonlight with Miguel del Icaza and Joseph Hill
4. Herding Code – Episode #28/29 – Miguel De Icaza (1) / Miguel De Icaza (2)
5. Deep Fried Bytes – Episode #23 – Functional Programming in C# with Oliver Sturm
6. Deep Fried Bytes – Episode #21 – Talking Software Performance with Rico Mariani
7. .NET Rocks – Show #407 – Ted Neward at Oredev
8. Stackoverflow – Podcast #34
9. Alt.Net Podcast – Ruby on Rails
10. The Thirsty Developer 45 – Visual Studio 2010

The above list is obviously biased toward my current though mercurial interests. I’ve done a lot with .NET client deployment over the last year so the Hanselman’s interview with Rick Brewster was a hands-down #1 choice for me.

Though .NET Rocks was listed only twice, they deserve my best-of-December award.  They post consistently and often and Decembers content was really good.  It’s hard to not include The State of Silverlight witih Tim Heuer, David Aiken on Azure, or Oslo is Love with Chris Sells.

I should also mentioned Software Engineering Radio.  I’ve been listened to a number of older episodes and the podcast definitely has my interest.

I also listen to You Look Nice Today. I wish they posted more shows. Nickelpuss was their latest gem and deserves to be in the top 5 above.

Blogs

As my podcast and book consumption goes up, the number of blogs I consistently follow goes down.  These days I find myself dedicating an entire evening each week to blog-catch-up rather than reading posts as they arrive via FeedDemon.  Other than when I read, nothing has really changed in this area.  (I think I’ll keep better track of this activity in January.)

That said, though it falls more in the screencast rather than Blog category, I watched an outlandish number of Dimecasts last month.  The Dimecast folks have published nearly 75 episodes and I think I watched 50 of them in December alone.  Go ahead and quiz me on anything… 

And though Stackoverflow doesn’t really fall in the Blog category either, I spent a bit of time on the site.  I skim through various tags and unanswered questions, but the bulk of the time Google search or my own questions direct me there.  It’s amazing how this site has really taken off.  Stackoverflow is anti-subjectivity, but to date, my most popular question is What’s Your Favorite Harmless Computer Practical Joke? 

Twitter

It is fair to call me a casual Twitterer, but I am far from addicted to the service.  In fact, I’ve never once complained or even noticed when the site has gone down.  That said, I’ve started to recognize Twitter for what it is — a valuable resource for an inquisitive software developer like myself.  It’s shocking just how much information can be gathered by merely “listening in” on numerous public conversions/announcements.  Though I see little evidence of it yet, I am confident that micro-blogging (and podcasts) will ultimately kill traditional blogging.  We’ll see. Anyway, I currently follow a dozen or so folks and I check in with Twitter about 4 times a day.  My current desktop client is Witty and I use Twitterific on my iPhone.  Again, I’m not addicted.

Open Source

On a related note, I submitted two patches to the Witty – A Twitter client for Windows Vista and XP powered by WPF – project in late December. To my delight, the patches (Run Witty at Startup and Highlight Terms of Interest) were committed and released on Christmas Day.  

It isn’t open source yet, but I also wrote a couple “test” Windows Live Writer Plugins for fun.

Tools

I have started using Launchy, TimeSnapper and Dropbox on a routine basis and I’m experimenting with Remember the Milk, EverNote and PasswordSafe.

Summary

As I mentioned in the Profession Retrospective announcement, it is difficult to remember what I did last week never mind yesterday.  This was a tough exercise to go back a month in time.  I’m sure I missed dozens of things particularly current areas of interest like AOP, Functional Programming, Powershell and ClickOnce to name a few.  Again, this is just an experiment. Let’s see what next month brings.

Though I hope everyone will benefit from the upcoming entries, the retrospectives will primarily be written for selfish reasons.

What’s to come?

With so much going on in our industry, I find it really hard to keep up with all of my interests.  Though I don’t think I’m the only one in this boat, I still believe you would laugh if you were aware of how randomly my thoughts bounce around throughout the day.  This would be most evident if you were to see a full list of half-written, unpublished blog entries I’ve compiled over the years or if you had a look at one of my many task lists.  So, first and foremost, the retrospectives are intended to help me stay on track.

Speaking of half-written, unpublished blog entries, I hope the retrospectives will give me an opportunity to post little bits before (or in lieu of) more polished, full-fledged articles.  This, of course, assumes that something is better than nothing.  I also figure if there’s enough interest in something noted in a retrospective, it will probably motivate me enough to get the “real” article out the door. 

And since the primary object is to keep me on track, I’ll be posting some goals.  For example, if I’m really interested in learning more about Technology X, I may commit to publishing a “Getting Started” post in the following month. Or I may announce my intension to get involve in OSS project Y or do a talk about Z for user group ABC.  Sky’s the limit…

What just happened?

Additionally, these posts will act as reminders for where I’ve been and what I’ve done.  This may sounds funny, but so many details are easily forgotten. (By now you must think I’m the biggest scattered brain.) If you are required to submit time sheets on a weekly basis, I bet you know what I mean.  Unless you are disciplined enough to keep track of your hours as you perform the work, it’s often difficult to remember what you worked on last week — never mind yesterday.  So, I plan to keep ongoing notes and publish the collection as we enter a new month.  I thinking this is called web logging or something…

On a side note, my company performs bi-annual employee reviews.  If I capture what I’ve accomplished and what I wish to accomplish (a.k.a. goal setting) each month, completing my self-evaluation every 6 months should be a breeze.

Finally, I genuinely enjoy reading about what folks are interested in and what they’re really up to.  90% of the blog posts I read don’t get into the “real life” type stuff.  I’m not suggesting that personal information is shared (we had boy # 2 six weeks ago, by the way), but I would like to have more context around some of the stuff I read.  For example, I want to know if the blogger is writing about what they practice on a day-to-day basis in the office, is this something they do at night and on weekends or are they just talking out of their asses?  Hopefully, the retrospectives give you all better context about where I’m “coming from.”

Anyway, that’s the plan.  The first edition will come tonight (how sad) or tomorrow.  Happy New Year.