December 2011
7 posts
I moved on from WCF Web API, but Web API IS still... →
If you’ve my last few posts around the new Windows Azure SDK for Node.js and you have not been following me on twitter, then you might be suspicious. Let me remove the suspicion, I’ve moved on from…
A holiday.js gift for Azure Node.js developers →
It’s been 10 days since we release our first preview of Windows Azure SDK for Node.js. So far the community reaction has been really good with 11000+ downloads to date. Feedback is starting to…
Node.js in Windows Azure, to the cloud and beyond! →
Node.js is an exciting platform that has been increasing in popularity for the past two years. It offers a server side JavaScript programming model ideal for building highly scalable…
Sunday Thought: Embracing the Type System →
I had a lot of fun talking with all of you on the benefits of dynamic languages on the previous post. Definitely getting a better picture of what working with a language like that is like listening…
Free OpenWrap workshop Saturday 10th December in... →
You get 4 hours and a lunch (complimentary from PeopleWare) to come and talk about package management and how it can change the way you build software. It’s completely free, you just need to…
A Question to You: the Reader →
A curiosity hit me today.
What is the value of dynamically typed languages in larger projects?
Do they have unique benefits?
Do they have unique negatives?
Load up the comments.
-d
Building an Async WCF Service in .NET 4.5 →
In the .NET Framework 4.0 version of WCF, managing multiple asynchronous operations, for example in the form of WCF and HTTP request/response operations, is currently very complex regardless of…
November 2011
6 posts
Telerik components for asp.net: learning to live... →
Telerik is a Friend of codebetter and they deserve some more attention. In this post I will explore some of my recent experiences with their components for asp.net. There are two suites of them. On…
A simple tip to make your debugging sessions go... →
TL;DR: In C# use [DebuggerDisplay(“”)] on your classes and follow better practices.
So lets say we have a class (C#) that looks like this:
public class Person
{ public string Name { get; set;...
Staying home for the night →
&*%$ you and all of your @#*!% opinions! There, now that I’ve established my credibility, let’s get started.
I installed Ubuntu recently on a virtual machine. It was insanely easy. Pointed VMWare…
Great post on why the patent system in the US is... →
You can read the post at SFGate. It’s a great interview with a Google attorney who lays out in pretty simple terms why the patent system in the US is broken. The comments are also worth a read….
Node-inspector just got easier for Windows →
In my last post I demonstrated the superbly awesome node-inspector module and how you can use it to get a nice interactive debugging experience for node apps right in your browser.
The first…
An ANTS Winner, Week 8 – ReSharper! →
Congrats to @n3wjack who gets away a copy of ANTS Performance Profiler Professional Edition!
This week, we’re giving away the must-have-can’t-use-visual-studio-without-it tool, ReSharper! (Personal license).
October 2011
11 posts
OpenWrap 2.0.1–a better way to look at... →
There are many many features in OpenWrap 2.0, and at this rate it will take me many weeks before we go through them all. As such, I shall only blog about the things that are fully finished (and why…
Free OpenWrap workshop, Cambridge, 5th of November →
If you want to know what package management is, how it can help you and how you can use the latest OpenWrap version to solve your dependency needs, I’m giving a free workshop for the Cambridge…
Models for a view (some objects are more equal... →
How to implement the V and the C in MVC is no point of great discussion. When it comes to the M the variation increases. An ASP.NET MVC app has a Models folder; what you will find in there varies…
One language everywhere →
How important / beneficial is it, really, if you had a single language for the backend and the frontend? For instance, if you could code in JavaScript/Python/Ruby/C# whatever in both the browser and…
Getting Inherited Config Settings →
Yesterday, I wrote an HttpModule to support enabling Http basic authentication for Web APIs running in an ASP.NET host. But wait, you say – IIS already supports basic authentication?!? This is…
Use of Abstractions in Dynamic & Static Languages →
The more and more that I code in .Net the more that I notice we like to layer our own abstraction on top of 3rd party abstractions. In general (and I don’t have enough experience to really say) I…
Using a gmail account as a production bug tracking... →
I’d like to share here an idea I implemented 2 years ago in NDepend and that has proven being pretty powerful and useful: Using a gmail account as a production bug tracking server !
By …
OAuth 2.0 in Web API →
This week I’ll be pushing a sample to the WebAPI-Prototype branch in our Codeplex repository for doing an OAuth 2.0 dance for Web APIs. Before I get into how the sample works, let’s quickly define…
OpenWrap 2.0–Package locking →
Well, this one was scheduled for much later in the development process of OpenWrap, but ended up being built last week.
Why locking, a historical perspective
OpenWrap is very much a …
Avoid Testing Implementation Details, Test... →
Every so often I return to Kent Beck’s Test-Driven Development. I honestly believe it to be one of the finest software development books ever written. What I love about the book is its…
Week 4 – DevTeach Ottawa for Three! →
Congratulations to week 3 CodeBetter Fantasy Football winner Andrew Ghetler! He’ll be getting 5 great books from the Addison Wesley Signature Series. This was our closest contest yet – three…
September 2011
6 posts
A Slate Winner! Week 3: Win 5 Signature Series... →
Congratulations to our week 2 winner, Mike Graf with 109 points (see week 2 standings here). He’ll be getting this slate!
We’re going to try to keep this going as long as we can get sponsors,…
It’s that time of year again: CodeCamps! →
I’ll be speaking at NYC CodeCamp with two new talks: Building your first jQuery Plugin and Rest & ASP.NET MVC. NYC Code Camp is on 10/1 @ Pace University.
I’ll also be at Philly Code Camp…
CodeBetter.Com Contest Fantasy Football →
When we sat down to decide how to pick a winner for the CodeBetter.Com wants to send you to Redmond! contest, we realized we couldn’t just pick our winner out of a hat – it’s way too boring, and…
Extending configuration in OpenRasta 2.1 →
The latest OpenRasta 2.1 code contains some changes that make extending the fluent API easier, and provide a supported way for you to write those extensions in a way that won’t break with OpenRasta…
One of the small costs of transparency →
If you’ve been following wcf.codeplex.com, you’ll notice that we’ve had a flurry of activity over the last couple of weeks, culminating in the release of Web API preview 5. If you’ve been following…
Summer holidays are over, time for a new roadmap →
As many of you many have noticed, things have stalled a bit over the summer on the master branches of openrasta and openwrap. While our amazing contributors are still sending pull requests and…
August 2011
4 posts
Running Visual Studio (and Resharper) on a Mac →
Many before me have made this step, finally I took it myself. The excuse to get me a Mac was building iPhone apps with Monotouch. My expectations were great and all were fully met. After battling…
RT @AnthonyGreen: new beirut album stream!!!!!! http://t.co/6fHNa6N
Thought Questions →
After many weeks of travel I finally have some time to think again. Yay!
Today’s post was inspired by http://wakeuptiger.blogspot.com/2011/08/questions-worth-asking.html. The post presents a…
Using AppEngine (and GWT) in a CI environment →
These days, I don’t much like being ahead of, behind, askance of, or otherwise deviated from the curve. It used to fit well with my “blogging as a nervous tic” phase of early 2008 when I would…
July 2011
2 posts
Why CRUD might be what they want, but may not be... →
A brief history of CRUD
The Rolling Stones once sung:
“You can’t always get what you want, But if you try sometimes, well you just might find, You get what you need”
I think the same is true of…
Automatic ETag Management with Web API Message... →
One of the great things about the fact that Http is a full fledged application protocol is that it has built in semantics for doing all sorts of application types of things. Two of these things…
June 2011
5 posts
Daddy’s gone to “work” and closed the door to the office.. Two year old still hasn’t caught on that I’m here. Wonder how long I can do this?
Scalable vs. Non-Scalable job →
I am currently reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, certainly a great book to read.
One interesting note at the beginning of the book is about…
Create and Destroy →
I am reading the excellent, if dry, book Data and Reality. One of the quotes from the book that I really like can be paraphrased as
Create and Destroy, when applied to an information system,…
Getting FubuMVC (Asp.Net) running on Ubuntu →
This week I had one goal. Get a FubuMVC site running on ubuntu and then document it for others. Well I succeeded at that goal, and here are my notes. I am not the best unix hacker so some of my…
Which .Net Web Framework? Let’s at least ask the... →
I can’t say that I’ve ever spent much time on StackOverflow, but there’s a small discussion going called OpenRasta vs FubuMVC vs Asp.net MVC just some thoughts that’s obviously interesting to me.
May 2011
8 posts
MonoDevelop Wishlist →
Ok, so I used MonoDevelop for a few hours today, as I am starting to get Topshelf to run on mac and ubuntu. I thought this would be a good way to make sure everything was okey dokey. Until I ran…
Book review : C# in Depth Second Edition →
Exactly 3 years ago I praised C# in Depth First Edition authored by Jon Skeet. Today, after several months owning and reading the second edition, I am even more enthusiast about this book!
Using DataContracts with WCF Web API →
A few folks have been asking if it is possible to serialize/deserialize using the DataContractSerializer. Rest assured, yes it is possible. Now whether or not it is the easiest/most intuitive…
Registration is open for Pablo’s Fiesta 2011 →
Just saw the notice that registration is officially open for Pablo’s Fiesta 2011 in Austin from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2. If you need to get your open spaces fix with a lot of smart, passionate software…
Getting Fiddler and the .NET Framework to Play... →
I was working on a sample over this weekend and kept running into a wall related to Fiddler that was driving me crazy. Fortunately, I was able to find a solution thanks to Eric Lawrence and so I…
Tips for UI Tests with GWT: HTML IDs, or “How to... →
Earlier this year, I resolved to be twice as entertaining as last year and I’m so confident that I can attain that goal that I’m going to actively flaunt it by talking about automating UI tests…
Back to basics: Usage of static members →
Using the static keyword should be considered as an unnatural design act in a OOP world. The problem is that developers get punished for using static fields and methods, months or years after…
MassTransit 2.0 Beta – Boo Yeah! →
After what seems like a long slumber, along with work being done on other projects such as Topshelf and Stact, it is our great pleasure to announce the first beta release of MassTransit v2.0. What…
April 2011
10 posts
Talking about Conventions with the Deep Fried... →
The Deep Fried Bytes crew just released a podcast with me rattling on about incorporating “convention over configuration” techniques. We talked about how conventions can be beneficial by cutting…