DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by Matt_TCF

Kinect for Windows Now Available

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:07:01 GMT

On January 9th, Steve Ballmer announced at CES that Microsoft would be shipping Kinect for Windows on February 1st. Today version 1.0 of the SDK and runtime were made available for download, and distribution partners in twelve launch countries are starting to ship Kinect for Windows hardware.

Using Git with Subversion

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:57:38 GMT

Do you love Git? Are you working on a project that's using Subversion? Well, did you know that Git actually integrates quite nicely with Subversion right out of the box? I'll show you what you need to know to get started with Git and Subversion, and I'll show you the workflow I use for keeping my work in sync with everyone else on my team.

AppHarbor Rocks. Seriously.

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:05:29 GMT

You kids and your applications today. Back in my day, we published our applications like real men! We didn't have these fancy, cloud-based services like Heroku and AppHarbor. We couldn't just type 'git push origin' and have our application magically show up online, ready to rock and roll. We used to dread deploying our code because of all the hoops we would have to jump through. Oh, how times have changed!

Validating WCF services with System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotions

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:26:27 GMT

All WCF services operations need some level of parameter validation to ensure that the data passed to the operation is present and correct. Two popular methods are manual checking and the Validation Application Block (VAB) from Enterprise Library. This article discusses another option - using the validation features from System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.

Static Code Analysis

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:52:27 GMT

The most important thing I have done as a programmer in recent years is to aggressively pursue static code analysis. Even more valuable than the hundreds of serious bugs I have prevented with it is the change in mindset about the way I view software reliability and code quality.

Shortest String That Contains All Words

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:11:10 GMT

Mango12 created an interesting competition to kick off the New Year, and I decided to try it out. It's a simple task along the lines of a code kata, and I recommend you try it yourself before looking over my solution. Task: Compress a list of words into the shortest string that contains all words. Test: "testing", "ginger", "german", "minutes" should become "minutestingingerman" Here is my approach: create a weighted graph connecting each term then recursively reduce the highest weighted edges.

Status Update on SpecsFor.Mvc

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:07:04 GMT

SpecsFor.Mvc is an integration testing framework for ASP.NET MVC applications. It enables you to write integration tests that are strongly-typed, refactor-friendly, and that run under the testing framework of your choice, all while leveraging your existing unit test writing skills. SpecsFor.Mvc is a work-in-progress, so please take a moment to give me some feedback on how the API is shaping up.

8 Things clients need to learn about software development

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:55:45 GMT

Software developers always have to do everything they can to deliver good software, lot's of books have been written on the subjects of quality assurance, requirements management, agile, etc. Something that deserves its own book however are the rules you as a client should obey when starting a new software project. The biggest problems are the fact that most customers want their software to be as cheap as possible, the ever changing requirements and the lack of communication.

Inversion of Control Containers - Things You Should Know

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:43:03 GMT

Think you're a senior developer? Not yet senior, but interested in taking the next step? Today's topic in the "Things Every Senior .NET Developer Should Know" series will cover Dependency Injection, Inversion of Control containers, and my favorite Inversion of Control container, StructureMap.

SpecsFor.com Launched, SpecsFor 2.2 Released!

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 06:25:35 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that SpecsFor.com is now live. I've also shipped a new version of SpecsFor that simplifies the painful task of creating multiple mocks of the same type for injection into IEnumerable parameters.

SOLID - Things Every Senior .NET Developer Should Know, Part 2

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 17:09:34 GMT

Think you're a senior .NET developer? Then you should already be familiar with SOLID, a set of five principles originally introduced by Robert Martin. These principles will help guide you towards better, more maintainable code and may help you have more fun at the same time. In this article, I'll cover the Single Responsibility, Open-Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation, and Dependency Inversion principles.

NHibernate Session-Per-Method-Call via StructureMap Nested Containers

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:28:33 GMT

There are several documented approaches you can follow to implement the session-per-method-call pattern with NHibernate and StructureMap. The majority of these approaches fail to leverage the full capabilities of StrurctureMap and are therefore more complex than they need to be. In this short post, I'll show you how you can implement a simpler solution by utilizing StructureMap's nested containers.

SpecsFor 2.0 Released!

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:24:31 GMT

The newest version of the SpecsFor behavior-driven development framework is out with additional functionality to eliminate common points of testing friction. With a single NuGet package, you now have everything you need to start writing clean test cases. Read on to see how much easier writing tests could be.

Things Every Senior .NET Developer Should Know, Part 1 - OOP

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 23:50:43 GMT

If I could pick only one thing that a senior-level .NET developer should know, it would be Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). True, OOP is not .NET specific, and indeed I think at this point a senior developer on virtually any platform should be familiar with OOP, it's especially important here in the .NET world. Read on to find out why I think OOP is so important and to get a quick introduction and refresher on the four major tenets of OOP.

Things Every .NET Developer Should Know-Introduction

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 03:28:41 GMT

.NET will officially turn 10 years old in February. Our platform and our community have matured and grown in that time, and today it is virtually impossible for a developer to truly be an expert in everything .NET-related. There are, however, several things that I think everyone on the .NET platform, particularly those of us that are arrogant enough to call ourselves "senior" level, should know.

What's in your Definition of Done?

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:20:00 GMT

Every team, whether you are practicing agile or not, regardless of platform or language, should really have some Definition of Done. What things have to happen to achieve "done" status? Defining these things will help with estimating effort, and it may also help increase the quality of your product.

What questions should you ask if you are the interviewee?

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:43:44 GMT

Asking the right questions as an interviewee is just as important (if not more important) than asking the right questions as the interviewer. The position you are interviewing for is going to play a major role in your life. You need to find out now if it isn't a good fit for you. Here are some of the questions I like to ask.

Data Access in Fail Tracker-Row-Level Security with LINQ to NHibernate

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:30:52 GMT

It's quite easy to implement row-level security using LINQ to NHibernate. See how you can do this by combining the Repository and Decorator patterns in this post.

Data Access in Fail Tracker

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 23:32:05 GMT

This is the first in a series of short posts on how data access is handled in Fail Tracker. Future posts will get into how the strategy works with unit testing as well as how advanced topics, such as row-level security, are handled. Read on to find out how Fail Tracker utilizes a simple repository layer around NHibernate for all data access.

Getting Started with NHibernate 3 and SQL Compact

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:46:28 GMT

There are many posts on the web about how easy it is to get started with Microsoft's Entity Framework and SQL Server Compact Edition (SQL CE). This combination seems to be all the rage thanks to EF's new "Code First" approach introduced in version 4.1. While I am impressed with the latest version of Entity Framework, I still prefer NHibernate for a lot of reasons, and it's actually just as easy (maybe even easier) to get up and running with NHibernate+SQL CE as Entity Framework+SQL CE. In this post, I'll walk you through the simple steps to get up and running.

Test-Driven Development Is Not Slower

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 01:04:46 GMT

Hello, my name is Matt Honeycutt, and I am addicted to Test Driven Development. I've been "using" for about 5 years now. It started out with a little innocent unit testing and Test Later Development, but I quickly found that the increased productivity caused by TDD to be too alluring, and I succumbed. Now I'm using all the time. I use at work. I use at home. I just can't stop. People don't really understand the risks. There's this myth that TDD is slower, that it makes you less productive, but that's so not true. Read on, and I'll help you understand why.

Cleaning up POSTs in ASP.NET MVC, the Fail Tracker Way

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 01:43:08 GMT

Cross-cutting POST handling logic can be pushed out of the action methods as well as a source of common errors can be eliminated from your ASP.NET MVC applications quite easily. Read on to find out how you can achieve this in your application framework.

Building Nice Display Names From Pascal-Case Names in ASP.NET MVC

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 02:26:33 GMT

Want to stop decorating your ASP.NET MVC view models with the DisplayNameAttribute when all you want is a space in your property names? Here's a simple convention you can implement to achieve exactly that.

Continuous Deployment Using TeamCity 6, MSDeploy, and psake

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:43:48 GMT

Want to start doing continuous deployment *now*? Then this post is for you. I will give you some background on what continuous deployment is and why you should care, and I'll show you how easy it is to start doing continuous deployment today using freely available tools.

Verifying NHibernate Entities Contain Only Virtual Members

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:59:10 GMT

One requirement that NHibernate imposes on your object model is that all public members must be virtual in order to support lazy loading. I got really tired of getting a yellow-screen-of-death while working on Fail Tracker every time I added a new member to my domain and forgot to mark it as virtual. So, I added a simple NUnit test to enforce the convention.