DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by jimholmes

CodeMash Open Space Podcast: Open Source on .net

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 06:46:04 GMT

From the recent CodeMash conference: an Open Spaces talk discussing Open Source software on the .net platform - and WebDevRadio just happened to be there and got it all on tape... err, digitally recorded.

Podcast interview with the authors of Windows Developer Power Tools

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 18:01:02 GMT

Michael Kimsal interviews Jim Holmes and James Avery to discuss their book "Windows Developer Power Tools". 40 minutes long, it's a good discussion on windows dev tools.

CodeMash session list

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 18:01:01 GMT

The session list for a great looking conference in Ohio.

throw; vs. throw ex; Here's the difference!

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:01:01 GMT

The difference is that throw; preserves the original stack trace and throw ex; truncates the stack trace below the method in which the throw ex; call is located.

Custom service controller for debugging windows services

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 11:01:02 GMT

Describes how to use a quick-and-dirty windows form for testing/debugging windows services during development.

MbUnit - Unit Testing on Crack

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 14:01:01 GMT

MbUnit is a "better xUnit" that's used by a myraid of folks I respect, including James Avery, Patrick Cauldwell and Phil Haack. It's under very active development, even though I'd once wondered aloud if it was "abandonware." It's decidedly not and it's just got a new facelift to prove it.

Why You Should NOT Use Microsoft Unit Testing Framework

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 14:01:01 GMT

Description of a major flaw in the Microsoft's unit testing framework that makes it useless for anything but smallest projects. Read it or you will be sorry!

More on best practices for exception handling

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 09:31:02 GMT

Bill Wagner (author of "Effective C#"), adds his smart thoughts to Scott Hansleman's post on best practices for exception handling.

Developers Petition Microsoft to Rename .NET Framework 3.0

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 18:31:02 GMT

A group of developers are petitioning Microsoft to change the name of the announced ".NET Framework 3.0" back to "WinFX" or another less-confusing name Enter and left your sign =)

Why not on by default!? Turn on auto HTML attribute quotes in 2005

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 20:01:02 GMT

Holy cow! Why wasn't this on by default??? How annoying is it that when typing in the HTML Source editor window Visual Studio doesn't add the "" for you automatically... well guess what? It's a setting.

Source Control: Anything But SourceSafe

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 06:31:01 GMT

VSoft, the makers of FinalBuilder, just published the results of their annual customer survey. One of the questions is which version control systems do you currently use, or plan to use, in the next 12 months? The top 9 responses are reprinted here. I'm disheartened to see that Visual SourceSafe is still at the top of the list. If you are serious about the practice of software development, you should avoid SourceSafe.

New Regulazy Version Available

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 05:01:01 GMT

Regulazy is a great tool for developers needing help working through constructing regular expressions -- or old POSIX folks trying to deal wtih regexes in the .NET world.

Threading - Never Lock This Redux

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 06:31:02 GMT

Why locking on "this" can be a bad idea -- and how to lock in a safer manner.

Determining which method called me...

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 06:31:01 GMT

Using the stack trace to find out the caller.

The Demise of NDoc and A Challenge For Users Of Open Source Software

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 08:01:02 GMT

A summary of the unfortunate demise of the NDoc 2.0 project. But more importantly, it is Paul Haack's eloquent appeal to developers to do their part and contribute to the open source projects which make their lives much easier.

ReSharper - Show Type Hierarchy

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 18:31:01 GMT

A couple of very useful, even if slightly obvious, keyboard shortcuts for Visual Studio w/ReSharper... Get ready to have your productivity soar*! * = no guarentees ;)

MSDN library now free on Microsoft.com

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 20:01:02 GMT

need i say more?! Gentelmen: Start your downloaders!

Have you stopped beating your dog yet?

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 12:31:01 GMT

Dave Schmitt, Microsoft evangelist posts his responses to a list of questions about .NET from someone obviously in favour of J2EE

Announcing Our Book! (Windows Developer Power Tools)

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:21:01 GMT

The book is around 1100 pages of goodness on open source and freeware tools you can use to improve your software development work. The book's all about using tools to bring value to the entire development cycle from writing code to testing to lifecycle management. We've got something like 170 tools from Anthem.NET to Sysinternals RegMon to Bugzilla. We chose tools which help improve the quality of code you write, or help improve your productivity as a developer. (We also chose stuff we thought was just plain cool, too.) What's really neat is that we've had a significant number of articles written by the tool creators themselves. This is great because 1) these folks know their own tools inside and out and can best write about the tools' value, and 2) they were passionate enough to write the tool in the first place and that passion (hopefully!) comes across in their articles. We've also had some terrific folks contribute articles to the book as well. James and I have still ended up writing probably 70% of the book ourselves, plus we edited every submission for consistency, style, and content.

Announcing Our Book! (Windows Developer Power Tools)

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:31:01 GMT

Announcing the Windows Developer Power Tools book that features open source and freeware tools to improve the development lifecycle.

Jeremy D. Miller -- The Shade Tree Developer : May the Flow be with Yo

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 04:49:01 GMT

Jeremy Miller talks about how to get "in the flow" when writing code using Test Driven Development (TDD).

Applied Test Driven Development For Web Applications - Part 1

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 06:09:01 GMT

In this series of articles you will learn about how to go about practically applying Test Driven Development to the creation of a moderately complex web application. During the process you will learn all sorts of new and interesting techniques that you can take with you and apply to the development of your own web applications.