cruizer

TDD Step by Step, Part 2: The Database

2008-11-24T03:37:00Z

Welcome to part two of our series on building a Windows application using test-driven development (TDD). In the previous article we drove the design of our entity classes and data access layer by means of unit tests. The unit tests acted more as specifications for the system rather than tests, since we actually weren’t testing any output from our system. We simply used the tests to illustrate how we want to interact with our data access layer and what properties are exposed for each entity...(read more)

TDD Step by Step, Part 1

2008-11-24T00:37:00Z

In a hot discussion thread in msforums.ph about the value of unit testing and adopting test-driven development (TDD), a suggestion was made to illustrate how TDD is used in creating a simple application, specifically Keith's October code challenge . In response to that, I've decided to write a series of articles showing exactly how this can be done. I guess there's no better way to show the value of TDD than by showing how it's done! I'll be using Visual Studio 2008 for this tutorial...(read more)

Data Access with LINQ

2008-11-03T23:25:00Z

I discussed LINQ (LINQ to objects, XML, then SQL) during the Microsoft TechFEST event here in Singapore, and the slides are here . You can download the sample code as well....(read more)

WCF: Shifting from HTTP to TCP

2008-11-01T07:23:00Z

We've decided to shift our project's WCF services from HTTP to TCP. Why? We've got a few reasons: Performance is important. We all know the TCP-based protocol (used by NetTcpBinding) is faster and has lower latency than the HTTP-based protocol (BasicHttpBinding and WsDualHttpBinding). The system was initially envisioned to have its services available to other platforms (even non-.NET). This meant .NET Remoting was out of the picture, and we had to go with web standards. It turns out that...(read more)

A mind-opening article

2008-10-29T02:19:00Z

From MSDN Magazine: Test Your Security IQ Most C/C++ developers should be able to spot all of the security bugs illustrated in the examples; C# coders would find this very informative....(read more)

Some WCF Gotchas

2008-10-05T02:48:00Z

A project our team (in my employer) has been working on for a good number of months now makes extensive use of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). WCF is nothing really ground-breaking; its significance is that it unifies the various inter-process communication facilities into one common programming interface. Moreover, it is extensible so it can easily be extended to support different protocols and message formats that may come in vogue in the future. We've encountered some WCF gotchas along...(read more)

Concurrency is all the rage in MSDN Magazine

2008-10-03T03:02:00Z

The October 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine features lots of articles about parallelism and concurrency. I guess it's all the rage these days! That's what happens when Moore's Law is no longer directly related to more GHz but more CPU cores instead. Concurrency is one of the big reasons why there's a push towards functional languages. I myself am trying to wrap my head around one called Haskell . Here's a free online book (print version coming out soon) about it. I guess this is a...(read more)

Speaking at Microsoft TechFEST 2008 Singapore

2008-10-02T10:30:00Z

I will be speaking at Microsoft TechFEST 2008 Singapore on October 23rd. The topic? Nothing special -- just same old LINQ Hopefully I can present it in a practical manner that will help developers get up to speed with it. In any case, I think LINQ is so simple to grasp that it's more likely that what's hindering adoption of it is corporate policies or strategies, not developer familiarity. It's not a simple thing for a development company to upgrade en masse to Visual Studio 2008, especially...(read more)

Microsoft embraces jQuery

2008-09-28T10:46:00Z

I couldn't believe it: read ScottGu's blog post . Finally, Microsoft is getting *it*. No need to fight it, no need to exhibit their traditional NIH mindset and create their own (as they have demonstrated many times, not only in the .NET platform). They're finally including a useful open source product into their own. And they're promising not to fork it. Here's to Microsoft finally coming of age:...(read more)

SQL is a functional language?!

2008-09-06T04:55:00Z

I was taken aback by the claim, mentioned by a speaker in an event I attended about two nights ago. The topic was about development in languages and concurrency, which particularly interested me. I don't know if you'll agree with the claim but I didn't and I guess the talk went downhill from there for me. Anyway, what's all the fuss about functional programming languages ? At first I thought "hey all languages are functional, that's why we have functions and procedures."...(read more)

Using search engines from an IE6 address bar

2008-09-03T07:37:00Z

After using progressive browsers such as Firefox and Safari in my previous employers, imagine my dismay when I realised we were stuck with IE6. One of the things I missed as I had to step back and bear with old IE6 is the absence of the search bar. We're not allowed to upgrade to IE7 nor download browsers (lest we risk dismissal, shudder!) so there was nothing I could do...or was it? Anyway many thanks to my officemate who gave me this cool registry hack. Maybe you've seen this already, maybe...(read more)

Learning Ruby from C#

2008-07-25T10:58:00Z

Just in case you haven't seen this yet: http://www.codethinked.com/category/IronRuby-via-C-Series.aspx I'm sure it's a handy tutorial for learning Ruby (using IronRuby for .NET) the language if you've already got C#/.NET background. I personally think the DLR will become a huge thing and will help a lot in getting enterprises (like my current employer) to embrace dynamic languages....(read more)

IronRuby binaries out now

2008-07-25T00:19:00Z

Of course it's still in Alpha, but get 'em here ! Took it out for a quick spin and it seems still rough around the edges, but hey...no need to build it yourself anymore if you want to try it now....(read more)

Continuous Integration "Hang-ups"

2008-06-15T01:44:00Z

I really like continuous integration . Having come from a company that didn't practice it at all (this was a time I used to regularly work 12 to 16 hours a day), I was so happy when I got into a company that actually practiced it. I found it to be a really effective mechanism to ensure that developers are on the same page -- it encourages programmers to move in small steps (changes) with respect to the code base. Those in the team who like to check in lots of changes at a time are those who tend...(read more)

JP Hamilton on testing WinForms

2008-05-30T03:46:00Z

JP Hamilton has posted a brief blog post on how he unit tests WinForms . Looks nifty, especially if you use a pattern like Model-View-Presenter for your forms. His rationale is that if you keep on testing only the presenter and mocking out the view in your unit tests, your forms code still gets zero code coverage. He makes his extension methods available for download in the post. If you're using only VS 2005 or .NET 2.0, it's a simple matter to take out the "this" in the method...(read more)