Writing
Articles
Essays on thinking clearly, working for yourself, and doing real work while AI rewrites the rules. Two decades of them.
WTF’s Per Minute
A quick repost of the classic WTFs-per-minute code quality chart I found on digg, saved here mainly so I have my own copy to reference.
2008.04.07Read →NUnit 2.4.7 and the RowTest Attribute with Example
NUnit 2.4.7 shipped with the RowTest add-in, letting you run one test method against multiple data rows instead of duplicating tests.
2008.04.01Read →I Can’t Read Your Screen, Mr. Presenter
A pet peeve about presenters with unreadable tiny fonts, and the fix: ZoomIt for live zooming plus a dedicated big-font account for demos.
2008.03.31Read →PhotoShop Express vs. Paint.NET
I hoped Photoshop Express would be a Photoshop Lite like Paint.NET. Instead it's a slow, upload-dependent browser app. Paint.NET still wins.
2008.03.31Read →Implicitly Typed Locals – R# V4
Why I disabled ReSharper 4's suggestion to use var everywhere -- implicit typing doesn't improve naming or your API, it just adds noise.
2008.03.28Read →Beginner Test Driven Development Habits
Five habits new TDD teams fall into, like skipping the refactor step and treating tests as a debugger, plus how to coach developers past them.
2008.03.23Read →TIP: Getting the Base Directory of where your App is Running
Need your app's running directory in .NET? Use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, which works for both web and non-web projects.
2008.03.23Read →The Calendar and the Cloud
Google's new two-way Outlook Calendar sync lets a consultant merge client and personal calendars into one master schedule, with SMS agenda alerts.
2008.03.11Read →Knock Knock. Who’s There? Me. Too Bad. Go Away.
After a fresh Windows rebuild, Team Foundation Server locked out its own administrator -- turns out McAfee antivirus was silently blocking the connection.
2008.03.03Read →Free Conferencing Utilities
A roundup of free conference call services for consultants and freelancers who need to host calls without paying for a dial-in line.
2008.02.29Read →Creating .NET Event Sources with PowerShell
Skip writing a whole app to register a Windows Event Log source - a two-line PowerShell command checks for it and creates it if missing.
2008.02.26Read →Notepad? THE PowerShell IDE? Please, Save Me – Give Me Some IntelliSense
Writing PowerShell in Notepad is like driving when you could fly. PowerGUI gives you IntelliSense, debugging, and a watch window instead.
2008.02.22Read →