Software Geek

Also see: Mix 08 Sessions Published

Fritz Onion and I just finished the pre-conference ‘Day of Silverlight’ talk at DevWeek. Demos can be downloaded from http://www.pluralsight.com/fritz/demos/DevWeek2008DayOfSilverlightDemos.zip

http://www.interact-sw.co.uk/iangblog/2008/03/10/devweek-sl-demos

Also see: Language parsing and compiler design doesn’t have to be hard, but boy this book really sucks!

Whenever I lead a project, I always try to plan in such a way that sets me and my team up for success.   I do this in many ways, starting with a good methodology, doing thorough analysis, and providing a level of risk/certainty along with any estimates I provide. 

Part of this strategy involves ensuring that client expectations match developer and project expectations.  I tend to use the tried and true approach; “Plan for the worst, hope for the best”.

Some people see me as a pessimist, but I beg to differ - I consider myself a cynical, yet optimistic, realist.  By that, I mean that although I do plan everything based upon the worst case scenario, in my heart I truly believe we are going to achieve the best case scenario every time.  It often surprises me when people take my approach to be negative while at the same time, I often see their approach naive & overly optimistic.

The truth is that there seems to be a gradient scale of attitudes and philosophies employed from project to project depending upon the people leading and participating in the project.

Over the years, I started a private game in my head of creating nicknames for the different patterns of behavior.  Here are a few names of I have toyed with in the past:

“Expect the worst, then add 20%” - The Pessimist

“Expect the worst, hope for the best” - Reformed Pessimist

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Also see: Using IronPython for Dynamic Expressions.

With a simple extension method to ControlCollection to flatten the control tree you can use LINQ to query the control tree:

public static class PageExtensions
{
 public static IEnumerable<Control> All(this ControlCollection controls)
 {
 foreach (Control control in controls)
 {
 foreach (Control grandChild in control.Controls.All())
 yield return grandChild;
	
 yield return control;
 }
 }
}

Now I can do things like this:

// get the first empty textbox
TextBox firstEmpty = accountDetails.Controls
.All()
.OfType<TextBox>()
.Where(tb => tb.Text.Trim().Length == 0)
.FirstOrDefault();
	
// and focus it
if (firstEmpty != null)
 firstEmpty.Focus();

(more…)

Also see: Dare Obasanjo on C# Anonymous Types

Also see: Uniqueness Typing Simplified

Also see: Applied Metamodelling: A Foundation for Language Driven Development

By default, old blogs are truncated from this web site.  If you want to read old entries that have scrolled off, go to the CATEGORIES section at the right hand side of the web page.  Select CLR (rss) and you’ll see the full list.

http://blogs.msdn.com/cbrumme/archive/2003/05/18/51462.aspx

Also see: I love ClearContext!!

Sometimes you got to brag. Tuesday nights on HDNet is News Night. We lead off with Dan Rather Reports
Dan has brought back real news with a full 60 minutes of reporting on news that matters. If you haven’t yet, check out some of his reports that we are streaming online

DRR leads right into HDNet World Report. World Report, which is produced by Dennis OBrien doesn’t get the visibility that Dan Rather Reports gets, but it knocks out great stories from around the globe week after week. Today, HDNet World Report finally started to get some of the recognition it deserved. Today, at the 74th annual National Headliner Awards, sponsored by The Press Club of Atlantic City, N.J. HDNet walked away with first place winners in TWO categories !

The first was for Documentary or Series of Reports: HDNET, “The Forgotten Front: Terrorism in the Phillipines; beating out CNN with their amazing “CNN Presents: God’s Warriors;” and CNN for their , “Children of the Storm.”
Our 2nd win came for News Magazine Program: HDNet World Report, “Uganda’s Silent War ( a co production with Newshour with Jim Lehrer);” finishing ahead of 2nd and 3rd place finishers, Dateline NBC, “To Catch a Con Man;” JumpStart Productions/NOW on PBS, “Casualties of War”.

You don’t have to be the biggest to beat the best, but you do have to outwork the bigger players. Congrats to everyone at HDNet and the entire World Report team for doing amazing work and making us proud.

This is just th (more…)

Also see: My fair and biased opinion on the recent upgrade…

I’m going to the Rose Bowl.

I am a University of Illinois alum and an avid fan of college
sports.  The Illini football team had a great season this year and will play
USC in Pasadena on January 1st.  In fact, this is the just the second time in
my lifetime that Illinois has made it to the Rose Bowl.  For those of us here
in central Illinois, this is a really big deal.  Who knows when it will happen
again?

So last week when the University started selling tickets, I
placed my order.  A few days later I received confirmation that I was going to
actually get the tickets I had requested.  That email said:

“tickets will be shipped to the
address listed above via UPS Overnight Delivery”

I laughed out loud.  UPS Overnight?  I live right here in
Champaign-Urbana.  The University of Illinois Athletic Ticket Office is less
than two miles from my office.  Surely I could just go over during my lunch
hour and pick them up?

No, I suppose not.  These folks are trying to process orders
for over 25,000 tickets and they have very little time to do it.  They probably
just want to have one standard method of handling them all.  Dealing with the
special cases would slow everything down.

The next day I got email from UPS with a tracking number for
my tickets:

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Using the most recent features in Java is not always possible if you need to stick to earlier Java JDK’s. This post presents a short recipe on using JSR-105 (XML Digital Signature API) — which forms part of JDK 6 release — in earlier JDK/JREs such as JDK 1.4 or JDK 5.

Also see: The Exception Model

Also see: Solving big business problems in our little toolbox application. A use case for Project Distributor.

Also see: Bloggers in the Mavs Locker Room ?

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techtarget/tsscom/blogs/~3/244457030/thread.tss