Community Blogs

I am yet to find a proper sample on how to do realistic Test Driven Development (TDD) and how to write proper unit tests for complex business applications, that gives you enough confidence to stop doing manual tests anymore. Generally the samples show you how to test a Stack or a LinkedList, which is far simpler than testing a typical N-tier application, especially if you are using Entity Framework or Linq to SQL or some ORM in data access layer, and doing logging, validation, caching, error handling at middle tier. There are many articles , blog posts , video tutorials on how to write unit tests, which I believe are all very good starting points. But all these examples show you basic tests, not good enough to let your QA team go. So, let me...

Microsoft Canada’s Adam Gallant gave an excellent presentation today on ‘What’s New with Visual Studio Team System and MSDN’. Among Adam’s demonstrations were the new APIs to support so-called manycore architectures. Most of us are still writing code as if we only have one processor when it fact newer machines are likely to have four of them. The .NET Parallel Extensions supported in VS 2010 lead us into adopting these new technologies, which is fine. However, some of us at the session were wondering...( read more ) Read More...

While watching Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman, and Brian Goldfarb demonstrate Silverlight 4, I had a range of reactions: Wow! I’ve got to play with this stuff! I’m feeling overwhelmed by the avalanche of technology How will I find the time to do billable work and stay current with this great stuff? Maybe I can convince my client to switch the app in development from ASP.NET 3.5 to Silverlight 4? It’s all so exciting, unnerving, and, in a certain way, upsetting to be so blown away by technology. Ken...( read more ) Read More...

After I graduated from the HIO Enschede (B.Sc level) in '94 I have worked with a lot of different platforms and environments: from 4GL's like System Builder, uniVerse and Magic to C++ on AIX to Java to Perl on Linux to C# on .NET. All these platforms and environments had one thing in common: their creators were convinced their platform was the best and greatest and easiest to write software with. To some extend, each and every one of them were decent platforms and it was perfectly possible to write software with them though I'll leave the classification whether they were / are the greatest and easiest to the reader. I'll try to make clear below why this dull intro is important. Yesterday I watched the live stream of the PDC '09...

There is some discussion going on here about whether software tools work well for managing Agile processes or whether going manually with index cards and sticky notes works best.  Is your team practicing Agile?  If so, what works best for you?   Jonathan Cogley is the CEO of Thycotic Software, an agile software services and product development company based in Washington DC.  Secret Server is our flagship enterprise password management product. Read More...

I run Windows Server 2008 Enterprise on my quad core development workstation to take advantage of the OS’ Hyper-V support. (More info on setting this up at http://www.win2008workstation.com/ ) Anyway, Derek at Diskeeper corporation sent along an MVP freebie preview of Diskeeper 2010 so I thought I’d run a defrag overnight. This morning, it feels like I have a new machine! I know this sounds like a commercial, but I hadn’t realized how badly my system’s performance had been deteriorating over the...( read more ) Read More...

With advances in virtualization technology, it seems like the old quip, “It works on my machine - so let’s ship my machine!” is becoming reality. In the old days, people would configure a physical box in their shop and send it out to the client or host to plug and play. With virtualization, you could configure a virtual machine – even a development machine – and upload the virtual hard drive to a data center. Taking it further, the folks running Azure could run multiple copies of the identical VHD...( read more ) Read More...

I’m getting a horrible amount of comment spam here on weblogs.asp.net lately. Anyone still maintaining this place? Anything you can do to beef up the spam filtering? I’m half tempted to turn off all comments on my blog posts and to quit using the site if things keep up as is! I would rather not do that, but it’s getting a tad ridiculous....( read more ) Read More...

Jimmy has posted with sage advice on White Lists versus Black Lists and more from Day 4 at DevConnections 2009 in Las Vegas.   Jonathan Cogley is the CEO of Thycotic Software, an agile software services and product development company based in Washington DC.  Secret Server is our flagship enterprise password management product. Read More...

Jimmy does it again with Single Responsibility Principle and other .NET Best Practices .  Don’t miss the next in his Top 10 Takeaway series from #devconnections.   Jonathan Cogley is the CEO of Thycotic Software, an agile software services and product development company based in Washington DC.  Secret Server is our flagship enterprise password management product. Read More...