Archives
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Using an Ambient Orb to show continuous integration build status
A while ago I wrote that one of our developers was going to get an Ambient Orb and use it to signal the status of our continuous integration builds. I'm just following up to say that we have it working. The orb is sitting up above the cubes on a shelf where you can see it from anywhere on the floor. It glows green when the build is successful, and slowly pulses red when the build is broken.
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Simple technique to test drive a browser application
A while ago, I needed to do some profiling of a complex wizard-type ASP.NET application. I needed a script to drive a reproducible path through the application so I could compare the effect of code changes from run to run. Filling in each form was tedious and error prone. ACT would have probably done the trick, but the application utilized lots of hidden fields, viewstate, and Server.Transfers that made writing an ACT test difficult. I was in search of a quick and dirty, low-tech solution.
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Cargo-cult programming and Leaky Abstractions
Scott Hanselman recently wrote about cargo-cult programming which reminded me of Joel Spolsky's piece on Leaky Abstractions (which I think about often when working with ASP.NET).