I will be presenting on Pair Programming at the Northern Virginia SQL Server User Group tonight. I have done this presentation several times before but it is always fun to hear new perspectives – tonight should be interesting to hear DBA turned developer opinions (many people in this user group...

I will be presenting on Pair Programming at the Northern Virginia SQL Server User Group tonight. I have done this presentation several times before but it is always fun to hear new perspectives – tonight should be interesting to hear DBA turned developer opinions (many people in this user group...

As developers, we pride ourselves on our analytical skills and being able to quickly deduce a problem. Being “engineers” and “craftsmen” we use tools to gain insight and learn about a problem while we determine our diagnosis. Every now and then, the tools fail. This evening I...

I will be presenting on Test Driven Development at the CMAP Architect Group in Maryland. Session details and directions here . Abstract: TDD is hard. It is hard because we have to unlearn the way many of us have always coded. Instead we have to start writing unit tests and what is more; we have to write...

I have been asked a number of times in the last few years if I think TDD (Test Driven Development) will go mainstream. Firstly, we need to agree on what mainstream is – Wikipedia does not give any hard numbers ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream ) but it seems like 20% would be a good number...

Many developers in our industry prefer a dark corner to the presentation podium. This is often explained away with references to introverted personalities and geekish tendencies. While this may be true for certain individuals, there are definitely many benefits to breaking away from this stereotype....

Do you space out your code so there are line breaks between the pieces of logic? Why do you think this is necessary? Typically this is done to separate chunks of logic so that they can be easily distinguished. If it is a complicated enough chunk, then it may even make sense to put a comment at the top...

Our very own Bryant Smith has revamped his conversion of Martin Fowler's refactoring example (originally in Java) to now cover both C# and VB.NET. You can find the article here with the relevant downloads and walkthrough. Martin Fowler's example works nicely because it is a simple class structure that...

Our very own Bryant Smith has revamped his conversion of Martin Fowler's refactoring example (originally in Java) to now cover both C# and VB.NET. You can find the article here with the relevant downloads and walkthrough. Martin Fowler's example works nicely because it is a simple class structure that...

Do you space out your code so there are line breaks between the pieces of logic? Why do you think this is necessary? Typically this is done to separate chunks of logic so that they can be easily distinguished. If it is a complicated enough chunk, then it may even make sense to put a comment at the top...