.NET Brisbane, Australia

  • The Risk

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    Last night I had a conversation with some new friends here in the Beautiful Australia and I would like to share something with you guys to reflect upon: "Those people you see, on the National Geographic or Discovery Chanel, who try to reach the top of the Everest, are they crazy or what ?"
     
    Now, picture this. For many decades, many men and women have tried... and there, they lost their lives. As a matter of fact, most of these people were not even able to return to their loved ones. Despite this tragic statistic, more and more people tried... risking... knowing that they probably will die during this journey, leaving family, children, wives behind.
     
    So, why they still did/do this ? Because it was worth it doing it. In the very risk, a transformation happens in you, something is born inside you. No other experience can give you this. It only can be developed in the risk. That's the beauty of the risk.
     
    So, here we are, talking about the idea of "live your live to the most", no regrets, no looking back. Then another question arise: "Can you remember when did you feel most alive?"
     
    For some, it was when they managed to speak a second language for first time, for others was when they first did bungie-jumping in New Zealand or Switzerland, for others was when their first child was born. Now, if you remember "your special moment", I bet a shiver will run through your spine and your heartbeat increase.
     
    If I ask you to describe this feeling, you will be talking about this moment, proud of yourself and about how cool was it. I can almost tell a pattern where people will :
    • Talk about a scenario in which the risk pushed themselves out of their comfort zone and;
    • The outcome of the risk is not the main goal, instead the journey is what they remember most and;
    • They finish the story with a big smile and sparkling eyes.  
    So, there it goes. Think again about that first question I mentioned. Now, my idea is that the beauty of the risk doesn't lie in the final result - it lies in who you become in the process. Confident. Engaged. Alive. I risk to say more: this is not something you do every summer - it becomes a habit, and it can be contagious. It gives you a new approach to life. After doing it, your life is just not the same anymore, otherwise you will feel stagnant, bored. So, just like that famous question:"when was the last time you did something for the first time?"
     
    See you all later!

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  • Uploading files and raising events

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    This week while I was awaiting for a new project confirmation I saw myself doing some code fixing for another project, that's something quite common and I really don't mind that. One of my tasks was to develop a little page to upload images to a server. That's not a problem, so I decided to try something new. Yes, I was very keen to use Silverlight for the task, but I used some good old javascript and a very cool concept similar to the called bubbling events, which is basically to raise an event from a determined and let it propagate up in the chain until it is captured.

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  • SAFECode and Security Best Practices

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    hi people,

    Do you remember the last time you have developed an application with absolutelly no worries about security ? when you could trust the user input? when you were not worried about sql injection attacks? string attacks? dropdown list modifications? You are right, (if you ever did this) probably it must have been a long long time ago.

    Security nowadays IS PART of the regular software development application. It is no more something to worry about only when the application is deployed or attacked. Security is a development-phase concern. Security skills are part of the normal software developer skills and if you are a developer and it is not yours, start learning about security right now.

    The thing is: How and where to learn about security? What are the best practices for security in software development? What if I am a Java programmer, Microsoft recommendations apply to me? I use SAP, why should I worry about security?

    My friends, I present to you (or at least to those who haven't heard of it yet) SAFECode.

    SAFECode or Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code is a consortium formed by many big names in the world, including those I told you before. People like Symantec, SAP, EMC and of course Microsoft are part of it.

    Together those companies created internal teams and they interact with eachother using SAFECode as an organisational interface and they as a whole share and develop best practices to be recommended to write safer and better products.

    Last week SAFECode released their first whitepaper with the best practices for a better and more secure software. That's a very interesting document. Why? because if you take your time to read it, you will notice how similar are the methodologies of those companies.

    Hopefully this initiative will grow better and stronger. Maybe one day we will not talk about Microsoft Recommended Best Practices but we will start referring to an Universal Recomended Best Practice? Only time will tell. (and the market forces, of course)

    If you are interested take a look at the document here and let us know your ideas ok?

    See you later.

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  • MSDN and Version-Specific Content

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    Can anyone point to me which one is the correct procedure to create a custom exception class?

    "Do not derive user-defined exceptions from the Exception base class. For most applications, derive custom exceptions from the ApplicationException class." - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/seyhszts(vs.71).aspx


    "For most applications, derive custom exceptions from the Exception class. It was originally thought that custom exceptions should derive from the ApplicationException class; however in practice this has not been found to add significant value." -  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/seyhszts.aspx

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