Jon Skeet: Coding Blog - All Comments

re: Noda Time is born

Tom Ritter — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:30:27 GMT

I *really* hope you do a blog post on each of the answers to those questions. I don't really have the bandwidth to follow a mailing list or wave, but I'm very curious about the options and what you go with and why.

re: Noda Time is born

skeet — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:12:24 GMT

@Larry: Yes, we're going to use Wave where appropriate.

re: Noda Time is born

Larry O'Brien — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:29:47 GMT

Is there any thought of a Google Wave associated with the project? It obviously cannot be the primary means of communication, but it seems like software development might be a good fit for Wave's capabilities.

re: Noda Time is born

Felipe Fujiy — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:21:28 GMT

I was curious about the advantages of Joda Time on DateTime. Net

re: Noda Time is born

skeet — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:06:26 GMT

@Jeff: I'm hoping not to require any installation, but coding is always welcome :)

re: Noda Time is born

Jeff Yates — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:53:05 GMT

I recently wrote a WiX 3.0 installer for my own framework addition that provided full integration with Visual Studio, including the Add References dialog and some sample projects. I'd love to help out with that and coding if I'm considered worthy. :)

re: Noda Time is born

Igor Brejc — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:31:44 GMT

For testing: why not try Gallio+MbUnit?

re: Noda Time is born

Matt — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:17:45 GMT

Jon.. Skeet.......

I will, hunt you down?

re: Noda Time is born

Daniel — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:02:54 GMT

re: Sandcastle - I've had luck with Sandcastle + Sandcastle Help File Builder. The later gives Sandcastle nDoc-like UI and a console app that can be used in the build process. Maybe even MSBuild targets...

re: Noda Time is born

Jeremy Gray — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:35:47 GMT

re: framework versions - If you are planning on a year-long timeline, by the time you get there .net 3.5 SP1 GDR will have been available on Windows Update for nearly two years. I see no reason at this point, for a project such as this, to target anything less than .net 3.5 SP1 GDR.

re: NAnt and MSBuild - NAnt might be getting long in the tooth but only because it is so mature. I wouldn't let its "beta" nature discourage you.

re: Sandcastle - Please use something with less complexity and creeping dependencies than Sandcastle. Monodoc, Docu, just about anything else would be a step up.

re: low trust - I would assume that the unit test framework of choice would have at least some support for running a test (even if indirectly) in a low-trust setting. If not built-in or otherwise doable, it might suggest a need to evaluate a different test framework or modifications to the one that would otherwise be of first choice.

re: signing - +1 for "public" versus private snk.

re: exception i18n - I agree with the other comments thus far that while end user i18n is one thing, _developer_ i18n is another. It would be best to just punt on developer i18n and declare English as the official developer language of Noda Time, and then provide exceptions (and other developer-specific messages) only in English.

re: NUnit and Rhino.Mocks - NUnit is the defacto standard, so that is a no-brainer. The version of NUnit, on the other hand, needs some consideration. :) Rhino.Mocks has gone through a lot of evolution over the years and as such retains what some might consider to be cruft relative to something like Moq, but at the end of the day Rhino.Mocks still has the strongest feature set. Go with Rhino.Mocks but just put a rule in place that all usage thereof within the project is to use the AAA syntax and style.

re: logging - keep logging out of it. I personally feel that to be too big of a dependency for a library as small as Noda Time to take on. If you feel like you need Noda Time to log, you probably need Noda Time to throw more exceptions.

re: Noda Time is born

Wedge — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:31:02 GMT

I think targeting the 2.0sp1 CLR using the 3.5 compilers is the best course, preferably in a way that's mono compatible. The 2.0 CLR is well distributed, having shipped with Vista and Win7 as well as VS2005 and 2008, and is the de facto target for the vast majority of .Net development at the moment.

Also, it might be worth finding a discussion area other than google groups. John Resig has a pretty good critique of their major shortcomings on his blog: ejohn.org/.../google-groups-is-dead

re: Noda Time is born

Martinho Fernandes — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:03:20 GMT

@Cosmin: I really like PSake and I've already put it to discussion on the mailing list.

re: Noda Time is born

skeet — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:59:08 GMT

@Jurgen: Do you have any advice to give us to start with then? :)

@Brian: I'll take a look, but I suspect Joda provides us with everything we need...

re: Noda Time is born

Brian — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:46:35 GMT

You might want to take a look at the C# code for Fan's DateTime library. It has full support for historical timezones and DST with a fairly small code foot print.

re: Noda Time is born

Jurgen Van Gael — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:42:12 GMT

I'm one of the developers of Math.Net Numerics (an open source numerics library for .NET) and I am very very curious to read your guide on how to run and manage an open source project for .NET!

re: Noda Time is born

Cosmin Onea — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:36:50 GMT

How about PSake for build?

http://tr.im/EmQa

I had very bad experiences with TFS, which of course doesn't mean TFS is crap. I just felt that it was getting in my way.

Git or HG are the options.

Social comments and analytics for this post

uberVU - social comments — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:31:53 GMT

This post was mentioned on Twitter by jonskeet: Noda Time is born: http://tinyurl.com/ykbuajp

re: Noda Time is born

Martinho Fernandes — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:23:22 GMT

@Damien: I am Portuguese and I totally agree with you. I hate it when I get exceptions from the framework itself in Portuguese. It doesn't help at all.

@Timothy: I think it's already settled to go for hg as the VCS. But I agree we should have a Codeplex presence.

re: Noda Time is born

Fredrik Mörk — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:18:17 GMT

Not being English, I still agree with Damien; exception messages from a library are meant for the developer, not the end users. Keep the library simple and skip translating exception messages.

re: Noda Time is born

Omar Kooheji — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:10:56 GMT

I second NOT I18Ning the Exceptions, If I'm debugging an application to make sure it works in all locales I need to be able to understand the exception messages. If I want to expose a locale friendly message I'll translate the exception message and expose the translated version when I handle the error.

However, I think it's important to put sufficient Properties on exceptions such that I can reconstruct an error message in another language if need be.

I'm not doing too much .Net development at the moment and pretty much everything I do is for English speaking customers, but I remember having to check that code worked under the Arabic and Serbian Locale at my last job, if the exceptions were in Arabic I'd have been able to handle it, but not Serbian.