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Mon, Mar 30 2009 23:02

Evolving code over time

Given economics, time constraints, resource limitations, etc.; you can't write all the functionality for a given solution for a single release. Even if you weren't limited by these constraints, you're likely to get changing requirements as...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 1 comment(s)
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Thu, Mar 26 2009 11:33

DevTeach 2009 Vancouver

The schedule for DevTeach 2009 Vancouver has been announced ( http://www.devteach.com/ ). There’s lots of great software development sessions from some of the leaders in our industry. If you’re planning on improving yourself, this is the conference...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 1 comment(s)
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Wed, Mar 11 2009 9:36

Developing with Source Code Control - Best Practices Part 2

[Edited 14-Mar-09: clarified generated code SCC practice] This edition provides SCC vocabulary and some more practices that make development life easier. Vocabulary Trunk The root of the project or database. Sometimes called mainline or baseline; depending...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 13 comment(s)
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Thu, Jan 29 2009 11:10

A Upcoming Pandemic of Domain Anaemia

There's a well-known anti-pattern called the anaemic domain model[1][2]. This anti-pattern basically says domain entities, chronically, have little or no behaviour (remember, object-oriented design is about attributes and behaviour). It should be...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 4 comment(s)
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Thu, Jan 29 2009 9:00

It’s More Than Syntax

Writing good software is not just about adhering to a programming language's syntax. No programming language syntax enforces good design nor does it enforce good programming in all circumstances. I've seen many systems that compiled perfectly...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 5 comment(s)
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Tue, Jan 27 2009 10:00

House of Cards Design Anti-pattern

I've had this anti-pattern in my head for years.  It's an observance of some projects and methodologies that I've witnessed over the years.  I believe it's a form of Voodoo Programming , Programming by coincidence , and is often...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 14 comment(s)
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Fri, Nov 21 2008 12:09

Pass-through Constructors

Pass-through constructors is a term I use to describe parameterized constructors that have none of their own logic and simply pass parameters to the base class. For example: public class BaseClass { private String text; public BaseClass( String text)...
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Tue, Nov 18 2008 11:55

Pontificating Virtual Parameterized Constructors in C#

Tom Hollander recently posted about a change he required to the Enterprise Library for date/time validation. He had to create a new class (rather than modify the Enterprise Library) that derived from another, defective class. One of his complaints was...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 2 comment(s)
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Sat, Oct 18 2008 8:54

Developing with Source Code Control Best Practices Part 1

This post will detail some first principles about source code control (SCC) and provide what I consider the most basic of practices that every dev should follow. What is SCC? SCC provides developers the ability to keep a history of their changes. SCC...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 9 comment(s)
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Thu, Sep 4 2008 9:51

Software Process and Reduction of Quality

Ken Schwaber had a conversation with Scott Hanselman about the concept of "done". He said that software developers have a habit of culling down all the generally accepted practices of software development except the writing of code. He says...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 4 comment(s)
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Tue, Sep 2 2008 13:49

Becoming a Visual Studio Jedi Part 1

Becoming a Visual Studio 2008 (and often Visual Studio 2005) Jedi In much the same grain as James' Resharper Jedi posts, I'm beginning a series of posts on becoming a Visual Studio Jedi. It involves getting the most out of Visual Studio off-the...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 7 comment(s)
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Tue, Aug 26 2008 15:06

Trials and Tribulations of DataGridView, Column Selections, and Sorting

I had to implement some custom sorting in a DataGridView recently. Essentially, the stakeholders wanted full column selection (like Excel) while still having the ability to sort the data based on a particular column. This particular DataGridView is data...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 3 comment(s)
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Wed, Aug 20 2008 10:14

The winds of change are blowing

The essence of ALT.NET, or at least the essence that people made use of, was that it was a venue for improving one's skills.  There has always been an undercurrent of other agendas there; but they never really took root. The problem with the...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 2 comment(s)
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Mon, Aug 18 2008 10:11

Extra Features: One of the Lean 7 Wastes of Software

Derik Whittaker recently blogged about how writing unused code is one of the Lean 7 Wastes of Software . Mary Poppendieck calls this "Extra Features" and has a one-to-one association to overproduction in manufacturing. In Manufacturing it has...
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Wed, Aug 13 2008 16:55

Law of Reversibility of Attributes

I've come up with a simple law called Law of Reversability of Attributes. It’s based on the physics law of a similar name. Basically what the law means is that the inverse of a transformation should result in a return to the original state....
Posted by PeterRitchie | 7 comment(s)
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Mon, Aug 11 2008 17:34

DataGridViewColumn.Frozen

DataGridViewColumn.Frozen is documented as "When a column is frozen, all the columns to its left (or to its right in right-to-left languages) are frozen as well." Which is nice until you think of the consequences. The consequences being that...
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Mon, Jul 28 2008 14:00

ITSWITCH #1: Answer

Last post I detailed some code that may or may not have something wrong in it.  If you thought InitializeOne and IntializeTwo are semantically identical (e.g. they differ only by performance), you'd be wrong. If you simply ran the code, you'd...
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Fri, Jul 25 2008 13:58

ITSWITCH: #1

A short pop quiz on design/coding in C#...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 5 comment(s)
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Mon, Jul 21 2008 15:32

Working with Resharper's External Annotation XML Files

Resharper 4.0 has external annotation XML files that you can create to give Resharper more information about your code. For example, you can tell Resharper that a particular method does not accept a null argument. For example, the following method does...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 5 comment(s)
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Fri, Jul 18 2008 11:46

Drag-copying in Visual Studio Solution Explorer.

NOTE: I've tried this in Visual Studio 2008 (VS2k8), I'm assuming the same thing happens in Visual Studio 2005 (VS2k5). In the process of refactoring, it's *very* common for me to rename a type. This is most easily done by renaming the file...
Posted by PeterRitchie | 2 comment(s)
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