We need speakers for Vancouver and Toronto for the Developer Foundations track for TechDays Canada 2009. We’re finalizing the abstracts right now; but, it looks like there will be four sessions in this track. SOLID : the five OO principles that will change your life forever. Will cover Single Responsibility, Open-Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation, and Dependency Inversion.  What they are, how to use them, examples, etc. Refactoring for Fun and Profit How to improve your existing

Justice Gray recently blogged about his concern of lack of SOLID coverage at TechDays despite how Joey Devilla blogged about SOLID principles (and then went on to say that “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe” SOLID would be covered in the TechDays Canada tracks this year). Joey Devilla retorted with an open letter . Justice’s concerns are well founded; TechDays is a “showcase current Microsoft tools and technologies” and that’s primarily what it does. Most sessions

WCF service define "data contracts" for their interfaces. These contracts are often defined in an XML schema document and used to generated WCF data contract code. This process effectively creates a .NET type that will serialize to a chunk of XML text. Depending on the operation of the WCF service, its code may be responsible for creating some of these objects. A return value from an operation, for example. While the framework handles XML serialization of these object behind the scenes

With WCF services you need to declare contracts and generate contract classes that encapsulate those contracts.  Most of the time you can simply let the framework deal with whatever it needs to do to deal with these objects.  Sometimes, you need to actually see without running a service what XML would result from a contract object or serialize a contract object from XML text. In .NET 3.5 there exists the System.Runtime.Serialization.DataContractSerializer class that perform serialization

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 development progresses and everyone learns more about the software under development. It's fairly easy to prioritize what is developed and what isn't. You simply develop only what you need (see YAGNI). But, how do you manage adding new functionality

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 to go to. Not only can you attend excellent sessions; but you can hob-knob with the presenters and pick their brains. If you have a friend or co-worker who’s interested, there’s a limited-time two-for-one offer for an even better

[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 on the SCC structure, this is where most of the development occurs. Mainline The root of the project or database. Sometimes called trunk or baseline; depending on the SCC structure, this is where most of the development occurs. Baseline The root

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 obvious that a domain model that isn't truly object oriented is a domain model with a problem. But, let's look at other reasons why the Anaemic Domain Model is an anti-pattern. Your Domain is the nexus, the essence, of your system. An anaemic

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 fine; but they weren't good systems. Some exhibited reliability problems. Some exhibited maintainability problems. Some exhibited performance issues. Some exhibited resistance to change. All eventually failed at some point; either the system could

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 a side effect of Cargo Cult Programming . Anti-Pattern Name House of Cards Anti-pattern Problem A problem occurs when software is written that works in a specific observed scenario but no one knows why it works in that scenario.  Observation