Clipmarks | travislaborde's 'programming' clips

Debug an EXE without "Attach To Process"

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:00:05 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde
clipper's remarks: nice!

Did you know… You can debug an executable that isn’t a part of a Visual Studio project without using Tools – Attach to Process? - #296

Go to File – Open Project and give it the name of the executable. Yes, even thought it isn’t a “project” per se, like a .proj or .sln, the dialog will accept an executable.

Now you’ll see the executable opened in Solution Explorer as a project.

Just hit F5 as usual to start the executable.

Tags: programming, .net

Hidden Surprises in .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:14:21 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde

Clip Source: geekswithblogs.net

Hidden Surprises in .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1

Could not load type 'System.Web.UI.ScriptReferenceBase' from assembly 
'System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, 
PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'.

You are stymied. You've never heard of the class; you certainly don't use it in your code. You use ScriptReference, of course; who doesn't? But what's ScriptReferenceBase? Going to the documentation for ScriptReferenceBase, you learn that it is the parent class of ScriptReference and CompositeScriptReference. What? No it isn't! The documentation for ScriptReference clearly indicates that it's parent is System.Object! What's going on here?

Then you notice the Version Information for ScriptReferenceBase: "Supported in: 3.5 SP1". It's a new class for Service Pack 1. It doesn't exist in .NET 3.5 and the documentation for ScriptReference is clearly stale.

Tags: programming, asp.net, 2008

Favorite Programming Quotes

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:02:13 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde

Clip Source: www.juixe.com

Favorite Programming Quotes

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
Brian W. Kernighan

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we’ve finished building it.
Anonymous Consultant

Tags: programming, humor

Singletons are Pathological Liars

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:54:15 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde

Clip Source: googletesting.blogspot.com

Singletons are Pathological Liars

So you join a new project, which has an extensive mature code base. Your new lead asks you to implement a new feature, and, as a good developer, you start by writing a test. But since you are new to the project, you do a lot of exploratory "What happens if I execute this method" tests. You start by writing this:

testCreditCardCharge() {
CreditCard c =  new CreditCard(
  "1234 5678 9012 3456", 5, 2008);
c.charge(100);
}

This code:

Only works when you run as part of the suite.
When run in isolation, throws NullPointerException.
When you get your credit card bill, you are out $100 for every time the test runs.

Tags: programming

Checking Request is Synchronous or Asynchronous in ASP.NET

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:05:44 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde

Clip Source: www.codeproject.com

Checking Request is Synchronous or Asynchronous in ASP.NET

In case Asp.Net 2.0 and AJAX, when any exception thrown while execution of asynchronous request, it is catched in "ScriptManager1_AsyncPostBackError" event, then AJAX framework handles that exception and shows java script alert box to user. No event (Application_Error) from Global.asax file gets fired.

But, in Asp.Net 3.5 AJAX they changed exception handling mechanism and now both events "ScriptManager1_AsyncPostBackError" and Application_Error from Global.asax gets fired.

Issue: Now, if exception occurs in case of asynchronous request, application tries to redirect user to generic error page instead of showing JavaScript alert and ends up in another exception as Redirect is not allowed in asynchronous request. Ha.... exception within Application_Error method ;).

Tags: programming, asp.net, 2008

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 download and troubleshooting links

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:03:29 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde

Clip Source: blogs.msdn.com

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 download and troubleshooting links

SP1 download links

Tags: programming, .net, 2008

NHibernate Worst Practice - SQL

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:02:04 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde
clipper's remarks: exactly why I'm not an NHibernate kind of guy

Clip Source: ayende.com

NHibernate Worst Practice - SQL

The question just came up in the NHibernate dev list, and I wanted to be as clear about this as possible.

If you can at all avoid it, do so. The use of SQL in NHibernate should be strongly discouraged. It is there to give you the ability to use the proprietary features of your database, and as a way to avoid the abstraction if you really need that.

Tags: programming

Writing Testable Code

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:48:06 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde
clipper's remarks: Great article. I can't emphasize enough how true I think the clipped lines are Very well put!

Clip Source: googletesting.blogspot.com

Writing Testable Code

there are no tricks to writing tests, there are only tricks to writing testable code.

If I gave you testable code you would have no problems writing a test for it. But, somehow you look at your code and you say, "I understand how to write tests for your code, but my code is different ".

Well your code is different because you violated one or more of the following things.

Tags: programming, testing

Speaking at Connecticut Code Camp 8/16/2008

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:52:11 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde
clipper's remarks: Wish me luck! This will be my first time speaking away from "the home crowd!"

Clip Source: www.datadeluxe.com

Speaking at Connecticut Code Camp 8/16/2008

I will be at the Connecticut Code Camp on 8/16/2008 presenting the same talk that went so well at the last Philly.net Code Camp: SRP / DI / IOC : Don't Leave Sub Main Without Them!

This talk is a very gentle introduction to:

The Single Responsibility Principle
Dependency Injection

Inversion of Control

These great tastes taste GREAT together, and I'm very passionate about "spreading th word!"

In this talk we will go over what these things ARE, and WHY you should be using them. Rather than dive into one of the existing "frameworks" such as Spring.NET, Castle, or Unity, we will build our own right there during the talk and demonstrate how it can improve your code.

Tags: programming

Logging, Auditing and Alerts

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:19:18 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde
clipper's remarks: I couldn't agree more. Short, but good article.

Clip Source: ayende.com

Logging, Auditing and Alerts

Logging is for troubleshooting, nothing else.

Tags: programming

Unit Test Boundaries

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:30:25 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde
clipper's remarks: Very well written article, with great comments too.

Clip Source: haacked.com

Unit Test Boundaries

Clip Source: haacked.com

One principle to follow when writing a unit test is that a unit test should ideally not cross boundaries.

A test is not a unit test if:

It talks to the database

It communicates across the network

It touches the file system

It can’t run at the same time as any of your other unit tests

You have to do special things to your environment (such as editing config files) to run it

Tests that do these things aren’t bad. Often they are worth writing, and they can be written in a unit test harness. However, it is important to be able to separate them from true unit tests so that we can keep a set of tests that we can run fast whenever we make our changes.

having the discipline to focus on the unit being tested can help shape your code so that it follows the single responsibility principle (SRP for short).

Tags: programming

Does object orientation really work?

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:13:02 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde
clipper's remarks: not sure I agree with all of this but...

Clip Source: www.ckwop.me.uk

Does object orientation really work?

The vast majority of software that people write inside a business talks to a database. Yet object orientated programming does not gel well with databases. The code that looks clean and simple in a modern object orientated program looks positively terrible when you look at the traffic that code causes at the database.

It's called the object-relational impedence mismatch. The often aired solution is to use some sort of persistence framework to map your classes to a collection of database tables. There are a variety of packages that do this: NHibenate, Gentle.Net, JPersist etc.

The problem is that none of them work too well.

Solving the impedance mismatch problem is the computer science equivalent of the perpetual motion machine. You can't get it to work because it's impossible; they are simply incompatible ways of working.

Tags: programming

Speeding Up FireFox When Using the ASP.NET Development Server from Localhost

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:26:05 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde

Clip Source: scottonwriting.net

Speeding Up FireFox When Using the ASP.NET Development Server from Localhost

The problem was I noticed that Firefox was loading pages very slowly. I'd visit a site through localhost (via the ASP.NET Development Web Server) and pages would take several seconds to load.

Firebug will show you the total number of network resources downloaded when visiting a page, along with the time it took to download each.

Each resource - from the 4KB HTML fiel to the 7KB JPG file, was taking close to a FULL second to retrieve!

I next opened Internet Explorer - the same pages loaded instantaneously.

Turns out that there is a known issue with Firefox's IPv6 support and the ASP.NET Web Development Server that introduces these lengthy delays.

Consequently, to fix this problem of slow response times when visiting localhost using Firefox, either set the network.dns.diableIPv6 configuration property to true or set the network.dns.ipv4OnlyDomains configuration property to “localhost”.

Tags: programming, asp.net, firefox

Declare Active Conventions inside C# or VB.NET Source Code

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:43:34 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde
clipper's remarks: NDepend is awesome

Clip Source: codebetter.com

Declare Active Conventions inside C# or VB.NET Source Code

With the last version of NDepend, we polished one particular scenario that I would like to describe properly: The possibility to store CQL rules inside source code.

Consider this piece of code:

let's write a custom convention that checks that:

When a method is calling the method Foo1(), it must also call the method Foo2(int).

Right click the editor and select: Copy to clipboard to insert this query in C# source code ...

... and paste the clipboard content just before the Fct1() method definition. An attribute is now tagging the Fct1() method definition.

It makes sense to declare such constraint near the Foo1() / Foo2(int) methods definitions. This way, during code review or refactoring developers cannot miss it. This is active documentation.

Tags: programming, .net

PhillyNJ.NET tomorrow night!

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:01:15 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde

Clip Source: www.phillynj.net

Vince Napoli - Tips and Tricks with SSIS

This presentation will show you how to create a SSIS package with package variables and database connections, and demonstrate multiple techniques on how to modify your configuration at runtime.

Vlad Bezden - WPF Databinding

Data binding is a mechanism to link user controls with data in their applications. Data binding has always been a very powerful mechanism, but with introducing of WPF it became one of the top features.

Tags: programming, .net