All I Wanted Was My Data
by Barry Gervin
Most .NET developers are going to need to access relational data at some point. For somebody approaching .NET for the first time, the data access story in the .NET world can be a little overwhelming to say the least. Existing .NET developers looking to update their data access techniques can face a similar overwhelming experience. This article will help you understand the currently shipping mainstream technologies and how you can choose the one that is right for your particular needs.
Mano Kulasingam on digiTweet
Our CodePlex Project of the Month for May 2009 is digiTweet.
digiTweet is an open source desktop Twitter client for Windows. DigiTweet provides Twitter functionality within a rich user interface built with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
Listen to our interview with Mano Kulasingam () using the embedded audio player or download the MP3.
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CodePlex is Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site. Start a new project, join an existing one, or download software created by the community. Learn More
Practical Programming: Hidden Talents
by Peter Jones
This edition of Practical Programming covers a set of three useful classes / namespaces from the .NET Framework that you probably aren’t familiar with (yet).
Let’s make some noise: System.Media
Producing sound from a computer is something you may have learned in Programmer Playschool and promptly forgot (like me), but it is a useful little feature to add to all types of software, not just desktop games. Playing a system sound or other sound files is very useful in monitoring environments where the users are not seated in front of a computer 24×7 (for example, in server rooms or manufacturing environments).
Efficiency Upgrade
Developers solve problems. Good developers solve problems efficiently. The reward for that efficiency is [insert your preferred reward here]. Let’s assume you’re simply motivated by the satisfaction of a job well done (or maybe a promotion, a raise, longer lunch breaks, or just some extra time with your family). Whatever the motivation, the secret to solving problems efficiently is not inventing everything from scratch. Certainly the secret is not spinning your mental wheels hoping for inspiration. And most definitely the secret is not using Intellisense to arbitrarily try classes, methods, and properties until something works.
The secret to solving development problems efficiently is having the right information and the means to find the information you don’t have.
Mike Fourie on MSBuild Extension Pack
Our CodePlex Project of the Month for April 2009 is the MSBuild Extension Pack.
The MSBuild Extension Pack provides a collection of over 240 tasks for MSBuild, including things like Environment Variables, Event Logs, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Code Signing, Zip Files, Email, IIS6, IIS7, Twitter, and WMI.
Listen to our interview with project coordinator Mike Fourie using the embedded audio player or download the MP3.
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CodePlex is Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site. Start a new project, join an existing one, or download software created by the community. Learn More
MSBuild Extension Pack [9:43m]: Getting Started with Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration is a development practice that can help improve your company’s ability to deliver quality software. It can reduce the time to market and the deployment cycle from functional complete products to having the solutions deployed on desktop or servers.
Continuous Integration, or CI, can start with a lone developer desktop and mature closer towards production. The ultimate goal is to have a CI environment that can take you from checked-in code to production ready installation packages.
The instructions in this article will help you get started with CI even if you’re a single developer or a small team.
This is a process that takes time, but don’t be afraid of the road ahead, I will walk you through the first baby-steps towards a well-tuned machine. CI-practice is one of many important elements for the software development industry to mature to levels of other types of manufacturing.
Creating Useful Installers with Custom Actions
So you are almost done with implementing a ground breaking, state of the art, super duper plugin-enabled calculator application with syntax highlighting and now you are wondering how to get it deployed? In case you are already trying to put some arguments together to convince your boss for buying a suite to building Microsoft Installer packages worth several thousand dollars: Stop! Don’t do that. Well, at least not if your application is not as complex as let’s say your development environment.
Using Microsoft Visual Studio you should be able to create an MSI in literally no time by using the predefined Setup Project template and if you need to accomplish additional tasks that Windows Installer does not support out of the box, read on to find out how to extend your installer with own custom actions.
Remaining Valuable to Employers
The current economic turmoil has left many developers with uncertainties about their jobs. A big question on many people’s minds is "What can I do to make sure I am the most valuable developer to my current or prospective employer?"
Recently we asked 6 technology leaders to provide some advice on what developers should be doing to make themselves more valuable at work.
You might find their perspectives surprising:
(There’s an embed code if you want to share this video with others on your own site.)
On Strike at the Software Factory
Since there has been software, there has been the dream of the big green button.
Predictions of the future usually involve elaborate thought-capturing machines that deduce the true desire of an end user and effortlessly create their ideal application, ready for orders, often in the form of a simple form and a big green button promising magic with a label like ‘Go’. This is great for the futurist daydreamer, but terrible for the software developer who lives a life of continuous improvement, watching in horror as their profession is reduced to an afterthought somewhere between waking and the business application someone dreamt up before lunch. This is right around the time that the very emotional craftsmanship debate kicks in, and the humans vs. machines themes spring to awkward, robotic life.
Since the term "software factories" was coined in the late 60’s by Hitachi, it has been linked inexorably to the manufacturing process it is meant to emulate: people fear that the automation of software components will put developers out of work, or reduce their capacity down to mere assemblers of components rather than authors of code. We hear the buzz in technical communities about the emergence of powerful new software factories, developed by Microsoft and others, and can’t help but wonder if the intended goal of these new innovations is exactly along those lines. Yet, the people most involved in the software factory movement see it as just the opposite, a way to harness factory processes simply to meet the surging global demand for software at all, let alone with chairs to spare.
Ted Neward on Programming Languages
In this audio interview, Ted Neward provides some guidance for VB and C# developers interested in learning a new programming languages.
Be sure to read Ted’s article "Beyond VB and C#".