Community developer blogs

Andrew Stopford

Recent Posts

• Whats do you like most in your IoC of choice?

  Posted: 09 Jun 2009 at 20:08 by andrewstopford

  Question for you dear reader, what do you like most in your IoC framework of choice, what is lacking and what would you want to see?

• NUnit 2.5 RTM

  Posted: 05 May 2009 at 22:00 by andrewstopford

  Charlie and the NUnit team have been working hard on NUnit 2.5 and over the last weekend the NUnit 2.5 RTM was released, a huge kudos to Charlie and the team on getting this out. NUnit 2.5 has loads of new goodies, parameterized tests (like MbUnit) and Theories (like JUnit and XUnit.net) caught my eye, seeing parameterized tests in NUnit really shows how much MbUnit has brought this concept into the .NET mainstream and it is exciting to see in NUnit. So lets take a look. .csharpcode, .csharpco

• Twitter

  Posted: 17 Apr 2009 at 12:37 by andrewstopford

  In a disgraceful show of self publication :) if you hang around on twitter you can find me here. Apologies if this shows up in your feed reader, normal service now resumes.

• BDD with RSpec\Cucumber\IronRuby.

  Posted: 14 Apr 2009 at 22:06 by andrewstopford

  A great deal of debate has been going on about Alt.NET, what it means, what it does etc. For me the concept means to learn something new and not just in the camp that is my bread and butter but in any sphere of our industry. The one place I have been watching with the most interest is the Ruby camp, sure Rails is getting all the press but what pikes my interest the most is the developments the Ruby community have made in BDD with tools such as RSpec and Cucumber (Cucumber is one of the coolest t

• MbUnit 3 RTM

  Posted: 02 Apr 2009 at 21:34 by andrewstopford

  MbUnit 3 has been a long, long labour. It started around early fall of 2007 and under Jeff had grown and grown into todays final release. Along the way Gallio was born which as a Test Automation Platform this not only acts as the platform for MbUnit 3.0 but is intended as a complete stand alone infrastructure for test frameworks and it offers a great deal of exciting possibilities. Jeff has today announced v3.0.6 Update 1 when in fact MbUnit has been stable since v3.0.4, sure there are bugs and

• Technology Redundancy

  Posted: 24 Mar 2009 at 22:04 by andrewstopford

  Technology is moving at an ever changing pace, in the Microsoft stack alone it seems to change every month. As a developer the risk you face is massive if you don't keep up and keeping up is getting ever harder. Some developers have the spare time to keep up however if you have family or work long hours (or both) and you have no spare time. Some jobs afford you the time to look at new technology but that time has to be balanced with getting the job done, most jobs put the needs of the busine

• VS10 and OSS

  Posted: 27 Feb 2009 at 00:15 by andrewstopford

  Jason Zander, GM of Visual Studio gave an interview on the reg where he talks about OSS and VS10. Putting aside any license issues what I am keen to learn about is the kinds of existing projects that you would want to see embrace this from the current .NET OSS offerings and the kinds of features\projects that you would want to see from this. Would you want the same kind of support that IBM have created for Eclipse with the same kind of community projects. Loads of great things that could spawn f

• StyleCop for R# goes RC

  Posted: 24 Feb 2009 at 21:00 by andrewstopford

  Howard has announced that the StyleCop addon for ReSharper has reached RC.

• VS10 new UI

  Posted: 24 Feb 2009 at 20:51 by andrewstopford

  The VS10 UI is taking shape, it still looks very much like the UI in the PDC build but with some tweaks. Multi-screen support, the screen shot does not show how it works in action but the things you want\need in this you should start shouting about. Editor changes, expand, collapse, works for you or not, let me know. Extensions, MEF powered, the new manager shows how rich this eco system is going to get. Sorry for the long delay in posts, first time I have ever missed a month but crazy, craz

• TFS Baseless merging

  Posted: 01 Feb 2009 at 00:26 by andrewstopford

  In normal cases development branches are isolated from each other in TFS (in order to protect each branch), while changes from one development branch can be fed into other via the system test branch there may occasions where a development branch cannot be fed into system test but has changes that need merging into another development branch, such occasions are baseless merges. Prep before you start • Check what branches you want merge• Check what workspaces the branches are in• Ch

• 2009 ahead

  Posted: 29 Dec 2008 at 22:54 by andrewstopford

  The last post of the year and I normally look back at the year, however have not paid much attention to 2008, here's why. Yes thats my little girl, playing baby laptop smash (knocking keys off). Happy new year.

• Does the .NET community need an Eclipse?

  Posted: 29 Dec 2008 at 22:47 by andrewstopford

  I can't help but admire Eclipse, at its roots it just a shell that you can adjust at will to make the editor what ever you want. From this has sprung a rich eco system with ready packaged editor tweaked downloads for all your coding needs. In it's native Java market Eclipse is not alone but lets you do what ever suits you, I admire that in an editor. The big question is dear reader would a project like Eclipse ever float in .NET land?

• GUI toolkits

  Posted: 29 Dec 2008 at 20:43 by andrewstopford

  I do wonder why there are not many opensource winform projects and I am starting to wonder if its down to GUI components. The default winform GUI components are good enough for basic interfaces but for something more complex your faced with a long walk reinventing the wheel or paying out. If your building a commerical application then you should pay (although the cost of licenses is hard for a micro-isv to foot) but most opensource projects cannot afford it (and commerical vendors don't lice

• What Editors\IDE rock your world?

  Posted: 10 Dec 2008 at 23:19

  What editors\IDE (be they Windows\Linux\Mac) rock you out the most, from Emacs to TextMate I want to hear what you like\dislike the most and why?

• New StyleCop for R# release

  Posted: 07 Dec 2008 at 22:06

  Howard has announced a new release of the StyleCop plugin for R# with a range of fixes and new features, vote for the things you want to see most over on the issue tracker page.

• Tabs, too many tabs.

  Posted: 05 Dec 2008 at 23:18

  In VS when coding you can quickly navigate to other code via instances and referances in the code. The trouble is that this opens any unopened files in a new tab, in most medium to large code bases you can end up with masses of opened files. Navigating through the code can also get confusing, you fo

• What I hate most about VS...

  Posted: 05 Dec 2008 at 23:13

  Another question for you dear reader, what is your pet hates about VS? Speed, windows, layout, what gets in your way the most. Do you see VS10 answering those problems? What other editors do you admire the most? Your thoughts as ever are welcome....

• If only my IDE could do......this

  Posted: 03 Dec 2008 at 13:42

  I first asked what you most like in your IDE (thanks for your comments, keep them coming), one thing I was after were your thoughts on the following. Code windows in tabs, if your working with a lot of files you end up with a lot of tabs, could that be better? Styling the IDE, you can theme the c

• If only my IDE could do....

  Posted: 02 Dec 2008 at 12:08

  I'm doing some research, what do you want the most from your IDE, what features do you most desire, what do hate the most, what features do you envy the most in other (say Java) IDEs? Let me know your thoughts.

• MbUnit & VS10

  Posted: 23 Nov 2008 at 22:06

  MbUnit 3.0.5 has added support for Visual Studio 10, as before you can now run MbUnit tests direct from the VS test runner. Don't take my word for it though, check out this video from Karen Liu (lead PM on the C# and VB.NET IDEs). If you are playing with the VS10 CTP then you download the MbUnit sup