Community developer blogs

Stuff that's in my head

Recent Posts

• Open Source Risk Management

  Posted: 30 Jun 2009 at 23:06 by Colin Angus Mackay

  There are some pretty cool things happening in the open source space on the .NET platform these days and new projects are being started every day. However how do you sort the wheat from the chaff? How do you manage risk when using open source? In this post I hope to address this issue as it relates specifically to open source frameworks that target .NET.

• 40% off Microsoft Press Books at Books24x7

  Posted: 27 Jun 2009 at 20:10 by Colin Angus Mackay

  If you are like me, then you spend hundreds of pounds per year on books, yet at the end I still don’t think I have access to all the books I’d like. I can’t go to my local library because they don’t stock the books I’m interested in. So for the past year I’ve been using Books 24x7 which gives me access to many more books than I’d ever be able to afford to buy for myself. I can search the books for the information I’m looking for on the web and if I want to take it off-line I can download a PDF.

• Go Directly to Funky

  Posted: 24 Jun 2009 at 23:23 by Colin Angus Mackay

  In our office we have a notice board for the development team. It was there when I joined and I suspect its original function has long since been superseded by its new function of displaying any quotes, pearls of wisdom or witticisms of the day that members of the development team happen to find sufficiently amusing that it requires a degree of permanence. So I give you, our notice board: Have fun looking through that lot.

• How to get a value from a text box into the database

  Posted: 12 Jun 2009 at 22:39 by Colin Angus Mackay

  This question was asked on a forum and I took some time to construct a reasonably lengthy reply so I’m copying it to my blog for a bit of permanence. I suspect that many of my regular readers will be dismayed at the lack of proper architecture (e.g. layering) but we all had to start somewhere and I suspect that your first programs were not properly layered or structured either. I know mine certainly weren’t.

• Scot ALT.NET: An Evening of O/RM

  Posted: 12 Jun 2009 at 00:28 by Colin Angus Mackay

  O/RMs help us bridge the gap between the database and the code base we love to write. On the night we will be looking at two O/RMs, NHibernate the most mature O/RM in the Alt.Net space and Microsoft's recently released Enitiy Framework, the young pretender to the O/RM thrown. ScottLogic, a leading financial software and consultancy company based in Edinburgh, have been kind enough to offer the use of their premises for an evening of O/RM knowlege sharing and dicussion.

• Things I’ve retweeted

  Posted: 09 Jun 2009 at 20:47 by Colin Angus Mackay

  I just had this fantastic idea. I share things I like on twitter by “retweeting” it. But I thought I’d spread the link love a bit more by blogging an aggregate of these retweets from time-to-time. The retweets here have been modified slightly so that links are more “normal”   RT: @dylanbeattie: blogged "What if they Ran the Trains for Free?" RT: @kevindente: Google might not be evil, but they sure can be dicks. RT: @johnkellar Would anyone I know attend a devlink event in Europe?

• Granny’s Shortbread

  Posted: 07 Jun 2009 at 22:41 by Colin Angus Mackay

  By request from Betsy Weber, I’m revealing my granny’s shortbread recipe (with permission). Ingredients 200g plain flour 100g Butter 50g Castor Sugar (called superfine sugar in the US) Method Mix the flour and sugar together Cut the butter in to pieces. Using fingertips rub it into the mixture until evenly distributed (almost like bread crumbs) Knead the mixture together into a soft but not sticky dough. Divide the mixture and shape into rounds (about 1cm thick).

• Dynamic Objects in C# 4.0

  Posted: 04 Jun 2009 at 00:19 by Colin Angus Mackay

  It seems only very recently that I was posting about this wonderful new feature in C# 3.0 called LINQ and its associated language features such as anonymous types, object initialisers and lambda expressions. Soon C#4.0 will be released and it has a host of new goodies to look forward to. So far I’ve just been dabbling with dynamic types and the dynamic keyword. C# has been up until this point a statically bound language.

• Upcoming events

  Posted: 01 Jun 2009 at 22:36 by Colin Angus Mackay

  In June Scottish Developers have two evening events with Kathleen Dollard. Kathleen is the Chief Technologist for AppVenture (www.appventure.com) where she leads the application generation efforts. She has been a Microsoft MVP for 11 years and is a member of the INETA Speaker’s Bureau. Kathleen has worked extensively with application code generation and is the author of Code Generation in Microsoft .NET (from Apress). She has published numerous articles on a range of .

• Rant of the Day: Marketers bending the facts

  Posted: 21 May 2009 at 08:29 by Colin Angus Mackay

  I’ve just read a press release by Telerik claiming that their tools are the “preferred” choice among asp.netPRO readers. The rest of the blurb is about winning awards. True, they won awards. But it is the claim that “Telerik products are their [asp.netPRO readers] preferred choice when it comes to web development” that irritates me.

• What not to develop

  Posted: 16 May 2009 at 14:20 by Colin Angus Mackay

  I was recently looking to book a hotel in Southwark in London. I thought I’d found the perfect hotel, it was inexpensive (by London standards) and close to where I would be visiting. They also had availability on an offer for £75 per night, so long as you checked in and out on specific days, which I happened to be doing. It looked perfect. But then things started to go wrong. I selected the rate from the availability page and clicked the “Book” button.

• Rant of the day: Learn to frickin’ count!

  Posted: 10 May 2009 at 11:20 by Colin Angus Mackay

  I was in a shop recently and I bought 6 items at £5 each. A total price of £30, even I can manage that mental arithmetic without resorting to a calculator. However, the till decided that the total price was £30.01. For a penny I really can’t be bothered to argue, but it got me thinking about code quality and wondering about what awfulness must be sitting in that system to create such a simple basic mistake. My colleagues are probably all aware of my views on code quality.

• I hate low fares airlines.

  Posted: 06 May 2009 at 21:40 by Colin Angus Mackay

  And that is me being diplomatic! There is no point in me naming the airline because, quite frankly, they are all at it. They are all as bad as each other as far as I can see. Why do they insist on displaying the fare sans taxes and charges. If they are not optional then they need to be included in the fare. I can’t NOT pay taxes. I can’t NOT pay the airport charge. If it is an optional element then allow that to be added, if the item must be paid in order for me to simply board the plane and get

• Win an XBox 360 Elite by playing with IE8

  Posted: 06 May 2009 at 14:01 by Colin Angus Mackay

  Okay – You have to play with it in a certain way, but you can win an XBox 360 Elite. What you have to do is create one of them accelerator, web slice or visual search provider thingamabobs. Even if you don’t win the XBox you could still be showcased in various Future Publishing titles. For more information, links to a tutorials and videos to get you started, visit Mike Ormond’s blog: Fame and Fortune await those who play with IE8.

• Rant of the day: IDisposable

  Posted: 28 Apr 2009 at 18:35 by Colin Angus Mackay

  My colleagues are probably used to the fact that I rant about code quality frequently. I take code quality very seriously. Not because I'm especially expert in it, but because features of basic code quality make it easier for other people to read and maintain the code. Today's irritation comes from some code (replicated in a number of classes I might add) that implements IDisposable. It is a fine interface and by implementing it you are telling the rest of the world that you have some stuff tha

• Developer Day Scotland 2009

  Posted: 24 Apr 2009 at 22:24 by Colin Angus Mackay

  There is less than 2 weeks until Developer Day Scotland 2009. There are still a few places left so if you haven’t got one, now is your chance. If you’re still not sure then read on. Developer Developer Developer events are founded on a number of principles which I think makes it unique and well worth a single day of your time once a year. DDD events are free. It doesn’t cost you anything to attend. Think of any large conference that you might like to go along to. They costs hundreds of pounds,

• Upcoming events

  Posted: 24 Apr 2009 at 21:56 by Colin Angus Mackay

  There are a lot of upcoming events that you may be interested in. I’ve been putting posts on the Scottish Developers site as I get told about them and there have been a fair few this week. So, here’s a quick round up in chronological order: 2nd May: Developer Day Scotland 2009 takes place at the Continuing Professional Development Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University. 6th May: UX Book Club meets in Glasgow to discuss Designing for the Social Web. 7th May: Scottish ALT.NET group meet in Gla

• MSDN Library now has a low bandwidth version

  Posted: 15 Apr 2009 at 23:44 by Colin Angus Mackay

  This is fantastic news. MSDN has always been slow and now Microsoft have produced a low bandwidth version designed for travelling developers on slower 3G and HSDPA connections. However, it will probably be my default view from now on. It is much cleaner and easier to read and, naturally, it is much faster to load which is what I want when I need to look something up. I don't want to lose the train of my thought while waiting for MSDN to load up. If you are as excited about this as I am then ther

• Microsoft MVP Award

  Posted: 06 Apr 2009 at 20:49 by Colin Angus Mackay

  Last week, Microsoft honoured me once again by bestowing on me the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award again. This is an annual award that Microsoft give to "exceptional technical community leaders from around the world." From the MVP website: Microsoft MVPs are a highly select group of experts that represents the technical community's best and brightest, and they share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. MVPs are objective technology experts who are eager to sh

• The StackOverflowException

  Posted: 28 Mar 2009 at 00:14 by Colin Angus Mackay

  Take a look at the following code: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { try { RecurseForever(); } catch (StackOverflowException) { Console.WriteLine("Caught Stack Overflow Exception"); } catch (Exception) { Console.WriteLine("Caught general Exception"); } Console.ReadLine(); } static void RecurseForever() { RecurseFor