Community developer blogs

Garry's .Net Blog

Recent Posts

• Do you test your private methods?

  Posted: 18 Feb 2009 at 11:44 by capgpilk

  There is ample discussion on the blogosphere as to why you should or shouldn't test your private methods.  In the 'NO camp' http://www.redhillconsulting.com.au/blogs/simon/archives/000119.html, http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/chad_myers/archive/2008/11/21/do-not-test-private-methods.aspx In the 'YES camp' http://beust.com/weblog/archives/000303.html I think there is some confusion as to why you should or shouldn’t. Test-Driven Development If you personally are practicing TDD then you are te

• Why I prefer c# over VB

  Posted: 11 Feb 2009 at 13:52 by capgpilk

  A couple of weeks back I was asked by a friend of a friend why I code in c# over VB. I didn’t give him a very good answer at the time as I just couldn’t pinpoint the reason. Since then I have had a real good think about it and have come to this conclusion. It just looks bulky. Not a good reason I know. I am not what you would consider a power developer, I use .net for relatively simple tasks and there isn’t any feature I would consider using one language over the other. So for me it just comes d

• Quickly reading technical articles and books

  Posted: 04 Feb 2009 at 11:11 by capgpilk

  There is so much information out there pertaining to our jobs, a lot comes in the form of articles and books. How do you get through all this information fast without loosing comprehension? Well this is my technique. I have used this since my university days, and although it works for me, it isn’t perfect for everyone. It is a mixture of speed reading and mind mapping. I use this for both technical articles such as research papers as well as chapters from technical books. Quickly skim the pape

• Open containing folder

  Posted: 16 Jan 2009 at 10:34 by capgpilk

  This is one VS 2008 shortcut I use all the time. Open the folder which contains the file you are currently working on. Simply right click the tab in the editor view and choose that option. Ok nothing new there. It would be better if there was a shortcut. Go to Tools > Options > Keyboard and select File.OpenContainingFolder and assign a key, I chose Alt+o. Really simple, never got around to assigning it until now.

• Objectives 2009

  Posted: 06 Jan 2009 at 11:22 by capgpilk

  I am a little late in setting out my resolutions, and although 1st January is a good time of year to set out your objectives, I’ve never liked to be restricted by a date. If I smoked (which I don’t), and I wanted to give it up, I wouldn’t wait until the 1st Jan, I would give up there and then. No time like the present. So last February I set out some objectives for the coming 6 months, how did I do? 1. Finish my MCSE Upgrade exams – done 2. Get to grips with the latest development methodologie

• My end of year tool honours list

  Posted: 24 Dec 2008 at 12:06 by capgpilk

  Well the holiday season is finally upon us, and I would like to take this opportunity to post a list of applications that I personally have found useful over the past 12 months. There are some classics in there, but a few surprises. Have a look, there may be something of interest to you. So, have yourself a ‘Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’. Windows Server 2008 (configured as a workstation) Visual Studio 2008      Plug-ins – Ghost Doc                     Resharper 4.1         

• Integrate NCover with CC.Net

  Posted: 11 Dec 2008 at 16:42

  In previous posts I have covered getting cc.net up and running, combining NUnit reports with cc.net and generating documentation automatically as part of the build process. In this post I want to briefly describe how to get your unit test code coverage integrated with cc.net. If like me you have a l

• Looking at synchronization and one scary tool

  Posted: 25 Nov 2008 at 16:45

  It is funny how things work out, a disaster can lead to opportunities. Last month my main pc at home somehow got a corrupt hard drive and at first I thought I had lost all my private data (family pictures, documents etc), the drive wasn’t backed up as it was a mirrored drive, which I had thought wou

• How do you test private methods?

  Posted: 21 Nov 2008 at 16:42

  This morning I read a post by Davy Brion who was explaining a technique to test private methods. Although the post was interesting, it was a comment by Rafferty Uy that got me thinking. He suggests that you make your method protected instead of private and have the testing class inherit from this cl

• Starting with the Synchronization Framework

  Posted: 06 Nov 2008 at 15:24

  If you don't already know, the Synchronization Framework team has just released the CTP for v2.0 There are 3 core areas of the framework:- Sync Services for ADO.NET: Synchronization for ADO.NET enabled data sources Sync Services for File Systems: Synchronization for files and folders Sync Servic

• Being saved by...unit tests

  Posted: 29 Oct 2008 at 16:41

  The time comes in every developers life when a higher up requests what they think is a minor change. You think about it and agree also thinking that it would not take too much time. It is only when you get back to your desk, check out the code and look to where the change is going to happen when you

• Singleton in action

  Posted: 28 Oct 2008 at 13:11

  I had one of those 'wow that's cool' moments last weekend. This sounds really sad and you may think that I need a life, but I was playing with the code for a basic singleton pattern found at:-http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/PatternSingleton.aspxI ran it with VS 2005 and stepped in to the code. I h

• Protect your job...perhaps by learning new tech goodies

  Posted: 24 Oct 2008 at 11:08

  It is in the news so much recently that there is no avoiding the fact we are either in or about to go in to a recession (here in the UK that is). There is already job losses in the tech industry, wether these losses were going to happen anyway, and now is a good time to blame the economic outlook is

• Configure SubSonic for a Windows application and sort out the table names

  Posted: 23 Oct 2008 at 11:04

  Web or Windows applications?SubSonic was originally developed to aid in the creation of web applications, but with a bit of tweaking it is also possible to use it for Windows or console applications. When you generate your DAL using the Sonic.exe tool, it is looking for a web.config file in your pro

• A quick getting started guide to SubSonic

  Posted: 22 Oct 2008 at 11:52

  This is a post originally published on my previous blog over on Blogger. I have copied it here as I very rarely go to my old blog anymore and this info may be of some use to someone out there.Subsonic; an ORM which just works. I cannot believe how simple this was to set up. 1. Download it from CodeP

• Autumn of Agile

  Posted: 21 Oct 2008 at 15:36

  Following on from the Summer of NHibernate, Stephen Bohlen is now treating us to an Autumn of Agile. The initial screen cast has been published, go check it out here :-Autumn of Agile

• No pressure then...

  Posted: 09 Oct 2008 at 14:27 by capgpilk

  Now some of you out there know pressure when they experience it, but shed a thought for the NASA engineers fixing the Hubble Space Telescope. There has been a malfunction in the Science Data Formatter which is responsible for downloading data to Earth based stations, NASA want to switch over to the

• No pressure then...

  Posted: 09 Oct 2008 at 13:27

  Now some of you out there know pressure when they experience it, but shed a thought for the NASA engineers fixing the Hubble Space Telescope. There has been a malfunction in the Science Data Formatter which is responsible for downloading data to Earth based stations, NASA want to switch over to the

• Auto-generating help with NAnt and CC.net

  Posted: 09 Oct 2008 at 13:25 by capgpilk

  We are about to be audited here where I work. That is the IT department, not the company as a whole. As part of this we have to get all our IT documentation up to scratch. One problem being we don't know when they are coming and what exactly they are wanting to look at. So as far as we can see we ha

• Auto-generating help with NAnt and CC.net

  Posted: 09 Oct 2008 at 12:25

  We are about to be audited here where I work. That is the IT department, not the company as a whole. As part of this we have to get all our IT documentation up to scratch. One problem being we don't know when they are coming and what exactly they are wanting to look at. So as far as we can see we ha