December 2007 Entries

Real Life Examples of Agile Development

I just saw this challenge to find real life examples of agile development by Tom Perry. He was hanging Christmas lights and found a way to incorporate test driven development (TDD) and continuous integration (CI) into putting up the lights. He put up his lights, then turned them on and found he had a problem. I had broken the first rule of agile development - Test First! Of course, any reasonably competent handyman would have known to try plugging in each strand of lights before beginning the life ......
Posted On Friday, December 28, 2007 1:11 AM | Comments (4)

Problem Solver or Developer?

My friend Raymond just posted a great perspective on development. I have come to the conclusion that I am a problem solver. That’s my business. Whether its process management, software architecture, personal growth for my development team or trying to keep my daughter from stealing my son’s toys, I solve problems. I totally agree with Raymond about being a problem solver. I have been saying that for years, so it's nice to see someone else come to this conclusion as well. One thing I have learned ......
Posted On Thursday, December 27, 2007 11:54 PM | Comments (0)

Windows Live Writer Portable And A Glimpse Into the Future With Portable Applications

Imagine if you will one future for applications. You walk up to any computer and plug in your 128GB Flash Drive (USB3 or USB4). You always have your applications with you and suddenly you have access to them through the flash drive. Your documents and files are on the flash drive as well. You don't have to have an Internet connection and you don't bog down the Operating System (if you use Windows) because you don't have anything but the base install on it. Your applications are very responsive because ......
Posted On Monday, December 24, 2007 1:26 AM | Comments (1)

Automated Deployment - MSBuild.Community.Tasks - WebDirectoryCreate / WebDirectorySettings Example

From my previous post of WebDirectoryCreate I have an example script of how you would use MSBuild Community Tasks to Set up Virtual Directories and/or do updates to the current virtual directory. The below is an example of how you can create or update virtual directories. This is what you would add to the MSBuild.proj file. <PropertyGroup> <!-- Virtual Directory Items--> <EnableVirtualDirectoryS... <VirtualDirectoryApplica... ......
Posted On Tuesday, December 18, 2007 11:49 PM | Comments (6)

MSBuild.Community.Tasks - WebDirectoryCreate / WebDirectorySetting / WebDirectoryDelete

Recently I submitted a patch for the MSBuild.Community.Tasks because there were certain tasks that were not working for us. I decided to blog about this because there are others that indicated they were having the same issues. In IIS, you are able to specify more than one website with the same ports. By default, the WebDirectoryCreate task will always loop through and choose the last website with that port. If you do have more than one website with the same ports, you need to distinguish differences ......
Posted On Tuesday, December 18, 2007 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

Troyisms

The Troyism is a comment that is zany, off the wall, and completely unexpected! It makes you think and entertains you at the same time. Sometimes it only makes sense in the context that it is presented in. Many times these are comparisons or analogies. Sometimes they are a new word. Today the Troyism that you will see is the comparison. I have a friend at work that comes up with some great comparisons that we have come to know as Troyisms. As you can guess, his name is Troy. Troy is a great guy and ......
Posted On Wednesday, December 12, 2007 11:51 PM | Comments (0)

BlogSeries - Define Your Work Environment: The People With Which You Work

One of the things I have been thinking about is the caliber of the people I would work with. I think there are several types I would like to work with (or probably already do and like it!). As I mentioned at the start of this series, this is my definition of my perfect work environment. This almost definitely is not what you would see as the perfect environment and that is okay. I invite you to come up with your own ideas and put them together. Technical PM - While I have had the type of PM I really ......
Posted On Tuesday, December 11, 2007 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

What is Your Alt.NET?

Passion. I love what I do and I get very passionate about it. I love to argue about the best way to go about architecting a system, learn things from others and teach others about the ways of the pragmatic developer. I love being surrounded by people who are very logical and can design whole systems in their heads (not that they do because that can be error prone) and see bugs before they even write a piece of code. I like it when people can go from high level to very technically deep, like up to ......
Posted On Tuesday, December 11, 2007 2:32 PM | Comments (0)

New ATV

I mentioned on Facebook that my wife was buying a 4 wheeler. I just want to mention that we had an awesome weekend after we picked it up! She bought a Honda TRX420FE, which is a Rancher ES. It is a utility type of ATV, but it can still get out there and go. When we got down to her parents house, they took theirs and hers and went to town. She has some cousins in town and they have 4 of them (ATVs). So there was plenty to go around and not many people had to sit on the back of a 4 wheeler. They took ......
Posted On Wednesday, December 5, 2007 7:47 AM | Comments (2)

BlogSeries: What if You Could Define Your Work Environment?

Over the next month or two I will be blogging about a topic that is likely to make you think. If I were to ask you what your perfect work environment was, what would you say? I would like you to think about the people you work with. If you could work with anyone you wanted to and have your boss be anyone you wanted, who would it be (or you could be the boss)? I would like you to think about programming languages. Would you pick just one or would you like to leave the door open to whatever best fit ......
Posted On Tuesday, December 4, 2007 10:16 AM | Comments (1)