2005

The case for staged delivery and Agile methodologies

During the past week I’ve attended a .Net master class with Juval Lowy . One of the last items Juval talked about was his notion of software project management using Staged Delivery. Being a Agile advocate myself, I’ve…

The case for staged delivery and Agile methodologies

Title : The case for staged delivery and Agile methodologies Summary: During the past week I've attended a .Net master class with Juval Lowy . One of the last items Juval talked about was his notion of software project…

Happy new year

Happy new year, y'all. And on that note - I'd like to make a still non-official declaration: I'll be leaving my current job at Magen in the next two weeks. For what? to where? I'll keep you guessing for a week or so…

Next VB.Net user group: Web services, serialization and networking in .NET Framework 2.0 (Ohad Israeli)

Looks like Ohad is gonna do some serious lecturing this week! I'm totally there. Are you? This month in the second in our series of presentations on some of the new tools and technologies that are part of the VS 2005…

What does SQL server SP4 fix?

still in beta, but still interesting. A list of the bugs that are fixed in SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4 Beta

[WebCast] The Elixir and Alchemy projects - Outlook Integration with Siebel at Microsoft

"For years the Microsoft field had been requesting a CRM client that would be seamlessly integrated into their normal workflow so that customer interactions stored within Outlook, such as email or calendar items, could…

Zanebug v1.4.3 - a better NUnit GUI?

I really need to take a look at this tool . For now - here's the announcement of the newest version. Feel free to comment your thoughts on this toos on this post. "Greetings! To bring in the New Year, a new version of…

Continuous integration with CruiseControl lessons learned

Christopher Judd posts his lessons from implementing Continuous integration with CruiseControl.Net. [via TestDriven.com ] Continuous integration is a term used in Agile development project to denote the fact that…

A simple question about overloading

Given 3 classes: PersonBase, Employee and Manager: class PersonBase { } class Employee : PersonBase { } class Manager : Employee { } and given the following methods: public void Loop() { PersonBase [] people = new…

Some news from the wild

- Udi shares his thoughs on maintaining legacy code without unit tests and about Mock objects ( here and here ). Interesting stuff. Nothing too new here, but some great concepts one needs to keep in mind at all times…

Return of the Extensibility Application Block

A while ago I released two articles about implementing plugins in your .net applications( here and here ). I then went ahead and created a generic piece of code that encapsulates the functionality demonstrated in those…

Using Regex to return the first N words in a string

Jeff Perrin needed a function to return the first N words in a string (to create a small summary or a snippet thingy). He did it using the manual and awkward method of parsing the string manually. That method is more…

Full source for The Regulator released

I finally got around to release the full source code for The Regulator . Up until now the source code was partial and included mostly just the plugins for it. Now you get to see what a sloppy coder I really was when I…

Making ClickOnce publishing work in VS.Net 2005 Beta 1+

The following helps in cases when you get the following error messages: "Deployment manifest requires publisher and product specified" or "files missing from deployment" Here's what I needed to do on my Win Server 2003:…

Nice article on Extending the NUnit Assert methods

Charlie Poole (The new father of NUnit ) wrote this nice draft article about a subject I never touched: Extending the Assert class in NUnit. "Development of a set of customized assertion methods is a key to productive…

Interesting ASP.NET (Hebrew) webcast coming up

Natty Gur will be doing an interesting webcast this week on ASP.NET: "If you are ASP.NET developers, you interesting how ASP.NET really works and you understand Hebrew I suggest you will register to my web cast…

Defensive event publishing in .NET – Part I

This article was inspired by Juval Lowy’s Advanced .NET master class (Copyrights © IDesign 2005) and contains code excerpts from Programming .NET Components (1 st Edition) By O’Reilly 2003. Summary Events and delegates…

[Article] Defensive event publishing in .NET

Summary Events and delegates in the .NET Framework present an interesting case of apparent simplicity with abundant complexity underneath. Unfortunately, we *have* to take into account the complexity underneath if we…

[Cool Tool] XML Visualizer for Visual Studio .NET 2003

Just got an email from a guy named Michael Bouck about a cool new addin he made. Perhaps he should have added it to Project Distributor as well?: "Hi Roy, Love your blog feed -- keep it up! I noticed a while back that…

[Cool Tool] How could I miss Copernic Desktop Search?

How could I miss this gem ? All this time it was there, waiting, free , and apparently just as good, if not better, than the other desktop search tools. I should spank myself. "I've been a Copernic Desktop Search user…

Custom events in VB.Net

I had a discussion going on with some folks regarding the fact that VB.Net does not have the equivalent of C# event accessors (the "add" and "remove" accessors you can declare inside an event declaration). We thought…

Some thoughts on logic duplication in SOA design

Rocky talks about the problem of duplicated business logic in a pure SOA design. This is an important conversation that must be had in order to make SOA a real life opportunity. Here are my thoughts on this. Rocky…

Q&A - Greedy matching in regular expressions

This came in the mail, thought other folks might be interested. Hi Roy. I need to check a line of html and make the value of the style attribute lowercase. I've tried to come up with a regex that will work but I keep…

Team Agile - It's time to start my own business

In 3 days I'll be leaving Magen , the Microsoft Technology center in Israel. I've worked there as a senior consultant for the past year or so. I feel it's time for me to pursue my passion and interest in the past 2…

[Interview] Jonathan de Halleux on mbUnit and model based testing

You may have noticed that lately I've started to interview people I find interesting. Such was the case with Johanna Rothman, and now it's Peli's turn. All interviews will be hosted from now on on Team Agile's interview…

The Regulator now hosted at Regex.osherove.com

FYI: The Regulator will be hosted from now on at http://regex.osherove.com/ No longer will the fact that my home machine is down mean that The Regulator's site will be offline. Phew. And for the record, I'm working on a…

[Free book] .Net in samples

.NET in Samples presents many technologies on .NET platform like security, cryptography, WMI, networking, IO and others. This is still in draft version and final one will be release on the end of 2004 focusing on…

Free online workshop - The .NET Assembly Loader (Fusion) - Internals and HOWTOs.

"I owe Richard Grimes lunch. Heck, dinner even. He has posted a fantastic self-paced workshop that delves into the details of the .NET Assembly Loader (Fusion) . " [via Scott ]

BackgroundWorker for the compact framework.

Very cool, there's now a BackgroundWorker class implementation for the compact framework . [via Chris Sells ]

Darrell teaches Python

Darrell Norton provides pricelss information , tips and links on where and how you should go about learning Python . This is posted here very much for my own sake, as I start treading this path myself. However, you…

Agile Deployment

Rachel Davies posts about the idea of an Agile Deployment . In an Agile deployment, you have unit tests to make sure that the production system on which your product is installed meets all the required hardware and…

Search my blog

Just added search abilities to my blog, thanks to David Cumps!

Why Word hates you

Now I know why sometimes Word hates me: "So, we had a problem, and it had a deceptively simple solution. This is exactly the kind of problem Word’s Auto Formatter was designed to solve. The fancy name for Word’s Auto…

.Net Architects user group - Architectural tools - dynamic modeling, code generation and IDE integration

Greetings .NET architect (in Israel)! You are welcome to attend our next meeting to be held on Sunday, January 23rd . Our next presentation focuses on introducing new concepts and tools to turn good system architecture…

SQL Injection Attacks by Example

This nice article details a step by step approach of what the author needed to do to try and hack some intranet site (by request). It then details all the mitigation steps needed to make sure something like that can…

Yet another product nowhere near your area

A very cool, slick and easy to use CD/DVD holding and retrieval device, even with a discount for MSDN subscribers is, once again, offered only to customer in the US and Canada. I think that sucks. Especially after…

Israel C# User Group: How to write your own object relational mapping

Date: Wednesday, January 19, 17:00 - 20:00 Place: Microsoft Israel Hapnina 2 ( Amdocs Building ) Ground Floor Raanana +972 (9) 762-5100 Parking is available at the Kurkar parking lot. Proceed straight past the traffic…

Get an MSN alert whenever this blog updates

I just added an alerts service to my blog after reading about it on Kevin Harder's blog. Supposedly, you should now be able to receive an alert on you MSN IM whenever my blog updates. That's pretty cool, and is an…

The role of helper frameworks in your tests

As you create tests for a system that gets bigger and bigger, so do the tests become bigger and more complex. One of the problems that start to occur is that you test code starts getting riddled with various…

"Buy first, ask questions later"

Jeff likes RegexBuddy , and I'd like to believe it's that good. I'd like to try it out. Unfortunately, their web page says the following: " There is no free evaluation version of RegexBuddy. You can safely buy…

I'll be available for consulting in the bay area

<ShamelessPlug> There's a high probability that I'm going to be in the New York City/Bay Area during the month of March (7th-24th). I'll be available for consulting/training regarding Agile Development and .Net…

Wanted: Great questions for an interview with Juval Lowy

I'll be doing an online interview using Skype tomorrow with Juval Lowy . It's really hard to ask good questions at such interview. I mean - where do you start? So, I need your help. What are the top 3 questions I should…

Announcing: First Agile Israel user group meeting this month!

I think its about time to do something about that Agile user group I talked so much about. So. The first meeting of the Agile Israel user group will be held on January 31st, Monday at 18:00 at Magen . Co-managing the…

Data Binding with .Net 2.0 : upcoming coolness

Brian Noyes posts a little nugget on Data Binding with .Net 2.0 from his upcoming book. Generics are indeed very cool.

Help the Tsunami Victims of Banda Aceh - Buy an hour of Top-Notch Consulting

" It looks like Scott was the first to blog this... A bunch of us, championed by Julia Lerman and Stephen Forte are going to auction an hour each of our consulting time to benefit the Tsunami victims of Banda Aceh . ALL…

[Interview] Natty Gur - Organizational Enterprise Architecture

Download the Mp3 file here (note: this specific interview was conducted in Hebrew) "Summary Roy Talks with Natty Gur - An independent software consultant specializing in Enterprise architecture - in the organizational…

MVP.Xml library released

" On behalf of the Mvp.Xml Project 's team I'm glad to announce release v1.0 of the Mvp.Xml library . Mvp.Xml project is developed by Microsoft MVPs in XML technologies and XML Web Services worldwide. It is aimed at…

[Interview] Juval Lowy on great architects and project management

Summary Roy Talks with Juval Lowy, the principal of IDesign and one of the industry's leading software architects. The topics include: Project management and the IDesign process, staged delivery and what's missing in…

About architecture and astronauts

I really like what Joel writes about Architecture Astronauts (thanks for sending, Alex K.!). Sometimes it does feel that way. "When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers…

Reminder: .Net astronauts user group meeting today

Reminder: .Net Architects (" Astronauts "? :-) user group meeting today !

New stuff on Team Agile: XtUnit and Interception block with basic documentation

Update: Fixed broken links (21-6-06) I just finished adding a new downloads section to the Team Agile website . In the process, I've revamped some of the downloads I've made available to date with some documentation and…

The Quality Pledge

"I just received this in email: Pledge Our company is completely and absolutely committed to quality. * * Except on time-critical projects and during adverse cash-flow situations. When else would you need to be…

Agile content for the Winter 2004 issue of Methods & Tools

Winter 2004 issue's content: * Agile Multidisciplinary Teamwork by Gautam Gosh * Adaptive Project Management Using Scrum by Craig Murphy * Delivering Real Business Value Using FDD by Grant Cause Methods & Tools is a…

How to register for .NET user groups in Israel

I recently got a few emails from people in Israel that wanted to know how they can be notified in advance on various user group meetings. *finally* an easy answer :) To get notified every time the Visual C# user group…

A new face lift for AxTools CodeSmart

One of my all time favorite addins for VS.NET/VB6 just got another face-lift(I especially like the C++ additions): We are pleased to announce that we have just released CodeSMART 2005 for VS.NET. Packed with many…

XP Discussion: Invest in the design of the system every day

I just had to quote Kent Beck over at the XPBookDiscussionGroup list: " Invest in the design of the system every day . Strive to make the design of the system an excellent fit for the needs of the system that day. When…

JetBrains .NET Profiler

Welcome to JetBrains .NET Profiler Early Access Program (EAP) ! - Looks like the JetBrains folks are cooking up another utility. Open beta, so go download if you're interested. (via Matt Berther ) [via Larkware ]

SharpDevelop develops NUnit integration

Oh this is cool. SharpDevelop , the open source .NET editor, has built in NUnit integration. I'm still not sure what that really means, but I intend to find out. Hopefully it will be just like the JUnit integration…

Agile Israel user group changes location to SELA

The First Agile user group meeting will be held this Monday, the 31st, not at Magen, but at the SELA University in Tel Aviv. Here's a link to exact arrival instructions: http://www.selayouniversity.co.il/Pages/Map.asp…

Silly bickering

It's amazing sometimes what you get to fight about; things you never thought possible suddenly come true. For example, we now have arguments over which one gets to take the "good" car for various errands. The "good" car…

Is CodeBetter.Com to become the new .NETWeblogs?

Darrell Norton is one of the founders of the newly created CodeBetter.Com - a blogging community for better coders and developers. That also means that Darrell's most excellent blog has moved here . So, is…

Enterprise Library 1.0 released!

Enterprise Library is out. Let the blogging madness begin. What is it? It's the next, better version of the Microsoft Application Blocks you've seen until today. With a few changes: It's a suite of 7 built in , new and…

How to schedule an online meeting between totally different time zones

So what do you do when you want to setup an online meeting with a person on another part of the world? Scheduling sucks. I just found this little gem: It's the online meeting planner . It lets you enter 2 or more places…

Debugging VB6 binaries in Visual Studio .NET

Rob Gruen has a excellent post on how to debug your VB6 code in Visual Studio .NET without the need to have the VB6 IDE open. [via Marty ]

[OT] Infinite Cat

Silly as it may seem, I was laughing out loud to myself while browsing this site . Yes. It's the Infinite cat project . Got it through Rory through Richard . The idea is as simple as it is hypnotic. Some guy took a…

Launcher: Clean auto-deployment and auto-updating code from Franklins.Net

" So I was not satisfied with all of the options for auto-deploying .NET apps in version 1.1, and rather than waiting for ClickOnce, which only works in v2.0 anyway, I sat down and designed and developed a simple and…

1st Agile Israel group meeting went great!

The first Agile Israel meeting took place yesterday, and it was pretty darn good! Show-up: 32 people out of a 42 registered crowd. In the pictures you can see the room we had at SELA and Udi talking to the group. What…

IVBUG meeting this week: New Features and Changes in ASP.NET 2.0

"Continuing in our series of presentations on some of the new tools and technologies that are part of the VS 2005 releases due to arrive in the coming year, Noam King, CTO of Sela University, will take us through the…

Pics from my Magen farewell dinner

About two weeks ago, some of the folks from Magen arranged a special farewell dinner for me. It was pretty touching. Here are some photos from that dinner. Thanks you guys! Especially Ohad who's arranged for it all. It…

I'm not really here, sorry.

I know. You've missed me like hell. I've been staying along with my wife at a friend's house (they're on a trip and we're house-sitting). The Internet connection there sucks, but that is easily compensated by the fact…

Employing TDD and unit testing with Waterfall methodologies

One of the things I've encountered lately is large organizations (1000's of developers) trying to get "Agile" while still trying to retain some sort of sanity in the ranks. I do believe that such moves should be made…

Congratulations to Yosi Taguri!

Congratulations to Yosi Taguri on the birth of of your daughter! Many more happy days (and nights) to come :)

Agile Israel news and updates

Looks like I got into terms with Microsoft on hosting the Agile Israel user group on a monthly basis at the Microsoft Center in Ra'anana. The next meeting is now being scheduled for the 23rd of March. I'm trying to see…

Israel .NET architects user group: Patterns, practices and online resources for architects

Greetings .NET architect! You are welcome to attend our next meeting to be held on Sunday, February 27th . Our next presentation is based on my request to have a Microsoft official present the various resources that are…

[CoolTool] WinDirStat

WinDirStat is cool, free and just saved me 6 Gigs of HD space. It also uses the now famous "TreeMap" visualization scheme to show you how your disk looks logically.

IVBUG: Multithreaded UIs with VB.NET

Udi will be giving a talk at the upcoming IVBUG meeting about multi threaded UIs with VB.NET. Check out his description of it.

CxxTest for C++ - easier unit testing?

CxxTest for C++ seems like a nice way to write unit tests in C++. It uses Perl to generate Cpp files from regular classes and then you compile those into unit tests and run them. this intermediate step saves you lots of…

TDD and test generation in VS 2005 can be annoying and tricky if you don't watch out

- VS 2005 is cool. You get great Intellisense and there's a even a nice refactoring that lets you create method stubs when you write code that uses a method that does not exists. - VS 2005 also has a great feature for…

Lesson of the day: don't be a pompous windbag

One of the things that I was totally surprised with when I started working with large organizations as a trainer was that their training staff had different ideas as to what makes for a solid, qualified and standardized…

Test Driven Development proves useful at Microsoft

One of the coolest things I got to find out today from the PM of the MSBuild product, Kieran Mockford, is that development on the next version of MSBuild has been done using Test Driven Development. Yep, Write a test…

How big organizations (surprisingly) always advocated test driven development

Large organizations have to deal a lot with process. They have to or nothing would get done. On the other hand, too much process can halt an organization from going anywhere. That's why trying to implement Agile methods…

Response to the test generation "bug" I posted about

After I've written about the broken feature in the VS 2005 Testing features in regards to code generation and refactoring, the developer of that feature at Microsoft, Ryan Milligan, put the following comment on the…

The new Larkware.com

It looks like one of my favorite sites - Larkware.com has taken on a new initiative - write more, and also get some real money for it. Here's the blurb from the brand new spiffy home page : "...As many of you know, I've…

Met some nice people in Prague

I got to meet some really interesting people while I was in Prague. Take Ernst Kuschke for example. Ernst is from South Africa and he's a C# MVP. He's also an avid fan of Agile development and is in fact practicing it…

Agile Israel next meeting infromation and other important news

If you arn't registered on the new Agile Israel mailing list - I just sent out this important letter to the list. If you'd like me to add your email to the list, send me an email to AddMe at AgileIsrael dot com. Hi…

Another one gets test-infected

Chris McKenzie's blog has a post about his first experience with Test Driven Development on an existing ASP>NET project. I suggest you go read it , because when was the last time you have uttered the sentence: "I am so…

Updater is the new DCOM

I know I've been somewhat "Agile-Focused" these past few months. I almost feel bad for all those people who read my blog for cool technical stuff. I've become a bore on non-agile stuff, haven't I? Well, that's how I…

Deep Indigo, Clemens style

Clemens is doing a great blog series on an introduction to Indigo . I should read it.

[Cool Tools] Code metrics, dependencies and more metrics

Ohad is much a tool freak like me, only less in the IDE space. He just posted a very useful blurb about some tools a lot of projects could use. Do you find yourself asking the following questions ? – Which code most…

Solving Binary serialization versioning conflicts

My friend, Jonathan Einav (His blog is, sadly, empty for now) just sent me this by email. It's a solution to a versioning problem he encountered, which he has made public for the community. This is a a nice approach to…

Do you have a pre-built version of Mock++ handy?

It's weird, but I can't find any pre-built version of the latest Mock++ (Mockpp) framework for C++. Since I'm not a C++ guru, I can't seem to be able to built it alone. If you yourself have done it or know of anyone…

Natty Gur on Enterprise Architecture

Natty Gur has been blog-busy lately. His blog is a great start if you want to understand what Enterprise architecture means (not enterprise application, but from an organizational point of view). He's also contemplating…

CLR Performance Q&A, and how it relates to unit testing and mock objects

Over at CodeBetter.com , Raymond Lewallen has a nice post talking about CLR performance tips and tricks . The info is mainly from a CLR perf chat that was held lately, and you should really read some of the stuff in…

the CSS maze

I'm sure lots of people would love to hire the web-designer who can write a full graphical maze with only CSS (no JavaScript!) (via LarkWare )

How most developers don't give a damn about productivity

One of the things I couldn't do at my last job was deliver training and consulting on non-Microsoft technology projects. I find myself these days teaching Agile concepts for developers in C/C++, Java and .NET. Each of…

[CoolTool] FinalBuilder 3.0 - the ultimate build management and automation tool

FinalBuilder is out with version 3.0 I first learned about this tool from Mike Gunderloy(Larkware) about a year or so ago. This is one of the coolest and most productive tools I know to manage and execute automated…

The Real Roy

There were a lot of pictures taken at the MVP open days in Prague. You'd think my one and only picture would turn out better than this one .

Catch me at one of these upcoming user group events this month

If you want to meet me in person (or just listen to an interesting lecture you can catch me at these upcoming events: 16th of this month - C++/C# user group I'll be speaking at the C# user group about C# best practices…

Picking a fight with a book author

Looks like Alex picked a fight with non-other than Francesco Balena, long time coder and regional director, and personally someone who's code and tips I've used as a VB developer for many of my projects. Francesco is…

Funny TechEd video - Scott & Rory

What can I say? This is a funny video. Wish I was there.

How to use virtual PC and still save lots of room: differencing disks

Here's a great way to save some space on your hard drive with those big 'n nasty Virtual PC images: Differencing disks. The idea is simple: Start out with a hard drive image you're comfortable with, then create…

[Free Book]Coding Slave

" This has been a month of extraordinary learning and changing awareness for me. Today I am up for trying out new ideas that previously I would have dismissed out of hand. Thus, I am going to follow Kelly's thinking and…

Easier legacy unit testing with TypeMock.NET

"Legacy code" is one of those questions which never have a great answer when confronted with (besides the "Test only when you can, which will only be sometimes.." answer) One of the coolest findings lately for me was…

Taking notice of Lucene: A searching & indexing library

Lucene is an indexing search engine. It's in Java, but it has ports to other languages including several for .NET . One of those several, dotLucene looks very well maintained and some great demos appear on the site. So…

A meeting with a twist this Wednesday at Agile Israel

a package of 100 Popsicle sticks. A package of rubber bands (elastics) 1 ball of string Packages of colored index cards or colored paper 4 or 5 kid scissors (not-sharp scissors) 4-5 scotch tape dispensers (the small…

VS 2005 Pricing and Licensing (sucks)

[ Update : You can go vote against this licensing scheme in the Microsoft feedback center, thanks to Jordan T.] It's bad enough that Unit Testing will not be included in all versions of Visual Studio (like Microsoft…

[Audio Interview] Charlie Poole, NUnit lead developer - on NUnit, XP, TDD and much more

Another interview out the door, this time with Charlie Poole, Lead dev on NUnit and an XP wonk. Go download it from here (1 hour 45 min. in 2 parts) Summary Roy Talks with Charlie Poole , the lead developer of NUnit on…

Integration and interoperability resources

Here's a great list of interoperability and integration resources on the web. Some of these are well know, some are a gem just waiting to be discovered. Some are great books about integration and enterprise patterns you…

NUnit in Hebrew?

This is a question to all the Hebrew-speaking readers of this blog (all 3 of you): One of the upcoming features on NUnit will be a localization kit which will enable it to be run in different language contexts. So:…

Desktops with a twist

Wow! Some great looking desktops over here. Thanks to Mike for the link.

Software Factories And Regular Expressions

I'm still preparing for my software factories talk tomorrow at the Israel Architects user group. It's amazing the stuff that I dug on this issue. Especially all the (not so)hidden rivalry between MS and IBM over what…

[Recording]Johanna Rothman at Agile Israel: 9 steps to becoming more Agile

I was quite wary of how the recording would turn out, and it really wasn't perfect. But, with some tweaking and noise removal, I bring you the recoding from the first half of the Agile Israel user group meeting last…

[Interview]Kieran Mockford, MSBuild Program Manager - on MSBuild, TDD, the Microsoft build process and much more

Another one for your listening pleasure :) Kieran Mockford- Program manager for MSBuild, Microsoft - Building MSBuild, Test Driven Development style (February 28, 2005) Length: 67 minutes. Language: English. Download…

Naming standards for unit tests

The basic naming of a test comprises of three main parts: [UnitOfWork_StateUnderTest_ExpectedBehavior] A unit of work is a use case in the system that startes with a public method and ends up with one of three types of…

A Unit test should test only one thing

This guideline is much more aggressive and recommended if you work in a test driven manner rather than write the tests after the code has been written. The main goal here is better code coverage or test coverage. Here s…

Test Coverage and testing angles

How do you know if you have good coverage on your new code? Try and remove a line or a constraint check . If all tests still pass – you don't have enough code coverage and you probably need to add another unit test. The…

When should you remove or change a unit test?

As a rule, a passing test should never be removed. That's because passing tests serve as the regression tests for our maintenance work. They are there to make sure that when we change code we don t break anything else…

Migrating Nunit 1.0 to 2.2.2 - step by step walkthrough

I recently recieved this in the email from a fellow named Eli Ofek which I got to work with here and there Eli is a great guy and passionate abou this work so he felt he had to share a good experience and walkthrough on…

Weird fonts on this blog?

For some reason, my fonts look weird. Perhaps it has to do with me posting from PostXing?

VB user group meeting this week: Diving into ADO.NET 2.0 and VS 2005 Data features

Here's the email I got from Jackie regarding thie month's (week's!) VB user group meeting: "This month we will take a look at the two sides of Data Access in .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. I'll be giving the 2…

How Do You Explain Pair Programming?

Here's something to put on my slides for the next executive briefing I'll talk at. It's about the benefits of pair programming and it's only a part of a whole list of benefits found when doing Pair Programming . It was…

Scrum at Microsoft

The MSBuild team is not the only one doing Agile development. Several other teams are using Scrum . At least according to Rob Caron : " Something interesting happened this last week. Ken Schwaber visited Microsoft and…

Tests should reflect required reality

One of the most common mistakes of newcomers into TDD is that they often mistake the “Fail first” requirement with “Fail by testing something illogical”. For example, given a method requirement with this spec: Int…

What Algorithms should you test and how?

[ Update : I've updated the description here to make it clearer. Some of the comments indicate that I did not explain myself as well as I should have. Perhaps this is better.] Math Algorithms are problematic. The…

Solving Binary serialization versioning conflicts - The HashTable problem

A while ago I posted about a solution to Binary Serialization version conflicts , via Jonathan Einav. A comment was posted on that blog post regarding a problem to which Jonathan is replying through me via email, and…

Defensive event publishing, a different approach

Eric has posted a nice example of invoking "safe events" without using the threadpool , as was mentioned in my own article here. You should definitely go read his post and see his code, since it's different way of…

TimedLock class: helping find and avoid deadlocks in your multithreaded code

Another gem I found through Eric's blog is the TimedLock class. It helps in locking and detecting the offending code in multi threading deadlock issues (at least makes it not as painful). Originally posted by IanG (and…

[Free eBook]FIT for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests

The FIT for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests (2.4 MB) free eBook by Rick Mugridge and Ward Cunningham is available for download. "This book is about using Fit tables for two major, interconnected…

CFNUnitBridge: Test Driven Development for the .NET compact framework(almost there)

Just found this via this post over at CodeBetter.com . CFNUnitBridge The goal of the CFNUnitBridge is to bring unit testing and test-driven development to the .Net Compact Framework. Currently it specifically targets…

[Recording] Roy Osherove on Software Factories and Domain Specific Languages

Last month I delivered a presentation at the Israel .NET architects user group about Software Factories and Domain Specific Languages. Perhaps it's just my big ego, but I definitely feel that people should be able to…

[CoolTool] Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager

Use this application to backup and restore presentation, pictures, songs and applications from and to USB Flash Drive devices and take them with you. Use USB Flash Drives to store personal data, to keep your network…

Whitepaper: Introducing System Transactions, by Juval Lowy

Juval Lowy is out with a new white paper at the Microsoft download center . It's 50 (-10 for introduction) pages full of good information about the upcoming features of Indigo, as reflected in the System.Transactions…

Enterprise Library - Configuration AB Memory Leak Patch

The Enterprise Library team recently became aware of a memory leak issue in the Configuration Application Block, which is used by all other blocks in Enterprise Library. Patch 1475 , available in the Releases section of…

LinMagazine: Hebrew blogs about technology and development

I just discovered LinMagazine - an Israeli (Hebrew Speaking) magazine with online blogs and RSS feeds. It looks to be mainly for Linux lovers, but I do find a nice amount of posts to be interesting there. A lot of the…

An old joke with a new ending

Here's a funny joke I just read (you probably know the first half..) It's taken from slahdot, but I found it over on this Hebrew blog "A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled…

Agile Israel news and updates

I'm continuing to work on the Agile Israel site. This is what I have so far . You've got a page for each meeting with downloadable goods and also links to slides and audio bits from the talks. My first reaction is…

What should you write in a test Assert message?

The Assert message in a test is one of the most important parts. It's there to tell us what went wrong with our code. what we expected to happen but didn't, and what should have happened instead. A good assert message…

Making your tests withstand design and interface changes - remove code duplication

One of the biggest pitfalls developers writing unit tests face is in the face of a re-design. They write hundreds of unit tests for various classes, and suddenly a design change breaks many of them - a default…

Enterprise library -- Test usability and "runnability"

So, Enterprise Library is out and it's a great thing. It even has unit tests. But is anyone actually using them? Enterprise Library is a great test case for the issue of unit tests usability because: It will be used by…

Test maintainability: consider creating a test fixture "per method" instead of "per class"

If you find yourself writing lots of tests for a single method on your tested class - consider making a specific fixture for just one method or feature. It would make the class more maintainable and logically sound. For…

Another Entlib example: Separate integration tests from unit tests (and learn to know the difference)

Here are some more inputs on the EntLib unit tests runnability issues ( problems as specified in this blog post ) [I've bolded some phrases I thought were important in the original text] : Data 56 tests will fail if you…

Scary future ahead?

This is a scary way to order pizza: http://www.adcritic.com/interactive/view.php?id=5927 makes you think..

Pitfalls to avoid in an authors publishing contract

This is an interesting article found on one of the newsgroups: " What pitfalls do I need to avoid in an authors publishing contract? "

Blogs.RegexAdvice.com - smells like community spirit

http://blogs.regexadvice.com/ is really starting to pick up. I haven't posted there a lot myself, but looking at the latest batch of posts - people are really investing time and effort into writing useful stuff. And…

Setting Up VirtualMock in the Eclipse IDE

One of the things I teach as part of Team Agile is how to do Test Driven Development and write unit tests in Java. Yes. This is .NET weblogs, but the following information is so scarce and hard to find I just have to…

Try to avoid multiple asserts in a single unit test

Consider Assert failures as symptoms of a disease and Asserts as indication points or blood checks for the body of the software. The more symptoms you can find, the easier the disease will be to figure out and remove.…

Now *that's* how you tell a wedding proposal story!

Rory's getting married . And he describes "the start" of the process in a very "Rory"ish way - I laughed out loud. Congrats!

Debug Visualizers in VS 2005: Almost there, one big feature missing

One of the coolest new features in VS 2005 is Debug Visualizers, which allow you to "see" various data as it is being debugged in your IDE. For example - you can see a dataset presented as a real table in a grid (just…

Aspect Oriented .NET frameworks - more than I thought

This looks like a great place to dive in and start researching... I wonder just how usable they all are, and how one would go about implementing "Design By Contract" using each of them. Any experiences?

Weird and interesting Blog of the week - Anarchia

By far one of the most "...uh... what?" blogs I've seen that I actually found by a trackback to one of my unit testing blog posts. Worth a look, if only for the seemingly random Bob Dylan and Latin phrases mixed in.…

Movies, The Ruby way

PS And one of the funniest bits I've read all month comes from the Anarchia blog I've talked about earlier Movies, the Ruby way. What do I mean? Here's a short example: The Matrix assert_nil(spoon) Forrest Gump…

What does an Agile work environment look like? Here's one variation

This is a nice overview and actual pictures from a team room environment working with XP. Check it out at: An XP Team Room " Many newcomers to Extreme Programming wonder what a team room looks like. (For those…

[Book of the month] Working effectively with legacy code

[Note: You can find more books I found very helpful or interesting here ] It's been a while, but I have a new favorite book - Working effectively with legacy code If your company or team is trying or going to try to…

Yahoo 360? *yawn*

So now Yahoo! is making an MSN spaces clone called Yahoo 360 ? And It's invite only Like GMail ? That is so 2004.. ;)

Addictive, hypnotic and simple game

This is something to play at work , if you don't want to work. Can you max my 1718 points? Update - make that 2516, dudes.

Consolas: Our next programming font?

This is an interesting read . "Beginning in 2006, Microsoft says it will ship with its operating system and other software products six brand new typefaces created especially for extended on-screen reading. " Especially…

[Weird Project of the week] "Parking Spots"

It's the weekend, so guess what? more weird stuff. Just like the Infinite cat project, here comes " Parking Spots " where people show off their toy cars placed in real scenes. It's actually pretty funny if you take the…

[CoolTool] SWExplorerAutomation: Automate web GUI unit testing for IE

Got this in the email a week or two ago: Hello Roy, Have you seen SWExplorerAutomation ( http://home.comcast.net/~furmana/SWIEAutomation.htm ). It allows to create an object model for any Web application developed with…

Team Agile is hiring

In the coming days I'll be posting this "officially" on the Team Agile website. I'm looking for good people to hire: Note that all these points refer to different people and positions . You need to live in Israel to…

The spin on passover

I have to say - this is a real new spin on passover :) (the load is worth the wait...) and this is a funny one too (from same site)

[Word Shortcut of the day] ALT-F3: Quick Auto Text

Just found this nice shortcut in Word: Alt+F3: create auto-text entry. Just select the text and press Alt F3 and you can save the text for future use.. almost like Code Snippets :)

Using Emacs: A masochist's guide

Using EMacs : The ultimate hacker's text editor. Why on earth does Don Box like this thing? (via Anarchia ) Always did wonder what everyone saw in this thing. I'm a keyboard freak myself but this thing is *daunting*!…

2 exciting announcements from yours truly

I'm thrilled to tell the world that my first ever article on MSDN Magazine is going to be published this June, which deals with Database Unit Testing techniques, based on the work I've done so far on this issue. Still…

What does Indigo really mean?

Nice writing by Rocky Lhotka here about what Indigo really means, and why all the hype surrounding it might be meaningless until we start using it for bigger and better things. Very interesting way of putting things in…

What does SOA really mean? One big hype machine

Clemens Vasters, at an unusual leap of humility, declares something which to me is one of the biggest "DUH"s of the past year: Service Oriented Architecture is just one big hype machine , it talks about connecting…

Regulator 2005 & GUI threads goo- news on both?

I've kept mostly quiet for the past N weeks because of holidays+illness. It gave me time to geek out and start working on a fresh new version of The Regulator (aptly dubbed "Regulator 2005"). Boy am I a happy camper.…

When training classes go horribly wrong

One of the worst things you can experience as an instructor is to teach a class of people who just don't give a damn. This happened to me a few weeks ago. These people were coming in late, (sometimes an hour late!),…

RSS support from YNet Israel - Finally

Now, when my parents ask me what RSS is, I can just point them to the new set of RSS feeds provided by one of Israel's largest online news sites - YNet (from one of the three major newspapers in Israel). And, FINALLY, a…

Google Web Accelerator

OK, has anyone checked out the new Google Web Accelerator application? I guess this NY times is not so off track after all... Gates should get busy quick.

[Article]Simplify Data Layer Unit Testing using Enterprise Services

My first MSDN Magazine article is (finally!) up: Simplify Data Layer Unit Testing using Enterprise Services "Despite all the hype surrounding unit testing and Test Driven Development (TDD) many developers don't see them…

Yoel Arnon - MSMQ Guru

Last week I attended a presentation at the Visual C# user group in Israel. The topic was MSMQ use for connecting applications. The presentations was given by Yoel Arnon - who was part of the original team that…

Jackie Goldstein Rocks

Looks like Jackie Goldstein has beat me to being the first Israeli on .NET rocks . His show will air on the 30th of this month. Jackie is the founder of IVBUG - the largest and oldest user group in Israel which deals…

UISafeInvoker: Making UI Thread safe methods - a little more easily

Update : See at the end of this post for an important issue you need to know about if you're going to use this solution. Here's something I've been using in my programs lately. I've been pretty darn annoyed with the…

[CoolTool] ASP.NET Development Helper

If you're an ASP.NET developer - this tool should save you many hours of debugging and configuration testing. A LOT. It's a browser helper object for IE that shows you lots of interesting stuff about your ASP.NET page.…

[OT] In response to an email spammer/Scammer

Please disregard this post. I just want this guy to get as much spam as possible. johnnykuruma@yahoo.ca and I'll be keeping a list of email spammers on my homepage for various spam robots to find right over here:…

May at Agile Israel: Legacy Code Testing and MSF Agile

The May meeting of Agile Israel will be as scheduled, although the topics have changed a bit. for a link with full information on the meeting and arrival instructions, go here:…

June at IVBUG

June on the Israel VB User Group (IVBUG), run by Jackie : This month, instead of focusing on the future , we will spend our time looking at building our current applications (with a little bit of looking to the future).…

Not Dead

Yes, I know, I stopped writing. Lack of time. Too much things to do. Good trouble. In the next few days I'll have more time. so I'll get back to it. Anyone interested in making the new logo for the next version of The…

Ajax.NET - I'm impressed!

I am totally impressed with Ajax.NET . And I'm not even a web programmer at heart :) If you're doing ASP.NET development and find you need to do a lot of rich UI with various asynchronous things going on - this should…

Oracle Tools for VS.NET

Seems like this is worth a look if you're doing any work in oracle. tightly integrated "Add-in" for Visual Studio .NET that brings the power of the Oracle Database to .NET developers! Use the Oracle Explorer to browse…

Agile Israel May meeting summary

We had a fun time at the last Agile Israel meeting. (FYI - slides are already online for download , audio coming soon). Two things bothered me a bit: We had the stroke of luck to be side by side with conference about…

Announcing: The Regulator Logo Contest

All details on this and more that you wanted to know: /logocontest Feel creative? Got Illustrator or Photoshop? Feel like donating back to the community? Wanna free cool .NET component? If you answered "yes", read on.…

The Regex phrase of death

"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems. " -Jamie Zawinski, in comp.lang.emacs I swear, if one more person sends me an email, SMS message or…

MSF Agile, Testing Legacy code: Latest slides and audio from Agile Israel meeting online

The latest slides and audio recordings from the last Agile Israel meeting are now online . The slides are in English, but the audio recordings are in Hebrew (Israel, remember?) MSF Agile (Gadi Meir) (slides) Recording:…

VS 2005 Team System Modeling Strategy and FAQ

This looks interesting: Summary: Customers and partners are keen to understand Microsoft's strategy for model-driven development and its support in Visual Studio Team System. When we explain our strategy to them, they…

What's legacy code?

When speaking to one of the process engineers at a major company I consult for, I came upon a lovely notion regarding legacy code. We were talking about the perils of testing legacy code, and he turned and asked me…

Wanna see something really scary? Watch "The Grudge"

I like scary movies. I've been watching scaries for years and years, since childhood. Gore and terror - the more the better. So when I heard there's a new movie called " The Grudge " which is essentially a Japanese…

Agile Linux? Linux Kernel gets nightly build & Test

An anonymous reader writes "The Linux Kernel is now getting automatically tested within 15 minutes of a new version being released, across a variety of hardware and the results are being published for all to see. Martin…

MS Digital City, and a funny amateur video commercial

This Thursday and Friday Microsoft is holding it's " Digital City " conference in Tel Aviv Israel. There are many gadgets and gizmos shown there. I'm also presenting there 3 sessions of 30 minutes (err, same session 3…

Logon as a different user on the same local desktop: in win 2003

Windows XP has a nice feature where you can log on multiple times as different users concurrently, while at the same machine (switch user). It's a nice feature if you want to test your application as a lower privilege…

Cool Resharper hidden gem

Oh this is cool. Just found this out: IF you have Resharper installed, put your cursor inside a member in a class. Now press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+Up/Down arrow .

Problem with Log event size

I came a across a problem with one of my clients with a win 2003 server that contains custom event logs from applications. The event logs are set to "overwrite logs as needed" and also set to a maximum log size of 1GB.…

Popping up custom forms in the .NET PropertyGrid control

Someone asked me if I knew a way to add a custom dialog to pop up when dealing with the .NET property grid. I didn't, but when I looked it up I found a few good starting points on this matter:…

Israel C# user group: Instrumentation in Windows Operating Systems

Lecturer : Gad J. Meir , Idag , Ltd. Date: Wednesday, June 15, 17:00 - 20:00 Place: Microsoft Israel , IVCUG Hapnina 2 ( Amdocs Building ) Ground Floor Raanana +972 (9) 762-5100 Parking available at the Kurkar parking…

Test event logic easily with the EventsVerifier class

While working on The Regulator I came up with a class to help me test logic pertaining to events being thrown from the tested class (event throwing logic). I tried to think what would be the easiest way to test such a…

XStream.NET - Serialize almost anything easily?

XStream.NET provides transparent XML object serialization. Unlike default XmlSerializer, XStream doesn't require any additional metadata (attributes) and could be used with any object. [via dreamprojections ] (via Jon…

In search of the perfect programmer's font

Fonts Fonts Fonts! I've always thought that "Courier New" was the new black - the perfect programming font. Yet, I've always had my doubts and have attempted to switch to various other fonts fondly known as "programmer…

Mock Object testing can cause trouble - here's why and possibly how to avoid it

I got this question on the israel agile development list: I wonder about the usefulness and pitfalls of using mock objects, I'm currently using NMock, and I'd made a simple refactoring that resulted in a holy mess when…

Mock Objects vs. "Inherit & Override"

In regards to my previous post about Mock Objects and their inherent problems, Scott writes this comment: "I particularly like the technique where a virtual method allows the unit tests to subclass and inject…

A good tester

Now, this is what a call a good tester. "The developer thought I was insane when he saw me rocking my desk with my knee while typing... " (via Brian Marick )

Great set of icons

This is a great set of downloadable icons , many of which available for Windows. The link was sent to me by my lovely wife, Tal. (See if you can spot one familiar icon on the list...)

[OT ]It's Yamaka pattern time!

You knew it was going to happen: There's a special program to design the patterns on a yamaka ("Kippa" in Hebrew). (site is in Hebrew) (via the YNet blogs ) Also, from thr Same site: Haaretz newspaper finally has RSS…

Flickr! - get ready for Flippr! (and a new Israeli dev blogger)

Found this guy, Ohad's weblog, on blogger.com through Ynet.co.il. He's a developer and has some small little utilities to download. For example, he wrote (in C++!) a utility that grabs process info off Google on each…

Write clearer more powerful tests with the unofficial NMock 2 Drop

[If you know what a Mock Object and NMock is - feel free to skip the following paragraph] NMock is a .NET library (framework actually) to help write unit tests for objects that have to interact with other objects (Like…

Use Mock Logs instead of expectations when it makes sense

Len Holgate writes about a little known technique for using Mock Object testing which is very applicable in languages like C++ where Mock Object frameworks are hard to use and mocks are hard to create anyway. Instead of…

Nice Handwriting fonts in Hebrew

We were on the lookout for some great Hebrew handwriting fonts so that we could "write" a letter to family in Australia. via Google I stumbled upon this site with a very nice selection of handwriting fonts in Hebrew…

Why payroll systems are a pain to design - Temporal Data (and some great resources on it)

When I first started working on a payroll system at a previous engagement, I was very frustrated with the biggest problem in building payroll systems: Handling time. That is - the change of things and values over time.…

A very nice .NET architecture blog discovered

What happens when a good architect and consultant gets creative and starts a blog related to .NET architecture ? This guy worked at Microsoft Israel until recently as an architect. This should be good. Subscribed !

[Audio Interview] Brian Noyes: Deep .NET Q&A

Brian Noyes -Getting Technical about .NET (April 25, 2005) What would you do if you had an experienced architect and consultant sitting right next to you? You'd start asking him all kinds of questions that have been…

Balanced matching using .NET Regex

.NET Regular expressions have an extended ability to match "balanced items". For example, in the string "a + (b+(c+d))" it can find correct pairs of matching open and closing brackets. It's not the most simple solution…

LibCheck: List breaking changes between assembly versions

Another cool tool I'll need to check out from the BCL team: LibCheck "Basically, LibCheck analyzes a version of a library, and compares it to another version of the same library. It then reports the differences ... in a…

A new way to fight blog trackback spam?

Paschal posts about what seems to be an interesting and efficient way to fight blog trackback spam . Now we need to add a way to manage it from the blog and add support for this here on weblogs.asp.net. Of course, it…

New Advanced .NET Debugging Blog

Looks like there's a new hardcore debugging blog in town - from another Israeli blogger, no less - please welcome Eran Sandler's (not related..) Advanced .NET Debugging weblog . This guy is deep into debugging. Half the…

Nice Free Stock Photos site

This is a nice site with free stock photos one can download and use in their presentations (needs free registration but comes recommended by many people apprearently..) (via Beyond Bullets )

June at Agile Israel: Implementing change in an organization + A Bug's Life

The next Agile Israel meeting - More details here Please send an email to Yes@AgileIsrael.com if you plan to attend so that we know how many people to plan for. Thanks in advance. If you'd like to receive notification…

Impressions from the "Get ready for VS 2005" conference in Israel

MS Israel help 2 free single day conferences today and the day before. Yesterday was all about "Get ready for SQL 2005" and today was mainly for developers and dealt with many topics related to developers with VS.NET…

ComputerZen: Top 120 cool tools every developer must have

Scott Hanselman has updated is " All time amazing super cool tools list " and its time for all of us to sit back, take a good look and try to lineup what the pros are recommending. You need to be a tool geek to love…

Blogn' my way to the PDC: The Regex Challenge

Yes, me too. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to business. I tried to come up with something innovative and fun to deliver my message. Something that I like doing and that I think other people might find…

Geeky Podcasts list

Looks like the "Podcasting" craze is upon us. Slowly but surely, small independent audio talk shows are starting to show up on the blogsphere. I'll try to list the ones I know about here, and I welcome your input in the…

Blog'n your way to the PDC - A reality in the works

Wanna go to the PDC? For free? If you have a blog or are in the mood to write a little software - you should really really check this out then . All I can say is that very soon you'll see my own entry for this contest.…

The Regex Challenge: Blogn' my way to the PDC

Here's my official Blogn' for the PDC entry. I've tried to make it...different. http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/articles/pdc.aspx "I tried to come up with something innovative and fun to deliver my message. Something…

Annoying problem (+Solution) of the week: "One or more projects in Solution X needs to be updated to use Crystal Reports 10."

This is weird and annoying: Upon the daily build we started getting this dialog box: "--------------------------- Crystal Reports 10 --------------------------- One or more projects in Solution…

"Visual C# .NET compiler could not be created" - Possible solution?

We started getting this weird exception when trying to build some solution manually: "Project <Name> could not be opened because the Microsoft Visual C# .NET compiler could not be created" It might be one of these…

$50,000 to build a Cool Tool?

hmmm... $50,000. Sounds like fun. Let the thinking game begin. (via Rocky )

My Session schedule at Tech-Ed Europe

Here's the list of my upcoming sessions at Tech-Ed Europe. Hope to see as many people from the blogsphere there! Testing, Testing... (CHT019) Date: 7 July 2005 12:00 -13:15 (My Chalk & Talk about Unit Testing at TechEd…

Evil code in disguise

The Underhanded C Contest "..we hereby announce an annual contest to write innocent-looking C code implementing malicious behavior. In many ways this is the exact opposite of the Obfuscated C Code Contest: in this…

[Tool] Convert NUnit tests to Team System Tests

" Jim Newkirk has released an alpha version of a utility to convert NUnit tests to VSTS tests . What he doesn't mention in the post is that he's using GAT to integrate this conversion functionality into VS05." [via…

Great article on Reflection and Performance on MSDN Mag

Joel Pobar (master of all things dynamic) wrote a great piece on reflection in this month’s MSDN Mag.. Reflection: Dodge Common Performance Pitfalls to Craft Speedy Applications [via Brad Abrams ] Just skimming this…

[OT] What are you afraid of?

This is scary. How many phobias(chronic fears) do you think there are? Take a look at the ultimate phobia list and count them. I didn't see a fear of large lists of fears though. Some may sound eerily familiar from work…

TDD Workshop - NUnit Basics, 5 places left

If you'd like to participate in this you must send an email to Workshops@AgileIsrael.com with your name and contact details. Since we have a limit on the number of people, this is a must to be able to attend. Your name…

TDD Workshop - JUnit basics, open for registration

If you'd like to participate in this you must send an email to Workshops@AgileIsrael.com with your name and contact details. Since we have a limit on the number of people, this is a must to be able to attend. Your name…

Wanna record a geeky interview at Tech-Ed Europe?

If you're attending Tech-Ed Europe and would be interested in doing anything between a 10-60 minute recorded interview about some interesting facet of technology, or just geeking out in the community lounge with me,…

Tomorrow on Agile Israel - some very cool talks

Reminder about tomorrow's presentation on Agile Israel: http://www.agileisrael.com/Default.aspx?tabid=60 Please notify us of arrival to Yes@AgileIsrael.com 18:00-19:15 - Eli Lopian, Amdocs: Helping cause change in a…

.NET CLR Data counters are wrong - Official

"Original counters (in V1.0 and V1.1) reported wrong numbers in almost all scenarios." http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/changeinfo/Backwards1.1to2.0/default.aspx#00000123 "We’ve created a new set of Performance Counters in…

The ultimate gamer keyboard?

I don't play much games anymore, but if I did, oh boy. I'd buy this sucker immediately for my upcoming birthday.

TDD workshop today - CANCELED

I'm sorry to say that the TDD workshop today will be cancelled due to low participation rate – primarily due to the expected traffic gams today . The next one is expected to be at July 18 th . If you'd like to attend…

A [Newer] new way to fight blog trackback spam

" Hi Roy, Just thought that you might be interested to know that I’ve just posted a new trackback spam solution on my blog here: http://briandela.com/blog/archive/2005/06/29/652.aspx This solution will work for any…

Who's reading me?

I've been getting some referees from this address: http://teams/information services/application support/default.aspx Is this a Microsoft internal address? Who's reading me in there?In fact - who's reading me at all?…

The Mock Objects elevator speech

A friend asked me by email the other day :"So why do I need mock objects?" I came up with this in roughly 3 minutes so it's a bit rough, but it'll do to drive the point home, I hope. Note, that this does not really…

Nice PDC Contest Entry from Steve Hebert

Steve Hebert has a very nice contest entry about why he should go to the PDC. Why didn't *I* think of a poem?? :) Update : OK, I just found out that Brenden has a pretty darn innovative PDC post as well. Guess I should…

How to see the TechEd US sessions online

Here's a simple way to view the recorded sessions from TechEd US from your browser, even if you didn't attend TechEd. Let's say you browse the breakout session catalog and you see an interesting session like : " ARC313…

William Safire's Rules for Writers

I found a quite funny tidbit today by reading the weekend papers, where it was translated into Hebrew. The English source is pretty nice as well!: William Safire's Rules for Writers : Remember to never split an…

Dictionellisense

OK, never mind. I don't have the time or energy to build this, but maybe one of you can. And earn billions of dollars: Dictionellisense: Type the beginning of a word in Word , press CTRL+SPACE and have a list of words…

Rhino.Mocks v. 2.0 Announced. Yes, it's a Mock Object Framework.

Ayende has announced that he's released Rhino.Mocks v. 2.0 : his own version of what he'd like in a Mock Object framework. I haven't yet got a chance to try it out, but it certainly sounds interesting! "Rhino.Mocks is…

Agile Israel News & Updates

If you haven't been to the last Agile Israel meeting in June, here are some things announced there: Fixed meeting date The Agile Israel group has a fixed date each month. The group meets on the fourth Monday of each…

Congratulations, Ohad. Twofold!

Congratulations to Ohad on his newborn, shira ! Ohad just got his Security MVP as well, so that's double reason to be glad :)

TechEd: David Platt on Smart Clients Vs. Browsers

It's the first time I've been to a speaker lounge in TechEd (and 2nd time in TechEd at all, for that matter) and boy there are some interesting people in here. Phone posted later. For now, David Platt about Smart Client…

Some Teched Pics

Some photos from day 1 of TechEd: There are some beanbag places like this - just sit down and wi-fi your way home. Very nice. There are a few dozen PCs like this: Pick up the phone, press a "New Call" button in Outlook…

Another Semi Israeli Blogger

Another semi-Israeli Blogger about .NET out there: Yaniv Pessach .He lives in Redmond. A Microsoftie?

Sessions done at TechEd

I just finished doing all my sessions and chalk talks at TechEd. phew. I didn't imagine it would be so demanding physically (the mileage you walk between sessions is huge!). I've gotten feedback scores on all of them -…

Upcoming Audio Interviews from TechEd Europe

TechEd Europe is Done. Here's a great summary of some of the sessions and the overall spirit of things. I've been pretty busy networking and getting to know many of the speakers I've always read or heard and wanted to…

Udi Dahan - MVP, finally.

Congratulations to Udi Dahan on getting his Solutions Architect MVP award ! Udi has been speaking at user groups for a long time now and has an interesting blog where he posts his thoughts on architecture and software…

Performance vs. Testability and semi-virtual method calls

I won't try to sit here and say that the issue of performance vs. testability can be summed up in one blog post (or a full article for that matter). However, it's an important one and during my consulting gigs I've come…

I might be in L.A in October, and open for consulting/speaking engagements

It looks like I might be in the neighborhood of L.A this October for several weeks. Possible things I'd like to do while there: Speak at a user group or two about Agile/Regex/.NET stuff Consult/Train on Agile/.NET Have…

Fixing MSDN's bad DPAPI examples (And what's DPAPI anyway?)

DPAPI (Data Protection API) is something that most developers still don't know enough about. The good news is that working with it is much easier with .NET 2.0 and VS 2005, but in the meantime, if you want to work with…

Visual Basic 1.0, all over again

Looks like we're getting back to our roots , people. VB 1 is here to stay! :) Actually, it seems like a pretty nice GUI specification application. I wonder how it will fare in my next agile project.. (via TSS.net )

Looking for an architect for a medium project

I'm looking for an architect for a 5 week project. Good people are hard to find. Do the math. You don't have to live in Israel to do this. You may need to get on a plane to get there, though.. You need to know .NET and…

Bloggers call to action: Fight comment spammers by moderating comments easily with .TEXT

Right now the best way I have to fight comment spammers is to moderate all comments. That means that automatically, any comment on the blog is not shown unless I specifically allow it to. If you have a .TEXT blog, you…

Geekiest joke ever

This joke courtesy of David Platt : "What do you get when you combine Lee Iaccoca and Dracula?" "Auto-Exec bat"

Spell it with Flickr Images!

This is cool ! Spell whatever you want using Flickr Images :) (via the Hebrew YNet blog )

Important:Need someone to help me with DotNetNuke

I need someone who has good DotNetNuke installation experience - the www.agileisrael.com site keeps falling and This is a community site, so whoever can help is helping a growing community here in Israel. I'm not sure…

[Audio Interview] Steve Cook -Software Factories and Domain Specific Languages

The first of several Interviews I managed to do during TechEd Europe: I chatted with Steve cook for a very interesting hour about his role in the development of UML, the concept behind software factories and domain…

My contests actually make a difference :)

I'm glad my little Add-in contest helped someone get to Redmond for a tour with their friends :) What other contests would you like to see? Geekiest Joke? Coolest Avalon App? A "Self Documenting Code" contest? "Best…

Open for work during September(L.A or Bellevue)

It looks like I'll be attending the MVP summit this September, and I'll be looking to do a small time gig (speaking, training, consulting, development) during the week after that, in the hope of making it profitable…

[OT] What's inside the food we eat?

My wife is doing a paper for university on Morality in business. She's decided to explore the wonderful world of food additives and how they kill us slowly but surely(a lot of them, anyway). One of the articles we…

Selling my soul to AdSense

I'm doing an AdSense experiment on my blog page on the the interview page at Team Agile . We'll see what happens, and if the ads are "good enough" and not too annoying. Let me know what you think! I wonder if putting…

TDD Workshop tomorrow!

If you'd like to sign up for the free basic Test Driven Development workshop tomorrow, July 18th, there are still a few places left. for more information on this workshop:…

Resharper 2.0 for VS 2005!

If you're in love with Resharper as I am, you'll be glad to read that the new Resharper 2.0 public access download (beta beta!) is now supported in VS 2005 as well!! and some very cool new features ! (via Peter Provost )

[OT] If you can't stand the heat, take your ThinkPad out of the oven

It might be a well designed commercial for an IBM ThinkPad, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. This is one of the reasons I got a ThinkPad : (Translated and paraphrased from Hebrew, but Nice picture int he…

[Article] The Test Feasibility Matrix

One of the toughest questions in projects that contain legacy code that would like to write unit tests from part of that code (it may need to change) are: "Where should I start?" When one of my clients faced this…

XP Games links

Some links to various "XP Games" - small games to simulate Agile Development practices and benefits (via the XP Mailing list at Yahoo) The XP Game XP War Some nice games fro developers from Bill Wake Offing the Off-Site…

The Testing Feasibility Matrix

One of the toughest questions in projects that contain legacy code that would like to write unit tests from part of that code (it may need to change) are: “Where should I start?” When one of my clients faced this…

[OT]The Friday Page

Just found " The Friday Page ". Some disturbing stuff in there, but some of it's really funny. View at your own risk..

Unit Testing Best Practices and guidelines

Someone asked me about this the other day - there are currently no concrete set of guidelines for unit testing best practices (not talking about HOW-TOs, but about HOW_NOT_TOs). So it occurred to me that I've been…

The solution is out *there*, NOT on in my chat window!

Here's a small hint before you try to "chat" with someone on your MSN Messenger about solving a specific problem in .NET. It will save you (and them) a lot of time in a many cases. It may seem silly, but a lot of people…

[Audio Interview] Randy Miller on MSF Agile and software modeling techniques

I chatted with Randy Miller , the guy who practically wrote MSF, for a very interesting half hour (due to technical difficulties we had to stop early). The interview revolves around MSF- the Microsoft Solution Framework…

Unit test readability should not come in place of maintainability - they go hand in hand

Brian Button writes this post about a best practice he believes in when writing unit tests. The main idea in that post is that when you use Setup and TearDown methods in your tests, you're essentially separating parts…

How many services does windows need to run?

None, it seems. (via SlashDot)

Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" cracked in 24h

This in unbelievably and funnily simple

Nice article: Agile Top-Down

"There's a recent thread on the Scrum list about how an executive or highly-placed manager could get Agile going. I've been one of those guys, and I know a bit about Agile, and here's how I'd proceed. First, focus…

.Math - Open Source math expression compiler in C#

Welcome to .Math, the Open Source expression compiler for the .NET platform written entirely in C#. Offering speed through compilation of expressions, the library allows for variable handling, an entire function library…

What blog community site do you recommend for a new .NET blogger?

I have a very knowledgeable friend who would like to start a blog about topics such as Windows Vista and VS 2005. He asked me where he should open his blog. I didn't have a good answer. So, what blog community site…

Still alive, in Ireland.

I'm still very much alive, and Ireland is very beautiful. I just can't find any time to blog. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to say in the coming days..

Announcing a New Larkware Contest

It's time for a new contest , and I'm one of the judges. "As you undoubtedly know by now, the release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is scheduled for the week of November 7. That's just…

Small Domain Specific Language for the GoF Design patterns

I've met some very nice people while I was at Ireland, some of them MVPs and quite brilliant (and good drinkers!) Take for example, Eamon O'Tuathail , who created a small Domain Specific Language for some of the most…

Had fun speaking at INDA (Ireland .NET user group)

I'd like to thank Paschal for arranging my speaking at the INDA users group in Ireland last Friday. It was really a great bunch of people and I was pretty excited (and tired from a full week f training I've done just…

Easy tip to speed up your Virtual PC

Here's a great way to easily speed up your Virtual PC performance: Filter the process name from your anti virus scanner's real time monitoring. Since I have ETRUST antivirus installed, I simply double click on the icon…

NUnitASP Architecture walkthrough video from Jim Shore

Jim Shore , one of the Agile folks out there, has created a nice animated video using Camtasia that talks about how the NUnitASP Architecture works. It's not really for those without any NUnitASP experience but it's…

Video of my "Intro to Agile Development" talk at INDA is online

Paschal has posted online Part I of my Talk at the INDA group . It's roughly 3/4 of my full "Into to Agile development" talk and Parts II and III (Unit Testing Best Practices) will be posted later on, in audio format as…

[OT] Evacuating the Gaza strip

On a purely non technical and unrelated note to anything, I'd like to take this moment to talk about how I feel when today Israel is starting to move people outside of their homes from the Gaza strip. I really don't…

Two interesting Israeli .NET related blogs

Some technical news from the wild wild middle east: My ex-colleague, Shahar Nechmad, has finally opened a blog of his own dealing with Windows Vista, Indigo and various .NET things. He's the friend I was asking about a…

[OT] Watch The Anchorman for the commentary

If you have a chance, pick up the DVD for " Anchorman ". Not for the movie, but explicitly for the movie commentary. Just watch it all with commentary on. It is hilarious and unlike any movie commentary you've heard…

Installing Exchange overnight, oh my!

Last night spent 6 or so hours installing Microsoft Exchange on our home server, so that I can *finally* be able to synchronize my mail, calendar and tasks through my laptop when I go off to various places. It all…

Sherpa: Another Code/Layer/Application Generator

I'm not much of a fan of various "Application Generators" software, but Sherpa seems to be an interesting find. It's allows full application generation but with inherent extensibility (by changing templates, XSLT and…

[Audio Interview] Ingo Rammer and Christian Weyer On Distributed Applications Architecture And Practices

I chatted with Ingo Rammer and Christian Weyer of the ThinkTecture team shortly after both of them had finished doing their talks about Distributed architectures at TechEd Europe. The interviews starts with Christian…

Cool Tip: Show a vertical rule after 80 chars in VS.NET

I have no idea why this is not actually an editor option built in, but still, nice to know it's *possible*. I got this nice tip from a guy named Herfried K. Wagner (MVP) "Once upon a time I asked if it was possible to…

Rally Software are doing it right

Rally Software are an Agile development-related company. Personally, I think someone over there "gets" how the web works, and how the Agile world and the blogsphere world work, and they combine the knowledge with some…

.NET Architecture clinic with Juval Lowy this week at Israel (free)

The August IVBUG meeting will be on Wednesday August 24 . This is so that we can take advantage of Juval Lowy being in Israel that week and agreeing to speak to us. It will be a combined meeting together with the C#…

PDC Blogging Contest is over - I lost to a cooool entry!

Looks like the PDC blogging contest is over and my poor entry lost to something which was definitely very cool . Congratulations Bonk ! You deserve it :) Totally cool animated movie there!

Tips for a successful MSMQ-enabled application

For the past few weeks I've been deep down inside a client's project. It's a large distributed application and one of the features I was working on made me realize just how little I've gotten the chance to use MSMQ in…

Can you Digg it? Digg.Com

At first sight, Digg.Com looks like a really interesting site/blog/community information center. Plus, it has info on cool hacking tools and stuff. I am such a L33t h4x0r, ain't I? I can Digg it.

Picasa "Hello" is cool + a nice tip about using Hello

I you haven't tried " Hello " from Picasa, you should seriously give it a try. It's a way to share pictures and chat with your friends at the same time. Sounds lame but it's actually pretty nice. You can also blog…

Issues in breaking dependencies for unit testing

One of the most important issues I’ve come to realize is the various ways of dealing with legacy code, mainly - how to deal with breaking multiple dependencies on an existing class or method that needs to be tested.…

The DIMES project aims to map the internet - with your help

Update : I've just installed the agent and it is pretty cool. It gives you a visual map of your agent's "traceroute"s based on IP, country or ISP. Simple and lovable. The DIMES project (Distributed Internet MEasurements…

[Article] Issues in breaking dependencies for unit testing

One of the most important issues I've come to realize is the various ways of dealing with legacy code, mainly - how to deal with breaking multiple dependencies on an existing class or method that needs to be tested.…

[Audio Recording] Juval Lowy on Project Planning and Tracking

Juval was invited to speak to in Israel in front of a group of .NET related folks. Juval's visit was sponsored by Gadi Meir, of Idag Israel. Juval spent 2 hours talking about something he usually does not address in…

[Audio Interview] David Platt & Juval Lowy - Why Software Sucks And Other Architectural Insights

What do you ask when you get two software legends in one place? High level, world shattering questions, of course. Listen to this semi-serious chat mostly between Juval and David as they discuss matters such as Why…

Interesting Agile related blog - Cory Foy

Cory Foy has a very interesting Agile related blog. He also talks about other languages than .NET which is a refreshing read. Subscribed! - um, I mean I would have if I could only find an RSS feed link on that blog :(…

Another Israeli .NET Blogger - Ilan Assayag

There's another Israeli blogger out there, though he hasn't written a lot.. yet. Hopefully, exposing Ilan Assayag's blog out in public view will make him write more stuff like the interesting MessageLoop component he…

Agile conference coming to Israel - Your input is required.

I'm in the process of trying to implement an Agile Conference here in Israel somewhere in the first half of next year. The plan is to have a two day event with talks and workshops from well known international speakers…

[OT] Horrible movie about how fur coats are made

This horrible and very hard to watch movie was emailed as a link that's going around these days. It shows how furs are actually "made". It's amazing how much cruelty there is to animals here, being stripped alive. I…

September at Agile Israel - Why Agile, and lessons learned from implementing SCRUM

The next meeting will be held on the 26th of this Month, Monday. For session and speaker details go the the event page . The first part of this month's meeting will be dedicated to a session we never got to finish at…

Hear MSDN webcasts on your favorite audio player

How to download MSDN webcasts and listen on your MP3 player - level 100

New blog from NUnit primary maintainer - Charlie Poole

Charlie Poole finally has a blog . Charlie is the primary maintainer and caretaker of NUnit for quite some time now, and it's great to finally be able to read his thoughts and comment on them, rather than doing so on a…

What 2 questions would you ask Kent Beck?

If you had an hour to talk with Kent Beck , a proud father of eXtreme Programming , and you could only ask two questions , what would you ask? I'll be interviewing Kent as part of my audio interview series this week. I…

Back to Basics before Indigo: [Book] Understanding COM+

Lately, I've had to give back what has to has come to be, for me at least, the ultimate guide to COM+ services and infrastructure. Interestingly enough, this book is not recent. It was actually published way back in…

Philosophical development questions and the rule of the lowest common denominator

I really am a fan of Agile development, and smart people are abound in any methodology camp I attend (mailing lists and such). But sometimes, *plenty of sometimes*, instead of talking about details, and "how" to do…

Two small irrelevant tips

This is something I didn't find out until a few days ago. What happens when you search for "new York weather" on google? Find out. How do you get rid of the annoying irritating useless "personal tabs" in MSN Messenger ?…

Come to my .NET Architects talk this month: Guidance Automation Tookit and LINQ preview

I'll be doing the next talk at the Israeli .NET Architects user group this month, at the 27/10. Here's a summary of the talk. Should be interesting! (see the link for location details) This month, we will focus on 2…

Good architecture content from Udi Dahan

Udi Dahan , a Solution Architect MVP and a friend, has been writing some good stuff on his weblog lately. Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to attend the MVP summit, so I though I'd direct your attention to his…

The new MS 4000 keyboard and a ThinkPad go great together

I just got the new keyboard from Microsoft - the ergo 4000 , and it's pretty cool. The coolest feature for me, forgetting the shortcut keys and all that, is the fact that the keyboard is high enough in the air to…

Wanna be a Microsoft Israel Presenter?

Microsoft Israel is looking for "star quality" presenters on Microsoft content. Basically, if you can muster up a 15 min. technical presentation in front of some of Microsoft's finest in Israel and are found to have…

When LINQ and Yukon meet

I think the award for "coolest upcoming technology preview" for this year's PDC has to go to the LINQ stuff. That's "Language Integrated Query" if you haven't heard this yet. If I had to sum up the idea behind LINQ in a…

A better command line parsing class

Mike has recently recommended a command line parser library for .NET called Param.NET . Personally, I don't think this sort of thing should be driven (as is param.net) by a configuration file. In fact, custom attributes…

My Agile talk at Ireland Devs group finally has permanent links

A while ago I present at the Ireland .NET Developers user group on an intro to Agile development and on Unit Testing best practices. The links kind of disappeared from that site for a bit, but now I have direct links…

Introducing Amazoner: Create Amazon Associate Links with ease

Update (30/10/2005) There's a new version of this tool available . This tool also has a dedicated site from now on. For the latest version downloads and information, go to this URL: / Thanks, Roy. A while ago I posted…

Early experiences from .NET 2.0 Winforms

One of the reasons I wrote this little application is to get to know the .NET 2.0 Winforms API a little better. Here are some of the things I have on my mind after playing with it for a while: Data Binding The Data…

Annoying pop up on this blog? No more, I hope.

I seem to have inadvertently let in a pop up ad into this blog through one of the amazon or google ads. This was unintentional and I'm freaked out that I haven't noticed it. I still haven't, but I've gotten 3 emails…

More popups?

The popups still keep on coming, so I've removed the google ads. If you still see popups, let me know. If you don't, but you used to, let me know to.

Nice Guidance Automation kit hands on lab from TechEd (with a fix for a build problem it contains)

There's a nice guidance automation hands-on-lab available from teched, created by Daniel Cszzulino . Unfortunlately, if you tried to compile the source from the download on a VS 2005 Beta 2 or later without VSIP…

Reminder: My Architects talk is today (GAT and LINQ)

Don't forget. Today is my .NET architect's talk about Guidance Automation Toolkit and LINQ Preview . More details here . I'll be giving away a book from the MSCD training kit, especially for the architect's group: MCSD…

Representing void methods with generic delegates

Generics are cool. Learn about them . I want to talk about a specific query that I had which right now I can only guess the answer. To begin, here's the scenario. You can create a Generic Delegate to point to a method…

Strongly Typed Reflection Calls in .NET 2.0

Oren Eini is trying to cheat Reflection , that is, create his own, "strongly typed" version of reflection, and what he's done so far seems like a very cool and nice workaround: " I don't like strings and Reflection. In…

Amazoner 1.0.1 - Larger Images for Books and a dedicated website

A new version of Amazoner is out. Not many changes, but the main thing is that the book images are now bigger, oh and it's compiled using Visual Studio 2005 RTM out 2 days ago (relies on .NET 2.0 final). I Created a…

Automating the reinvention of the wheel

John posts a macro how to automate creating connection strings in visual studio .NET, and demonstrates a few key points (which have nothing to do with him probably being a great guy, good blogger etc..) 1. The blog…

My blog is not worthless after all

Just so you know: My blog is worth $88,068.24 . How much is your blog worth?

A little DotNetWebloggers uproar

Update : Alex Lowe of Telligent posts the following in response: "I've created a forum that will make it easy for us (Telligent) to share information and solicit feedback from the bloggers here at weblogs.asp.net.…

FinalBuilder is approaching version 4, and still the coolest build tool out there

If you haven't heard of FinalBuilder yet, there's no better time than now. Especially with Microsoft's new "If you want a build process, you'll wanna get VSTS" way of doing things. In short, it the most usable and…

How To: Perform a Security Code Review for Managed Code

Recently I was asked by one of my clients to do a security review of some of their code. I'm no security expert (and stated this to them) but I was still requested to do this. Having gotten this task I decided to look…

"Ask The Pros" article about favorite .NET addins at VisualStudioHacks.Com

There's a new article series over at www.VisualStudioHacks.com (the book) called "Ask the pros". It asks various personalities in the .NET world about their favorite hacking tools and methods with VS.NET. I'm proud to…

My first real frustration with VS 2005 RTM

Update: This bug was reviewed and solved by MS as soon as is humanly possible (probably due to the huge amount of exposure it got). See this post for details . It's completely amazing to me that VS.NET 2005 RTM, after a…

Google AdSense Referral Program Open to the public

Looks like Google AdSense just went another mile further. They now have a referral program. So if people sign up for AdSense through me, I actually get some money for it. All I can say is that so far, AdSense has…

Top 31 weblogs.asp.net blogs to subsrcibe to

In the early days of weblogs.asp.net (when it was still called "DotNetWeblogs") the main page had a list of all the bloggers sorted by number of posts and last date. That made for a good way to find out which blogs are…

Problem creating mail enabled Contact on Exchange 2003

I don't usually do this - use the blog as a public forum post, unless I've searched the answer in all the places I know. This one is a favor for a friend I can't seem to get done on my own.My friend is desperately…

Predefined CodeDOM implementations for common .NET usage patterns

Omer Van Kloeten adds some predefined CodeDOM implementations for common .NET usage patterns . Very cool and pretty darn useful for anyone doing some development with the Microsoft .NET Code DOM to generate source code…

The Browser Book - cool bunch of cheat sheets

These guys offered to send me a sample of this book, and I like it already just based on the book's site . This looks like a cool book to have if you do any kind of web development work. It's sort of like a bunch of…

A better Safe Cast using Generics

Update : the code has changed a bit in the C# version to reflect *exactly* the same behavior as "as". See the comments. Here's a nice way to make something like the "as" word in C# apply to both value types and…

A better BackgroundWorker : CancelImmediately and other goodies

One of the nice new features you get in .NET 2.0 Winforms is the new BackgroundWorker component. It allows safely executing long tasks in a different thread than the GUI, while allowing an easy event-driven interface to…

Creating a better BackgroundWorker: CancelImmediately and other goodies

One of the nice new features you get in .NET 2.0 Winforms is the new BackgroundWorker component. It allows safely executing long tasks in a different thread than the GUI, while allowing an easy event-driven interface to…

The Agile Blog

Check out the Agile Blog for lots of good Agile related content. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Rally Software are doing something right. Keep it up!

I'll be speaking at IVCUG this month: New stuff in .NET and C# 2.0 + Deep LINQ Preview

I'll be presenting at this month's upcoming C++/C# user's group meeting about new stuff in .NET 2.0 and a deep introduction to the LINQ project. The LINQ presentation will be different than the one I did at the…

Microsoft solves my RTM Bug (By Design..)

Microsoft did a hell of a job following up on the obscure bug that I posted (I'm sure that the fact the post was published on eWeek , The Register and other places helped a bit in speeding things up..) . It involved…

Cool Error Correction Dialog in VS 2005

I didn't know this, and this is something I could have used ... " For most of the System errors that the compiler is reporting if you place your cursor over the little glyph at the end of the error squiqqle you get an…

The unbearable ease of domain names

It's almost ridiculous how easy it's become to get your own domain name. So easy in fact, that when I found out that the business cards I had ordered had my blog address wrong becuase of my own mistake, "ISeria z…

Test Driven .NET's new version supports all versions of VS 2005 including Express

Jamie Cansdale is a a pretty sharp guy. He's released the latest version of TestDriven.NET, one of the most productive addins for testing and debugging your code, and it works with Visual Studio 2005. Not only does it…

Be an MS Paint MVP

Note: This whole post is under the assumption that this guy is not sarcastic to the point that nobody gets it. Looks like you can get on the MVP program by drawing a nice icon these days. Seriously, this guy just got…

Agile Dilbert

[Larkware Contest Winner] Snapper: Snap your daily computer usage

The Larkware Coding Contest came to an end this week , and boy, were they giving out some grand prizes. As a judge I couldn't participate in it, but I did get to check out all the cool stuff. The first place goes to…

Good technology audio I've been listening to

Here's the stuff I've been listening to in my car lately. It's very geeky. Beware. Rick Rashid - From the Labs at Microsoft Research - some very cool stuff. Trent Henry - Enterprise Security Architecture kinda of…

November at Agile Israel - The XP Planning Game

The next meeting will be held on the 28th of this Month, Monday. For session and speaker details go the the event page . This month's meeting will be dedicated to "The Planning Game", held by Amir Kolsky. In the first…

I'll be speaking at Oracle Week [TDD Intro and Best Practices]

I'll be speaking at OracleWeek in Israel which takes place from the 27th for 5 full days. My talk will be on day 2, on the 28th, from 10.45 to 12.30 and it will be about Test Driven Development Intro and Best Practices.…

Slides Available for my talks on C# 2.0, LINQ, Agile Methodologies and TDD Best Practices

Here are the slides for the IVCUG Talk I did last week. The slide topics were "What's new and cool in C# 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005" and "Language Integrated Query".…

Taken the MS Israel Speaker Challenge? Omer did.

Good luck to Omer . He's taken the MS Israel " Looking for a speaker " (registration seems to be closed by now) challenge and is waiting for any results. From the technical side, I *know* he knows his stuff. On the…

Experiment: Free advertising on this blog

Update : Already got two- . 1 to go... Let's make this more interesting. If you submit an ad without the offer code (not free), I'll get rid of the Google ads today and your ad stays on top for the duration requested (1…

QA Podcast: The Journey From Business Needs to Test and User Acceptance

Got this in the emails, and it sounds itneresting: "Hi Roy, Just a quick note to say that I thought you might be interested in this recent podcast we completed, entitled "The Journey From Business Needs to Test and User…

Microsoft fails miserably to explain or promote Test Driven Development in Team System

Update : Looks like they're working on fixing it as we speak. Update 2 : It's now obsolete. Going to the link provides and empty article. Microsoft publishes it's own version of Guidelines for Test-Driven Development…

Webcast: Agile and eXtreme Programming from patterns & practices (Level 200)

this next web cast may be interesting: Hopefully this will hold better insight than MSDN's little fiasco on Test Driven Development. "Agile and eXtreme Programming from patterns & practices (Level 200) (Level 200)"…

Slides from my talk on Guidance Automation Kit are available

A little late, but still. Here are the slides from the Guidance Automation Toolkit talk I did at the .NET Architects User group last month. I also talked about LINQ, which you can download the slides for here .

Has Microsoft screwed up with VS 2005, or is it a perception problem? Some thoughts.

Mike Gunderloy writes in an article for SearchVB.Com about what he believes is more of a perception problem by developers regarding VS 2005 rather than an actual lower quality in the product. "Every single version of…

Father of Rational Unified Process Goes to Redmond

This is pretty big. "Microsoft has tapped Ivar Jacobson, known as one of the fathers of the popular Rational Unified Process (RUP), to lead an effort to deliver a lightweight unified process to the Microsoft Solutions…

[OT] MSDN Wars? Part 1?? The Movie???

I'm not sure what to say when I see something like " MSDN Wars - Part 1 ". Perhaps I shouldn't say anything.. [via msdn webcasts blog ]

Test-First vs. Implementation-First : What Microsoft really meant

The following diagram is borrowed from Scott Dockendorf's blog , where he explains an article he's written about unit testing with VS 2005 (a different article than the one posted on MSDN). It explains clearly the…

Google Ads Gets Better - Targeted ads for specific sites

Looks like Google has added a new feature to its Google Ads: The ability to let you bid directly on a specific site with your own ad (see my own blog page on the top left - you get a new "advertise on this site" link).…

SQL 2005 management studio lacks.. lots of stuff.

Looks like the SQL 2005 Management Studio needs some work too these days. Just a quick heads up. I can't say my experiences with it are much different, unfortunately.

Announcing Regex Kit: Regular Expression Visualizers for VS 2005

I've been hibernating with everything relating to regular expressions for quite sometime now. I'm still working on the Regulator 3.0 (built on .NET 2.0), but for now, I thought I'd release these: Regex Debug Visualizers…

For the ego trip bag: Google Book Search

Here's another trick for the Ego Trip enhancement bag: Search your name in Google Books . Funnily enough, I was mentioned in one book I didn't even know about, while another book that I *do* know about , is not listed.

Nice article on ordering code construction tasks by Jeremy Miller

Jeremy Miller has some sound advice and an interesting read on the order of code construction (a nice "Where should I start building my project, and how do I continue to implement the various pieces of the…

Agile Israel meets today! The Planning Game

Update : Meeting went great! Amir is certainly a good speaker and kept people awake until 21:00. Now *that's* saying something... Expect audio and slides as soon as humanly possible on the site. Don't forget: Agile…

Ask The Pros: Debugging Tips

The latest round of VisualStudioHacks.Com 's "Ask The Pros" article is out, and this time it's about debugging . While I did contribute my own tips into the mix, I was pleasantly surprised how much new information I…

A Better XML Visualizer

Here's another cool visualizer for your use. It's a better XML Visualizer than the one currently in the VS IDE, written by Howard van Rooijen .

FinalBuilder 4.0 is out - Lightweight, Scalable Build Managment Tool

The good people at VSoft have done it again. FinalBuilder 4.0 is out and running , and I couldn't be happier advertising for it on this blog. One of the best products I've used for build management, and it gets better…

Raise your hand if you want an interview with Jamie Cansdale (the NUnit Addin guy)

OK, Andrew started it, so raise your hand if you want Jamie Cansdale , the guy who created TestDriven.NET (one of the coolest addins out there), to be interviewed by me for my interview series . He's a little shy, and…

[Review] JustCode! Universal 1.0 - Productivity Addin for VS 2005 and a0023

Let’s face it. JetBrains , the company who created Resharper for Visual Studio 2003, set a standard for refactoring and “quick-fix” addins which has the whole “productivity addins” industry taking notes. Their two…

December at IVBUG: Xml Editing and Debugging + LINQ

Here's the email I got from Jackie , head of the Israel VB User Group on the upcoming meeting. --- This month I was able to arrange for a special speaker from Microsoft in Redmond . Yair Alan Griver is the Group Manager…

Special Agile Israel Meeting with Johanna Rothman: Moving Towards Agile Project Management

I'm happy to announce that Agile Israel will host Johanna Rothman at an upcoming special meeting of the group. The meeting will take place next week, on December 15th (Thursday), at the Microsoft Offices in Ra'anana.…

Johanna at Agile Israel topic is set: Moving Towards Agile Project Management

Just an FYI: We finally have a session topic set for Johanna Rothman's visit to Agile Israel. It's Moving Towards Agile Project Management .

Nice audio recordings about (Agile) management practices

From Johanna Rothman : The Orasi folks have posted my fall webinars, both the audio and PDF presentation. If you missed What Makes a Great Product Manager? Managing the Project Portfolio Delivering the Right Product on…

Media Center Fix: Multiple Concurrent Logins to Windows

So I can find it later: Concurrent Remote Desktop Sessions in Windows XP SP2

Team Agile is looking for a TDD/Unit Testing Expert

Team Agile is looking for a Unit testing/Test Driven development expert in C++/Java · Expertise in Test-Driven Development of projects employing C++ and/or Java · Knowledge of Unit-test development and tools for unit…

[Article] Unit Testing Tips - Write Maintainable Unit Tests That Will Save You Time And Tears

My latest MSDN Magazine article titled " Unit Testing Tips - Write Maintainable Unit Tests That Will Save You Time And Tears " is out in the online January Issue here. It's based on real issues, guidelines I've…

[Slides and code] VS Launch Israel: .NET 2.0 Things You Need To Know

You can download the code demos and presentations from my talk with Jackie Goldstein at the VS Launch in Israel about .NET 2.0 things you need to know. Jackie played the part of the VB Fanatic, while I played th part of…

Reminder: Agile Israel meets today!

Reminder: Agile Israel meets TODAY with Johanna Rothman . More info here (including how to get there). It'd be great if you sent me an email ( roy @ agileisrael.com ) telling me you're coming but you can just as easily…

Agile Israel News: RSS Feed and 3rd TDD Workshop are now open!

Today's Agile Israel meeting with Johanna Rothman was a great experience, and I hope to share some photos from it as soon as I get them from Johanna. Audio and Video(Thanks to Ohad ) were recorded, and it won't take…

NUnit 2.2.4: .NET 2.0 Support, Extensibility Support and new Asserts and Attributes

Got this from Charlie Poole today: We just released NUnit 2.2.4, the first production release of NUnit since 2.2 was released in August 2004. That means it's the release we recommend you use now - as opposed to all the…

3rd Agile Israel TDD workshop registration is now closed

The registration to the 3rd TDD workshop is now closed. We have 12 people willing to learn and have fun on January 8th. If you want to be there next time, be sure to be registered at www.AgileIsrael.com and you'll get…

Video: Johanna Rothman at Agile Israel: Moving Towards Agile Project Management

Ohad Israeli has put a video online from the first part of Johanna Rothman's talk last week at Agile Israel. The talk was about "Moving Towards Agile Project Management". Check it out here .

Fowler's "The New Methodology" - Updated

A couple of years ago I got to read Martin Fowler's fascinating paper on " The New Methodology ". That paper/very short book summarizes the approaches taken by Agile development methodologies, how the came to be, and…

Going to Thailand for a couple of weeks

My wife an I are going on a two week trip to Thailand this Wednesday (2 days from now..ack!). It's a long awaited, and well deserved vacation for the both of us. Our "plan" is pretty agile :) We have a two week…

January 2006 at Agile Israel - Mock Objects & Refactoring

More Info: http://www.agileisrael.com/Default.aspx?tabid=118 When : January 5th, 2006 Gathering at 17:30, we start promptly at 18:00 Part I : Mock Objects - Asher Sterkin Mock Objects are a powerful mechanism for unit…

[Book of the month] Behind Closed Doors : Secrets of Great Management

Behind Closed Doors : Secrets of Great Management (Pragmatic Programmers) Having been reading this book by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby all night and getting about half way, I can say this is one of the best,…

New XML Features in VS 2005 and .NET 2.0

I attended a session hosted by Alan Griver a few weeks ago at the Israel C# Users Group (IVCUG). It was a lovely talk, who's first part centered around the new XML features in VS 2005. Amazingly, I don't think I've…

See you in two weeks! (Guess what I'll be reading)

I'm leaving today - see you in two weeks. Here's what I'll be catching up on: so far this is one hell of a book. Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn