I found myself in the middle of an argument over the differences between static and global variables today. I started to give my input, and stopped dead in my tracks. I don’t care what the answer is. I love the fact that my developers enjoy programming enough to argue about the semantics of it. I love that they take software development so seriously. I love that they want to know the answer. »
Testing database queries is super important, but not easy enough. It can be done, but usually you have to write custom test fixtures and spend too much time doing it. Every project needs to test database integration, so why isn’t there a library out there to make it easier? NDbUnit seems somewhat dead, and only works on a specific set of database providers. Even worse, it relies on a ton of XML setup, which I hate. »
Continuing on my recent theme of not having any code in my posts, here is an awesome video a Mickey getting a sing-o-gram last week. Enjoy, and yes, that is the new and improved Mailtrust office. Valentine’s Day Surprise at Mailtrust from Cameron Nouri on Vimeo. I promise to have at least one post with code in it this week. »
While I am giving mad props to Mailtrust, big high-five to the Sync team for launching iPhone Sync for Noteworthy. Sync for BlackBerry owns me. If only I could switch to an iPhone now. »
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Mailtrust just held a discussion on Open Source Software in Business after hours tonight. It was open to the public, and we had a fairly good turnout, ~25 people. Here are my takeaways. A lot of people view closed source software vs. OSS as Microsoft vs. Linux. There are tons myths about open source and closed source, which can be very misleading to non-technical people. Since OSS is usually driven by developers fulfilling their own needs, the end product can sometimes be lacking important functionality. »
I hate the term user story. Not because I hate user stories, but because people usually look at you funny when you ask them for it. If this happens to you, instead of asking for user stories, ask who this is feature is for, what the feature really means, and why its important. Now you have successfully figured out the user story, without having to tell the requester to start their sentence with As a. »
Yesterday, I ordered a sandwich at Panera, and saw something quite unexpected. As they were cooking my sandwich, half the sandwich looked delicious, and the other half was starting to falling apart. The cook threw the ugly half in the trash, and cooked another one. Even though the bad half would have tasted the same, the presentation was important enough to throw it away. How many other fast-food restaurants would have done that? »
Reporting….can be a pain. Business requirements for reports often collide with domain models, and leave developers annoyed. Why do you need the first 10 users of every Wednesday, unless their first name is Steve, for the past 6 months, excluding October? MySQL temporary tables can help. Doggie Nail Clippers, LLC Reach back to that great sci-fi imagination of yours, and imagine you are developing a doggie nail tracking application, which tracks information about all your doggie clients. »
My laptop recently got re-imaged. On login, my eyes started to bleed, almost. I realized a tool I use everyday was not in my list of Tools, ClearType tuner. This XP Powertoy helps make text more readable by using ClearType technology. I know nothing about the technology itself, except that I love it. »