Jeffrey Palermo, Microsoft MVP, Author, Speaker, Clear Measure Chief Architect, Azure DevOps Expert
I was a bit frustrated when I installed Redgate SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare on Windows Vista. The apps crashed right away with no error message. I hate the way Vista hides the error message and invites me to the troubleshooting screen (it can’t resolve the problem anyway).
SOLUTION: Redgate tools need .Net 1.1 in order to run. You’d think that Vista would be able to tell me that. I installed .Net 1.1, and the tools work great.
I’ve had numerous requests to publish my podcast list, so here it is. Here is what I listen to on my commute to and from client sites or, in the case of this month, to and from a buddy’s wedding several states away.
http://polymorphicpodcast.com/podcast/feed/
http://channel9.msdn.com/rss.aspx?ForumID=34&Mode=0&sortby=0&sortorder=1&format=mp3
http://www.hanselminutes.com/hanselminutes_MP3Direct.xml
http://www.dotnetrocks.com/DotNetRocks_FullMP3.xml
http://www.slashdotreview.com/wp-rss2.php
http://www.se-radio.net/rss
http://feeds.feedburner.com/javaposse
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DrNeilsNotes
http://agiletoolkit.libsyn.com/rss
http://syndication.sdmediagroup.com/feeds/public/cmp_podcast_udi.xml
http://feeds.gigavox.com/gigavox/channel/itconversations
http://www.trinitydigitalmedia.com/tnb.xml
http://www.oneminutetip.com/feed.xml
http://www.runasradio.com/runasradio_FullMp3.xml
http://feeds.feedburner.com/NetObjectivesPodcast_LAST
In case you’d rather import the OPML, here it is in its entirety:
Here’s a bit of info that I’ve glossed over for some time. I always have Visual Studio installed with building projects with .net 2.0 and 3.0, and VS bundles the SDK. On my current project, we have a graphics designer who works on html and css, but we have a local build that even he uses. Everything is automated. The designer doesn’t have VS 2005 installed, and when we started using WCF in .Net 3.0 for some web service calls, his build (and the CCNet box) started breaking. Before .Net 3.0 libraries were used, all that was needed to build our app was the .Net Framework 2.0.
.Net FX 2.0 includes MSBuild.exe, so all was well. Using some stuff from WCF causes some other tools to be called, so now the .Net 2.0 SDK is required on the build (CCNet) box as well as the designer’s box.
What a jacked-up name: .Net 3.0, but be sure to mark “2.0” in IIS!!
This is the second Austin Code Camp, organized by the Austin .net user group : www.adnug.org. Get more information on the code camp here: http://www.adnug.org/codecamp2007.aspx
I will be giving a talk on 1 topic, but it will be separated into two parts because of the amount of material to cover.
Fundamentals of modern programming
Join C# MVP Jeffrey Palermo for a talk that gets back to the basics of programming with .Net in the 21st century. This talk will not venture into Test-Driven Development, Domain-Driven Design, O/R Mapping or other recent advances in programming. Instead, I’ll focus on fundamentals that few colleges or training courses are equipped to cover. Some fundamentals include the actual differences between procedural programs, object-oriented programs as well as how to leverage both for service-oriented programs. Code presented herein will be basic and geared toward illustrating specific fundamentals. An example presented will be what a class should look like and how to decide when to create a class. If you feel a bit rusty on your fundamentals or if you’d just like a refresher course, this talk is for you. (Level 200)
In my career, I’ve found that many programmer focus on certain technologies and become very skilled in them, but the foundation of programming knowledge is lacking. Granted, many of us may get along these days without having to write a compiler from scratch, but there is plenty of knowledge missing from the common base of programmer knowledge. My talk will not cover net glitzy technology. Instead, it will cover more foundational knowledge and extensively reference well-known works and software studies.
My goal is that those who attend my talk will leave with a better understanding for how to go about constructing software.
This weekend I was a groomsman at Kevin Dulaney’s (great friend from grade school) wedding in Missouri. I drove from Austin, TX on Friday and returned Sunday. 11-hour drive each way. I stocked up my Windows Mobile phone with podcasts and listened the whole way there and back. For those who ask “why would you do that”? It’s my study time. Constant learning. I get to attend virtual lectures by industry experts. Invaluable.
There are three things that I MUST follow up on:
I’m still 3 weeks behind on my podcast list!!!! Arg!
My two BoF’s have been accepted for Tech Ed. Plan on attending if you are interested.
“Agile development with .Net”
“Techniques for writing less code (frameworks, libraries, and tools)”
The selections were determined from votes from Tech Ed attendees. It’s encouraging that many others are interested in these topics.
There it is. A pile of ripped up note cards denoting all the engineering tasks completed by my pair. This was an unusual day because it started at 7:30am with some white board modeling and brain-crunching a very, very tough problem. We wrote out some tasks to get us started, and we played the TDD game. It was such a tough problem that neither my pair partner nor I could imagine the complete solution, but we could imagine a few things that would be included. We wrote down the items to do on note cards and ordered them. The navigator manned the note card deck. In the course of completing some of the engineering tasks (all part of the same story), we uncovered new tasks that needed to be done. We wrote those down and added them to the bottom of the pile. We also ran into a brick wall and had to stop to do another task before we could continue. We wrote that down and added it to the TOP of the stack. We used these note cards as a true STACK. FILO. It helped us stay on track. We finally got through the stack, and when we did, the story was implemented. We didn't have the complete plan at the beginning, but we adapted and changed the plan along the way.
This pile of ripped up note cards is all that's left of that nasty story. It did take us all day, though, and at 6PM, we both were wiped out! It was the last day of the iteration, and we had committed to the story. We ate a quick lunch at our desks and worked straight through. It was great that we were able to meet our iteration through micro-adaptive planning.
I hope I don't have to do that again for a long time because that was the most difficult pair-programming I have ever done. We were talking through the problems _all day_. My brain was hurting on the way home.
My pair partner commented that it would have taken him 3 days if he had had to work through this nasty story by himself. Pairing on the entire solution cut the delivery by 2/3.
I'm going to present you with a very exciting new feature of StructureMap that is available in the 2.0 release. You can download StructureMap from SourceForge.
There are plenty of articles about StructureMap's service location capabilities, and the documentation is quite good, but I'll throw out the bread-and-butter usage scenario for service location. Here is is.
I have an ICustomerRepository, and an "impl" class that implements the interface, CustomerRepository. As the names suggest, this interface will return an array of Customer(s) given a whole or partial phone number. Here is the full code.
1 using StructureMap;
2
3 [PluginFamily("Default")]
4 public interface ICustomerRepository
5 {
6 Customer[] GetCustomersByPartialPhoneNumber(string phoneNumberOrPartial);
7 }
8
9 [Pluggable("Default")]
10 public class CustomerRepository : ICustomerRepository
11 {
12 public Customer[] GetCustomersByPartialPhoneNumber(string phoneNumberOrPartial)
13 {
14 //do the right thing to find the customers;
15 return null;
16 }
17 }
18
19 public class Customer
20 {
21 private string _name;
22 private string _phoneNumber;
23
24 public Customer(string name, string phoneNumber)
25 {
26 _name = name;
27 _phoneNumber = phoneNumber;
28 }
29
30 public string Name
31 {
32 get { return _name; }
33 set { _name = value; }
34 }
35
36 public string PhoneNumber
37 {
38 get { return _phoneNumber; }
39 set { _phoneNumber = value; }
40 }
41 }
In another place, I want to make use of the ICustomerRepository interface, so all I need are the following lines:
49 //imagine this method were real.
50 ICustomerRepository repository = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<ICustomerRepository>();
51 Customer[] customers = repository.GetCustomersByPartialPhoneNumber("555-5555");
52 return customers;
Of course, when my application starts, I'll put these lines to ensure it will work (or I could use a StructureMap.config file).
47 StructureMapConfiguration.UseDefaultStructureMapConfigFile = false;
48 StructureMapConfiguration.ScanAssemblies().IncludeTheCallingAssembly();
Now that you get the gist of it, I'm going to use StructureMap to enable the Model-View-Presenter pattern in a cleaner way with ASP.NET UserControls. First consider the following usage:
I have a page that has a complicated piece which has been delegated to a usercontrol-presenter pair. The page, of course, will embed this usercontrol in the appropriate place. Immediately you can spot the problem: The "Foo" view is responsible for creating the "Widget" view. Then the Widget view creates its presenter and uses it. This is too much responsibility for both views.
Now consider an alternative:
Now notice that the FooPresenter is responsible for creating and using WidgetPresenter. WidgetPresenter, in return, uses StructureMap to service-locate its view, which implements IWidgetView. Because Widget.ascx.cs implements IWidgetView, this wiring works easily. The StructureMap change that made this possible is the following usage of the configuration. Here is the code:
58 public interface IWidgetView
59 {
60 void ShowWidget(RedWidget theRedWidget);
61 }
62
63 public class RedWidget
64 {
65 }
And the usercontrol that is the view:
5 public partial class Widget : UserControl, IWidgetView
6 {
7 protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
8 {
9 }
10
11 public void ShowWidget(RedWidget theRedWidget)
12 {
13 HttpContext.Current.Response.Write("Red widget shown");
14 }
15 }
And the configuration that makes this possible:
66 void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
67 {
68 StructureMapConfiguration.UseDefaultStructureMapConfigFile = false;
69 StructureMapConfiguration.ScanAssemblies().IncludeTheCallingAssembly();
70 StructureMapConfiguration.BuildInstancesOf<IWidgetView>().TheDefaultIs(
Registry.LoadUserControlFrom<IWidgetView>("Widget.ascx"));
71 }
Now that we can service-locate asp.net usercontrols, we can inject them as well. The next step is having the WidgetPresenter receive IWidgetView in the constructor. StructureMap will chain-create the usercontrol in order to create WidgetPresenter. Now, our presenter is in control, and the views can concentrate on presenting information to the user and not worry about control flow.
If you will be in Houston on Tuesday, come participate in my presentation. http://www.hal-pc.org/CsharpSIG/
| Date | April 17, 2007 |
| Time | 7:00 PM |
| Location |
HAL-PC Headquarters , 4543 Post Oak Place , Suite 200, Houston, Texas |
| Topic | The Benefits of Developer Testing |
| Speaker | Jeffrey Palermo |
| Meeting Details |
This month's speaker is Jeffrey Palermo. Jeffrey is an independent software consultant with special skills in Scrum, XP, and .NET. He runs the Austin .NET User Group and is the South Texas INETA Membership Mentor. He enjoys spending time with his wife Liana, riding his motorcycle and country dancing. He is a member of Journey Bible Fellowship where he helps with the youth group ministry. Jeffrey is an Eagle Scount and graduated from Texas A&M University. He recently served in the Army in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Topic abstract: Developer testing |
|
To receive email notification of C# SIG announcements, please send a message to Harry Nystrom |
Debugging can be easy or hard. It’s easy if you have an easily reproducible error. This morning I wrestled a bug where a screen just stopped showing data. Nothing. Zilch.
When I debugged through, I watched every piece of data get properly set to labels in my Winforms view that were visible, but the screen shows up without the data!! What gives?
Ultimately, I was looking at the wrong instance of my screen/view.
Here’s a debugging tip to use if you watch the code executing properly but it still doesn’t work in the end:
Make sure you are looking at the right object.
In the debugger, set a breakpoint in the constructor and ensure you are watching the right instance. In the immediate window, use the hashcode to track the instance:
this.GetHashCode()
34169857
this.GetHashCode()
61248560
This way, you can clearly identify the object.
