August 2011
9 posts
1 tag
Creatively Thrashing With TDD
One thing I’ve never seen anyone do, for real, is Test-driven Development. We’ve all sat through the demos of “Red, Green, Refactor” and the To-do list - but never have I seen the presenter do something “Real”. That changed last week and it was pretty fun.
Tekpub just released “Full Throttle: TDD with Brad Wilson” and during the recording of it,...
2 tags
Could Benford's Law Have Saved an Apple ID......
Scott and I were talking yesterday about his compromised Apple ID. I was telling him I didn’t understand why he was so upset about it - it seemed perfectly reasonable (as MG Siegler said) that Occam’s Razor applies here: Scott has his login/password hacked somehow. But that’s not the problem - turns out there’s a lot more going on here.
The Problem
Scott was more than...
1 tag
The Backbone.js Todo List Refactored - Part 2:...
In the last post I showed the basics of the Todo List app that I refactored from the original. I’ll say it again - I’m fairly certain I don’t know completely what I’m doing. I’m sort of following my nose a bit and trying to use what I’ve learned over the last few weeks. In this post - I’ll wire up some events to make the Views dance.
Update: I refactored...
1 tag
The Backbone.js Todo List Sample, Refactored -...
This is a long post with lots of code. I want to be complete, but I also don’t want to bore you to tears. If you want to see the refactor right now - here it is.
I’m fairly certain I don’t know what I’m doing - and that I probably lack the experience to even be writing this post. All I can tell you is that I have a feeling… a not so good feeling… when reading...
“Apple doesn’t sell bandages. It doesn’t make bullets. It doesn’t sell canned...”
– Might be time to learn Objective-C
As Stock Market Burns, Apple Most Valuable Company In It - Forbes
“For a few moments today, Apple was the most valuable company in the world. If we...”
– Give them another 6 months.
via Boing Boing
2 tags
The BackboneJS and Knockout Danceoff
I just rolled out Tekpub’s latest drop for the MVC 3 series: BackboneJS with MVC 3, and a lot of people are curious why I didn’t use Knockout. So here ya go - my thoughts on the two.
http://www.pimpartworks.com/artwork/gmayhew/dance-off
They Don’t Do The Same Thing
It’s important to realize straight away that Knockout’s focus is different than Backbone. You can do...
1 tag
Massive and Complexity
Got an email today from someone watching the MVC 3 series and they asked the question (paraphrasing): “I like what you’re doing with Massive - but can it handle complex queries?”. This, fortunately, is where Massive shines.
In response I wrote this:
“Absolutely. In fact it’s why I wrote it. Here’s a semi-complex query that is all too common in the business...
1 tag
Low
Low is … one of those bands that doesn’t need an introduction. They just are, and seemingly have always been. They’re the pioneers of “Slow Core” and if you don’t know them, or haven’t heard of them - you’re in for a treat. They’re just one of those bands you simply *must* know.
Low’s latest album is “C’mon” and like...
July 2011
9 posts
“The poll also gauged God’s handling of specific “issues.” When...”
– Apple has more money than the US Government and God barely scores a higher approval rating than congress.
This is a weird fucking time to be alive.
Poll: God’s Approval Rating Barely Breaks 50 Percent
3 tags
Announcing Entity Framework Migrations (Fantasy...
I crossed Time and Space today on my way into my office - the coffee was strong, the tunes loud - and I ended up tripping my way into an alternate universe where the EF team just posted about their new migration tool. I have to admit - this Fantasy Migration Tool is pretty compelling. Wanna see?
The following is not real. It’s a small dream from a small mind about a huge tool.
Versioning!...
1 tag
The Ike Reilly Assassination
I like music - a lot - and many people have told me they like the things I like so… I figured why not blog about the stuff I’m listening to? It figures rather largely in This Developer’s Life - so why not? Therefore - following in Nate’s footsteps I figured I’d blog a bit about some albums I like.
The first one that comes to mind is The Ike Reilly Assassination....
1 tag
ViewData, ViewModel, ViewBag...
I was reading Rachel Appel’s post today on when to use ViewData, ViewBag, and TempData and I think it’s a good read. I left a comment but it disappeared… I think her comments might be borked… so I’ll add it here as I think it’s valuable.
Here’s the comment I left:
...
1 tag
Man-Hating
Thomas Holland had some criticism for our latest This Developer’s Life - click the link and have a read. In short: he took a bit of exception with the point of view of one of our story-tellers. He doesn’t have comments enabled, so I figure I’ll respond here.
I’ll summarize my point by saying that, as men, working mostly with other men, in an industry primarily managed by...
1 tag
1 tag
I Find Your Lack Of Faith... Invigorating
Sometimes I link to controversial stuff and a weird thing happens: it’s as if I wrote it myself! I linked to a post by Ken Egozi earlier today and pretty soon I was being told that I’m feeding the troll mill, that “I know a guy who left .NET and came back” etc.
I can dig it. I didn’t have the intention of skewering .NET really - to me it’s a given that people...
2 tags
Anatomy of My Screwup: Pushing a Sloppy Podcast
One of my last posts essentially picked on someone else’s work so I figured this time, to balance things out, I’d pick on myself a bit and share with you the complete debacle that was the latest push of This Developer’s Life. I really screwed up - I mean big time - and since we learn from mistakes: here’s mine. Lot’s of them.
Details, Details, Details
I obsess over...
2 tags
A Simple Example That's Incredibly Complex
I was reading through my RSS feeds and email, just having returned from Paris and I was asked to take a look at a project from Microsoft Spain up on Codeplex.
In reading the summary, it looks to be a sample application utilizing some high-end tricks from DDD (emphasis mine):
This project is a sample implementation of most used patterns in Domain Oriented Architectures based on simple scenarios...
June 2011
16 posts
“That’s really what that means,” she said. “It means that...”
– God has chosen Michelle Bachman to be President apparently. I seem to remember something about this from History 101…
Bachmann: ‘Assurance’ God wants her to run - UPI.com
UPDATE:
I suppose I asked for it - doing a political post. I’ve closed the comments as a few members...
“Uh… hello. Where’s my right-click? Why can’t Apple provide me with a mouse that...”
– If you look for enough reasons, I’m sure you’ll find them. Old post, but good for a few laughs.
Best part? The comments - the author chimes in this gem in the comments, a few years later:
Since writing this (3 years ago) I’ve since switched to Mac’s full time (I bought a...
WatchParis, on the first day of Summer (in Le Merais)
2 tags
2 tags
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING MAN TAKING SO MUCH TIME ? YOU GUYS SHOUTED MORE AND GIVE...”
– Ever wonder what spending your day on support forums is like?
via Jon Galloway
1 tag
Changed My Mind: Massive Changed To Embrace C#
As I wrote my last post about bringing some ActiveRecord love to C#, something wasn’t sitting right. It was a feeling of “ME-TOO” and I hate that. C# isn’t Ruby - but it can be as expressive given the new constructs. I like the ActiveRecord_Style_Of_Querying, but I know that it’s very Ruby-ish - not very C#-ish. So I changed that.
Damn You Skeet
In Oslo I when I...
1 tag
PeepCode Birthday Present - 50% off Tekpub If You...
I love me some PeepCode and today is its founder’s birthday (Geoffrey Grosenbach). I also like any reason to give something away so…
If you buy a video from PeepCode in the next 24 hours, just send me a copy of the receipt (rob at tekpub) and I’ll give you a discount code for 50% off anything at Tekpub.
Why am I doing this? Because people need to know how much better learning...
1 tag
TDL :: Firefly?
I’ve been asked a few times this week in Oslo (at NDC2011) and also in a few emails if we’re going to push a new This Developer’s Life any time soon. For fun, I’ve been telling people we’re going for “cult status” a la Firefly…
But Seriously Folks…
I thought it worth writing a little something to say that both Scott and I have been...
“… while I maintain that the OS X finder is as effective as shooting your...”
– Brilliant. One sentence that captures the Mac finder experience beautifully. Gracias Mr. Hanselman…
Codes from the Underground - Why I Hate Ruby (Or,... →
Read the comment stream. Priceless.
1 tag
The Hard Thing
I’m in the middle of a 26 hour travel day, on my way to NDC 2011. On the plane to New Jersey (red eye from Hawaii) my daughter and I watched Harry Potter - The Goblet of Fire. There was a scene towards the end where Dumbledore told the students that one of their own had died - and he told them how. Defying the Ministries orders to remain quiet:
Soon we must make a choice between what is...
“We’re all being quiet right now because we can’t comment on this....”
– Yep that’ll work just great Pete. Stay silent and let your dev brigade stew as the rug is pulled out from under them.
Also - editing posts and removing language on a forum comes across as… let me think…
1 tag
Real World Examples
I just pushed the first video in our new series at Tekpub - Real World ASP.NET MVC 3. I’m putting my heart and soul into this one - it means a lot to me. It’s carved right from my direct experience working in various startups over the last 12 years (minus my time at MS). It’s another of our advanced titles - and I’m also letting a bit more of my opinion into it.
We Need...
May 2011
24 posts
2 tags
Referencing Routes in ASP.NET MVC The Rails Way
Routing is probably the most confusing aspect of working with ASP.NET MVC. It’s hard to craft a groovy URL - even harder to link properly off to that groovy URL. Rails leans on Ruby’s forgiving and friendly nature to make this a bit more simple - C#4 allows to get close to this as well.
With Rails 3 you define a route in your config/routes.rb like this:
match "order/receipt/:id"...
"Blade Runner" behind-the-scenes Polaroids, from... →
One of the fun things when I was growing up - my sister worked in the movie industry doing hair and wigs. She had thousands of these polaroids - archives of her work.
Anyway - she worked on Blade Runner - but this isn’t her work. She might have helped on this, but for Blade Runner she did the hair on a few stunt scenes - namely this one.
She would bring me to various sets that she worked...
1 tag
MySQL Is Harmful? IE9 Might Be On To Something...
It’s actually quite difficult to get around this dialog (click actions and the small link at the bottom of the Actions dialog called “more options” and then “Run Anyway”.
Nicely done.
1 tag
“The thing with Ruby is that you can get an awful lot done with very little code,...”
– InfoQ: Interview: Russ Olsen on “Eloquent Ruby”
1 tag
An Interesting Look at Style
First, there is the RC 1 Announcement of ASP.NET MVC 3 from Scott Gu:
ASP.NET MVC 3 is a pretty sweet release, and adds a ton of new functionality and refinements. It is also backwards compatible with ASP.NET MVC V1 and V2 – which makes it easy to upgrade existing apps (read the release notes for the exact steps to do so). You can learn more about some of the great capabilities in ASP.NET MVC 3...
“I had to constantly remind them that we should strive for simplicity since...”
– Hammet Verrisimo - talking about his time at Microsoft and what went wrong. Shockingly similar experiences.
CoffeeScript Basics →
Ryan Bates - aka “Mr. Screencast” - at his best.
"Let's get this party started!" →
Reminds of my BizSpark and OpenID discussions on Twitter - bots abound.
CoffeeScript in Motion →
Worth every penny
1 tag
Tekpub's ASP.NET MVC 3 - Suggested Outline
In the spirit of being as transparent as possible - I thought I’d follow up on our plans for the forthcoming Mastering ASP.NET MVC 3 series. Many people have asked what we’ll be doing - so here’s what I’ve put together.
Keeping It Real
Overwhelmingly people have asked for a “real-world, advanced look at MVC 3”. They’re tired of the scaffold demos and...
1 tag
Low Has a New Album →
One of my most favorite groups has a new album. If you like music - Low is worth checking out.
Also - this cover of Toto’s Africa is amazing.
1 tag
Mastering ASP.NET MVC 3
I’m rolling together the outline of Tekpub’s Mastering ASP.NET MVC 3 and I was hoping to drop in a couple of episodes on top of MVC 2, but it’s looking like this release has enough to easily cover 9-10 episodes.
So that’s what I’m doing - starting today - rolling together a new series that will be a lot more advanced than MVC 2 - and I think I might redo MVC 2 to...
1 tag
Ensuring SSL On Your Actions In Rails 3
Working with SSL in any web framework can be challenging. Making sure that inbound links use HTTPS and outbound (insecure) revert back to HTTP can be a PITA if you have to do it manually.
Thankfully the ssl_requirement plugin works lovely.
The idea is simple: add a filter to your controller that says “this action needs to be protected by SSL”, and that’s it. For the pages NOT...