Typical Developer's Life - I really enjoy these GIF's that illustrate a different meaning than the original scene they were taken from. I decided to create a few myself, just for the fun of it. If you know of some really funny ones, let us know in the comments. Also…
Okay, you probably all know this, but somewhere someone doesn’t. And I thought it might be a nice article to post. Have you created a Windows Service Timer that isn’t working? The reason for this is because you probably added a Windows Forms Timer to your Service instead of a System Timer. So for future reference, this is what I did:
Trust but Verify
This was the almost signature phrase adopted by Ronald Reagan. At the signing of the INF Treaty he used it again and his counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev responded: “You repeat that at every meeting,” to which Reagan answered “I like it.” Well in my mind, Ronald (who by the way, would have been 100 years old on the 6th of February 2011) had a point going there. How can we as developers adopt that mantra to our work?
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Streams of Inspiration
When do you know it all? You might be wondering what I mean by saying that, but is it possible to ever say that you know all there is to know about your chosen programming language? There are really some very good programmers out there. Guys and girls that dedicate their lives in the pursuit to knowing all there is to know about their language of choice. And when you come across one of these individuals, their grasp on that specific technology or topic is astounding. How do they do it, you wonder? They must know everything about XYZ. (more…)
Hello C# My Old Friend
Simon & Garfunkel’s song title (Hello Darkness my old friend) reminds me of how I feel we should see the language we develop applications in. It should be a friend, not true? In other words, you should be very comfortable with your abilities developing in your language of choice. I’m a C# developer, and I love the language. I try to expand my understanding of it continually. In fact, you should never think that you know it all. Most importantly, you have to remember, that your pride must be left at the office door before starting your work day. There will always be another developer that knows more about a specific topic than you do. And you need to be big enough to take advice when given. But I don’t specifically want to talk about this. (more…)
I have taken some time to write this next post, simply because I wanted to give it some thought. Working from home
My company has their HQ in Johannesburg, and I have been working for one of their provincial branches from my home (telecommuting) for the past 2 and a half years. The other day I was stunned that it had been so long. I then started thinking about the road I had traveled and how I have become accustomed to working alone.
First of all, some of the plus points are that I have so much more time with my family. I can also spend some quality time with my baby daughter during lunch hours. There is no morning commute through traffic to get to the office. The only commute that I am used to is down the hall to my office while grabbing a cup of coffee along the way. This commute also doesn’t cost me anything on fuel. But telecommuting does have a few proviso’s. There are a few things that are essential to any telecommuter. (more…)
Understanding Requirements is probably one of the most important aspects of programming. In the 1989 movie, Field of Dreams
Staying Current Staying Current in our profession is a very difficult thing to do. It is however essential. I used to know this guy who always said "Be prepared is a boy scout marching song" Well, in order to be prepared, you first need to be up to date. State…
Visual Studio Item Templates – In one of my previous posts (Programmer’s Survival Tips – #3) I looked at having your own code library or repository
Know your IDE
Your IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is your tool for creating great applications. Without it, you don’t mean much, unless you are a hardcore .NET developer that can write a whole application in Notepad and compile it with a command line compiler. The bottom line is, you need your IDE.
What is really astounding to me is how little the average programmer knows about their IDE. (I will be specifically referring to Visual Studio Team System 2008 throughout this post.) They know just enough in order to do the most basic of tasks (and I don’t mean writing code). Your Visual Studio IDE is a very powerful tool, and your utilization of that tool impacts directly on your productivity. (more…)