March 2006 Archives
"They kill people, then they say sorry. I hate them"
That's a quote from a child in Iraq, in reference to American marines who murdered her family. The term that the USA seem to prefer to use is "marine misconduct", which doesn't even begin to cut ice.
Sure I've waffled about this before, but there's an article on StickyMinds.com titled "Win-Win Delegation" in which the most important (to my mind) point is "Delegate Authority with the Task". There's nothing worse than giving someone a task to do, but not the tools they need to do it, and authority is just another tool at the end of the day. (A very important tool admittedly!)
Prompted by: BookNotes I - Refactoring Workbook
Yet another link dump, but this time they're refactoring related. One of these days I'll actually get round to reading through all the links that I've stored here. (The curse of Firefox is that it's really easy to open something in a tab with the intention of viewing it later.)
-- refactoring.com, not quite the universal answer I'd hope for of a site called refactoring.com, but must look in more detail.
-- The Process of Database Refactoring, and here was me thinking that was called normalisation! ;)
-- perl.com: A Refactoring Example, it might be in perl, (and thus virtually unreadable refactored or otherwise!) but it's still a valid example...
Reminder to self for when I inevitably loose the bookmarks when my computer goes on a bookmark eating frenzy:
-- Nullable Types in C#
-- The Truth about Nullable Types and VB...
-- Why don't nullable relational operators return bool? instead of bool?
On the plus side, nullable types make it easier to represent "Sql-Style" data in .net, as you can actually pass back an explicit null for a value, if that's the value in the database, rather than a "magic number" like -1. On the down-side, the integration of nullable types into VB seems to be slightly slimmer, no cryptic "int?" syntax and no "??" coalesce. It's not the end of the world as there appears to be a drop-in replacement for the "??" coalesce in the comments for the middle link, which I must remember to take a peek at.
[StickyMinds.com] Done and DONE-done - The Magic of Completion Criteria
Another great article from stickminds, which shows the importance of defining requirements, in this instance work completion requirements. Someone I work with uses an example of "the client wants a login box", fairly simple requirements you'd think? Think again...
-- Microsoft Products Developed in .NET
A brief summary of the approximate number of lines of .net code in various MS products, which is a question I've seen asked by a lot of people in a lot of places. Not as many lines of code as I would've thought! I'm surprised there's no mention of Vista there....
-- Tracepoints are AWESOME!
You learn something new, and useful, every day. Well you might not, but I do!
Boots Sandwiches, but not! I tried the "Chicken Fajita Salad" yesterday, which was very nice except for the chicken tasting like Bavarian smoked cheese. The bean salsa stuff actually had some flavour and kick to it, which was quite remarkable given that things like that are usually bland and flavourless. I'm in shock!
For a few weeks now my computer has been throwing up the message "Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API." every now and then when I try to hibernate it. No rhyme, no reason, just a rather cryptic error message. As luck would have it I spotted this entry on blogs.msdn.com today, which links to MS Knowledge Base article 909095. Apparently there's a hot-fix for this problem. Hurraaaah!
The only question now is, do I request and apply a hot-fix to my PC, or wait for the next XP Service Pack?
Almost a year ago I theorised that Windows Genuine Advantage was a cunning plan by Microsoft to put people off Firefox. It looks like I was wrong. Admittedly the Microsoft attributed quote at bink.nu ("We want to make sure our PCs are running genuine Windows") sounds like marketing vomit, but it's still good news. Fair play to Microsoft!
The Joel on Software Discussion Group - Why I Hate Frameworks
Never a truer word spoken in jest! Whilst frameworks, design patterns, managed environments and their ilk can be a fantastic thing, the abstraction away from the "bare metal" does sometimes make me long for the "good old days" where incorrectly using a pointer could bring down the entire machine. Or even better, having to handcraft something as simple as a radio button. Or even better, having to write thousands of lines of code just to control a mouse. Bring back DOS, that's what I say! ;)
Marco Dorantes' WebLog : You are 100% accountable for your source code
A subject very near, and very dear, to my heart. The line "Once a source code sentence is introduced in main code branch, it must be kept correct in itself and in relation with the rest of the code" sums it up really. Design and implementation should, in an ideal world, be the minimum required for the functionality desired. Anything else increases the maintenance requirement and also the testing requirement. Planning, managing and implementing the testing regime is hard enough for a piece of software without hypothetical requirements and functionality being interwoven into the system. Who in their right mind would want to add this level of risk to a system?
