.NET
There are 25 entries for the tag
.NET
I had the honor of speaking at CodeStock this year, and it was an awesome experience. The highlights of the weekend include: 1) Getting picked up at the airport by Alan Stevens with his awesome sign. 2) The pre-conference get-together where I met many of my tweeps FINALLY… and they were all as awesome in IRL! 3) Rocking “Thriller” in Alan’s van after we learned that Michael Jackson had died (RIP). 4) The impromptu pool party at the ghetto hotel where we dueled with the kiddies to see who could be...
Here are some screen shots from VS2010 Beta. The first thing I noticed is that Team Explorer is (finally) installed with the base install. The new look has an Expression-Blendy feel to it… Also, I noticed that it defaults to a single tool bar line at the top. Nice! VS2010 Welcome Screen Home Screen Projects Tab Visual Studio Tab New Project Dialog Box Open XAML Document with common windows open Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2010,.NET...
The third Iowa Code Camp was another first-class event. Those guys do a fantastic job every time. It is a tradition at Iowa Code Camp to intersperse pictures of cows randomly throughout your slide deck. On my way to the event, I made a quick stop at Greg Wilson’s house. Greg has cows, and had used a marking spray from the vet to write on three of his cows: I was scheduled to do one session on WPF data binding as part of a three-part series with Bryan Sampica and Greg Wilson. Just as I was settling...
I will be speaking at Iowa Code Camp this weekend. Greg Wilson, Bryan Sampica, and I are doing a series on WPF data binding. It should be a great time, so come on out!! These guys always put on a first class event. And the after party (the most important part of the weekend) is always awesome. (As for the cows, it’s an Iowa Code Camp thing. You kinda had to be there.) Technorati Tags: WPF,code camp...
In Visual Studio click on Debug –> Exceptions, and when the dialog box appears click “Add”. Fill it in as below: Be sure to check when “Thrown”. Now your code will break on the C# code where the error is thrown and you can find it more easily. Technorati Tags: WPF,XAML,Visual Studio...
On May 8 the ugMIX Event is coming to Minneapolis. This will be a special presentation of the highlights from MIX, followed by the main attraction… A private screening of the new Star Trek movie!! I can’t wait! this is turning out to be geek heaven for any .NET developer. See you there! Technorati Tags: .NET,MIX,StartTrek...
I was doing a data conversion that involved importing data from a flat-file source into SQL Server. I fired up SSIS and created the Data Flow tasks that would move the data into the SQL Server tables. The problem was, the longer fields (i.e. a “Notes” column) were all being truncated no matter what data type I made the destination field. So I created a Data Conversion task to sit between the Flat-File data source and the SQL Server Destination. After I had tried every conceivable destination data...
On my latest project, I needed to come up with a Business and Data layer(s) with the following requirements: 1) They wanted to use a code generation tool to automatically generate the classes whenever the database (which was still under development) changed 2) The business objects would basically mirror the database tables 3) I had a couple of days to deliver. Michael Eaton suggested using Castle Active Record (which uses NHibernate). I found some Active Record templates for CodeSmith, and within...
Like the rest of the geeks across the land, on Thursday I eagerly logged into my MSDN account and downloaded Windows 7. It took about four hours, borrowing my client’s pipe for part of it. The plan was to install it onto my my spare laptop… my MBP has become my main laptop… but I found myself with an iso image, my work laptop, and some free time, so I went ahead and spun up a VPC. A couple of people have asked me how to install using only the iso (until the MBP I had no DVD burner, so this is a familiar...
The first thing I did after downloading BabySmash was to begin building an on-screen keyboard. I installed Microsoft Expressions, but quickly became frustrated. That was a surprise to me because I am a Photoshop pro!! (On portraits anyway). Despite the admonishing of many, I switched over to Visual Studio and began coding my keyboard by hand. Now I was on much more familiar territory! I do plan to return someday to Expressions when I have a more open mind. But for now, I want to build DrewbieSmash!...
A long, long time ago in a galaxy far far away, a developer at Microsoft named Scott Hanselman decided to learn WPF. And so he set out upon the Great BabySmash Experiment. Meanwhile, in another galaxy, a developer at Magenic named Kirstin decided to learn WPF. By this time, the Great BabySmash Experiment had achieved fame far and wide, and so Kirstin downloaded the source code and created DrewbieSmash. Who is Drewbie? Drew is my five-year-old nephew and is very special in many ways. When he was about...
Last I attended a TFS User Group meeting in Minneapolis. Bill Maurer explained how Microsoft used Team Foundation Server to build the next release of Visual Studio. It was really interesting to hear how the development team used TFS to track their own work. The most interesting thing to me was to hear about how TFS is being used to manage Java projects (Not at Microsoft of course!) Previously it had not occurred to me to consider TFS as anything other than a .NET development tool. But, of, course,...
There is a great new site dedicated to educating developers on all sorts of topics. It is run by developers, and the contributors are developers. My first episode had been released: Creating a Project in Team Foundation Server! I am really excited to be a part of this great project... look for more episodes from me coming soon
One of the questions that came out of my TFS talk at the Magenic Technology Summit was: How do you go about customizing one of the existing templates provided for TFS, such as MSF Agile? We may want to add new types for Work Items, for example, or add new states that work items can be in. The easiest way to do this is through the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools. If you do not have the Power Tools installed, you can still do this by editing the XML that makes up the...
You know that Fibonacci is not a fine wine or type of bread. Your Christmas list is a color-coded spreadsheet with sort capabilities on person, store, and price. The last party you attended was a slide deck check. Your MP3 player contains more .NET podcasts than music. The average shelf life of the books you purchase is 3 months. You have more email addresses than you have digits in your phone number. That's ok, because you have linked them all together with single sign-on from your smart phone....
Mike Eaton, a member of my twitter tribe, is trying to get to know his tweeps better. As part of that, he asks a few questions to get a better understanding of our background. I figured that rather than answer in his comments, I'll post it here instead. Then, I got tagged by Jeff Brand... So the pressure was on!! How old were you when you started programming? Ten years old the first time. 23 the second time. How did you get started in programming? My parents bought a Commodore Vic 20 (they couldn't...
There are many ways to run a test in VSTS: From the Test View window, from the Test List window, and from the Test Results window, to name a few. VSTS then runs the test in the IIS or the ASP.NET Development Server Process. But what if you want to step through a test? How do you set a breakpoint? Microsoft has documented the "official" answer here: However, I have found a much simpler way to accomplish this: Run your tests from within Visual Studio runtime. To do this, rather than running your tests...
In Team System when you are working in Solution Explorer and you create new or add existing files, the file is created on your local workspace and is added to Source Control when you check your changeset in. Working in the Team Explorer has the opposite paradigm, however. When you add a new file in Team Explorer (such as new build definition), it is created in the source repository, and your local workspace does not have access to it until you perform a Get Latest. It shows up in source control grayed...
In VSS you had to add the file to the VSS project explicitly. I can't count the times that the solution in VSS did not compile because someone had added new file to their solution, referenced it from existing code, and then forgot to add the new file to source control. When the developer compiled the solution prior to check in, it compiled on her local environment because she had the file, so she thought all was well. The file addition on check-in in Team System Version Control (TSVC) that in my...
It's amazing what you can learn on network television these days. Thanks Jason Bock for finding this one...
After setting up my project in TFS, I wanted to configure the system so that my work items in my project would show only specific users as "Assigned To" choices. The default is to include all users in the TFS Valid Users group. After setting up my user and group security, I exported my Work Item Template using the witexport utility and running the following command: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\witexport" /f "C:\WIT\Task.xml" /t MyServer /p MyProject /n task I found the...
I took Jeff McWherter's suggestion to play around with SubText, and have successfully gotten SubText upgraded and running in VS 2008, .NET 3.5. My environment is the "Visual Studio® Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server and Team Suite VPC Image (Trial)" Virtual PC from Microsoft. Here are the steps that I followed: 1. Download and unzip the latest source code from SourceForge 2. Open Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition and Create a new Team Project (File - New - Team Project). I selected the MSF For...
****Please Note***********************... This is not a formal announcement, nor is this a sure thing. We are in the "gauging interest and exploring feasability" stage. Code Camp Vegas may or may not happen in 2009... or ever. Please let us know your thoughts. ***************************... After scouring the area for a .NET user group and coming up empty, a couple of cohorts and myself are attempting to organize the first ever MidWest Code...
DMAIC is used to improve processes, and it is to engineers what O-O is to developers: a well known and understood best practice with patterns, anti-patterns, and a common language and toolset. DMAIC is an acronym for five interconnected phases: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control, and is usually an integral part of a company's Six Sigma practice. Pronounced (Duh-May-Ick), it is a data-driven, procedural approach and quality strategy for improving processes- in this case, application performance....
Magenic Road Trip - Iowa Code Camp Spring 2008 Photo: Chris Williams...