Friday, December 07, 2007
UPDATE (12/17/2007): My blog has moved. This post is now located at:
http://jason.whitehorn.ws/2007/12/07/NET+Wiki+Weekend+Update+1272007.aspx
Its been a great week on the
.NET Wiki. There have been a few newly registered users, and several pages added.
The updated pages include:
Value Type
Access Modifier
LINQ
Silverlight
Additionally I managed to updated our version of
ScrewTurn Wiki to the latest version (2.0.21, up from 2.0.20).
Things are really moving along nicely.
UPDATE (12/17/2007): My blog has moved. This post is now located at:
http://jason.whitehorn.ws/2007/12/07/The+Design+Of+Code.aspx
Jonathan Starr in a
recent post, asked his readers:
"As we software engineers refactor someone else's code [...] at what point is the new application essentially not the same as the legacy application that you improved?"
Software rarely occurs in isolation, especially enterprise software. Often years of business rules, legacy systems, and even unjustified rational guide and shape the applications we work on.
When you are involved in a massive re-engineering of an existing application, you typically work you way piece-wise through the code. It is in this fashion that you systematically rework entire subsystems of the application. During this process we are hardly aware that, despite our best intentions, we are not truly guiding the design of the application. The legacy design is guiding its own redesign.
We often have to shape our ideas to fit into the legacy mold the application presents. This, coupled with the same business needs and environment that shaped the application originally, is precisely why most applications never truly change. The source code may look different, however the differences is purely cosmetic. Much the same as how an adult is still the same person as they were as a child. The adult has a few new behaviors, some they don't perform any more. The adult even looks, walks, and sounds different. But the adult is still the same person they were as a child.
An application can only truly be reborn, when it is clean room re-engineered, as anything short of this would re-introduce the "
spirit" of its predecessor.
UPDATE (12/17/2007): My blog has moved. This post is now located at:
http://jason.whitehorn.ws/2007/12/07/Making+Visual+Studio+Load+Faster.aspx
Tired of Visual Studio being sluggish?
Well, I can't help you there. But I can tell you how to make it start up faster. You simply need to disable the startup screen.
Really, you didn't use that screen anyway ;-)
To disable it, goto to the
Tools menu, and select the
Options option.
From the
Options menu, navigate to the
Environment tree option, then the
Startup option.
From here you can select the
Show empty environment value for the "At Startup" drop down.
There you go, that will disable that sluggish startup screen!