Month: September 2006

David Lemphers has had a great idea that I think we should all try to support and contribute to. It’s a Wiki for developers, but not for the technical nuts-and-bolts stuff. It’s for all the other stuff that developers often give little priority to (and I don’t mean washing!): things like career development and life skills, people skills and presumably chatting up the opposite sex for a spot of pair programming! But seriously, I think its a great idea.

It’s almost live: Daily Developers…coming soon Drop David an email and let him know you’re interested.

The only thing I don’t like (and I realise I run the risk of being excommunicated) is that it’s hosted on Sharepoint and it just doesn’t look as calm and soothing as the standard Wiki look and feel. Does it have a standard Wiki skin?

The whole reason that the term ‘master craftsman’ exists, is to distinguish those people who take their craft beyond that of others. If everyone could build software to the same standards at the same speed, then we would all be machines!

Large projects are (and always have been) about managing large numbers of people with greatly differing skill levels, personalities and idiosyncracies.

It’s unreasonable to assume that what you can achieve with a small team of highly skilled, highly self-motivated individuals can necessarily be scaled up to larger teams, even with a in-house framework of standards, guidelines, tools and best practices.

Programming is knowledge work, it just doesn’t scale like manufacturing.

I came across a very nice collection of VSTS videos and webcasts compiled by Jeff Bramwell here.

Over at the Microsoft MSDN site there is an excellent set of ASP.NET 2.0 tutorials written by Scott Mitchell (of 4GuysFromRolla fame). These very useful and up-to-date (June 2006) tutorials walk you through creating a Data Access Layer (DAL), a Business Logic Layer (BLL), using Master pages (one of the great new features in ASP.NET 2.0) and wiring up UI elements to business objects. Each includes downloadable source code.

The series consists of:
Tutorial 1: Creating a Data Access Layer
Tutorial 2: Creating a Business Logic Layer
Tutorial 3: Master Pages and Site Navigation

Tutorial 4: Displaying Data with the ObjectDataSource
Tutorial 5: Declarative Parameters
Tutorial 6: Programmatically Setting the ObjectDataSource’s Parameter Values

Tutorial 7: Master/Detail Filtering With a DropDownList
Tutorial 8: Master/Detail Filtering With Two DropDownLists
Tutorial 9: Master/Detail Filtering Across Two Pages.
Tutorial 10: Master/Detail Using a Selectable Master GridView with a Details DetailView

The .NET Framework 3.0 RC1 has been released:

.NET Framework 3.0 RC1 (containing Workflow Foundation RC5) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=19E21845-F5E3-4387-95FF-66788825C1AF&displaylang=en

VS Extensions for Workflow Foundation RC5 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=117ECFD3-98AD-4D67-87D2-E95A8407FA86&displaylang=en

Windows Vista RC1 SDK (optional: provides SDK samples and help) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=117ECFD3-98AD-4D67-87D2-E95A8407FA86&displaylang=en

I found this great idea while ago in Bob Walsh’s book “Micro ISV: From Vision To Reality”: keep a summary of all decisions you make in a “Decisions Document”. Bob was talking about it from the point of view of a one person start up (or micro ISV), but it can apply equally well to a software department. This should be done for each project individually as well as another document for the department as a whole.

The Decisions Document should include a short description of the decision, the reasons for making it, the date, references to any documents or research material, and where appropriate the people involved in making the decision. It allows you to re-visit decisions at a later date and re-assess whether they still apply.

Design is not just about what you put into an application or product; it is also about what you decide to omit. An excellent place to keep your decisions document is in a Wiki (along with your other development artifacts).