Lee Brandt's Blog

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Lee Brandt's Blog You're only as smart as your last line of code

Jan 11

Fake It Easy On Yourself

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I have been using Rhino.Mocks pretty much since I started being a mockist-type tester. I have been very happy with it for the most part, but a year or so ago, I got a glimpse of some tests using Moq. I thought the little bit I saw was very compelling. For a long time, I had been using: 1: var _repository = MockRepository.GenerateMock... ......

Posted On Thursday, January 13, 2011 10:58 PM

Dec 10

503.1 Service Unavailable Error Resolution

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I was having a hell of a time tonight with my IIS on my development laptop. I don’t remember doing anything to change the IIS settings. I don’t use IIS that much on my dev machine. Usually Cassini is enough for testing my development efforts but tonight I needed to replicate a problem that seems to stem from x86 v x64 mismatch, so I went to create an ......

Posted On Thursday, December 9, 2010 1:02 AM

Dec 10

11 Types of Developers

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Jack Dawson Jack Dawson is the homeless drifter in Titanic. At one point in the movie he says, “I figure life’s a gift, and I don’t intend on wasting it.” He is happy to wander wherever life takes him. He works himself from place to place, making just enough money to make it to his next adventure. The “Jack Dawson” developer clings on to any new technology ......

Posted On Sunday, December 5, 2010 11:45 PM

New Style of Post

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I’ve been absent from blogging for awhile. Part of it is due to the ultimate inertia of my life. Most of it is due to my inability to post my thoughts without turning it into an ‘According to Hoyle’ blog post. I have an idea, and I try to flesh it into an interesting article. Something that you might see posted in a magazine or something. It never lives ......

Posted On Sunday, December 5, 2010 7:44 PM

Nov 10

Please Think Before (And While) Coding

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I am a firm believer in learning best practices. I enjoy reading and studying SOLID and how to spot violations in the wild. I whole-heartedly concur with Separation of Concerns, Behavior-Driven development, lean software development and a hundred other things that have really cool buzz-wordy names and make me sound really smart. All these things only ......

Posted On Friday, November 19, 2010 1:27 AM

Nov 10

MVC3 RC _ViewStart Page

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For those of you following the MVC releases, you will see something new in your File->New for MVC3 RC: _ViewStart.cshtml (_ViewStart.vbhtml for you VBers). This is a common place to dry out view dependencies. The most common view dependency is the MasterView it will use. To that end, the default _ViewStart page you get from a File->New MVC3 project ......

Posted On Saturday, November 13, 2010 2:51 PM MVC , Learning , Software , ASP.NET

Oct 10

WP7 Official Launch on October 12th

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Posted On Friday, October 1, 2010 11:27 PM

Aug 10

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

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I just wanted to put up here a list of upcoming speaking engagements. Mostly, for my own sanity, but just in case you were wanted to see me put my mouth where your money is: August 20th & 21st – St. Louis Day of Dot Net – St. Louis, MO Getting Started With Behavior-Driven Development NHibernate & Friends September 8th-10th – Heartland Developer’s ......

Posted On Monday, August 16, 2010 9:50 AM

Jul 10

Of Consultants and Contractors

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I have been programming computer in some professional capacity for almost 13 years. In that time, I have written code in several capacities. I have been a permanent employee of a company that hired me to write internal applications, I have been a permanent employee of companies that have paid me to write applications for their clients. I have been a ......

Posted On Tuesday, July 13, 2010 9:35 AM

Jun 10

How Estimates Became Quotes

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It’s our fault. Well, not completely, but we haven’t helped the situation any. All of what follows comes from my own experiences which, from talking to lots of other developers about it, seems to be pretty much par for the course. Where We Started When we first started estimating, we estimated pretty clearly. We would try to imagine something we’d done ......

Posted On Wednesday, June 16, 2010 2:09 AM

Apr 10

Do NOT remove the reference to System.Core from your VS2010 Project

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One of the things I routinely do when adding a new class library project, is remove all references and just add them back in as I need them. That is NOT a good idea for Visual Studio 2010. When I DID need System.Core, and went to add it back, this is what I got: "A reference to 'System.Core' could not be added. This component is automatically referenced..." ......

Posted On Friday, April 23, 2010 1:04 PM

Apr 10

Becoming A Great Developer

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I’ve been doing the whole programming thing for awhile and reading and watching some of the best in the business. I have come to notice that the really great developers do a few things that (I think) makes them great. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I am one of these few. I still struggle with doing some of the things that makes one great ......

Posted On Tuesday, April 13, 2010 11:53 PM

Apr 10

Twin Cities Code Camp 8 Retrospective

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I just got back (a few hours ago) from Minneapolis, where I was speaking at the Twin Cities Code Camp 8. I’d never been to a Twin Cities Code Camp, and I have always heard such great things, so I submitted and got accepted to speak. The conference (what I got to see) was great. My talk was pretty short on people, but there are many reasons for that. ......

Posted On Monday, April 12, 2010 1:17 AM

Where I’ve Been

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Hey all. I am still here. Still kickin’. I’ve been swamped with work and community stuff. But I wanted to post about some of the things going on. Just finished up Twin Cities Code Camp 8, and had a blast! Always good to see these guys. First of all, up-coming speaking engagements: Iowa Code Camp – May 1st in Iowa City, IA [more info] DevLink – August ......

Posted On Monday, April 12, 2010 12:51 AM

Jan 10

Up Until Now

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I don’t really want to make an “End of 2009, beginning of 2010” post. Mostly because we’re almost in February, but also because I’m sure both of my readers could care less. I do, however, want to mention what I’ve been up to (mostly as just a shout out to all the cool events and people). Last year became SUPER busy right at the end, and so far this ......

Posted On Wednesday, January 27, 2010 1:09 AM

Dec 09

How To Recover From Developer Burn Out

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I consider myself extremely fortunate. I go to work everyday and do something I LOVE to do and I get paid quite well for it. Everyone should be that lucky. But about once a year I go through what I call, "Code Burn Out". I still enjoy what I do, I just don't come home and work on my own stuff. I don't spend all my time reading about software development ......

Posted On Wednesday, December 30, 2009 10:16 PM

Nov 09

Emergent Design

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I, like many developers, was raised on the idea of getting the database complete before writing the code. The database was the foundation of our application, and building a house without a finished foundation is insane. Also, don’t even THINK about changing the foundation once the house-building has begun. If you MUST change the foundation once development ......

Posted On Monday, November 30, 2009 9:18 PM

Nov 09

It Doesn’t Matter If You Know What You’re Doing

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Got your attention? Good. It really doesn’t. Developer’s, in general, are always afraid to let other developers see they’re code. They are afraid they won’t measure up. Since 90% (or better) of the world’s developers are male, maybe that insecurity of what’s under the covers carries over into development. Maybe we just DEFINE ourselves too much by our ......

Posted On Sunday, November 15, 2009 3:46 PM

Nov 09

Speaking at Iowa Code Camp Tomorrow

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OK, I’ve been remiss in my duties as a blogger I know. Can you forgive me? Both of you? C’mon! It was only a couple of weeks. I promise to be more diligent in my posts in the future. So… we cool? Ok. I am really posting to let you both know that I will be speaking at Iowa Code Camp tomorrow. I have two talks. One on BDD, of course, and one on The Opinionated ......

Posted On Friday, November 6, 2009 6:37 PM

Oct 09

More To Come…

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I’ve been a little scarce lately as I prepare for HDC (I’m doing a lightening round), finishing up a project for a client (rollout in a week), and help out some with Sharepoint Saturday, Kansas City (December 12th). Be sure that I will continue my series on building a dev shop and things should get more back to normal after next weekend. Stay tuned… ......

Posted On Sunday, October 11, 2009 6:44 PM

Sep 09

The Backyard Mechanic

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Recently, I read some posts about Duct Tape programming from Joel Spolsky, Michael C. Neel, Jak Charlton, “Uncle” Bob Martin and Jeffrey Palermo. I have followed these posts closely. While the intent is good, I think the delivery suffers. The whole thing started with Spolsky (as it often does) creating a post that (I think) was meant to say, “Hey stop ......

Posted On Saturday, September 26, 2009 10:58 AM

Sep 09

Let’s Build A Dev Shop (Part 5 In An Ngoing Saga)

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Well, here we are again. Last time, we talked about project structure and came up with the one we’ll use for this series. Next we’ll talk tools. We’ll talk tools like Tim Taylor talks tools: with lots of grunts for my favorites and only a little explanation about what the tools do.) This is mostly because there is LOTS of material on the interwebs about ......

Posted On Monday, September 14, 2009 10:00 PM

Technical Arguments Are Good

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I might have made a decent lawyer. If I’d been born without any self respect and complete absence of morality, I might’ve become a lawyer. I love to argue. I love it. I like pitting my ideas against another’s. I like that at any moment I might have an epiphany and change my perspective or opinions about something. That’s learning. Basically, in technical ......

Posted On Monday, September 14, 2009 7:38 PM

Sep 09

Let’s Build A Dev Shop (Part 4 of n)

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Alright dear readers (both of you), I told you last time that I would answer that age-old question, “How many projects should I have in my solution?” The answer is: only as many as you need. I know, I know, but it’s not a copout, really it’s not. I’ve really found that is it easier to start with fewer projects and break them out when you need to, than ......

Posted On Sunday, September 13, 2009 7:20 PM

Sep 09

Let’s Build a Dev Shop (Part 3 of n)

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Last Time… we looked at installing and setting up VisualSVN Server to be our Source Code Management (SCM) system. With our SCM system all set up, now we need to take a look at how to best take advantage of its features. We’ll look at common folder structures for code repositories and what they folder do/mean. Just about anyone who has used some sort ......

Posted On Tuesday, September 8, 2009 11:26 PM