Tips on Copying Files Between Machines with Windows Explorer

March 9, 2007

If you’re relying on a backup or migration strategy that involves mass-copying files to network drives using Windows Explorer, here are two tips that will probably save you some frustration: When moving a folder that contains deeply-nested folders, you may well encounter illogical errors about a file name being too long. The file name itself […]

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AOL Email Beta An Improvement — But Twice Nothing is Still Nothing

March 8, 2007

After all, no matter what they do to it, it’s still AO-Hell. The same application that wiped the root of my wife’s computer clean back in the 90’s when I tried to uninstall it. The same application that is the bane of discussion list managers because it produces all sort of false spam reports because […]

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Get in on the Ground Floor of this Open Source Project

March 7, 2007

The other day in my posting on The Crisis of Programmer Competence, I suggested that developers seeking greater levels of competence and practical experience could, among other things, consider participating in an open source project. Here’s an interesting project you can get in on the ground floor of — the first code will go public […]

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Is There a Place for Code Generation in Your Tool Kit?

March 5, 2007

I’ve discussed more than once in this space the fact that you’ll never reduce software development to some kind of mechanical exercise. I’ve even gone so far as to question software gods like Charles Simonyi, who seeks to systemetize software specification to the point that producing actual software becomes a push-button operation. Is there a […]

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Absuing OOP: Over-Abstracting and the “Huh?!” Factor

March 5, 2007

I’ll bet you’ve had the experience of finding some cool article on a technique you can really use in your work — but then discovering that, once you look at the code, your major reaction is, “huh”? Source code should not make your scratch your head. It should be self-evident. Granted, some things are complicated […]

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Software Development is Wicked

March 3, 2007

If there is anything inherently true about software development, it’s that it’s difficult. Or as some have said, wicked. As developers we need to realize we are solving “wicked problems” — problems with unstable problem statements, uncertain finsih criteria, no single objectively “right” solution, problems not exactly like any others that have been done before, […]

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Should You Use Properties Internally in a Class?

March 2, 2007

I participated in a discussion recently on the microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.performance newsgroup entitled “Accessing Property values vs private variables”. It was interesting on two fronts. First, the original poster’s question (the subject line would have been more clearly titled, “Accessing Property Values vs Private Class Fields”) was concerned with the performance of properties vs. fields — which […]

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Great Advice for Consultants

February 28, 2007

Software developers are for the most part consultants. Don’t know the difference between a consultant and a contractor? Wondering how to get started in consulting or how to be a better consultant?

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The Crisis of Programmer Competence

February 27, 2007

The blogosphere is abuzz today over a post by Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horrors entitled, “Why Can’t Programmers … Program?”.

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Database User Roles in SQL Server 2005 Management Studio

February 25, 2007

I was migrating a database from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 today and was a little puzzled that none of the users appeared in the public role in SQL 2005.

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