DotNetDevDude - Monday, July 26, 2010

Saturday, July 24, 2010

On the way home from a weekend in Chicago for Midwest Give Camp a fellow developer and I got on the subject of what I like to call the “9 – 5 Developer.” If Wikipedia had an entry for “9 –5 Developer” it would read:

A 9 – 5 Developer is a developer, typically found in the corporate arena, that is content with doing his daily development responsibilities using the least amount of effort possible. While away from work they do nothing to better themselves in the development arena. They are often found using technologies and techniques 2 –5 years behind what is current, and are content in doing so. They are usually opposed to new things in fear that they would be required to learn. Phrases often spoken by them include;
- “If they think I am staying a minute after 5…they are crazy!”
- “Why would I need to learn that when what I am doing works?”
- “I would attend [insert free developer event] if the company paid me for my time.”
- “[Boss] has something against me! I am always being passed up for promotions.”

Don’t worry…if you are reading this…you are not a “9 – 5 Developer"!

Being that I am a consultant I have ran in to more than my share. If I had to estimate I would say, from my experience, 85% of all developers fall in this group. I find that very disturbing. I just can’t imagine being content going through life this way.

That’s my rant! Thanks for stopping by!

General Ranting

posted on Saturday, July 24, 2010 10:01:00 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [5]

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Offline Access To The Rails API Documentation

I am currently reading Agile Web Development with Rails by Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas, and David Heinemeier Hansson and I came across something very helpful early on in the book. As with most documentation these the complete Rails api documentation is available online which you can only access when you have an internet connection. As this is becoming less and less of a problem it is still a problem. So here are the steps for pulling down the documentation and always having it available when offline!

> Open up Ruby command prompt
> rails apidocs_app
> cd apidocs_app
> rake rails:freeze:gems
> rake doc:rails

That's it. Now you can open up the index.html file created under apidocs/doc/api and have complete access to Rails api documentation whenever you need it!

Ruby | Ruby On Rails

posted on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 6:17:43 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [13]

So many things I want to learn...

There are so many things that I want to dive into and I was whining about it on Twitter and a friend of mine brought to my attention that I should blog about it. So here we go;

Ruby On Rails (Have a good start on this)
F#
Power Shell
iPhone Development (Started)
Android Development (Started)
nServiceBus
Advanced Silverlight/WPF

General Ranting

posted on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 5:58:04 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [12]

Saturday, July 18, 2009

ReSharper Live Template For Creating Unit Test Stub

I have been so busy lately and I am disappointed that blogging is one of the things I have been neglecting. In hopes of getting back in the groove I wanted to get a quick hitter out. This is a ReSharper Live Template for creating a unit test stub that provides an easy way for you to create a unit test name and comments that help in describing the true intentions of the test and stick to best practices.

The template itself is very simple…

        1: /// <summary>

       2: /// A unit test for $MethodBeingTested$

       3: /// </summary>

       4: [TestMethod]

       5: public void $MethodBeingTested$$WhatIsBeingTested$() {

       6:     //Arrange

       7:     $END$

       8:     //Act

       9:     //Assert

      10: }

If you aren’t familiar with ReSharper Live Templates…think CodeSnippets on Steriods. If you are doing TDD or some hybrid of such, you should be using a template such as this.

posted on Saturday, July 18, 2009 5:46:10 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [40]

Monday, June 08, 2009

Building a powerful developer pc on a budget. (with dual 22’s for < 1k)

A little over a year ago I was in the market for a new desktop for doing development at home. I looked at the usual places Dell, Best Buy, etc. and found to get something that I thought would be a good developer rig I would have to spend more than $1,500. I have always wanted to build my own rig so I decided to take the leap. At that time I didn’t have a blog or an audience for that matter so I just speck’d out and built a developer rig in my little bubble.

Of course any good internet savvy person the first thing I did was Google “Build developer rig” and the first link that popped up was for the the machine Scott Hanselman built with the help of Jeff Atwood. This machine speck’d out at $2k…so not in my budget. After a dozen or more dead-end links I devised a plan. I was going to go to NewEgg and build a rig strictly on price and reviews. In the end all turned out very well. So, getting to the point…

A couple of weeks ago my good friend Michael Wheeler told me he was looking to build/buy a new developer rig. So being the helpful guy I am I went back to NewEgg and speck’d out another developer machine using the same method…and in thanks Michael let me do the build as well. In part one I am just going to list the specs for 2 reasons. First, I want to finish up my series on Nerd Dinner for the real world. Second, I Tweeted about the build and price point and received a number of reply’s interested in the specs. I did take detailed notes and pictures of the build and all of that will be detailed in part 2.

The interesting specs are…