My previous post posed some C# questions based on some code with incomplete output. This post provides the answers… don’t cheat now…
Answers to the Test
February 9th, 2008Test Yourself on C# Types
February 9th, 2008I’ve been thinking about writing a technical test for my employer, and thought that I would start by following-up on my last post, and create a basic test on types and how they are passed as parameters.
Reference and Value Types
February 3rd, 2008Today I’m going to cover some basics in C# - the difference between Reference and Value types.
How to Delight your Client
February 2nd, 2008(and how your Client can Delight You)
Yesterday’s post reminded me just how much value I have begun to place in my working-relationship with our on-site client-liaison. She has a fiery temperament, is outspoken and very different from me, differences which I have come to appreciate. And let’s not forget, in an otherwise all-male office, she is a she and, sad but true, it really does help to have a little bit of a mix of the sexes.
The Down-Sides of Unmanaged Development
February 1st, 2008Some time ago I wrote about the joys of working for my new employer, in a low overhead environment. I think I can now say with some certainty that this has become a confused and un-managed environment. We’ve grown quite some way since I wrote that entry, and this has been a substantial contributor to the situation.
Some Basic Object Ideas
January 26th, 2008I’ve been thinking about some basic ideas recently related to the design of a Object Layer for the C#/.Net project that I’m working on. Actually, it’s not a proper OL really, more of a set of enhancements to the Data Access Layer generated with MyGeneration for the Gentle framework. Of course, this is all rather old-hat for anyone who’s utilised Datasets in .Net 2 or later, but there you go.
Two Trusty Tools for Web Development
August 27th, 2007This short blog is to recommend two tools for Firefox that have proven valuable to me on those occasions when I have been doing website development - especially with CSS, but also now with JavaScript. As web-dev is not really my main role, I’m confident that I’ve only scratched the surface of what they can do.
Read the rest of this entry »
Low Overhead Development
June 30th, 2007
I’ve been a little bit quiet on the blog front recently because I very happily have got a job as a C# developer, after quite a bit of time away from work by choice… and then a fairly long job search. One of the fantastic things working for a small consultancy (<10staff) was proven in the first few days; I had coded some small enhancements to the system… and they had gone live! Read the rest of this entry »
Coding Style - A Fine Line Between Clever and Stupid Part 2
May 10th, 2007Continuing from my previous post, I wanted to write about something that I have found to be a bugbear - the idea that functions or methods should have a single exit point.
But first, another quick reminiscence of my days programming mainframes with PL/I. There were no internet connections to the machine, data came in on tapes. Someone who wanted to get their own nefarious data onto our machine would have had to intercept a driver, get the relevant tape, take it to a conveniently located mainframe resource, load the data off the tape, insert their own data into the records, put it back onto tape, drive it to our office with a driver with an appropriate security pass… and so on. And I didn’t even mention knowledge of record formats or file validity checks and so on!
Coding Styles - A Fine Line Between Clever and Stupid
May 8th, 2007I’ve been thinking a lot about coding style recently. I must admit that I have probably always tended to code in a way that would be considered to be verbose by many programmers. Although I learnt to program by myself, I benefited from an extensive professional programming course in PL/I (which doesn’t date me too much, but it does date the machines I was working with!)