References

Things to install on a new machine

Submitted by Bevan on Sat, 10/04/2010 - 13:37

Roy Osherove has posted a list of things he installs on any new developer machine, including links so you can find out more.

MSDN Magazine downloads

Submitted by Bevan on Sun, 14/02/2010 - 19:00

If you're interested in reading MSDN magazines on screen, there are PDF downloads of MSDN magazine available from Microsoft.

An Architects Life

Submitted by Bevan on Wed, 26/08/2009 - 13:30

"If Architects had to work like software developers", a hilarious (and sadly true) tale ...

The Pragmatic Programmers have a Magazine

Submitted by Bevan on Mon, 06/07/2009 - 13:26

The Pragmatic Programmer is one of the best books I've ever read - a copy of it sits on my bookshelf and it gets reread, cover to cover, every 18 months or so. Every time, I learn something new - and I'm reminded why I love my job.

Jira and Confluence for $5!

Submitted by Bevan on Tue, 21/04/2009 - 09:36

Here's a good deal ...

As an Atlassian customer, we wanted you to be the first to hear today's news: For this week only, we're offering a special 5-user "starter" license of JIRA and Confluence for only $5 each. We're calling it the Atlassian Stimulus Package and it's our way of supporting small teams and small businesses in this difficult economic environment. Best of all, we're going to donate every penny to charity, so please help us spread the word!

Listening time

Submitted by Bevan on Thu, 12/02/2009 - 22:26

Shorter than some, longer than many, my 1 hour commute to and from work each day used to be down time. Over the last three or four years, I’ve found that podcasts are a good way to fill the time.

Scott Hanselman has just posted Hanselman's Super Karate Death Car List of .NET and Software Podcasts and suggested that others do the same … here’s what occupies my commute.

Swiss SRP

Submitted by Bevan on Wed, 28/01/2009 - 19:59

Over on Los Techies, Gabriel Schenker has an excellent post (Real Swiss don't need SRP) showing the Single Responsibility Principle in action - refactoring some existing code from muddled mess to SRP fineness.

Financial Functions for .NET

Submitted by Bevan on Wed, 17/12/2008 - 17:03

This looks pretty useful – Luca Bolognese has implemented (during paternity leave, no less!) a fairly complete library of Financial functions for .NET.

 

If this had been around a few months ago, a project I’m working on might have taken quite a different approach. Something to bookmark for later.

Linq Aggregates

Submitted by Bevan on Thu, 30/10/2008 - 19:00

Catching up on my blog reading, I came across a gem demonstrating use of the Aggregate() method from Linq's Enumerable static class.

Worth reading.

Tool Proficiency

Submitted by Bevan on Mon, 04/08/2008 - 14:08

I've long been of the opinion that it can be immensely fruitful to work towards being a virtuoso of your development environment.

The more effectively you can drive the environment, the faster you're going to get the job done - and the more time you can spend on thinking.

The Keybinding posters for Visual studio are one good place to start.

Inversion of Control

Submitted by Bevan on Mon, 28/07/2008 - 13:04

The current (as of 28 July) episode of .NET Rocks is #362 - James Kovacs Inverts our Control.

James Kovacs spends the episode talking about some of the current hot topics - Dependency Injection, Inversion of Control, Aspect Oriented Programming and so on.

Recommended listening.

Spec#

Submitted by Bevan on Wed, 30/04/2008 - 19:27

Spec# is a C# based language from Microsoft Research. It extends the language by adding comprehensive support for Contract Based Programming, with new keywords such as assume, require and expose.

Cheatsheets

Submitted by Bevan on Wed, 20/09/2006 - 03:56

This is cool - a collection of more than 30 different developer cheat sheets.

To quote the page:

Lets face it, unless you have a photographic memory, no developer can remember all the different functions, options, tags, etc. that exist. Documentation can be cumbersome at times, that's why I like cheat sheets. They are quick references that feature the most commonly forgotten things on a specific topic. You can print them out and hang them on your wall, or just keep them handy in your bookmarks for quick reference.