Some useful tips, some tricks to be more productive and some traps to avoid.

Capturing Transient Errors

Saturday, February 09 2019 tips

Have you ever tried to fix a problem where you only got a glimpse of the error before the entire application disappeared in a puff of smoke?

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Console logging and the passage of time

Saturday, February 02 2019 tips

I frequently write console applications to automate things that I used to do manually. Sometimes these are test frameworks for my own use, other times they are utilities that I share.

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SharpDox Tips

Saturday, January 02 2016 tips

SharpDox is an exciting open source C# documentation generator that is both easy to set up and easy on the eyes. That said, I’ve run into a couple of minor issues getting it up and running - here’s a summary of my experience in the hope that it saves you some time.

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Effective IO for the Modern Developer

Sunday, June 21 2015 tips

Have you ever observed how much your development process is hindered by the pace of I/O?

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Blink Estimation

Sunday, August 11 2013 tips

Estimation is one of the dark arts of software development.

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Notifying Windows Explorer about files in use

Monday, April 01 2013 tips

Ever tried to delete a file that is in use and wished that Windows Explorer would tell you which application has the file open?

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Code Analysis vs Code Contracts

Saturday, February 16 2013 tips

I’ve started using Microsoft’s Code Contracts and finding some interesting interactions with Code Analysis (aka fxCop), a feature of Visual Studio that I’m already using heavily.

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Comspec corruption - Solved

Wednesday, July 25 2012 tips

As a followup to my recent post “Comspec Corruption”, I’m happy to report that the culprit has been found.

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Comspec corruption

Tuesday, July 10 2012 tips

Following on from my earlier post describing my problems installing Visual Studio 2012 RC. It turns out that some errant installer had set two values for my COMSPEC environment variable:

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Configuration of Log4Net through code

Wednesday, September 14 2011 tips

While writing a windows service, I created a console version for debugging use. I wanted this console to display all the logging, in real time, so I could see things were working. A bit of a search revealed that ColoredConsoleAppender was the desired class, so I added code to set things up.

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What to ask users ...

Monday, August 15 2011 tips

It’s admittedly rare, but sometimes you see something on Twitter that’s worth preserving and repeating …

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Semantic Versioning

Thursday, July 28 2011 tips

Scott Hanselman has an interesting note on product version numbering and naming. My response is too long for a tweet or a facebook comment, so I’m blogging it here and sending him a link …

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IIS Web Application installation trap

Tuesday, March 01 2011 tips

Here’s a trap if you’re setting up an existing web application on a new IIS 7.5 installation …

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Older posts

On the length of names ...  21 Feb 2011
Importing Excel data with SSIS  04 Feb 2011
Fixing Performance Problems  21 Jan 2011
WCF, Callbacks and IIS  13 Jan 2011
Knowing when Builds finish  27 Oct 2010
A New Version of FxCop  17 Oct 2010
Working with fxCop  27 Sep 2010
MoreLINQ  15 Sep 2010
Clean Code  12 Sep 2010
On Naming and Convention ...  18 Apr 2010
Things to install on a new machine  10 Apr 2010
Using Windows SignOn with PowerBuilder and SQL Server  09 Mar 2010
Validation shouldn't be a Blunt Instrument  18 Feb 2010
Improving on POCO: The ORM Problem  04 Feb 2010
Adding AzMan Operations  03 Feb 2010
Wierdness with Fitnesse  01 Feb 2010
CI, Builds and NAnt  15 Jan 2010
Improving on POCO Collections  08 Jan 2010
Improving on POCO Properties  01 Jan 2010
Linq vs Loop performance  01 Sep 2009
MappingLists with NHibernate  19 Aug 2009
How to Find Stuff  16 Jul 2009
Older Programmers  07 Jul 2009
An Event Snippet  17 May 2009
WinForms DataBinding Goodness  27 Apr 2009
Class Diagrams as Documentation  28 Mar 2009
Tracking Warnings with TeamCity  30 Dec 2008
Financial Functions for .NET  17 Dec 2008
Giving your Application a voice  24 Nov 2008
Small Fonts  11 Nov 2008
Upgradable MSI installations with WiX  12 Sep 2008
Databinding with Lists  08 Sep 2008
NUnit Best Practices  21 Aug 2008
.NET 3.5 SP 1 problems ...  16 Aug 2008
The Best RSS Reader  11 Aug 2008
Tool Proficiency  04 Aug 2008
Single Instance Applications  03 Aug 2008
Estimation Poker  05 Jul 2008
A Settings Problem Solved  30 May 2008
Copy Error Dialogs  24 Apr 2008
Cheatsheets  20 Sep 2006
Avoiding Microsoft Project  03 Aug 2005