Tips, Tricks and Traps

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

Capturing Transient Errors

9 Feb 2019

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?

2 Feb 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.

2 Jan 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.

21 Jun 2015

tips

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

11 Aug 2013

tips

Estimation is one of the dark arts of software development.

1 Apr 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?

16 Feb 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.

25 Jul 2012

tips

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

10 Jul 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:

14 Sep 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.

15 Aug 2011

tips

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

28 Jul 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 …

1 Mar 2011

tips

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