Showing all posts tagged: 'programming'

A 7-post collection

Applying consistent code styles with Visual Studio 2017

[Visual Studio 2017](https://www.visualstudio.com/" target="_blank) offers an extended set of tools that can help developers be more productive and for teams to be more cohesive and consistent. Code consistency is importan at any level you look at it: individual, team and enterprise. Although each developer has his/her unique code writing style, there are cases where we may want to apply a consistent set of rules/styles across a project or event an entire development team. In the past, the best way to do this was through code analysers such as [FxCop](https://blogs. …[read more]

On software complexity

Ok, I'm probably just thick. Or, after writing code for so many years, I'm still not good at it. Or am I? Today's post is the result of esoteric thinking. Thoughts that go through your mind when faced with really complex code or, in other words: "what the hell does this thing even do" questions. Complex code should not be confused with complex business logic and complicated workflows. There are a lot of smart developers out there. A lot smarter than me. You may be one of them. How you write you code says a lot about you …[read more]

On programming tools, extensions and IDEs

If you’re involved in software development in any capacity, chances are you have your favourite toolset. If you are a .NET developer, you’re most likely using [Visual Studio [Community or Pro/Ultimate]](https://www.visualstudio.com/" target="_blank). If you are in Java-land then you get pick between [IntelliJ](https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/" target="_blank) and [Eclipse](https://eclipse.org/downloads/" target="_blank). And if you’re an iOS and OSx developer, you have [xCode](https://developer.apple.com/xcode/" target="_blank) (bless you). Web developers are more flexible …[read more]

Visual Studio 2015 tips and tricks - Visug talk, Belgium

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at Visug, the .NET User Group in Belgium. Attendance was good (about 35-40 people) though it could have been better should the road access hadn't been impacted by massive traffic delays. Nonetheless, the show must go on and we did the talk as planned. For those that missed the talk, I've recorded the whole (I think I did since the camera battery died at some point) session and I will be posting a link to it shortly. A lot of people asked me whether they could get access to the …[read more]

Code comments - taking a closer look

Should I use comments in my code? This is probably one of the most debated subjects in software development it's been going for a while. There are developers that insist on commenting everything under the sun and then some. You've seen code like this before, where there is a sea of green (if you're working in Visual Studio) and sometimes the comments may even outnumber the actual code. On the other hand, you have that prefer to leave the code totally undocumented. No green insight, anywhere! But no way to decipher the code either. So what is the best practice …[read more]

Extend the Common.Logging API with Log4Net

In an earlier post I described how the Common.Logging API can help us abstract logging in our application by hiding the implementation details and allowing us to use different logging providers (NLog, Log4Net etc) in a modular, plug-n-play way. In this post, we will examine how to combine Common.Logging with Log4Net in order to output log messages to a file. 1. Install the right NuGet packages in the right order Before beginning, I will assume that all your assemblies already implement the Common.Logging API. If not, then go through my post to see how to add logging …[read more]

Working with Azure Blobs through the .NET SDK

Azure is my cloud of choice. Not only because you get free stuff, yes you do, but also because of the flexibility and ease of interacting with it. If you don’t have an Azure account, you can register for free here. One of the features offered by Azure is Storage. There are 3 types of Storage: Blobs: used to store files, images, binary data, or video Drives: which can be mount on VMs etc like an external drive but virtual Tables: scalable structured storage which acts like a database table but with slightly different behaviour and structured. You can …[read more]