Long time, no speak...err post.  Anyway its good to be back, I've been out of action for a while off doing some other projects, however I'm back and ready to rumble again.

A quick one to get things started again:  I've always liked to dabble in technologies and programming languages on the side to keep myself challenged and to keep my mind and options open.  So in saying that, I thought I should do a bit of research to see which particular skills are in demand at the moment.  So I've done some quick searching and found a few list of in demand skills and technologies.  Here's what I've found.

1. Microsoft .NET skills nearly always land near the top of the list
2. Web technologies/languages such as Ruby on Rails, Python and Django are very prominent.
3. PHP still has a massive presence.
4. Javascript, even though it has been around for years seems to have a new lease of life because people are beginning to realise how powerful it can be at enabling seamless user experiences.
5. ASP.NET MVC rates a few mentions and could help Microsofts image in the eyes of the hardcore patterns crowd.
6. Newer web technologies such as Google Gears and Windows Azure are springing up more and more.
7. Mobile apps for iPhone and PocketPC's are really starting to take off.

The list if heavily web focused, and thats no surprise given the direction of most companies and organisations to be heavily web enabled and having a prominent presence on the web.

Ruby on Rails is something I've really wanted to learn more of for a while now, and the Cloud Computing platforms of Windows Azure and Amazon are something that makes me curious and eager to investigate. 

Have I missed any big ones above?

        

Last night I attended a Developer SIG meeting at the Microsoft Theatre in Melbourne.  The presenter was David Lemphers from the Microsoft Windows Azure team.  The presentation gave a walkthrough of how to create .NET applications for the Azure platform, and an overview of the cloud architecture. 

My impressions after a day of reflection on the ...<< MORE >>

Thought I'd start the year of by sharing this good little add-on for unit testing that I came across recently. 
If you are unit testing with NUnit in .NET 3.5 - this may be of
interest to you.  Its an add-on called 'SpecUnit' which basically
enables you to write your tests with a more fluent interface - so that
your tests read more like ...<< MORE >>

I get this thought every now and then - should Public Variables be avoided in all situations?  I was recently writing a quick prototype application, and had a few "data objects" which I noticed myself spending alot of time writing get/set properties.  I then proceded to get rid of them all, and revert to just simple public variables. 

There was ...<< MORE >>

I was just reading Martin Fowlers article on Fluent Interfaces.

I then decided to check out Wikipedia's page on it - it seems to me that the example of fluent interface there is just a classic case of method chaining.  The impression I got from Fowler was that the "fluency" comes more from the language used ...<< MORE >>

Developing using TDD is more about the developer’s mindset rather than the tools and technologies that are used.    However we still need to write some actual code, and that’s where a whole range of both commercial and open source tools come into play.

There are two main tools that you will need to be able to write tests effectively:

1.      ...<< MORE >>

Stored procs should be ignorant, obedient and just plain down right stupid.  We don't want them to ask questions, make decisions or do anything other than what we tell them.  If they start doing anything other than CRUD operations, then you can quickly find yourself in a whole world of T-SQL pain.

What am I talking about here?  The database making ...<< MORE >>

I've been asked by some work colleagues to produce a short demo/presentation about TDD, so to get my mind into gear, I thought I put all my thoughts (and the thoughts of others) down on my blog and see if it provokes any feedback that can improve my presentation.  I really think about TDD as not so much Test Driven, ...<< MORE >>

I've just gone through the pain of working out how to get my WPF Browser Application (XBAP) using a WCF service without any security exceptions causing me to attempt to break yet another desk.  After hours of frustration I've finally got it working:  A WPF Browser application, talking to a WCF service seamlessly and with no security issues.  In an ...<< MORE >>

If you're having issues with your WPF Browser app's having old versions being cached - most noticeably during development, when you make a change, debug the app from Visual Studio (by pressing F5) and your changes do not appear in the version loaded in your browser - then you will need to clear your Application Cache before your new version ...<< MORE >>

If you have applications that need to create objects or call code from a .NET COM dll, then you will need to make sure you have registered the dll correctly. 

To do this type in the following from the command line:


I've just spent a few hours trying to work this is out, as I was ...<< MORE >>

If you are working on some existing code that's in a state of mess, then CTRL + K,D is your best friend.  In Visual Studio, hit it at any time and it will automatically format all code in your current document.  ...<< MORE >>

I've been re-reading the 'Planning Extreme Programming" book written by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler lately, and  I've picked out a few quotes from what I've read so far that I think highlight some key points to remember, or that simply amused me.  Either way, I think its good reading.  Here they are:

Keep the plan simple, otherwise they won't be ...<< MORE >>

I've written a little console application to convert NUnit test result output from BDD style test fixtures into a simple spec text file.  The spec text file output is basically a human readable file that will be useful to departments in your business other than the developers themselves, such as - QA and Project Managment.  It is something I'm starting ...<< MORE >>

Code like this really frustrates me... well maybe 'frustrate' is a bit over the top, but it's something I feel the need to point out:

/// <summary>
/// Customer object
/// </summary>
class Customer
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Customer name
    /// </summary>
    private string Name;

    /// <summary>
    /// Customer age
    /// </summary>
    private int Age;

    /// <summary>
    /// Customer constructor
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="name">the ...<< MORE >>

I've really jumped on board with BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) in the past week.  I've been reading about it for awhile, but it wasn't until I started actually doing it on a side project of my own that I've really begun to realise how good it can be.  The natural language naming style of the 'specs' (not 'tests' anymore) in ...<< MORE >>

I re-installed ReSharper today after living without it for a few months.  The reason I originally uninstalled it was sort of an experiment to see if I had become too dependent on it.  I wanted to be sure that I could work without it, for the scenarios where I jump on other people's machines to code, or ...<< MORE >>

I have been reading about NHibernate for about a year now and have been thinking about converting to it for many of those months.  I've always read little bits and pieces about it, but never found a really good article or guide about setting it up and useing it in a realistic example...until today

Karl Seguin's article ...<< MORE >>

In the past few days I have been refactoring a system that had no concept of an independent Data Access Layer (DAL).  All the code to access and manipulate the database was directly in the Domain objects.  I set myself the task to extract all this code and introduce a decoupled DAL.  There are a fair few articles on this ...<< MORE >>

In the last six months I have become increasingly interested in the discussion and ideas being generated by the ALT.NET group, and thought it would be a good idea to spread the word a bit more if you are unfamiliar with it. 
<< MORE >>