devSolo

I’ve been using Subversion(SVN) at work for any new projects that I start.  The rest of my applications are all stored in Visual SourceSafe(VSS).  I recently had to start adding some functionality to a couple of the VSS stored projects but I really wanted them to get migrated to subversion.  So after doing some non-stack overflow searches (the stack overflow searches were very very pessimistic and “i give up”ish, I found a utility to do it for me… More »

So you want to start using Source Control with all your projects.  Great idea! 

Here is a step by step howto for getting Subversion (Specifically VisualSVN 1.7.2) up and running on your computer.

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As long as I’ve had this WordPress blog, I’ve cringed every time I look at my URLs and see ugly query strings in every link. 

i.e. http://devSolo.com/?p=245

Where does that link go to? Who knows? I much prefer to see the link in a SEO Friendly (and very human readable):

http://devsolo.com/index.php/2009/05/what-should-the-guy-that-comes-after-me-know/

Yes, it’s longer, and not search engine friendly, but it is human readable.  It’s not search engine friendly because I didn’t use any useful keywords to start the title.  I’ll have to pay more attention to that in future articles.

Anyway,  I played around with dasBlog and BlogEngine.Net and they both generated the SEO Friendly URLs by default.  So I considered switching to BlogEngine. For some reason I assumed that if WordPress didn’t do it by default, it must not be able to.  That’s what I get for assuming.  So if you are using WordPress and would like much friendlier URLs then just change the following Setting:

1) From your management page: Select [Settings]

2) then [Permalinks]

3) then pick your prefered style.

4) Profit…

After reading the book Clean Code by Robert Martin, I am increasingly paranoid about which room is talking about me. This comic was his introduction to the introduction of the book.

I certainly hope that any programmers that look at my code would sound like the code review on the left. But of course that’s a fantasy.  I’m actually finding it a challenge balancing my goals. 

1. Make sure your code can be understood by the “guy that comes after me.”
2. Get work done!

But here is my dilemma… In using 3LA’s to make me a more productive programmer, am I making it harder for the “guy that comes after me" to follow my code? 

I think this all depends on who “the guy that comes after me” is.  This guy will most probably only know VB.  And he won’t know a unit test from a integration test.  In fact, he probably will think a test is what big companies have a dedicated department to do.  “Did you test your code?” “Yes, I clicked every button, and even made sure the program crashes gracefully.”

And what about Dependency Injection… and I’m not talking about StructureMap, NInject, Windsor, or Unity.  I mean Poor Mans Dependency Injection.  DI as a pattern, not an application. "um, whats a pattern?”. 

/facepalm, *ouch* ok I /facepalmed extra hard and knocked myself off my soapbox. (be nice)

Ok, 5 things that I would want the “guy that comes after me” to know.

1. Source Control
2. Unit Testing
3. Dependency Injection (a.k.a. Loosely coupled code)
4. Build Scripts
5. Object Oriented Programming w/ Interfaces  (shouldn’t this be assumed)

I’ll expand on these points in later posts.