LINKBLOG for October 31, 2007

• Building A Feed Reader: Episode One - Bits.Bytes.
  


• Glossary of Terms - Scott Sehlhorst
  I was not aware how to use a glossary of terms in requirements gathering as described in this post, but it actually seems like a good idea


• The Web is Agreement - seen on Flickr
  Looks like a mindmappy way of demonstrating how the intarnets look like
  via reddit.com


• Strategic Storytelling - Cultivate Greatness - Leadership Blog
  On the art of storytelling to attract the public's attention when speeching


• IronXSLT v0.2 released - Oleg Tkachenko
  


• Embracing Languages Inside Languages - Jeff Atwood
  ' Embrace the idea of languages inside languages. In The Land of Strings, we speak regular expressions. In The Land of Data, we speak SQL '


• Embracing fluent interfaces - Ayende Rahien
  Ayende's answer to Jeff


• Fluent Interfaces Allow a Higher Level of Abstraction - Ben Scheirman
  Ben also joins the discussion on the language-in-language thing


• … In Which We Discuss Proprietary Object Noise - Rob Conery
  Rob joins the language discussion with some clear meanings:
  ' The old saying of “I solved a problem using Regex - now I have two problems” is dead on ' Have to admit I still remember a collegue once refactored away some 20 well written, concise lines of code to a one-line regex. I can tell you that to me the 20 lines were easier to understand than the newly created monster. So: I think regexes really have their place, but don't overdo them...


• Important Notice: VS 2008 Beta2 VPC Images Expiring on Nov 1st - Scott Guthrie
  In case you haven't heard yet


• Make sure your .NET applications perform - James Moore
  ' Improving the performance of your application often boils down to rephrasing the problem you are trying to solve '

LINKBLOG for October 30, 2007

• Subversion integration into Visual Studio - David Vidmar
  Really: if you're still on the old Sourcesafe, consider something else; like SVN. I can tell you that it integrates real nicely into VS these days with the right plugins. Read this for more details


• How Big Should a Function Be? - Uncle Bob
  ' 4, 5, perhaps 8 lines long; but no longer ' according to the uncle. But to my taste that's a bit too constraining. Maybe I'm just not OO-minded enough?


• Whois May Be Retired, Says ICANN
  This time not a grand-old-man retiring, but a system (maybe). All things have there time, so to say


• Recursive Directory Search - Rhonda Tipton
  basic recursive function example


• Considerations in Evaluating Onshore vs. Offshore Software Development - Matt Lockhart
  via Maurice de Beyer


• Sandcastle October 2007 CTP released - Jan Schreuder
  


• Use the ASP.NET MVC Framework to Write Web Apps without Viewstate or Postbacks - Jeffrey Palermo
  via Jason Meridth


• Security by Letterhead - Bruce Schneier
  It would be funny, but this clumsiness could actually be abused very easily


• What Does Protected Internal Mean? - Phil Haack
  If you're a C#-er, there might be a very interesting lesson to learn here. As I don't want to spoil it, just head over to Phil's place


• Microsoft Pushes Cloud Development
  ' Microsoft is at work on a project to enable everyday developers to build Web applications, just as easily as folks have built Visual Basic applications over the years '
  Hmm, codenamed Volta, it's a bit unclear from the article what the status is
  


• New websites - Joel Spolsky
  Joel on being the client in the client/server relationship for the very first time


• Team Foundation Server 2005 Widget List - Razi's Space
  


• Requirements specification for writing a requirements specification (excerpt) - Sterling Camden
  ' Preconditions:
  The Author is expected to be omniscient and inerrant with regard to the problem domain '
  wherein the - among other exceptions - much needed ExcessiveWorldofWarcraftException is introduced


• When is a Bug a Story? - Bret Pettichord
  ' Never. It is either a defect that you should fix right away or a sign that you still have more stories to complete. But it’s never a story in and of itself ' via Scott Bellware


• 10 signs that you aren’t cut out to be a developer - TechRepublic.com
  Really hits the nail on the head

LINKBLOG for October 29, 2007

• Difference Between Knowing Programming and Knowing Syntax - Abhijit Nadgouda
  


• Dynamic Methods - Ayende Rahien
  


• The Problem with Writing Acceptance Tests in a Custom DSL - Scott Bellware
  


• TalesFromTheSmellySide<Code> - Episode #1 - joeyDotNet
  


• Connecting the Dots Between Analysis and Design - Max Pool
  ' Attempting to solve a larger puzzle with only a subset of the information is only an exercise at best '


• Tools of The Effective Developer: Make It Work - First!- Hans-Eric Grönlund
  Hans-Eric continues his 'Tools...' series, this is part 6, previous posts are linked to at the bottom


• Refactoring: Replacing Enums with the Strategy Pattern - Jeremy Jarrell
  A nice case for the situation you *want* to use the Strategy pattern


• Community Convergence XXXIV - Charlie Calvert
  And still more pointers today: this one from the C# team


• OOPSLA 2007 Podcast
  Scroll through the OOPSLA podcast list and find a lot of interesting people here (Kathy Sierra, David Parnas, Fred Brooks, etc.
  via Evan Hoff


• Vint Cerf to Step Down from ICANN - Josh Catone
  One of the grand old men of the net is taking a step back


• Your Desktop Is Not a Destination - Jeff Atwood
  Jeff says out with the background/desktop pics
  ' We should be filling our screens with information, not distracting ourselves with pretty frippery '


• Check-In/Check-Out as Often as Possible - Dave Donaldson
  ' I've sort of developed an internal clock that goes off in my head about every hour, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more '


• 5 Reasons why SubSonic is Better than Sliced Bread - Dominick
  


• Some feedback on EBS - Joel Spolsky
  Joel saves me some linking today by providing the most interesting reactions to his EBS post

LINKBLOG for October 28, 2007

• Doing it yourself - Mark Long
  Mark has a Russinovich-style case file


• SOA in the Unification Model - Nick Malik
  


• Incubating Frameworks - a catch-22 of software development
  Good advice: Think twice (reallly!) before building a framework that you are gonna release in the wild (using internal framework/libs in your own company is another matter, of course)


• Dumbster - Fake SMTP Server
  Nice idea, mocking an email server for your unittests,
  via Christopher Steen


• Automatically process incoming files - Eric de Maar
  


• ÜberUtils - Part 3 : Strings - Brad Vincent
  also read part 1 and part 2


• New York Times opens up code - Tina Gasperson
  Linux.com article describing the idea behind NY Times desicion to open-sourcing some of it's homegrown web tools
  


• ALT.NET: RE: How can Microsoft Patterns and Practices Help? - Evan Hoff
  Microsoft's P&P Team is wondering what we think about them. Evan has a couple comments


• How to suck at Presenting - Paul Lockwood
  


• Links from the Sharpside - Inaugural Weekend Edition [10.27.07] - Scott Reynolds
  Next linkblogger in town. Welcome! I was in cancer research some time ago, so it seems Scott and me have that in common