Developer

A most important comment, on comments

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I truly enjoy helping other developers by making exceptionally good comments, such as these, during my commits.  Really.  I do.  Yes this is called helping.  Honest! (ahem) “Final commit of the day.  Stati are inserting correctly and things are going into the database properly (still) as long as we have good item codes in our … Read more

Popdown Notification with Jquery/ASP Webforms

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(Updated this post after some refactoring discussions with my good friend Frank from over at DuhJones.com) If you’re a twitterer, you’ve seen the notification drop-downs they use.  Basically it’s a bar, full-screen width, which contains a notification message.  It slides down from the top of the screen, stays put for a few seconds, then disappears.  … Read more

Get your free HTML5 exam voucher

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I’m looking at this free course right now and so far, I’m digging what I’m seeing.  Check out the details below in case you’re interested in picking up some HTML5.   Get ahead of your competition: Earn your MCSD certifications and start developing Windows 8 web and Windows store apps. We’ll get you started with … Read more

To log or not to log …

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To Log or Not to Log Honestly, really?  Let’s hope we’re not still asking ourselves that question in 2012 kids.  Say in ain’t so! So let’s say its safe to assume we’re all logging things somewhere. The question is not “to log or not to log” but rather where should yon logs go? (yon logs … Read more

Get a clue! or .. write a requirement

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Guys and gals, we’ve all done it. Written code without requirements. Me too. Guilty. However what is your preference? Are you the developer that needs a mountain of documentation that details your every line of code? Are you the developer that thrives on having some creativity by just having a loose outline of what is … Read more

The Simpleton Pattern

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Simpleton UniversityNo, you read that correctly.  Simpleton, not Singleton is the subject of choice today.  Recently a fellow developer was looking over some code that I had written.

He commented on it by saying, “Rob I just love looking at your code.  It’s simple, easy to read, well-commented, and just makes sense”.

I replied, “Well that’s likely because I’m a simpleton”.

So jokes ensued with my friend asking, “Is that the design pattern you follow?”.  I thought, well yeah actually I guess it is and thus was born the idea for this blog post.

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The Pessimistic Programmer

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If you’re a programmer of any kind and have done it for any length of time at all; particularly as your profession, not just a hobby, you know this one rule:

Good programmers expect things to go bad.

One of our prime directives as lord or lady of the bits and bytes is to predict what can go wrong and prevent it.  Or at the worst case, handle it gracefully.

Being a developer isn’t exactly all baby giggles and sunbeams so a healthy amount of pessimism is certainly warranted.

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Cursors are evil, Cursors are good

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Sure, sure if you’re even slightly older than me “the cursor” was the unruly kid at school with a slightly skewed moral compass.  However, if you’re like me, and reside on the Great Timeline of Technology, being privy to both the old world and the new information-age world you realize that the cursor can mean a few other things.

Today we’re talking about t-sql.

Ok let me out myself here.  I hate cursors.  A lot.

They are bloated, complex, and use entirely too much code.  I get it though.  Sometimes you just have to use them.  And I get it that they have their place.  Cool.  However here is handy way to NOT have to use one though.

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