Wagnerblog » General

LINQ to SQL is Dead?

Thomas — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:10:52 +0000

Leave to MS to kill the one product in the entire entity effort that seems to actually have worked to some extend. If I read this correctly it sounds as though Linq2SQL is done with in favor of the wacky Entity Framework. Oh joy.

Couple of good books

Thomas — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:54:44 +0000

I still get an occasional copy of a book sent for review here and there by publishers. Two of the better ones to come across my desk have been Ubuntu Kung-Fu by Keir Thomas as well as Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt.

Between them I enjoyed Kung Fu for the quick 1 or two page solutions to a plethora of technical problems, although reading it did reinforce my decision to stay with Windows as the right one.

Pragmatic Thinking on the other hand is a totally different work. I really wonder what prompted Andy Hunt to go from developer / consultant to author to…. seriously deep thinker. Just from a perfunctory review I can see that he did a tremendous amount of research. Its not an easy read for me so I expect to be curled up with it for some time to come, but I know the effort will be well worth it. This is a pretty unique book in our industry.

The best espresso at home

Thomas — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:47:08 +0000

I recently purchased a Nespresso machine. Being a big skeptic I didn’t think it was that great until I actually tasted the coffee it produces. I got Goosebumps ! That’s how good the espresso made by one of these things is. Unbelievably smooth. They are available in Southern California at Sur La Table. And just so I can remember, here is the reset procedure needed to set the fill level back to factory settings:

Factory Reset on Nespresso Essenza C100

Factory Reset Nespresso Essenza C100

1. Switch the unit off.

2. Press and hold the Big Cup Button.

3. Switch the unit on – that’s it.

Programming the fill level is easy too. I was playing around with the buttons and such and messed mine up, so here’s another easy set of things to do to get everything aligned again.

Program Fill Level Nespresso Essenza C100

1. Lift Lever and insert capsule.

2. Press and hold the button (which ever one you want to program) for at least 3 seconds

3. Release the button at the desired fill level – Done!

If you need the manual, you can download the very graphic, very basic manual at Nespresso (PDF Link).

This absolutely bears repeating

Thomas — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:57:45 +0000

Read this great post by Larry O’Brien. It is so true so 100% right on the money and I have seen this happen again and again and again. And it doesn’t matter who the client is. I’ve seen Project Managers talk that way, Development Managers, VP’s — I even caught myself doing it once — all the way up to CEO’s and Sr. Management. The reasons for this behavior have ranged from inexperience to not knowing details of software dev all the way to a Machiavellian CEO who knew full well what was involved but acted completely ignorant to be able to make exactly these kind of arguments. Its a sad situation. The only thing sadder is the lack of understanding on part of so many managers, PM’s, etc etc what constitutes good code and what is complex. Somehow classic ASP gets the same treatment as 5 tier WCF web development.

Sad – Funny & Right On the Money

Thomas — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:35:01 +0000

Frans talks about a couple of points regarding the MS EF. The only thing that comes to mind is that MS in the past has been accused of only listening to internal people and disregarding what the working developers in the industry have to say. I wouldn’t necessarily put Stephen Forte in that group. He is a special case for many reasons. But there have been “Insiders” for as long as MS has been creating developer products. Seems their role has changed over the years.

The problem with “Insiders” or the Council of Wise Men as Frans calls them is the fact that very few of them know ORM technology at the level needed by a manufacturer like MS, hence their advise is flawed. I am sure that wacky Object Caching Service employed by EF stems from a lack of knowledge. Maybe not on the part of an Insider but certainly on the part of the Product Team. Not only is MS finally coming around and building something that Frans has had in production for 5+ years, they are building it in a crappy way. That’s sad. There have been countless times when I had to argue against the MS Marketing machine which influenced my customers decision makers.

I have had an opportunity to work with some of the code and services exposed by MS products like Project Server Enterprise Web Services and I have to tell you its some very very scary stuff. So I am not even sure that Frans’ hope of good devs working inside MS, who are just not being listened to, is very realistic. Fact is that once you level the playing field with a framework like .NET, you end up actually competing with some very good people who do not work at MS. That’s the fun part. Anyway, in my mind Frans is on the money here.

Maui is empty – except for Eagle Rays

Thomas — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:24:27 +0000

I have been on Maui for the past week. Our annual trek to the island is marked by a distinct downturn in tourism. It is very very quiet here considering that usually at this time of the year there are probably five times more people on vacation here. Seems the current economic problems are impacting the tourism industry a great deal. My wife figured out that a regular airline ticket rose about 40% in price in the last few months. That’s crazy. Makes me wonder what happens to our annual vacation next year. This time around we got lucky with the airfare.

In the meantime, my daughter and I were lucky to run into a small group of eagle rays at Black Rock. I have never seen that many of these animals in one spot – there were six of them just cruising along. Totally amazing. Unfortunately my little Sea&Sea underwater camera with 800 Speed film did not really do this situation justice. But here are a few images. I was pretty blown away.

Project Post-Partum

Thomas — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:50:36 +0000

General Patton, I am told, was an avid reader of battle history. One of his favorites was the German General Carl von Clausewitz who had lived a hundred years earlier.

Clausewitz is the originator of the famous quote ” No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy”. Similarly I find myself today looking over a 3 month project for a very prominent customer and marveling at the similarities between some software development efforts and battles. Of course software usually isn’t built under life threatening circumstances – no matter what some developers might claim …..

The interesting aspect of this particular project is the fact that we created a plan that all parties agreed to and all parties bought into. However, as the plan began to suffer the impact of “contact with the enemy” different participants ended up changing their mind very quickly about the aspects of the project that were highest priority.

At the outset it was understood that budget was the highest priority item. Our customers made it very very clear that a certain number of man hours were allocated to this work and nothing more. Since cost was the driving factor, the project was structured in a manner that accommodates this priority. Namely we had one primary developer and a couple of supporting people. The critical path rested in the ability of this one primary developer. The schedule was built around that effort and all seemed in order. There was even enough leeway to deal with the usual vagaries in a longer term dev cycle.

As I mentioned we ran into the usual set of issues along the way, nothing too extraordinary. But it did cause us to lose some calendar time, even exceeding my built-in allowance for this sort of thing.

To complicate matters, in the latter third of the cycle our customer insisted on some changes that ended up putting our developer behind schedule even more. At that point lo and behold the client began to view the schedule and final deadlines as the highest priority. Of course its easy to picture how this change of priorities ended up causing us some stress. One of my lessons learned for the future is the need to manage the customers expectations and priorities better. By clearly addressing the potential of this circumstance at the outset of the next similar project I hope we can alleviate some of the stress such situations may cost.

Every 3 years a giant MS Data Access Mess

Thomas — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:46:07 +0000

Actually in this case it has been a bit longer. But for as long as I’ve been working with MS tools there has been a big overhaul every 18 -36 months. What a mess! And the one coming at us this year is especially crazy. Roger Jennings has a great article here – http://reddevnews.com/features/article.aspx?editorialsid=2525

Why would I want to jump on EF when LLBLGen has been doing everything that EF would want to be (but in some cases isn’t) for about 5 years or more now.

Bottom line: If you run NHibernate or LLBLGen your in a better place than this dao mess coming at us.

Jeff hits the nail on the head

Thomas — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:23:30 +0000

Have you ever been in a situation where you knew a particular design was not something you wanted to participate in BUT where unable to articulate the reasons why you didnt like the idea ? Enter Jeff Atwood with his recent post on MVC tagsoup. It points to the very thing that bugs me about the MS MVC implementation. I am actually one of those people who likes the ASP.NET web form paradigm – along with user controls and server controls. Its pretty unique.

Public No-Confidence vote in the Entity Framework

Thomas — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:08:39 +0000

Feel free to sign this statement here by the Alt.NET community if you agree with it. I did.

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