This is a question that brings out very strong beliefs on either side. On one side of the room are those who stand firmly opposed to writing tests to cover coded solutions. They claim things like “It costs more money to ‘waste’ time on writing tests….
Everyday we visit tens, even hundreds of websites. We type in a URL, hit enter and, like magic, a website appears. Yes, we know that the page is made up of HTML, this little piece had to go fetch something from the database to display my name and all the code someone had to write in order for the site to function properly. But do you ever think about what happens in the small amount of time between when you hit ‘enter’ and when the browser starts to render the page?
As a programmer there have been many times when I have found a bottle neck in an app I’ve written that comes down to waiting on some kind of input. Usually you end up needing the result of this input for the next step in your code and thus the wait is necessary.
When faced with a problem that needs to be solved with precision, no one would even consider not measuring carefully two, maybe even three times. Consider a carpenter building a bookcase the full length and height of a wall – he has absolutely no room to spare, he must be precise in the angles he cuts.
Developing web applications, there are scenarios and patterns which repeat over and over, day after day, when working with the underlying data. One of these scenarios which I see very often is when there are two or more collections with one-to-many or many-to-many relationships which require filtering or joining on some type of key to ultimately perform a computation that requires the parent and the child in a hierarchy.
On Friday afternoon May 09, 2014 the Mercury New Media team set off for Canoe Escape for our annual team event. Upon arrival each team member was handed their oar, life jacket and demonstrated the finer points of paddling. After our short tutorial we paired up with our paddling partner and headed for the river to begin our 4 mile adventure.
Over the last few years there have been scenarios that as a developer I’ve come across many times and today I thought I’d share some SQL specific scripts that I find myself needing every once in a while and I always have to go hunting for them. This post will consolidate some of the more commonly useful ones that I think will be valuable to other developers as well.
The base Visual Studio installation gives you enough functionality to get by, but I find that the use of a few Extensions really helps VS 2012 shine. Some of my favorites include:
As a young developer in an ever-growing world of software and technology I’m discovering that getting the proper certification is incredibly essential. Getting the appropriate certification not only highlights your bond to the .NET structure but most importantly helps nourish and define who we are as developers.
With 2013 behind us it is time to take a moment and look into the magic eight ball to see what the future in web has in store for us.