In the previous entry, we explored how to clean up our interaction with instances of SPSite, SPWeb, and SPList objects. Logically, the next scenario that we’d want to cover is working with the SPListItem that we get back from the...
One thing that I’ve discovered is that it’s easy to write sloppy, hard to read code when SharePoint is involved. A lot of it may be due to the quick-and-dirty code samples out on the ‘Net and a general lack...
Ever work on a small project (say 5-8 developers, a few hundred thousand lines of code) and get the feeling that the codebase is unreasonably large and difficult to navigate or use/reuse? Ever notice that other people keep duplicating logic...
As I’ve been working on my current project, I’ve found that many freshman developers who want to get better often have a hard time navigating the huge amount of resources out there to improve their skills. It’s hard to commit...
As I’ve been starting on a new project recently, I’ve been delving into Mercurial (hg) as an alternative to Subversion (svn). I’ve been using svn for about 3 years now, and – for the most part – it has been...
I’m officially a fan: System.Linq.Expressions is one of the coolest namespaces. I’ve been working on a simple workflow engine as an example codebase for exploring different aspects of object oriented programming (inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, design patterns, etc.) for training purposes....
In working on some SDK-style developer documentation for FirstPoint, it occurred to me that we needed a way to create some all encompasing documentation which covered not only our code base, but also our markup, our JavaScript controls, CSS, and...
Nikhil Kothari has been blogging furiously about Visual Studio 2010 and C# 4.0. One of his posts covering the dynamic programming features in C# 4.0 raised some interesting discussion in the comments. Some like Francois Ward: I heavily dislike this....
I recently finished up Eric Brechner’s I.M. Wright’s Hard Code. One of the more interesting aspects of development and project management that he brings up is the concept of working depth first as opposed to breadth first. Too often, I...
One mistake that I see time and time again, even from experienced developers, is trying to model new ideas, new techniques, and/or new designs directly into a working codebase. In my own experience, I’ve come to find this to be...