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Category Archives: Software

ASP.NET MVC

Teaching myself a little ASP.NET over the weekend.  Surprisingly vanilla ASP.NET seems to lack a lot of modern features found in other web frameworks.  I ended up running into the ASP.NET MVC preview and installed that.  So far I’m liking it.  There are a few rough edges I need to sort out.  I think I’m missing something because there has to be easier way to link up LINQ and web forms for CRUD operations.  I really like the LINQ syntax, it’s so damn intuitive.  Funny because it vaguely reminds me a lot of a quick Python framework I built around DBSlayer for my senior project.  Of course I still had to write SQL to get that working.

I’m well on my way with a Hello World 2.0 (Blog).  I feel lame writing a blog to learn the language, but it’s a well defined application and lets me focus on the code. :)   While I’m finding the MVC framework to be a major bonus, there’s still a lot of auto-generated .NET boiler plate all over the place.  Definitely not as lean as some other modern frameworks, but hey it’s ASP.

I think MVC Preview 2 was just released so there’s not a ton of information out there.  Scott Hanselman has some really helpful screencasts.  There’s also a helpful tutorial that got me started at ASPAlliance.

ECHO!

First post in a long time and it’s an echo.  How useless!  Still, I absolutely love this quote.  An article posted on Reddit about how to hire managers, it’s an interesting article and definitely worth a read.  Of course, the part I love is about programmer psychology.

Psychologists have studied how people have a higher opinion of their own abilities than others do. When they do something well, they tend to attribute it to an inherent trait. “I figured out how to write this tricky bit of code; I’m smart”. When they do something wrong, they tend to think it’s a fleeting condition “I forgot to check in that file. Silly me, I’ll remember next time.” Bringing their perception in line with reality will deal them an emotional blow. This is especially true of those whose self-worth is wrapped up in their programming ability, something that’s pretty common among those driven to become the best programmers. Don’t be surprised if they spend the rest of the afternoon staring at their screen in shock, feeling as if all their hard work and cleverness is unappreciated — even if you spent most of the review pointing it out and praising it.

This hit home hard, and I’m sure it hits close to home for others.  I often think about the mistakes that I make, I try and take some time to reflect on them in order to learn from them.  However, I am guilty of touting my triumphs and downplaying my failings.  We’re only human right?  Now thanks to this article, and it is the articles fault… ;-)   Any time I make a mistake I’m going to feel compelled to analyze whether I should knock myself down a peg for it, or attribute it to human nature.  I’d much rather accept that we all make mistakes and attempt to learn from it.

I do worry a lot about how others perceive my work.  I’m sure that each and every defect I produce has at least some bearing on their opinion of me, even if I’m only loosely connected to said defect.  I have yet to decide whether all of this stems from a lack of confidence or just a healthy sense of reality.  I’ll go with the latter. :-)

Learning JavaScript

I spent most of Sunday picking up the basics of JavaScript.  Overall it went pretty well, I even started writing a little Ajax application.  Syntax is very C-like, but the overall philosophy of the language reminds me a lot of Perl (a million ways to do one thing).  I found the following sites extremely helpful.

Starting JavaScript

The information is a little old on the site, but for picking up the basics it’s fine.  A quick read through and you’ll be well versed enough to start writing some simple things.

JavaScript Toolbox

This one was recommended to me.  I really liked the site, particularly the best practices portion.  As I said, JavaScript seems to have a million ways to do everything, so what’s the best way?  The site goes into detail on common JavaScript gotchas and programming for compatibility and maintainability.  The code samples are also very helpful.

As for ajax, there are some really good tutorials you can find at the bottom of wikipedia’s ajax page.  I’ll have to do some brainstorming in my free time and come up with an app to post.

Prediction: .NET is coming to Linux and OS X

WPF and WPF/E are the first step.  I watch a lot of Channel 9 videos.  In the past month or so I’ve seen not one, but two open admissions that Microsoft is looking at bringing C# and .NET to other operating systems.  Doing so would, in my mind, remove THE major barrier for .NET adoption.  Of course it’s possible they’d just bring C# over to support WPF.  Time will tell, but of course I’m hoping for full-blown .NET. :)

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