Here’s a fun little tip you can use in your SQL scripts to make them scriptable via the sqlcmd utility while still supporting SSMS. Say you want to make the name of your database configurable so you can script out the deployment of your database. You could do that with a script like this: 1:…
try-catch-FAIL
Stories from the trenches of software development.
Month: <span>September 2008</span>
Time to stand up…
I never intended to use this blog as a political soapbox, but here we are. I will at least keep this short. It’s time to stand up. It’s time to push back and tell those that are supposed to represent us that we’re not going to let them rob us. That’s all I’ll say, for…
Web.config magic: configSource and file attributes
Many of the web applications we create are deployed many different times, providing many different instances. Each instance is slightly different, but only in terms of configuration: they use different databases, possibly different sitemaps, different themes, and different terminology (via resource files). Aside from those things though, the applications are exactly the same. We want…
Interesting observation: C# vs. Ruby
CodeClimber has a neat post on how searches on C# compare to searches on Ruby. C# is clearly getting more searches (even before you factor in all the various ways people search for C#), but the difference is much more pronounced during the week. Maybe all us C# devs are getting burned out by the…
How to run a software development company (INTO THE GROUND) – Part 6
Oh yeaaaaaaah! It's Friday, and even though I'm busy as all get-out (which is actually related to today's HTRASDC article), I'm going to bestow the greatness of my writing upon your face. Enjoy! Do everything at the last minute Failure to plan == planning for success, or at least that's what I've heard from this…
Machine Learning: Why you should care
In the last post, I introduced the topic of machine learning. In this post, I’ll describe an example problem, discuss how you might go about writing code to address the problem, then discuss how you can apply machine learning to the same problem and get the computer to do the heavy lifting for you. In…
Why var is a very important keyword in a recursive JavaScript function…
I actually don’t hate JavaScript. I’m typically not a fan of duck-typed languages, and JavaScript has caused me no small number of headaches, but it has its uses, and it beats the alternative. I could be writing in VBScript, after all… Still, there are a few things about JavaScript that really, really tick me off. …
Peer Reviews
Peer reviews seem to be a source of seething hatred for many developers. I can sort of understand why (no one likes rocks being pitched at something they created), but they can actually be very beneficial if done correctly. This post will lay out the case for doing peer reviews as well as an approach…
What is Machine Learning?
I’m going to be doing some posts on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data mining over the coming weeks and months as I try to crank out a thesis. Since machine learning isn’t a topic that a lot of developers are familiar with, I decided it would be best to write up a brief summary…
How to run a software development company (INTO THE GROUND) – Part 5
Damn, we’re at part five already? You might think that I’d be running low on material by now, but fortunately I have witnessed a horrifying number of ways in which people have tried to run a software project, most of which ended in disaster. This week we’re going to touch on something that I’m still…
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