Microsoft Office Lullaby

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/microsoft_office_lullaby.htm]

Somehow, after having three kids, I started singing this kind of lullaby (sung to the classic theme "Hush little baby"):

Hush little baby, don't say a word, Daddy's going to teach you Microsoft Word.

And if that MS Word does not spell, then Daddy's going to teach you Microsoft Excel

And if that Excel doesn't save the day, then Daddy's going to teach you VBA

And if VBA doesn't hit the mark, then Daddy's going to teach you how to program C#.

Blogging as a Legacy

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/blogging_as_a_legacy.htm]

I was casually chatting with a dev manager who had worked in the trenches for 25 years. He emphasized how a lot of developers spend their career without leaving a legacy. You work on a dozen systems, for different companies, and a decade later don't have anything external to show for it. Sure, you've got skills, 10-linear feet of obsolete tech books you've read, and the memories. But it's not as tangible as shipping actual products (like the devs who can say "I helped ship AoE2 - that was me!").

This hit home with me as I reach the 5-year mark for my blog. After 5 years of consistent blogging, I've written 430 posts and received hundreds of comments (many of them educating to me). There are a lot of obvious benefits to blogging, but after writing for years, what really sticks out to me is the legacy of blogging. I started blogging at CSC, blogged all through Paylocity, and continue blogging now at CareerEd. Ironically, my blog topics have evolved from hard-core development, to tech lead, to architecture, to more managerial-related tasks.

I can't show people any of the systems I've done (except for the occasional screenshot from a dusty tech doc), but as appropriate, I can share with them the archive of hundreds of blog posts. It helps motivate me to want to write for another 5 years.

Farewell Paylocity, Hello Career Education Corporation

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/farewell_paylocity_hello_career_education_corporation.htm]

I've had the good fortune to serve at Paylocity the last four years. Inheriting a legacy system, I got the opportunity to develope, contribute to process, grow as an architect, and work with a very classy team.

For a variety of personal and professional reasons, I'll be switching to a new company soon - Career Education Corporation. CEC has a noble mission - to help people with continuing education (something I have a passion for). They have both an online and brick & mortar presence. It's an international company with several thousand employees, and a lot of opportunity. I'm looking forward to this new chapter in life.

Developer Scrabble

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/developer_scrabble.htm]

My wife and I were playing a game of scrabble the other day, and she was cleaning my clock. I kept staring at my random set of vowels and consonants, and thinking "Couldn't I please just use developer buzzwords and acronyms?" I'd bet the board would end up looking something like this:

 

Some random things I noticed:

• Normal English words and developer buzzwords use very different letters. For example, normal English words always have vowels, and usually have lots of E's and A's, while having very few X's and Q's. Developer buzzwords seem the exact opposite (think SQL, LINQ, XML, XAML, AJAX, etc...).

• Acronyms by their nature are short. So, lots of 3 and 4 letter buzzwords.

• Because developer buzzwords use the rare (i.e. high point-value) letters like X and Q, you could really build up a high score.

 

Random quotes that could apply to development

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/random_quotes_that_could_apply_to_development.htm]

Here's a list of seemingly-random quotes that could apply to development. I don't recall the sources for each of these. Every now and then, it's good to have a good quote handy.

• "Talk is cheap."

• "Better to try and fail than to never try at all."

• "I prefer my way of doing it to your way of not doing it."

• "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." (good for showing how new tools can expand your thinking)

• "The pessimists may be right, but the optimists have more fun along the way."

• "You can be right, or you can be happy."

• "Give a man a fish - feed him for a day; teach a man to fish - feed him for life."

• "Consider it done." (very nice thing to say to your manager when asked to take care of a task)

• "Easier said than done."

• "At some point, you just need to jump into the arena."

LCNUG: Gorking the ASP.NET MVC Framework

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/lcnug_gorking_the_aspnet_mvc_framework.htm]

Yesterday, Derik Whittaker presented at the LCNUG about the MVC pattern. I had a last-minute family emergency come up, so I couldn't make it, but it looked good.

This is the fifth presentation at the LCNUG, almost half a year. It's been great to see the new group up and running.

Chicago - Codeapalooza was great

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/chicago__codeapalooza_was_great.htm]

I had the good fortune to be able to attend the Chicago Codeapalooza this last Saturday. It was an all-around success - about 30 speakers spread across five comprehensive tracks, hundreds of developers, vendor booths, good community interaction, and more. I'm proud that Paylocity could  be a sponsor. And the event was free.

I've always thought that the big thing about user groups aren't necessarily the tracks (which were good), but meeting other developers in the community. The talent level is always humbling. Several companies were actively recruiting - much better to meet a recruiter in person at a professional event than as one of a thousand random resumes online.

Our demanding field requires continual education, and free, local, interactive events like this are one of the best ways to break the ice, followed up with your own personal study.

Screen scraping the easy way with .Net

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/screen_scraping_the_easy_way_with_net.htm]

Sometimes you may want to collect mass amounts of data from many web pages, and the easiest way is to just screen-scrape it. For example, perhaps a site doesn't provide any other data export mechanism, or it only lets you look up one item at a time, but you really want to look up 1000 items. That's where you have an application request the html page, then parse through the response to get the data you want. This is becoming rarer and rarer as RSS feeds and data exporting becomes more popular. However, when you need to screen scrape, you really need to screen scrape. .Net makes it very easy:

WebClient w = new WebClient();
string strHtml = w.DownloadString(strUrl);

Using the WebClient class (in the System.Net namespace), you can simply call the DownloadString method, pass in the url, and it returns a string of html. From there, you can parse through with Regular Expressions, or perhaps an open-source html parser. It's almost too easy. Note that you don't need to call this from an ASP.Net web app - you could call it from any .Net app (console, service, windows forms, etc...). Scott Mitchell wrote a very good article about screen-scraping back in .Net 1.0, but I think new features since then have made it easier.

 

You could also use this for a crude form of web functional testing (if you didn't use MVC, and you didn't have VS Testers edition with MSTest function tests), or to write other web analysis tools (is the rendered html valid, are there any broken links, etc...)

 

Do you have time to blog?

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/do_you_have_time_to_blog.htm]

I enjoy blogging, so I encourage others to try and enjoy it too. I've met many people who say they'd like to blog, but "just don't have the time." I understand that we're all busy. I figure a single blog post can be small, with a few paragraphs, much like a big email. And, an average blog may have 2-3 posts a week. So, if you can cut out just one pointless email, every other day, then you'll have enough time to blog. And if you blog about what you're actively working on, then it's much faster, because the words, concepts, and code snippets are already at the tip of your tongue. Optimistically, there are ways to squeeze blogging into one's life.

Excuses for installing a game on your work laptop

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/excuses_for_installing_a_game_on_your_work_laptop.htm]

Of course work laptops are for work, and should only be used for "company purposes". So, how do some people justify installing games on their work machines:

• "It's part of the operating system - Windows won't run unless I install these games. Really."

• "By installing on my main work laptop, I'm using that laptop more, so I'm more familiar with how it works and I can more easily check work-related tasks (like email and IM, and things that require the VPN)."

• "These games have technical educational value, and are therefore not really 'games', but rather learning tutorials that benefit the company."

• "I'm not 'playing the game', I'm studying it to better understand how to make functional user interfaces."

• "I'm just analyzing the deployment experience so I can glean from it and apply it to our own product."

• "This isn't really a game, it's actually a test project that I wrote myself (such as with XNA or Silverlight)."

• "This game was built by one of our clients, so I'm just studying their products to help me conduct better client outreach."

I'm sure there's more.

Three year anniversary

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/three_year_anniversary.htm]

Jan 19th is the 3-year anniversary of this blog. I started back in 2005.

Some obligatory stats:

• Total posts - 244
• Total hits - about 715,000 - almost 3/4 of a million
• Total comments - 270
• Most popular blog entry - Multiple Onclick JavaScript Events on a Single Control - 23,600 hits.
• Most difficulty blog entry - Silverlight TruckWars - I spent a good chunk of time writing a Silverlight arcade game.

Some things to note:

• The popular posts are never what I expect. I spend 10 hours writing a detailed post, and it gets little traffic; I spend 5 minutes whipping out a brain-storm, and it gets a thousand hits. Ironic.
• User comments have been great. There have been some discussions on posts, some people who have added useful enhancements to a post, and others who just let you know that they're reading it.

This is also a good time to point out that in the upper right corner of this blog, there's a "Donate" button to the Lupus Foundation of America to help find a cure for lupus. If you've ever been helped by this blog, consider giving even a $1 or $5 donation to help people with Lupus.

Thanks.

Merry Christmas

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/merry_christmas_1.htm]

Merry Christmas for 2007, and a happy new year coming up in 2008!

 

Developer Jokes

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/developer_jokes.htm]

Here are two developer jokes, just for laughs. I can't remember where I heard these:

Interviews: A confident college grad is interviewing at a software company. When asked what sort of compensation he's looking for, the grad suggests a 6 figure salary, 5 weeks time off, and free tuition for a masters degree.

"No problem," replied the boss, "We even give you your own company car."

"Really, are you kidding?" asked the grad.

"Well, no... but you started it."

 

Time sheets: A manager was staffing for a new consulting project, and insisted that he needed a developer with at least 15 years industry experience. When he found himself staffed with a young kid, barely out of college, he told his director "You must have made a mistake, this guy is just a kid, but I need someone senior".

"Oh," his director replied, "my bad, I determined his age from the amount of hours he logged in his timesheet."

 

---

Living in Chicago and interested in working for a great company? Check out the careers at Paylocity.

 

Open up multiple tabs in IE7 from the command line

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/open_up_multiple_tabs_in_ie7_from_the_command_line.htm]

I had a need to regularly view a quick collection of web pages, somewhat like a dashboard. Rather than manually click a bunch of links from my favorites, I just wanted a single click to open all the pages. I know that you can automate IE from the command line to open a single tab, like so:

 

"%ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer\iexplore" http://www.msdn.com
 

... but I needed to open several tabs. I could then repeat this line multiple times, but that just opened multiple instances of IE instead of a single instance with multiple tabs.

 

MSDN blogger Tony Schreiner had a perfect solution using Windows Script Host (WSH). You can just have a single script open multiple tabs within a single IE instance, and then call that script with one click from the command line.

---

Living in Chicago and interested in working for a great company? Check out the careers at Paylocity.

 

Government Forms

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/government_forms.htm]

I recently had to submit a form to the government, and it lived up to its bureaucratic stereotype:

1. I needed to print out a physical hard-copy, and make a duplicate.
2. Unclear directions
3. No validation to ensure that I filled it out correctly.
4. I mailed the form, waited 4 weeks (no way to see what the status was)
5. I get the form back in the mail, with a letter saying that I missed one line on one of the duplicates, and please re-submit the whole thing.
6. I sent the form back in the mail... waiting.

It seems like this was how most processes used to be, and it makes me appreciate how convenient and fast web applications are today - online version, dynamic help, validate before you submit, and instant results.

Paylocity is hiring a QA engineer

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/paylocity_is_hiring_a_qa_engineer.htm]

If there's any sharp QA Engineers in the Chicago, IL area looking for a new job, my company, Paylocity (http://www.paylocity.com/) is hiring. This is a good environment - little politics, vibrant and growing company, great team chemistry, and a ton of learning and growth opportunities. We're a .Net development shop, primarily working on an ASP.Net 2.0 web application that assists clients with Payroll. I'm a developer, and from a developer's perspective, the ideal candidate would have a technical and automation background, and would be comfortable with questions like:

• How would you test the function IsEven (check here for some ideas)?
• How would you test Notepad or Excel?
• Have you ever needed to set up your own performance or UI testing framework?
• Do you like using tools and technologies to simplify and automate testing? Which technologies do you think are good for QA testers to know?
• How can you improve a process to reduce testing time (such as using automation for regression testing)?

QA engineers are vitally important, and there's so much more to good QA testing than repetitively clicking away at a website. For an opportunity to be part of a great team, just send an email to  tims#@#paylocity.com (remove the '#").

UPDATE: Description moved to here

Merry Christmas!

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/merry_christmas.htm]

Merry Christmas!

Different Types of Comments

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/different_types_of_comments.htm]

Programming enterprise apps and their supporting processes, I've used at several languages. Most of them have different ways to make comments.

Characters	Languages	Multi-line vs. Single-line	Characters
//	C#, JavaScript	Single	2
/*  */	C#, SQL, CSS	Multi	2,2
'	VB	Single	1
REM	DOS	Single	3
	XML, HTML	Multi	4, 3
<%-- --%>	ASP.Net	Multi	4, 4
--	SQL (single line)	Single	2

I didn't have any big dialogue on this, I just found it interesting - 7 different ways to comment code for a set of languages that are often used together for a common goal. I'm sure that someone with a strong Compiler background could explain the significance of multi-line comments vs. single-line comments, and number of characters involved to create the comment identifier.

Viewing the source of an Html File, even with the ContextMenu disabled

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/viewing_the_source_of_an_html_file_even_with_the_contextmenu.htm]

In IE, you can view the source of any file through either the context menu or tool bar. However, sometimes there are design reasons to disable or hide these. For example, you can prevent the content menu by putting this in the a script in the HTML body:

document.oncontextmenu=new Function("return false");

And you can hide toolbars by opening up a new window and passing in the appropriate options:

window.open(...);

However, even if a site does this, you can still view the source through the VS.Net debugger. Simply start debugging one of your own apps, then navigate to the target site in the address bar, and you'll see full source in the Script Explorer window.