Does .Net 2.0 make developers "dumber"?

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/does_net_20_make_developers_dumber.htm]

 

When .Net 2.0 came out, it had a slew of powerful new features that made many things easier. Some people have asked: "Does .Net 2.0 make us all dumber?" The thinking is that .Net 2.0's new power spoils us, much like calculators spoil many of today's kids from no longer being able to do basic arithmetic.

My answer is no - .Net 2.0 does not make us all dumber, for at least three reasons:

1. By simplifying certain tasks, .Net 2.0 frees up mental resources so that we can focus on other, more interesting things instead. This doesn't make a dev dumber, it just lets them focus elsewhere instead.
2. .Net 2.0 doesn't just take existing things and make them easier, it also breaks new ground such that you can do more with the same effort. For example - ASP.Net 2.0 introduces web callbacks - an alternative to postbacks. It's a standard tradeoff: callbacks are more powerful, but require more effort. This actually lets a dev be smarter, by making it practical for them to deal with more complex techniques.
3. Some things an average dev just couldn't do before - like web parts. Having this new power doesn't make the dev dumber, it just means that the same intellectual effort can go farther now.

There will always be a spectrum of smart, average, and below-average developers. As the technology continually grows, I think the trend isn't that the whole spectrum is getting dumber, but rather that it's getting more polarized. For example, .Net drastically lowered the entry-level for web programming (so less-smart people could start becoming web developers), but it also let you do more (so power users could do more).

Ego Star vs. Humble Average

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

There is an interesting conflict between skill vs. humility:

1. Software teams requires smart people
2. Smart people tend to be more egotistical (because they think they're smarter than everyone else)
3. Egotistical people can hurt software teams because they ruin the chemistry and are no fun to work with.

So, the problem is that a smart person helps the team, but smart people usually have egos, which hurt the team. It prompts the question, would you rather have a coworker that is an egotistical star, or a humble average? (Of course everyone wants the best of both worlds, but life affords very few of those).

I see pros and cons to all the options on the spectrum. If you're doing a highly-complex feature, you may need the skills of the egotistical star, and may just need to tolerate the ego that goes along with it. If you're doing more commodity-type work, the humble average guy could be sufficient.

Personally, I'd like a balance, but find teamwork to trump ego. Because in enterprise architecture, you're always on teams with other people, and getting along with those people makes a world of difference. I'd rather be 10% late, and appreciate the team, then 10% early and hate the job.

I also find it's easier to learn from humbler people because they're more willing to share ideas, don't take criticism personally, and put the good of the project ahead of their personal ambitions.

Questions that I'd ask when trying to pick a person for a team:

• Is this position on a team - will they be working with other people?
• Are the skills replaceable? A developer's whose skills are easily replaceable doesn't have the right to be egotistical.
• Can you constrain/redirect their ego to something constructive (such as convert it into pride of ownership for difficult components, which helps the team).

MSBuild: Read and Write from a File to a Variable

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

MSBuild lets you easily read and write values from files into variables. While you could write your own custom tasks to do this, MSBuild provides out-of-the-box functionality with the ReadLinesFromFile and WriteLinesToFile tasks.

You can read from a file into a variable:

    <ReadLinesFromFile File="Version.txt">
      <Output TaskParameter="Lines"
        PropertyName="Prop1" />
    ReadLinesFromFile>

This will store the contents of the file "Version.txt" in a dynamically created property "Prop1".

You can also write to files:

      <WriteLinesToFile File="myFile.txt" Lines="This is a test value." Overwrite="false" />
      <WriteLinesToFile File="myFile.txt" Lines="A second line." Overwrite="false" />

Interview Tips

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

I've had the privilege of giving a lot of interviews at three different companies. The ideal is to find a win-win combo: a good candidate that fits within a good team. Here are some random tips to help the candidate and interviewer.

Candidate

• You know that you are going to be asked certain questions, so be ready for them. You should have prepared, ready answers for questions like "What do you know about our company?", "What's the most difficult task you've done?", or "Why do you want to work here?"
• Be prepared to actually write code on a whiteboard. You wouldn't believe how many developers cannot write the 5 lines of code for something as simple as the textbook problem "return X factorial". Sure, they've coded before (or so their resume says), and they could probably solve it with Visual Studio, but still. The thinking is that if on a scale of 1 to 10, writing "return X factorial" is a 1, if the candidate can't even do that on a whiteboard without an IDE, then it's pointless to go farther.
• You want to show the interviewer that you can think, not just regurgitate facts. If they ask you a simple coding question, check if it's appropriate to "think out loud" so that they don't just see some final answer, but rather your intellectual process. This is also great for getting "partial credit" if your answer is wrong.
• Have a realistic expectation of your abilities. For example, I constantly see devs who call themselves "Senior .Net Lead Architect" for a 1 person project they did their first month out of school. It's especially scary if they can't even tell you what a design pattern is.
• Build up your technical confidence.
• Everyone has "project experience", and eventually they all blur together. Be prepared to emphasize your extracurricular activities.
• Know some of the industry terms and buzzwords.

Interviewer

• Have standard questions you can ask everyone, which lets you compare candidates against the same benchmark.
• Ask both technical questions, and behavioral questions.
• Show respect to the candidate: (1) It's only professional, (2) They may very well be a lot smarter and more experienced than you, (3) You may need them more than they need you - i.e. a smart candidate will have multiple job offers, why should they work at your company?
• Focus on concepts, not trivia. Any professional team recognizes that you can learn new concepts (especially with the technology constantly changing). Software Engineering is too deep to waste your time memorizing trivia from reference manuals. Who cares if you can list all 19 constructor overloads of Foo.
• Avoid the ego at all costs. Do not assume that the candidate is some helpless hack who is at your mercy for a job. I've seen people get an ego rush from having the opportunity to interview - they research some obscure trivia, and then hammer a senior candidate on it, and take a sense of pleasure in trying to "push around" someone who they really have no business to be in the same room with.
• Could you pass your own interview?

Foreach loop in MSBuild

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

Yesterday we mentioned how MSBuild can handle conditional logic. It can also handle looping using the concept of "batching" and ItemGroups.

<Project    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">        <ItemGroup>        <ExampColl Include="Item">            <Number>123Number>        ExampColl>        <ExampColl Include="Item">            <Number>456Number>        ExampColl>        <ExampColl Include="Item">            <Number>789Number>        ExampColl>    ItemGroup>    <Target Name="ShowMessage">        <Message Text = "Number: %(ExampColl.Number)"/>    Target>Project>

The first step is to make an ItemGroup - which is simply a group of items that you can potentially loop through. Each ItemGroup needs the required "Include" attribute. For a basic example, lets just set this to "Item". The power comes in that you can add your own custom attributes to the ItemGroup, such as "Number".

You can then reference (and loop through) the ItemGroup using "%(.)", such as "%(ExampleCol1.Number)". When run, the above snippet produces the following output. Notice the Message task being called three times - once for each item in the ItemGroup.

Target ShowMessage:
    Number: 123
    Number: 456
    Number: 789

Build succeeded.
    0 Warning(s)
    0 Error(s)

Time Elapsed 00:00:00.01

There's a lot more that you can do with Task Batching, but this is a helpful start. You can replace the Message task with any task you want, and use the '%' character in any attribute of that task. It's a lot cleaner than the DOS for loop.

Conditional Logic (If-Then-Else) in MSBuild

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

MSBuild provides the ability to do an if-then-else control structure, using the Condition attribute, which is available to every task. Simply put, the task only runs if the given condition is true.

An If-Then-Else means "if the condition is true, run the first statement, else run the second statement". This is logically equivalent to: If 'X' is true, run S1; If 'X' is false, then run S2. We can use the task's Condition attribute, with the ! ('Not') Operator to achieve this. For example, in the snippet below, if the variable "RunTask" is true, then the first line is run, else the second line is run.

    <Message Condition="$(RunTask)" Text="Do X" />
    <Message Condition="!$(RunTask)" Text="Do not do X" />

You can see a list of allowed conditional expressions in the MSBuild reference. It includes operators ( <, >, <=, >=, ==, !=, !, And, Or), parenthesis, and even an "Exists" function to see if a file exists.

The Benefits of Reinventing the Wheel

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

When someone else already makes a good, working tool, you may not want to reinvent the wheel and build a similar thing yourself. Of course we want to reuse code and not waste time repeating someone else's work. However, as an extracurricular activity, there can be benefits to creating your own version of an interesting tool:

• Great learning opportunity - You'll understand something better when you build it yourself. You can then also compare your solution with the industry standard, and check for general trends to possibly improve your programming (i.e. "I did it this way, but they did it that way... ah... that's why they did it that way.")
• A sense of personal accomplishment - you may a fun tool. That someone else already made a similar tool doesn't diminish your own adventure.
• An appreciation for the tool when you see how hard it was to write.
• The possibility that you can write it better.
• You can customize it to your unique needs.
• If the tool isn't free, you can now have your own copy that you don't need to worry about licensing for.
• It's fun to write cool tools - even if someone else already has. Especially when you're a younger developer, you need to start somewhere - you can't always write flashy new things that no one has seen before.