Mar 29, 2010 Posted by John MacIntyre

Hey #region haters; Why all the fuss?

I hear a lot of programmers saying #regions are a code smell. From programmers I don’t know to celebrity programmers, while the development community appears to be passionately split.* The haters definitely have a point about it being used to hide ugly code, but when I open a class and see this, it just looks elegant to me. Now none of these regions are hiding thousands of lines of ugly code,... read more

Mar 25, 2010 Posted by John MacIntyre

Large Application Estimation in 2 Weeks

This is post 2 from a 7 part series entitled Technical Achievements in my Last Project. My role in this project started out by being asked to assess the existing project, provide insight into options to move it forward, with one of those options being a rewrite*. An estimation was needed for the rewrite option, so I was given 2 weeks to do it. This post explains how I was able to pull off this massive... read more

Mar 22, 2010 Posted by John MacIntyre

Technical Achievements in my Last Project

I’ve wanted to write this series for a long time, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Now, however, with my contract ending soon, I feel if I don’t write some of this down, I will never find the time, and it will be lost forever, which would be disappointing since I feel there are some really interesting things I did on this project which could benefit others. This isn’t about the kludges needed to fix... read more

Mar 19, 2010 Posted by John MacIntyre

The CRUDLAFS Technique for Software Estimation

I have always, like so many other programmers, had a problem with software estimation and costing out a software project. Most of my career was plagued by software estimates so bad that I made significantly less money on my independent projects than I did at my low paying day jobs. This was not the reason I was working through my vacations! The turning point came when I realized the CRUD acronym... read more

Mar 17, 2010 Posted by John MacIntyre

7 Features I Wish C# Had

…I couldn’t come up with 10 things I hate about C#, so I’m going to settle for 7 features I’d like to see. There may be good reasons why we don’t have some of them, but here’s my list anyway…

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Mar 8, 2010 Posted by John MacIntyre

When to start looking for another job

Last week I listened to Seth Godin’s audiobook Linchpin. It really resonated with me and I had a few significant insights. One of the interesting ideas he promoted was the idea of ‘gifts’. A gift as he explains it, is any additional work above and beyond what is required as part of the ‘transaction’. The transaction is fulfilling your end of the bargain for their end of the bargain. Seth Godin explains a... read more