July 2005 - Posts

Saturday, July 30, 2005 3:09 AM

.Math - Open Source math expression compiler in C#

Welcome to .Math, the Open Source expression compiler for the .NET platform written entirely in C#. Offering speed through compilation of expressions, the library allows for variable handling, an entire function library and the ability to add your own
Posted by RoyOsherove | 1 Comments
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Saturday, July 30, 2005 12:34 AM

Nice article: Agile Top-Down

"There's a recent thread on the Scrum list about how an executive or highly-placed manager could get Agile going. I've been one of  those guys, and I know a bit about Agile, and here's how I'd proceed. First, focus management attention
Posted by RoyOsherove | 2 Comments
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Friday, July 29, 2005 2:53 AM

Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" cracked in 24h

This in unbelievably and funnily simple Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit!
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Friday, July 29, 2005 2:50 AM

How many services does windows need to run?

None, it seems. (via SlashDot) Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit!
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Friday, July 29, 2005 2:11 AM

Unit test readability should not come in place of maintainability - they go hand in hand

Brian Button writes this post about a best practice he believes in when writing unit tests.   The main idea in that post is that when you use Setup and TearDown methods in your tests, you're essentially separating parts of the unit tests into 2
Posted by RoyOsherove | 1 Comments
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Thursday, July 28, 2005 10:40 PM

[Audio Interview] Randy Miller on MSF Agile and software modeling techniques

I chatted with Randy Miller, the guy who practically wrote MSF, for a very interesting half hour (due to technical difficulties we had to stop early). The interview revolves around MSF-  the Microsoft Solution Framework for creating
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Thursday, July 28, 2005 3:01 AM

Unit Testing Best Practices

Someone asked me about this the other day - there are currently no concrete set of guidelines for unit testing best practices (not talking about HOW-TOs, but about HOW_NOT_TOs). So it occurred to me that I've been keeping such a list on this blog for
Posted by RoyOsherove | 2 Comments
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Thursday, July 28, 2005 12:06 AM

The solution is out *there*, NOT on in my chat window!

Here's a small hint before you try to "chat" with someone on your MSN Messenger about solving a specific problem in .NET. It will save you (and them) a lot of time in a many cases. It may seem silly, but a lot of people don't realize that they can find
Posted by RoyOsherove | 4 Comments
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Tuesday, July 26, 2005 9:52 AM

[OT]The Friday Page

Just found "The Friday Page". Some disturbing stuff in there, but some of it's really funny. View at your own risk.. Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit!
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Monday, July 25, 2005 11:21 AM

[Article] The Test Feasibility Matrix

One of the toughest questions in projects that contain legacy code that would like to write unit tests from part of that code (it may need to change) are: "Where should I start?" When one of my clients faced this question a while ago I came up with
Posted by RoyOsherove | 3 Comments
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Monday, July 25, 2005 9:51 AM

XP Games links

Some links to various "XP Games" - small games to simulate Agile Development practices and benefits (via the XP Mailing list at Yahoo) The XP Game XP War Some nice games fro developers from Bill Wake Offing the Off-Site customer workshop materials Extreme
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Wednesday, July 20, 2005 9:48 AM

[OT] If you can't stand the heat, take your ThinkPad out of the oven

It might be a well designed commercial for an IBM ThinkPad, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. This is one of the reasons I got a ThinkPad: (Translated and paraphrased from Hebrew, but Nice picture int he article) "Michal Feldman and Dr. Mati
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Wednesday, July 20, 2005 12:03 AM

Resharper 2.0 for VS 2005!

If you're in love with Resharper as I am, you'll be glad to read that the new Resharper 2.0 public access download (beta beta!) is now supported in VS 2005 as well!!  and some very cool new features! (via Peter Provost) Share this post: Email it!
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Sunday, July 17, 2005 11:15 AM

TDD Workshop tomorrow!

If you'd like to sign up for the free basic Test Driven Development workshop tomorrow, July 18th, there are still a few places left. for more information on this workshop: http://www.agileisrael.com/Default.aspx?tabid=95   (You have to register with
Posted by RoyOsherove | 0 Comments
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Sunday, July 17, 2005 3:28 AM

Selling my soul to AdSense

I'm doing an AdSense experiment on my blog page on the the interview page at Team Agile. We'll see what happens, and if the ads are "good enough" and not too annoying. Let me know what you think! I wonder if putting AdSense in blog posts is a good idea
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Sunday, July 17, 2005 12:02 AM

[OT] What's inside the food we eat?

My wife is doing a paper for university on Morality in business. She's decided to explore the wonderful world of food additives and how they kill us slowly but surely(a lot of them, anyway). One of the articles we stumbled upon when searching for articles
Posted by RoyOsherove | 1 Comments
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Saturday, July 16, 2005 2:34 AM

Open for work during September(L.A or Bellevue)

It looks like I'll be attending the MVP summit this September, and I'll be looking to do a small time gig (speaking, training, consulting, development) during the week after that, in the hope of making it profitable enough for me to justify my going to
Posted by RoyOsherove | 3 Comments
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Friday, July 15, 2005 8:27 PM

My contests actually make a difference :)

I'm glad my little Add-in contest helped someone get to Redmond for a tour with their friends :) What other contests would you like to see? Geekiest Joke? Coolest Avalon App? A "Self Documenting Code" contest? "Best Software Development Horror Story"?
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Thursday, July 14, 2005 11:38 PM

[Audio Interview] Steve Cook -Software Factories and Domain Specific Languages

The first of several Interviews I managed to do during TechEd Europe:   I chatted with Steve cook for a very interesting hour about his role in the development of UML, the concept behind software factories and domain specific languages, and
Posted by RoyOsherove | 2 Comments
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Thursday, July 14, 2005 3:21 PM

Important:Need someone to help me with DotNetNuke

I need someone who has good DotNetNuke installation experience - the www.agileisrael.com site keeps falling and This is a community site, so whoever can help is helping a growing community here in Israel.   I'm not sure what the problem is:  
Posted by RoyOsherove | 5 Comments
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Thursday, July 14, 2005 1:40 AM

Spell it with Flickr Images!

  This is cool ! Spell whatever you want using Flickr Images :)   (via the Hebrew YNet blog)   Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit!
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005 3:14 PM

Geekiest joke ever

This joke courtesy of David Platt:   "What do you get when you combine Lee Iaccoca and  Dracula?"   "Auto-Exec bat" Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit!
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005 4:03 PM

Bloggers call to action: Fight comment spammers by moderating comments easily with .TEXT

Right now the best way I have to fight comment spammers is to moderate all comments. That means that automatically, any comment on the blog is not shown unless I specifically allow it to. If you have a .TEXT blog, you can easily do this as well. If we
Posted by RoyOsherove | 8 Comments
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005 2:16 PM

Looking for an architect for a medium project

I'm looking for an architect for a 5 week project. Good people are hard to find. Do the math.   You don't have to live in Israel to do this. You may need to get on a plane to get there, though..   You need to know .NET and Java at an Architect's
Posted by RoyOsherove | 3 Comments
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005 4:24 AM

Visual Basic 1.0, all over again

Looks like we're getting back to our roots, people. VB 1 is here to stay! :)   Actually, it seems like a pretty nice GUI specification application. I wonder how it will fare in my next agile project.. (via TSS.net) Share this post: Email it! | bookmark
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Monday, July 11, 2005 9:38 PM

Fixing MSDN's bad DPAPI examples (And what's DPAPI anyway?)

DPAPI (Data Protection API) is something that most developers still don't know enough about. The good news is that working with it is much easier with .NET 2.0 and VS 2005, but in the meantime, if you want to work with secure data (encrypted), using DPAPI
Posted by RoyOsherove | 2 Comments
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Monday, July 11, 2005 12:03 PM

I might be in L.A in October, and open for consulting/speaking engagements

It looks like I might be in the neighborhood of L.A this October for several weeks. Possible things I'd like to do while there: Speak at a user group or two about Agile/Regex/.NET stuff Consult/Train on Agile/.NET Have a blogger/geek dinner? So, If your
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Monday, July 11, 2005 1:58 AM

Performance vs. Testability and semi-virtual method calls

I won't try to sit here and say that the issue of performance vs. testability can be summed up in one blog post (or a full article for that matter). However, it's an important one and during my consulting gigs I've come across some interesting questions
Posted by RoyOsherove | 3 Comments
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Monday, July 11, 2005 12:21 AM

Udi Dahan - MVP, finally.

Congratulations to Udi Dahan on getting his Solutions Architect MVP award! Udi has been speaking at user groups for a long time now and has an interesting blog where he posts his thoughts on architecture and software development. He's a great guy and
Posted by RoyOsherove | 0 Comments
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Sunday, July 10, 2005 11:50 PM

Upcoming Audio Interviews from TechEd Europe

TechEd Europe is Done. Here's a great summary of some of the sessions and the overall spirit of things. I've been pretty busy networking and getting to know many of the speakers I've always read or heard and wanted to get closer to. It was hard, but by
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Friday, July 08, 2005 11:56 AM

Sessions done at TechEd

I just finished doing all my sessions and chalk talks at TechEd. phew. I didn't imagine it would be so demanding physically (the mileage you walk between sessions is huge!). I've gotten feedback scores on all of them - and came out just above average
Posted by RoyOsherove | 2 Comments
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Thursday, July 07, 2005 7:55 PM

Another Semi Israeli Blogger

Another semi-Israeli Blogger about .NET out there: Yaniv Pessach.He lives in Redmond. A Microsoftie? Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit!
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Tuesday, July 05, 2005 4:10 PM

Some Teched Pics

Some photos from day 1 of TechEd: There are some beanbag places like this - just sit down and wi-fi your way home. Very nice.   There are a few dozen PCs like this: Pick up the phone, press a "New Call" button in Outlook and you've got a long
Posted by RoyOsherove | 2 Comments
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Tuesday, July 05, 2005 3:46 PM

TechEd: David Platt on Smart Clients Vs. Browsers

It's the first time I've been to a speaker lounge in TechEd (and 2nd time in TechEd at all, for that matter) and boy there are some interesting people in here. Phone posted later. For now, David Platt about Smart Client Vs. Browser:    "InProc
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Sunday, July 03, 2005 10:39 PM

Congratulations, Ohad. Twofold!

Congratulations to Ohad on his newborn, shira! Ohad just got his Security MVP as well, so that's double reason to be glad :) Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit!
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Saturday, July 02, 2005 2:40 AM

Agile Israel News & Updates

If you haven't been to the last Agile Israel meeting in June, here are some things announced there:   Fixed meeting date The Agile Israel group has a fixed date each month. The group meets on the fourth Monday of each month. That means the next
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Saturday, July 02, 2005 12:58 AM

Rhino.Mocks v. 2.0 Announced. Yes, it's a Mock Object Framework.

Ayende has announced that he's released Rhino.Mocks v. 2.0: his own version of what he'd like in a Mock Object framework. I haven't yet got a chance to try it out, but it certainly sounds interesting! "Rhino.Mocks is an attempt to create easier way to
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Saturday, July 02, 2005 12:13 AM

Dictionellisense

OK, never mind. I don't have the time or energy to build this, but maybe one of you can. And earn billions of dollars: Dictionellisense: Type the beginning of a word in Word , press CTRL+SPACE and have a list of words starting with that word appear and
Posted by RoyOsherove | 5 Comments
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Friday, July 01, 2005 10:45 PM

William Safire's Rules for Writers

I found a quite funny tidbit today by reading the weekend papers, where it was translated into Hebrew. The English source is pretty nice as well!:   William Safire's Rules for Writers: Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should
Posted by RoyOsherove | 2 Comments
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Friday, July 01, 2005 4:22 PM

How to see the TechEd US sessions online

Here's a simple way to view the recorded sessions from TechEd US from your browser, even if you didn't attend TechEd. Let's say you browse the breakout session catalog and you see an interesting session like :   "ARC313  Patterns for Service-Oriented
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Friday, July 01, 2005 1:05 PM

Nice PDC Contest Entry from Steve Hebert

Steve Hebert has a very nice contest entry about why he should go to the PDC. Why didn't *I* think of a poem?? :)   Update: OK, I just found out that Brenden has a pretty darn innovative PDC post as well. Guess I should have waited a bit! "I wish
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