Some thoughts on DevOps
It’s now six weeks since I started at my new job, and I’m really enjoying it. Returning to .NET has felt like a homecoming in many ways. Even though I’ve been quite critical of some of the things that...
View ArticleAn update on Lambda Tools
A little under year ago, I started work on a new open source project to manage deployment of serverless code to AWS Lambda. This grew out of a task that I’d started at work, where we had a number of...
View ArticleIt’s not just an opinion, it’s scar tissue
Software developers such as myself often have strong opinions about how code should be written. While some people may be tempted to dismiss these as “just an opinion,” the truth of the matter is that...
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First impressions of JetBrains Rider
Up until recently, if you wanted to develop in .NET, your options for which IDE to use were pretty limited. Your choice was basically Visual Studio or … er, Visual Studio. Sure, there are one or two...
View ArticleProductivity suggestion: stop using the mouse
I could write a long, rambling blog post here with anecdotes and examples, but instead, I’ll just get straight to the point. If you want to see significant productivity gains, and avoid having...
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Just how clean is Uncle Bob’s Clean Architecture?
A colleague asked me the other day what I thought about “Uncle Bob” Robert C Martin’s Clean Architecture. It’s admittedly not something to which I’ve given much thought. I’ve always had a lot of...
View ArticleThe state of IOC containers in ASP.NET Core
One of the first things that I had to do at my new job was to research the IOC container landscape for ASP.NET Core. Up to now we’ve been using the built-in container, but it’s turned out to be pretty...
View ArticleWhich .NET IOC containers pass Microsoft’s tests?
Updates: 4 May 2019: Grace now passes all Microsoft’s tests as of version 7.0.0. Updated other containers to the latest versions. Since my last post on the state of IOC containers in .NET Core, I’ve...
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A brief history of pointless mappings
Throughout my career, I’ve worked on many projects, in .NET as well as with other platforms and frameworks. One particular practice that I’ve encountered time and time and time again in .NET, which I...
View ArticleA must-watch talk for every .NET developer by Udi Dahan
No matter what your preferred software architecture is — whether it’s n-tier, CQRS, Clean Architecture or whatever — if you’re a .NET developer, you need to watch this video. No exceptions, no...
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The vagaries of humans and other living beings
The title of this post is a quote from my school report when I was thirteen years old. My headmaster wrote about me, “His mind is better attuned to exact subjects such as Maths and Physics than to...
View ArticleSorry, but I won’t watch your video
From time to time, when I’m discussing or debating something online, people send me links to videos — usually on YouTube — that they expect me to watch in support of whatever point they’re arguing....
View ArticleHow not to stop Brexit
For better or for worse, the Conservatives under Boris Johnson have won the General Election with a majority of either 78 or 80, depending on which way the result in St Ives turns out. This means...
View ArticleOn the “reproducibility crisis” in science
I’ve had two or three people tell me about the “reproducibility crisis” in science in the past few months. The most recent such comment was at the weekend, which coincidentally came right at the time...
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Finding bugs in your code quickly using git bisect
git bisect is one of my favourite features of Git. It is a binary search tool that lets you quickly track down the revision that introduced a bug. Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to be all that well...
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Light speed
As you will no doubt be aware, the speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 metres per second exactly. It always has been, and it always will be. In fact, so confident are physicists that it has...
View ArticleThe time I forgot about the speed of light
The Fallacies of Distributed Computing are a set of eight assumptions, originally noted by L Peter Deutsch and others at Sun Microsystems, that are commonly made by programmers and architects who are...
View ArticleAccurate and honest metric weights and measurements
My height is 1 metre and 78 centimetres. I refuse point-blank to quote that in feet and inches. My weight, as of 12:30 on Saturday 19 August, is 79.8 kilograms. One again, I don’t care what that is in...
View Article“Seven plus nine is not six”
I can’t remember what the exact question was, but I do remember that it involved adding two three-digit numbers together. Let’s just say it was 247 + 389. Which, as any reasonably intelligent seven...
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Power-only micro USB leads are a thing
So I took delivery of a new Arduino Micro at the weekend. Since this is my first foray into Arduino development, naturally I had to download and install the Arduino IDE and then plug the thing in. So...
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