Category Archives: Pragmatism

Becoming An Independent Consultant

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Derick Bailey

After one year of a working with an amazing team and a great company at TrackAbout (well, 361 days. 4 days shy of a year), I am moving on. Starting on Monday, November 15th, I will be a self-employed consultant! … Continue reading →

Also posted in Consulting, Management, Ruby | 5 Comments

A Few Thoughts On IoC, An Idea For A different Type Of Container, And A Lot Of Questions

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Derick Bailey

With all the comments on my previous post, there actually is a lot of great insight to be had. I’ve picked up on a few underlying themes and several of the commenters were able to cut through the cruft of … Continue reading →

Also posted in .NET, C#, Compact Framework, Productivity, Quality | 28 Comments

Design And Testability

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Derick Bailey

In the line of business applications that I build, it’s considered good practice to use a test-first approach; Test-Driven Development, Behavior-Driven Development, or whatever you want to call it. Write a test, verify that it fails for the right reasons, … Continue reading →

Also posted in .NET, Behavior Driven Development, C#, Community, Principles and Patterns, RSpec, Ruby, Telerik, Tools and Vendors, Unit Testing | 37 Comments

Knowing when to ask

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Derick Bailey

It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, what your title is, or whether you are considered a leader in the team / project / company. If you don’t know yourself and when you need to ask questions, you’re going … Continue reading →

Also posted in Coaching, Management, Principles and Patterns | 2 Comments

Vendor Lock-In Vs. Best Of Breed Tools

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Derick Bailey

I posted the bulk of this on the Albacore group as a reason for my wanting to take Albacore down to it’s “core” as a suite of build related tasks (which I talked about in the Preview1 post). However, I … Continue reading →

Also posted in Continuous Improvement, Tools and Vendors | 7 Comments

Build Tools Roundup For .NET Systems

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Derick Bailey

It seems there is not shortage of build tools that are available for the .NET developer these days. Of course I’m quite partial to the Ruby + Rake + Albacore solution, being the big tuna behind albacore and all… but … Continue reading →

Also posted in .NET, Build Tools, Continuous Integration, Product Reviews, Tools and Vendors | 18 Comments

Adding Request / Reply To The Application Controller

Posted on April 15, 2010 by Derick Bailey

Back in December of 2009 I had a post on using various messaging patterns within an application controller as part of an application’s architecture. One of the patterns that I distinctly left out was request/reply. At the time I had … Continue reading →

Also posted in .NET, Analysis and Design, AppController, C#, Compact Framework, CQRS, Design Patterns, Messaging, Principles and Patterns | 4 Comments

Help! I’m Terrible At Migrating/Restructuring Code In A Test-First Manner

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Derick Bailey

I’ve spent the last day or so restructuring some code – specifically converting a WinForms form into a user control so that I can host the control in several different forms that need it. This involves changing the presenter for … Continue reading →

Also posted in AntiPatterns, Continuous Improvement, Craftsmanship, Model-View-Presenter, Philosophy of Software, Unit Testing | 11 Comments

Why I Write Automated Tests For My Code

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Derick Bailey

I started my journey of unit testing my code about 4 years ago… I had played with nunit prior to that, but I never understood the point and would delete my tests after I got them to pass… that was … Continue reading →

Also posted in Agile, Behavior Driven Development, Craftsmanship, Quality, Unit Testing | 3 Comments

Red/Green/Refactor, For The Right Reasons

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Derick Bailey

First, let me say this: WHAAaa???? something useful occurred on Google Buzz?! :) Ok, now that I’ve got that over with… there was a useful stream of comments over on the extended twitter reply network from one of my tweets … Continue reading →

Also posted in Agile, Analysis and Design, AntiPatterns, Principles and Patterns, Refactoring, Unit Testing | 11 Comments