So How Do You Improve Yourself? I started reading Apprenticeship Patterns a few days ago. It started with the notion of mentorship, and it struck me in the weak spot, because that’s what I’ve been thinking a
software design Abstract enough Programmers tend to think there is something special about them. However, a vast amount of IT jobs out there is mostly about business automation and solving auxiliary tasks, with client software being just
targetprocess How we build Targetprocess Preface For the last 2 years my professional career have been diverging further and further away from the path it was set on early. I’ve started as a desktop application developer a
How to set up a modern web app and stay sane Long story short, I had to create a modern web app. Actually, it was an HTML page prototype for our new feature. Basic layout and a fairly complex JavaScript to check our design
Are you ashamed of your API? I’ve been integrating some older modules of our codebase into a new one recently, which naturally involved finding the colleagues with the respective knowledge of those modules and asking them questions. It’
books On Book Libraries My grandparents used to have a huge home library in their old house. My parents had a smaller one, most of the books were either borrowed from their parents’ libraries or were purchased
software design Your code sucks So you are sitting at your desk wondering how come your beautifully- and carefully-thought abstractions have turned into an ugly monster, and why your precious codebase smells like a giant mess. You may
visual design On flat design The flat is the new black. You’ve probably noticed that the flat is the most trendy thing in the mobile and web design topic these days (however, the true hipster may tell
dropbox Windows 8 - How to automatically save screenshots to Dropbox I have always been frustrated by sharing screenshots taken on my PC. Back to the old days, I had to follow the “Press the Prt Scr, open the image editor, press Ctrl+V,
nuget Silverlight Unit Testing NuGet package Silverlight Toolkit has several NuGet packages (Core, Input, Theming, etc.). Unfortunately, Unit Testing Framework, which comes as a part of downloadable toolkit version, was not available for the fellow NuGet users. Until now.
async Async sequential workflows В последнее время всё чаще приходится сталкиваться с задачами, требующими выполнения последовательных асинхронных операций. Примером может служить загрузка файлов на мобильном устройстве. Учитывая что телефон может работать на слабом мобильном соединении, нам вряд
.net How to generate error log from nested exceptions. Working on error logging for my new application I’ve realized that I always use the same pattern when it comes to converting actual exceptions into a text form. And since I started
windows phone How to extract version number for your WP7 app from assembly information Pretty straightforward, but just in case.. Here is the snippet: public string GetAppVersion() { var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(); var name = assembly.FullName; var nameComponents = name.Split(','); if (nameComponents.Length >= 2) { var versionComponent
async Task Commands revisited Half a year ago I blogged about using TPL with MVVM in a test-friendly way. My solution turned out to be pretty handy, though it was far from being perfect. In this post
late reader Secondary tile backward compatibility Just in several hours after LateReader v.1.2 being published, I received an error report saying that “No XAML found at the location XXX”. Wait, but that’s an old URI, used
sql server ce Saving your time: how to work with large reference databases on WP7 In the previous post I showed how to load the large SQL Server CE database on WP7. However, if you are working with a read-only reference database, deploying it to the phone or
sql server ce Loading large SQL Server CE databases on WP7 Recently I ran into an issue when trying to load the large database (approx. 50 mb) from isolated storage on WP7. Whenever I tried to query the Data Context, I got the following
rx Building cool animated tiles with Rx I have a small WP7 project called Summarize. It is a fun math-based game (check it out for free). It has a nice effect of loading tiles. Several people has asked me how
mvvm MVVM + TPL + Unit tests UPD: This implementation didn’t work as well as expected, please read the follow-up article. Recently I’ve faced an issue with writing unit tests for view model commands that use Task Parallel
visual studio Tip for 1-click indentation settings changes in Visual Studio I work at several projects at a time, and I have different settings/requirements concerning the code style for each of them. The main issue is ‘Tabs vs. Spaces’ option – the first project
mvvm Building advanced MVVM commands, Part 1 If you follow the MVVM pattern while developing your WPF/Silverlight applications, then you are probably familiar with DelegateCommand (or RelayCommand, as it is called sometimes) model. In brief: it is an implementation
silverlight WPF/Silverlight visual states with DataTemplates Consider a common task – you need to switch between different screens in your application, that represent various states (e.g. Normal/Loading/Error). How are you going to implement this? You can start
wpf WPF Explorer TreeView with SelectedPath binding While working on one of my projects, I had to implement a control for displaying file system. I found pretty good articles over the web (“A Simple WPF Explorer Tree” by Sacha Barber
