Oren Ellenbogen's Blog - Sunday, February 05, 2006

Sunday, February 05, 2006

I just found a bug in the new version of SchemaExplorer (3.2.4.797) at MemberColumnSchemaCollection.Contains(CoolumnSchema value) method.

CodeSmith

Posted by Oren Ellenbogen
05/02/2006 02:25, Israel time UTC+02:00, Comments [1] |

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Thoughts & feedback on Roy Osherove's audio interview with Kent Beck

Roy did a great interview with Kent Beck, an author of several books about XP\Agile development and one of the most influence figures in that industry. I tried to think about the answers I would give Roy if he asked me some of those question, so here are my answers and some short feedback about the interview itself:

Push yourself to your extreme.
I'm one of the folks Roy mentioned that tries to get better by testing new methodologies\practices like Pair Programming, Unit-Test-first code-after, daily build process (etc) when I have the chance of doing so. By saying that some of the techniques such as Pair Programming just couldn't work here in Israel due to our complex nature(intolerance and straight-hard-to-your-face-comments) is somewhat rude (see - I'm a good Israeli, no problem saying "hard comments" ;-)

) as the term "Pair Programming", IMHO anyway, doesn't necessarily mean working on the same code at the same time; It's about thinking and discussing about the same context and move toward the solution at the same time - something which I enjoy doing on my every day work and I'm familiar with many more programmers out there that practice this technique in their every day work.
I think that Kent gave a good answer: those methods DO work(even in Israel) - the context or definition of "success" is debatable and can go either way, but those methods serve a better all as our main goal is to be the best we can be, and XP\Agile techniques are just some more tools and ideas for us to become so. That attitude, the "extreme achiever-wannabe", is the one I'm searching of at people, and this is what I'm working hard on in order to inspire others.

The cold hard truth - one man can't(?) change an entire organization.
Every once in a while I hear(while someone just throws it at my face) the sentence "you're still young and naive, you can't change this\that\him\her" or "you've been lucky to work with those people; with my teammates you couldn't done it..."; I guess that I'm just one of those optimistic people which think that by doing your best and influence others by your positive nature will work (to some extent, as I mentioned earlier) in any given group of people unless this group is doomed for failure and are willingly accept it. Can one man can change the world? I guess not, but I would like keep thinking so as I know that this will give me the inspiration and motivation I need. The definition of success is bound to the "ribbon" you're attached to. As a programmer, your world is pretty small but you can definitely make it spin in the reverse direction if you push hard enough. It would be much more difficult to change the world of other team in your department, I just think that this shouldn't stop you.

"People want some hard answers which will inspire them to get better"

Roy - I can't agree more, and at the same breath, I can't disagree more on this phrase. You see, most of us want hard answers as we wish to believe that by applying other methodologies\actions\thoughts we're improving our-selfs and raising our bar just one inch higher in the path of becoming better; So I definitely think that hard answers for complicated question, in some of the cases(case = person&context), will create the wanted effect.

On the other hand, the more creative you are, the more "self-succeeder" you want to become - the less it will apply to you. Meaning, I don't want to get straight answers about "What is the right way to develop a 6 months project with 3 programmers and one team leader" and the reason is simple - any answer you'll give will be wrong, but at the same time it will be also right so I'm still at step one. As you get older you realize that there is no right answer, so reading a book, or asking Kent for his opinion is just another (great)source\idea\tool to add to you tool-box, nothing more. Showing your attentions and discuss about those hard questions with other co-workers can cause the required inspiration that people are so eagerly searching for.

General feedback:

Roy - I think that you did a great job "pinning" Kent to the corner and ask the really hard questions about XP\Agile development which can seem like empty buzzwords instead of real solutions to specific organization\projects\teams\context in the eye of the intermediate programmer. I can't say that I've learned something entirely new, but It sure made feel better about my grasp of software development and people management.

Kudos for your not-so-Israeli accent( :-)

) and for your time !

Feedbacks

Posted by Oren Ellenbogen
04/02/2006 02:19, Israel time UTC+02:00, Comments [1] |

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

TIP: (dasBlog) code with style

I'm using dasBlog "Insert Code" feature in order to insert some code to the post(strange, but true). Until now, my code was nicely highlighted but it was lacking of background color and some border to give it the proper attention it was required. After digging for couple of seconds in the dasBlog directory I found out that the page ftb.insertcode.aspx (under ftb directory) is in charge of highlighting the code. Here are the important lines (Notice the background color & border ! :-) ):

void parseButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
 AylarSolutions.Highlight.Highlighter h = new AylarSolutions.Highlight.Highlighter();
 h.ConfigurationFile = Server.MapPath("CodeHighlightDefinitions.xml");
 h.OutputType = AylarSolutions.Highlight.OutputType.Html;
 string result = h.Highlight(sourceTextBox.Text, languageDropDown.SelectedValue);
 result = result.Replace("\t", "    ");
 result = result.Replace(Environment.NewLine, " ");
 resultLabel.Text = result;
 codeText.Text = "" + result + "";
}

All you have to do is replace the line:

codeText.Text = "" + result + "";

With this:

codeText.Text = "" + result + "";

Now add the class into your template css and that's it!

* I'm using:

.HighlightedCode
{
    border-style: dashed;
    border: 1px Silver;
    background-color: White;
    margin-left: 10px;
    margin-right: 10px;
    margin-bottom: 10px;
    margin-top: 10px;
    padding-left: 4px;
    padding-right: 4px;
    padding-bottom: 4px;
    padding-top: 4px;
}

Sweeeeet !

dasBlog

Posted by Oren Ellenbogen
01/02/2006 05:18, Israel time UTC+02:00, Comments [0] |

CodeSmith 3.2 installation

I've just upgraded my CodeSmith version to 3.2; It went pretty well just until I've opened the CodeSmith Studio and tried to compile my template. I got a strange NullReferenceException in the CodeSmith.Engine.CodeTemplate constructor.
I thought about 2 reasons which can cause this behavior:

Maybe the CodeSmith Studio works with an old version of one of the dlls, for some unknown reason (unlikely).
I'm using a compiled dll as my CodeTemplate base class, maybe I need to recompile it again and then try to compile the template (more likely).

So I compiled my DLL (and did a quick restart to my computer, just to be safe) - now it works...

CodeSmith

Posted by Oren Ellenbogen
01/02/2006 10:25, Israel time UTC+02:00, Comments [0] |

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Refactoring our architecture

After a long meeting with Ken and Roee about our(SQLink R&D department) architecture, I decided to put it out on the table - maybe you can give us some better insights about some questions we brought up during our session. I'll start from the end of our session - this is the architecture design we thought about:

Design

Posted by Oren Ellenbogen
28/01/2006 03:22, Israel time UTC+02:00, Comments [4] |

NOTICE: publish comments on my blog.

I'm using the Captcha anti-comment-spamming-engine in my blog:

Some of you complained that after posting a comment you can't see it afterwards. This is caused due to a time mechanism plugged in the Captcha engine - after X seconds, the code becomes invalid and you have to insert a new one. In case that the Captcha will have code timeout - it will make you enter a new generated code simply by leaving you on the same page. So please make sure that after hitting the "Save Comment" you're on the main page and you don't have your comment at the bottom of the page, if so - enter the new code and click the "Save Comment".

Thanks.

@ff Topic

Posted by Oren Ellenbogen
28/01/2006 02:04, Israel time UTC+02:00, Comments [1] |

Friday, January 27, 2006

Best Practice: verify the safe cleanup of your unmanaged code

After elaborating on the topic on my first post (see comments), it's time to wrap the all thing up. As I've noted, the purpose was to brought up some points of interest about developing classes which wrap unmanaged code inside them. When I'm reviewing my teammates code, any usage of unmanaged code triggers me as I start thinking about all the scenarios of which the unmanaged code stays un-handled and therefore causes memory leaks in the application. One of the scenarios which can cause a memory leak was the one we've talked about(again, the code in the first post was only for teaching purpose, so this post will be more relevant), but this could be better handled by implementing "Dispose pattern" on the (wrapper)class.

.NET | Articles

Posted by Oren Ellenbogen
27/01/2006 01:33, Israel time UTC+02:00, Comments [1] |

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Exception in the constructor - a NO-NO !

Consider the following code:

* Note: this code was written for teaching purpose only and is highly not recommended in "real world" implementation.

public class CustomWriter : IDisposable
{
 private StreamWriter m_sw;

 public CustomWriter(string filePath, int numberOfLinesToWrite)
 {
 m_sw = new StreamWriter(filePath);

 if (numberOfLinesToWrite < 0)
 {
 throw new ArgumentException("What's wrong with you ?!!? numberOfLinesToWrite can't be less than 0", "numberOfLinesToWrite");
 }

 // Assume that I'm using numberOfLinesToWrite here...
 }

 #region IDisposable Members

 public void Dispose()
 {
 // Time to say goodbye
 m_sw.Close();
 }

 #endregion
}

And now, here is a simple runner:

using (CustomWriter cw = new CustomWriter(@"c:\oren.txt", 15))
{
// some code here...
}

This one works as expected and the StreamWriter is being cleaned as using calls the Dispose method.

But what happens if the path is invalid like "c:oren.txt" or maybe "c:\windows\system32\cdosys.dll" ??
Nothing much to tell the truth as the resource(StreamWriter) will die and fail to initalize - we're OK.

But what about this scenario:

using (CustomWriter cw = new CustomWriter(@"c:\oren.txt", -5)) // <-- Remember? "-5" is invalid argument
{
// some code here...
}

Now we're in trouble: The Dispose method is NOT called at all and the resource is running free on the memory street with no GC(garbage collector) police to hold him back (a little metaphor, why not?). Need I to say how BAD this case is ?!

To sum it all up: constructors should NEVER throw any kind of exception. If you have a case which you need to do some extra initialization that could throw an exception in certain cases - do it in a method inside the class (Initialize() sounds right).

* I'd like to give the deserved credit for Amir Engel(His blog is on its way, hold tight) for elaborating on the subject with me ;-)

.NET

Posted by Oren Ellenbogen
24/01/2006 05:14, Israel time UTC+02:00, Comments [8] |

Monday, January 23, 2006

CLR view: const .vs. readonly

A dear friend of mine, Shani, wrote a great post about the subject which I highly recommand; Pay him a visit.

.NET | Referrals

Posted by Oren Ellenbogen
23/01/2006 10:17, Israel time UTC+02:00, Comments [0] |

Break string into words.

I've written a method which will format any given string into a more readable phrase. This method can be quite useful if you're generating your code or building your API based on an outer settings like a config file, DB, Reflection etc. Here is the code...

.NET

Posted by Oren Ellenbogen
23/01/2006 06:49, Israel time UTC+02:00, Comments [0] |