Concurrency and Coordination Runtime

Microsoft is developing library that is going to streamline concurrent programming. You can watch it and read about it The library is still a little bit messy for me but it seems to be interesting. Especially I like the idea that you can execute an action only when two or more values are available and you do not have to check it. The library will tell you when it happens. But once again API is not very handy and it needs to be improved.

Who is the best coder?

It's obvious - Poles
:)

Keep DRY

I hate "copy and paste" operation when I code. Today I found out what the official name of avoiding this activity is. DRY – Don’t Repeat Yourself.

The more questions you ask during interview the better job you get !!!

I do not agree with every single sentnece but I like in general Joel's point of view. If you want to hire me then especially pay attention to "Four Ways To Use The Joel Test" section ;);

Do not fix every single bug - that's true!!!

Surprisingly, it’s really true. We don’t live in perfect world and software isn’t going to be prefect. Obviously we don’t like war, poverty etc. but anyway our world seems to work and the same rule should be applied to our software because in fact it’s part of our world. More about this topic you can find on the website of very clever guy whose name is Eric Sink

Service Packs for Visual Studio .NET 2003 and 2005

What can I say, great move from Microsoft :). More about that here

IE embedded in Firefox

If you are big fan of Firefox then this extension is a must :) https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=1419

Coding like writing a book

If you write better code then it's just easier to read it.
Just have a look at below examples and you will know what I am talking about.

Code	Sentence that appears in my mind
public int GetTotalCost(DataTable products) { int totalCost = 0; foreach (DataRow product in products.Rows) { totalCost += (int)product["Price"]; } return totalCost; }	For each product that is in products get its price and add it to the total cost.
public int GetTC(DataTable dt) { int tc = 0; for (int i = 0; i < dt.Rows.Count; i++) { tc += (int)dt.Rows[i]["Price"]; } return tc; }	For each i in range from 0 to dt.Rows.Count – 1 get ith element of dt.Rows and get its price. Then add the price to tc.

Using OR mapping tools we can even replace DataTable with ProductCollection and DataRow with Product.

Last days of "Kurt Cobain" - movie

If you are by chance in Dublin then it's worth spending some time for movie of Gus Van Sant. Short overview of it you can find here.

LINQ - .NET Language Integrated Query (C# 3.0)

Quite nice paper about incoming release of C# 3.0. I am really impressed.

Mono 1.1.9 released

They are so close to 1.2, so close :). Here you can read about 1.1.9 release.

Afraid of Mono?

You don't like Linux because it's free only then if your time doesn't have any value? No fear, you can always try Mono using readonly version of Linux where everything is in place. You don't need to download/install/configure anything. Just have a look at Monoppix. It's worth spending a few minutes on it.

Framework Design Guidelines. I feel that's amazing book.

Framework Design Guidelines book is worth reading. Why? Just have a look at the list of contributors. It's amazing.

Again about Web Project in VS.NET 2005 Beta 2

I think they know that they have made some architectural mistakes but they do _not_ want to tell about that laud. Don't miss comments I think they are the most valuable part of this post.