Daily Links 23/06/2008

DockPanel Suite
Create dockable windows for your winforms applications ala Visual Studio

Microsoft to take Silverlight offline eventually, says exec

Nice summary on the features of Resharper
(scratching the surface mind you :) )

Software Development and Programming Podcasts

How to get up to speed with Team Foundation Server

SCRUM and Agile Programming using Continuous Build System
brief summary on what's involved doing a SCRUM sprint.

10 reasons why SQL Server 2008 is going to rock
1) is reason enough - intellisense! :)

TFS Code Review tip
tip on viewing (and doing the review on) only the changes made to a file since last check-in

What, the first computer programmer was a woman?!
...and developer of the first compiler...a woman
...so all us geeky guys owe the fairer sex a little more than we thought :)

Daily Links 20/06/2008

DevExpress has released Beta 1 of it's FREE Silverlight DataGrid
* Data Grouping against multiple Silverlight Grid columns
* Data Sorting against multiple Silverlight Grid columns
* Comprehensive Summary Computation support against multiple Silverlight Grid columns
* Column Movement
* Column Resizing
* Column Auto-Width
* Row Editing
* Row Preview (with animation)
* Template Support (for cell content, cell editing, row preview and headers)
* Auto Height Support for cells, headers, and totals.
* Virtual StackPanel Row Container (simply means we are able to handle an unlimited number of rows)
* Focused Row and Focused Cell
* Multi-Row Selection
* Cell Text Wrapping
* Vertical/Horizontal Lines
* Multiple column types/editors
The Source code is also available.

CLR Fun Stuff: How is my C# code converted into machine instructions?

We Don't Need No Architects
Making a case for the software architect

To JSON or not to JSON?
A comparitive performance look at Json Serialization vs standard xml serialization using WCF 3.5

ViewModel Pattern in Silverlight using Behaviors

Silverlight wallpaper
...for all the silverlight geeks out there

Daily Links 18/06/2008

Firefox 3 released!

Free open-source charting controls for silverlight

Free Datagrid (with source) for Silverlight from DevExpress
Keep and eye on this page for release details

What a developer needs from their manager

Scrum in 90 minutes - the presentation

Silverlight 2 Beta 2 basic ClientAccessPolicy.xml file

Silverlight Cream
Handy Collection of silverlight articles (cont. updated)

Silverlight Articles on .NET Slackers
latest mostly to do with silverlight animation

Prefix-casting versus as-casting in C#
...was wondering about that :)

RefCard to the 23 original GoF Design Patterns
requires dzone registration

Keep your .config clean with external config files

Need to convert video?
Check out these links

Killer Tools to Get The Most Out of Your USB Thumb Drive

Lies we tell kids

Daily Links 10/06/2008

Synch google calendar with outlook
$30 / year price tag :|

Upgrading to Silverlight Tools Beta 2 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta

Fixes for Silverlight 2 Beta 2 install / Visual Studio hassles

DocProject 1.11.0 RC
Works with SandCastle May Release (when it gets released)

MSDN Code Gallery
Handy for keeping up to date with code / utilities available for M$ software development products

Good article on using mock objects in unit testing

GhostDoc
Auto-generate xml documentation in C# code based on method name and paramters via a short-cut key. What I found really nice was that if you change the parameters / names etc., and press the short-cut key, it automatically corrects the xml documentation above the method definition. It also allows you to add custom rules to make the generation more intelligent.
Use this in conjunction with DocProject & Sandcastle, and you have a comprhensive code documentation system that has minimal impact on the productivity of the development team :)

I've come across some justifying leaving debug="true" in their asp.net web.config files for detail error message reasons. Here's why you shouldn't

Mobile Phone: XML Contacts Backup
"Useful for export, modify and re-import mass contacts files. XML Contacts Backup has nice interface very friendly and easy to use. It's always good to have your contacts backed up, why not in XML format for better accessibility and editing"

Daily Links 09/06/2008

Podcast from Alt.NET on adopting Agile

Planning poker
A tool that facilitates the planning stage of agile development

Scrum in 5 minutes

TDD Tips: Test Naming Conventions & Guidelines

Agile: Tools vs Books
some handy links in the comments to books on agile

Manage your database migrations (multiple DB support) from .NET code
Other .NET DB migration tools to consider

Velocity: Microsoft's Distributed In-Memory Cache
Still in early stage if development - touted to challenge in-memory applications like memcached

SWF2XAML

Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview

What's changed in Silverlight 2 Beta 2
I was disappointed to see that they didn't solve the UserControl inheritance issue - here is a work-around (although you can't see the UI in the preview designer, so it doesn't help that much)

Silverlight 2 Beta 2 download links

10 tips for working from home

The .NET Framework 3.5 Commonly Used Types and Namespaces poster

Daily Links 04/06/2008

Reharper 4.0 RC released

Why Enterprise Architecture is a Joke

Open source C#.NET applications

Agile adoption: Why isn't this stuff working?

Is Automated Software Testing Enough?

Propagating the ActivityId to a WCF service

On founding a software company - Rules, regulations and red-tape

Silverlight support for fullscreen apps

Some Great Free Winforms Controls - Krypton

10 Object Orientated Principles

A New Kind of Tiered Architecture

Castle ActiveRecord
ORM framework built on top of NHibernate. Simplifies persistence syntax :), but decorates objects with persistence attributes :|
All you wanted to know about ActiveRecord Part 1 & Part 2
Castle's ActiveRecord: Not for the Domain Purist in you...

Daily Links 02/06/2008

free icons

programmer's bill of rights
old post, but still relevant

Announcing the release of Microsoft Source Analysis for C#
"his tool is known internally within Microsoft as StyleCop, and has been used for many years now to help teams enforce a common set of best practices for layout, readability, maintainability, and documentation of C# source code"
although if you have Resharper, you already have access to all of this functionality
HowTo: Configure Microsoft Source Analysis

Resharper was moaning at me for declaring a loop scope variable before the loop (old C++ practice), so I hunted around as to why (doesn't declaring a variable inside a loop impact performance?)
Found this article: basically, declared inside or out, the same IL is generated under the hood (because variables are passed in the method header) - so it's better to declare inside the loop, for readability and scope reasons.

SQL Server Programming Hacks

Silverlight links post