Debug and Release

Inspired by this post , I'd like to give some perspective on benefits that companies offer to attract and keep their talent. Disclaimer - this is not about my current job or any previous jobs I've had. I am thankful for the position I am currently in! Playing ping pong at lunch Keep your free lunches I don't want free lunches, nor do I want a pizza as consolation for working late hours to finish the project we are behind resources on. I'm an adult, and will brown-bag my lunch ( to save money ) and do the work that's asked of me. I'd rather have realistic goals for the amount of work that we need to do, and get the support (de-scope work, get more employees, etc.) if needed. Don't give me swag I don't need free t-shirts, or mugs or tickets to a basketball game. These are all fine things, but do this out of generosity, not as part of a benefits package . Orange swag Give me the compensation necessary to live off of - it doe...

What are you really passionate about ? Do you really know, are you drifting week by week hoping that magic wish gets answered? Is it a feeling, that  constantly changes ? Do you feel hopeless you'll never find your passion? I've been gone not blogging for a few weeks, and I think I found my passion (for myself, right now). I want to share with you what I found. Passion is the long nights Passion isn't something that gives you life, without taking some away. In Latin, passion means " to suffer ". To be passionate is to ask, what are you willing to suffer for ? Jesus Christ's passion was not for His sake, but for our own. While we will not have to suffer like Jesus, the suffering we have for our passions is real. For me, my passion comes with long nights after work. After I've spent a full day at work, I still manage to get sometimes up to 5 extra hours working on the side. I don't go into this saying, " Ugh, do I have to spend more ti...

To preface the article, I primarily work on, and prefer, back-end code. I've been involved in both web and software development for over 4 years now and worked with many front-end and back-end frameworks. New Twitter UI Before all of the UI designers that read this go out and riot and champion against me for saying UI redesigns are a waste of time, let me say that I do value design . I think at the bare minimum, a product or website needs to be usable , and if you possess a good eye and steady hand , you should feel compelled to create something that looks pleasing. David Just stop redesigning the UI all the time . UI redesigns, in my opinion, are a waste of time 95% of the time. Let me explain further. No one cares Come see our fresh new look ! What about our new  material design , come see! I'm sorry, but besides fixing the UI where it impacts the usability of your application, no one is raving about how a redesign makes the application any better. ...

Up your productivity game by using these two tricks you probably didn't know existed in Visual Studio. Being more productive F1 key Starting with the best, the F1 key. You didn't know this key did something did you, well, you'll be surprised to know that the F1 key opens up a help page on whatever you have your cursor on. Don't know what a keyword means or does, don't know what the parameters of Parallel.ForEach are, hit F1. Use that F1 key! Clicking the F1 key while your cursor is over the SameSiteMode as shown in the above screenshot, takes us to this page where we can learn more about the SameSiteMode. The task list For when you want to clean up your code base, open up the task list  and get on to fixing those bugs! The task list opens a window that shows all instances of your //TODOs (as well as other symbols in your code). You can open this window by going to View > Task List or (ctrl + \, T). Take this example. An example ...

There is really no other reason why you shouldn't be picking up these free programming books . If you don't already know where to get them, you will know in a few minutes. Packtpub.com Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Packtpub. How do I get them Create a free account at  https://www.packtpub.com Every day, visit  https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning and claim your free book. That's it! Enjoy! The books that are free are on rotation, so you never quite know what book you'll be able to read next.  During busy seasons, ie. Black Friday, Packtpub has tended to offer different promotions and I have seen the free learning page unavailable. Once the season ends, they are usually quick to resume the free book offer. Do consider purchasing a hard copy of the book or videos on the site, they can't offer these books for free and still be in business.

You've likely heard of Optimizely , or ABTasty , but what if you don't want to shell out money to do your own server-side testing? You know the benefits of server-side testing, it is invaluable . Whether you are a big shop, or small team, you can implement server-side testing today in your ASP.NET Core web application. Today, we will explore how to implement server-side testing in ASP.NET Core web applications with OSWTF . A/B testing Disclaimer: I am the author of OSWTF; it is based on work I have previously done working in an ecommerce team. The framework itself does not offer any analytics integration, as that is likely company/project-specific and can easily be added yourself. *Please be aware before the package gets released as a major release, the framework is subject to breaking changes. What is OSWTF OSWTF stands for O pen S ource W eb T esting F ramework. The framework is a very simple integration into your web applications to enable server-side testing c...

This is the easiest [and shortest] guide you'll ever find on how to choose a project to work on. Follow it to the T and you'll enjoy projects from now on. Thinking of a project idea The process Take some time away from [home]work and do something you enjoy . It can be anything. Think of a project that can help, enhance, or expedite the thing you already enjoy using what you already know how to do. Incorporate all of the requirements in your project if they aren't already there (ie. make your project use a database if it's required to do so in your project). Incorporate 1-2 extra things from this list and learn something new (teachers love that you tried to do something you were unfamiliar with). OCR Reading/writing files. Using AWS Lambda . A third-party library ( NPM libraries are good candidates, or other Javascript libraries ). A new language ( Rust ? Go ? Java ?). Create an API . Interact with social media through their APIs/SDKs. Slack ...

I love working in C#, plain and simple. C# gets the job done, but - in it's latest preview, it's becoming too terse. Let me explain. A 'nifty logo don't you say? Patterns Have you ever heard of them? Well, besides software design patterns  or if you are hungry, cookie patterns , there is something called pattern matching in C# 7 and it is pretty handy. If you've never used pattern matching before, you can check if a variable is of a certain type and assign this variable to a new variable in a single line. The example below explains how this will work. Using the is type pattern expression Perhaps I haven't given it much thought to make use of this yet, but this feature out there and it makes sense. There really isn't any indication that we are assigning a variable in the code, we aren't using an equal sign or semi colon on the line, but still, it is an easy concept to learn. This new feature in C# 7 is not any more complicated than a ...

Javascript tooling is a mess . Every time that I start a new application, I'm always asking myself how I need to setup my tooling. Thankfully, there is a sane way of setting up your tooling that won't make you want to pull your hair out once you set it up. We'll explore how to setup tooling for using NPM modules in your ASP.NET Core [2.2] applications with LibMan and Webpack 4. Modern logo of tooling The example will be simple, but sufficient, in order for you to add your complexity that is needed for your application. Source code For those that came for just the source code, you can find that right here . Overview We are building a tooling pipeline that will take NPM modules, and use webpack to bundle them. Using LibMan, we will move them into the correct directory so our ASP.NET Core application can serve them. An overview of our process we are building Installation We will be making use of webpack , LibMan  and the NPM Task Runner explorer  t...

In the midst of a new framework, AI capabilities, hacker-space conference, IoT devices, search algorithm, online privacy, and the rest we see everyday - I strongly feel we have blindfolds over our eyes and do not pay attention to the most valuable news that's always in front of us. We have limited time here on Earth . All of the techniques we learn, conferences we go to, projects we create will fade into dust in due time. I'm as guilty as many of you; the news of x or y grabs our attention and wrings us into the corner. We spend weeks or months in it, until the next big thing grabs our attention and off we go again. Like I have said before , humility not only can help you become a better programmer, but it can also improve your quality of life. Once you are humble, you become more grateful of your time and appreciate your life and tend to be more joyful. To help you in this regard, I invite you to play the token game. The token game A token The rules of this g...

Am I the only one who is skeptical clicking on ads I see online? Yes, I know it is the lifeblood of entrepreneurs , but I really don't care to view more than I have to. We all know the 7 +- 2 rule ; we have a limit of the amount of information we can take in at a single time. It's a fact. We are not infinite in our abilities alone - let's just let the computers do the thinking for us .   Inline Adsense ads While I recently tried to set up a more elegant solution, I wanted to share with you how you have the power to block ads (in case you didn't know already) and regain [more] control of what you are looking at online. Extensions This is the easy answer, just install Adblock Plus ( Chrome ). Adblock Plus on the Chrome web store Adblock does it all for you. Ads? No more. It's really a golden bullet. However, if you want to grow as a developer, sometimes it pays to try and do things in a different way in order to learn how more things work und...