The DevOps movement has been trucking along for over half a decade. We are breaking down silos, automating toil, and making life better for…
I’m generally not a fan of all the criticisms of “hustle culture,” but my developer Spider-sense is triggered whenever I see a company…
One thing that drives me crazy in this field is how some folks think it’s a weakness to look something up. While you should spend time…
All of your microservices would have their own database in the ideal universe. Unfortunately, enterprise development is not in the ideal…
Have you suffered on a project due to lousy tool choices? (“Tool” can mean many things, but in this context, we’re talking about developer…
I was recently at a (socially distanced) high school graduation party. Like most graduation parties, the older adults doled out a big…
Welcome to year three of my yearly technology predictions. The goal of this project is to publicly state predictions and gauge whether I’m…
During my travels as a developer, I find myself having the following conversations far too often. Have you seen any of these? Timid…
Image from Web Summit via Wikimedia Commons What can this tiny Japanese lady teach you about technology? This is Marie Kondo. She’s become a…
You may have noticed my site design has become a bit… sparse. That’s because I recently moved from a hosted WordPress solution to a static…
Last year, I did a post outlining my predictions for the next few years. It’s time to see how I did with my predictions. The reason I’m…
It’s fun to experiment, but you eventually need to get things done. I spent a good chunk of my last weekend working on a side project. I…
If you attended my Get The Boring Stuff Right tech talk, you’ll know that I mentioned a ton of different resources to update your skills…
The web is always changing. Every time I turn around it seems like there’s a new way to build user interfaces on the web. Whether it’s yet…
Being a developer is committing to a lifetime of learning new skills. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on grokking cloud…
Let’s say you have a table of events. Each event has a beginning and an ending date. How would you get a list of the events that happened…
One of the great things about modern development is how easy you can leverage code written by others. Package managers like NPM and NuGet…
Ever wish you could see into the future? I’d love to have known about Bitcoin eventually hitting 17k back when you could pick one up for a…
There are a few ways to implement a monolithic Angular application. The easiest way is to use the built in template. Visual Studio comes…
Building web applications is hard work. Not only do you have to build the application, you need to figure out where to host it. Ever want to…
When doing a technology demo, it’s important that everyone in the room can see your screen. This usually means bumping up your view to 15…
Have you ever worked on an application with a jungle-like class inheritance hierarchy? Everything in the app inherits from two layers of…
Like fashion, computing works in cycles. Things that were once looked at as passe come back with retro vengeance. For .NET development, the…
I’m a huge fan of ASP.NET Core. It’s a great iteration on the ASP.NET platform and it should be your default choice for any new web…
The next time you give a tech talk or presentation at work, show up early and start a conversation. It’s a great way to get things moving in…
In addition to the productivity benefits of using the right tool for the right job, it’s good for your personal development to learn new…
In an effort to improve my data analysis skills, I’ve been learning and speaking about the R programming language. Even if you don’t want to…
I’m really enjoying using R Tools for Visual Studio. It’s nice to learn something new (R) with something familiar (Visual Studio). I did…
Update February 2018 The fine folks at Microsoft now have a template that integrates Angular CLI and .NET Core. I used it on my last Angular…
Ever find yourself in high stakes situations where even the slightest miscommunication can bring everything crashing into the ground? If so…
I recently went on a hunt for Angular (formerly known as Angular 2) profiling tools. Angular is a fantastic framework, but the component…
Books The easiest one is to read books. Books are cheap and accessible. If you don’t have a lot of time to read, get yourself an Audible…
If you want to improve it, you need to measure it. We use profiling tools to get the insight required to find and destroy application…
Image By walknboston (Flickr: Gavel) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons The technology…
If there is a developer hell, one of the circles will involve the JavaScript toolchain. The JavaScript ecosystem is awash in tools, choices…
The technology landscape is exploding. New technologies, platforms, and tools are being creating at an ever-increasing rate. VR, AR, and…
As technologists, we are the vanguard of innovation. We’re at the forefront of technological innovation. Even if you’re slagging COBOL in…
I’m sure this is obvious to some people, but this issue threw me for a loop. When building applications in Angular 2, it’s best practice to…
TypeScript is a first class citizen in the Visual Studio universe. By default, Visual Studio will compile your typescript files whenever you…
The year was 1995. “Gangsters Paradise” topped the music charts. Pixar released Toy Story, the first wholly computer generated film. And, in…
What do traditional archers and old Linux hackers have in common? Terrible looking websites. I’ve recently started getting into traditional…
Mobile devices are taking over the world. If you are a web developer, you need to be prepared for a world where people spend the majority of…
Have you ever built something you’re proud of, only to have it torn to shreds when you show it your audience? Get burned in a code review…
We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters. Peter Thiel According to Peter Thiel, an amazing future lies ahead. All we have to do…
Hate mixing HTML and C# code in your Razor views? Work with designers who are markup ninjas, but scratch their heads at a view full of HTML…
Today, Microsoft kicked off Build 2015. Among the long list of exciting developments, Microsoft released the first cross platform version of…
Being an adult is hard. People are constantly vying for chunks of your attention. As you become more successful, you have to weigh lots of…
Staying well informed is important to every professional, but how do you navigate the sea of infinite content? How can you filter out useful…
If you’ve used ASP.NET MVC for more than five minutes, you’ve probably used the Html.BeginForm helper method. This method wraps your content…
There’s nothing like replacing a legacy software system to stoke the fires of self-righteousness. You get to pull some poor users out of the…
Last year, I created my first tech talk and delivered it to several venues. I enjoyed the experience, so I decided to produce a new talk…
If you missed out on my D3.js talk from last year, the fine people at MadJs recorded it.
The more I learn about software development, the more I notice the things I don’t know. Each tactic I pick up or lesson I learn just leads…
When I first started using OR/M, I looked forward to not writing boilerplate SQL code. As a lazy developer, I prefer to automate boilerplate…
Software developers spend most of their time taming chaos into orderly systems. Along the way, there’s often lots of random issues that can…
Have you ever wished that you had a manual for how to live the good life? A guidebook that will tell you how to make the best decisions. I…
Smartphone and tablet adoption has exploded in the past five years. This trend has encouraged me to start exploring mobile development…
I love to read. I’ve read over 40 non-fiction books in the past year (and all five Game of Thrones books). One of the problems I ran into is…
This is a text version of a talk I’ve performed. The best way to use this post is to grab the demo code and follow along. Demo Code: https…
How can a bunch of philosophers who lived over 2000 years ago help you become a better software developer? The ancient philosophy of…
Ever want to give a tech talk to your peers? I recently built and delivered my first tech talk and I’d like to share my experience. There…
I used to be a little nervous about doing technical interviews. Even though I spend much of my free time learning about technology, I’m…
Habits are like cron jobs for the brain. They govern a large portion of our behavior automatically. According to a study by a researcher at…
ASP.NET MVC is great, but one thing I’ve had trouble with is finding information. I’ve wasted many hours searching for documentation or…
I recently passed Exam 70-480. Despite the lack of official study material and information regarding what was on the exam, I passed the exam…