Updated 3 Dec 2008 – I got an email from Artem Smirnov the author of Ivonna pointing out a couple of things, so I have updated this post Updated 3 May 2009 – I altered the code samples as the previous ones did not seem to work with Typemock Isolator 5.3.0 . I have previously written a post on using Isolator with Sharepoint, also Andrew Woodward has written a good and more detailed tutorial on the subject, so I don’t intend to go over old ground here. ...

Applications to attend Software Craftsmanship 2009 have opened, this is a free conference that aims to discuss ‘the “hard skills” that programmers and teams require to deliver high quality working software’. If you have not heard of Software Craftsmanship take a look at Peter McBreen’s book Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative well worth the read.

The next meeting is on the 10th of December at Victoria Hotel in central Leeds at 7pm as usual. The speaker is Gary Short who is speaking on Design Patterns. Come to this free event to find out more about this vital subject to developers in any language from an excellent speaker. As an added bonus we will all head off to Leeds Christmas Market, to have some wurst, sauerkraut and continental lager. ...

Typemock announced today a new product Isolator for Sharepoint – which allows unit testing of Sharepoint code without needing Sharepoint installed. Now this is something I have been using the full version of Isolator for of late, and there are more blog posts on the way from me, so watch this space. So if you are a Sharepoint developer this is an important product you should a least have a look at. ...

Another long day over the weekend at DDD7, but worth it. An excellent selection of sessions; I particularly liked Ben Hall’s on Pex and Jon Skeet’s on Linq. A big thank you to the organisers for putting on such a successful event. It was noticeably fuller than past events, as we know DDD7 filled up in about four hours. Maybe time for a bigger venue, but would we lose the atmosphere? The other option is for DDD style events around the country and to this end there were a few announcements yesterday. We already know about DD Scotland in May 2009, the new ones announced for Q2 2009 were ...

The call for speakers at the DDS event on the 2nd of May 2009 is now open. So get your session proposals up and see if there is any interest. I am not sure what I will propose, maybe something about testing Sharepoint

To license an installation of Typemock Isolator you run the Configuration tools and type in the key, you don’t get the option to enter the key during the installation. When I tried to run this tool today I got the error Now at first I thought it might be that I was on a64bit OS and it was looking in a portion of the registry for 32bit applications. However I was wrong it was far simpler than that. ...

I don’t recommend having automatic update switched on (which is the default) for Windows 7. Yesterday my Windows 7 install decided to install 20 updates. It rebooted and then rebooted again and again. My guess is that a driver updated and killed the boot process. It did try to go into the automatic fix, but this just said it could not fix the issue, maybe it was a driver issue. I could not find an equivalent to safe mode to try to delete the updates, so today I am re-installing. This time making setting a system restore point so I can rollback if the same happens again ...

I had to work unexpectedly from home yesterday, this has given me a chance to look at TypeMock Isolator and SPTypeMock to aid in the testing of SharePoint without the normal disturbances of being in the office. First thing I have to say is TypeMock is an amazing tool, OK it costs some money, unlike RhinoMocks, but it’s ability to mock out sealed classes that have no public constructors is essential when testing SharePoint (which seems to contain nothing but sealed classes with no public constructors). ...

At the XP Club last night I was pointed at a web site that contains a very strange guide to Ruby ”Why’s (poignant) guide to Ruby”. This is one of strangest language books I have read in a while, probably since “Mr Bunny’s Guide to Active X”, which was described in its own blurb… “This is the first technology book by Carlton Egremont III, author of numerous lengthy grocery lists (unpublished), one or two letters to his mom (unsent), and a doodle on page 117 of the Rochester Public Library’s copy of Moby Dick (overdue). Mr. Bunny’s Guide to ActiveX makes a lovely gift for the nerd who has everything, and is perfect for propping up uneven table legs. For the high-tech parent there is simply no better antidote to yet another bedtime reading of “The Velveteen Rabbit” or the “OLE 2 Programmer’s Reference”. Just like Carlton, you and your children will come to believe in a talking bunny, a befuddled farmer, and a technology called ActiveX. “ ...