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. “ ...
I am not a fan of blog posts that are just a repeat of an announcement on other blogs, but in this case I think it is worth noting that the TFS October 2008 Release of the Power Toys are out. The power toys are always interesting but the point of note here is the new shell integration for TFS. This means you can check in/out from Windows Explorer, thus in effect making it far easier to integrate third party products with TFS, like Dreamweaver or Expression Blend (OK not third party but has no TFS integration until version 3). ...
Next weeks meeting is at the Victoria Hotel in Leeds as usual at 7pm. It is going to be group discussion sort of session, the subjects being: Daniel Drozdzewski is going to present the future of the computing (based on the article read in recent New Scientist about processors built on logic gates utilising the chaos phenomenon) plus moderated conversation about design in software projects plus the usual gossip from the industry. ...
Whist at PDC and the VBug conference I have heard a a good deal of chat over the future of paying for conferences and user groups. This is in the light of all the PDC sessions being available on Channel9 in under 24 hours and that the content at the Vbug conference is also available at free events like DDD. The question boils down to can a person or company justify paying a good few thousand Pounds, Euro or Dollars to fly half way round the world when they could see the same content at home? In my previous post on the PDC I suggested it was worth it for the networking, and I still think this is so. However, I have heard an interesting slant on this from more than one person; this is go to the city were the conference is but not to the actual conference; just taking in the parties and maybe watching content via the Internet where available. ...