development

NHibernate 1.2 to 2.0 migration

What kinds of considerations are there for migrating an application from NHibernate 1.2 to 2.0? What are breaking changes vs. recommended changes? Are there mapping issues? ...

Good laptop for Solaris development

I need to spec a laptop for some Solaris development work I've got to do. I need something that will run Solaris 10 reasonably well - dual core with 4GB of memory is the sort of thing I'm aiming at. Solaris is a little bit picky about device support, so I'm hoping someone in the SO community has a solid recommendation on what works real...

Any pitfalls developing C#/.NET code in a Virtual Machine running on a MAC?

I am considering buying an Apple MAC book Pro, are than any pitfalls developing C#/.NET code in a Virtual Machine running on a MAC? For this purpose, is it better to run Vista or XPPro? ...

Simple Object to Database Product

I've been taking a look at some different products for .NET which propose to speed up development time by providing a way for business objects to map seamlessly to an automatically generated database. I've never had a problem writing a data access layer, but I'm wondering if this type of product will really save the time it claims. I als...

Multi-site development

Most of the development teams I have worked with have been geographically dispersed often across several continents. What techniques and tools have you found effective when working with a team which does not sit together in the same office? ...

Where do I use delegates?

What are some real world places that call for delegates? I'm curious what situations or patterns are present where this method is the best solution. No code required. ...

Regex Testing Tools

Hi all, I know of The Regulator for testing regular expressions. And there's also RegExr for testing regular expressions as well. Does anyone know of other regex testing tools? Do any of these tools allow you to specify which RE engine you're testing against? I changed this question to community wiki ...

What free and preferably open source development tools for windows would you recomend?

Currently, I use MinGW for C/C++, Sun's SDK for java, and the Crimson Editor or Notepad++ for editing and Eclipse for my IDE. Microsoft limits what you can do with the code you create with the Express versions of Visual Studio so as far as I am concerned it doesn't count as free development tool. I see them more as a training tool for ...

What is in your JavaScript development toolbox?

I have to do some JavaScript in the future, so it is time to update my toolbox. Right now I use Firefox with some addons: JavaScript Shell from https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/webdevel.html Firefox Dom Inspector Firebug Greasemonkey Stylish I plan to use Venkman Javascript debugger as well as jsunit and js-lint. For program...

How much process do you follow on your own projects?

Do you follow a process at all? If so, which ones? If not, how do you manage the development cycle? ...

Best practices when "going dark" (or going solo)

I'm sure some of you would have read Jeff's Atwood's Don't Go Dark article. The gist is that it is anathema to go "lock yourself in a room" and perform a development task or project for long periods of time. The best practice would be to have a team (at least another person) with you, commit early and commit often, do your work iterative...

Linux Lightweight Distro and X Windows for Development

Heyall... I want to build a lightweight linux configuration to use for development. The first idea is to use it inside a Virtual Machine under Windows, or old Laptops with 1Gb RAM top. Maybe even a distributable environment for developers. So the whole idea is to use a LAMP server, Java Application Server (Tomcat or Jetty) and X Window...

Should developers worry about ageism?

Having worked in software development for 12 years, I've recently started to worry about ageism in the industry. Seeing I'm not too bad at what I do I've never really worried about where my next job's going to come from, but the more I look around me the younger software developers seem to get. Although I feel I'm now at the top of my p...

How to get your network support team behind click-once?

I'm trying to make the case for click-once and smart client development but my network support team wants to keep with web development for everything. What is the best way to convince them that click-once and smart client development have a place in the business? ...

Tips for working in a large library?

I'm currently working on a quite large library (5M lines of code, in C++ under VS2005, 1 solution and close to 100 projects). Even though we distribute compilation, and use incremental linking, recompilation and relinking after small source modifications takes between a few minutes (usually at least 3) and close to one hour. This means ...

Windows Vista Virtual PC-image for Visual Studio-development minimized

Which features and services in Vista can you remove with nLite (or tool of choice) to make a Virtual PC-image of Vista as small as possible? The VPC must work with development in Visual Studio. A normal install of Vista today is like 12-14 GB, which is silly when I got it to work with Visual Studio at 4 GB. But with Visual Studio it to...

How to get kids into programming

I have a seven year old son. He is pretty bright and I want to show him that computers are good for something beyond playing games. My end goal would be to have him use a language (See Related question) to develop a program he can show his friends or solve a problem. My question is how do I get started? I am fairly certain I will hav...

How do Programmers go about learning programming?

There are a lot of skills that needs to be acquired by programmers to create software in a professional way. My question is, how do programmers go about acquiring these skills. For example, to be a better ASP.NET programmer, one should have strong knowledge and skills on ASP.NET C# Database (like SQL Server / Oracle) OOAD and UML Conf...

Source control system for single developer

What's the recommended source control system for a very small team (one developer)? Price does not matter. Customer would pay :-) I'm working on Vista32 with VS 2008 in C++ and later in C# and with WPF. Setting up an extra (physical) server for this seems overkill to me. Any opinions? ...

Linux distros for Java Development

Simply, are there any Java Developer specific Linux distros? ...