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More Ways to Avoid the Second System Effect

Dare Obasanjo had an interesting post yesterday on the Second System Effect in software development. For those who are unaware, the second system effect is a term first coined by Frederick Brooks in The Mythical Man Month . It deals with (in general) Read More...

SQL CLR Configuration - A Head Slapping Moment

This post is basically a reminder to a future me. The client I'm working with right now (basically an ISV) is using SQL Express as part of their project. And included in their database are a number of CLR stored procedures. In other words, the stored Read More...

The Cost of Migrating from VB6

Recently, a question regarding the cost associated with migrating from VB6 to VB.NET was asked by one of our clients. Since that is a question whose answer has a broader appeal than just to the asker, I thought I would replicate my response here. It should Read More...

An Old Problem is New Again

I ran into a problem yesterday that brought back memories. And not the good kind of memories either. I'm doing some work using TypeConverters. In particular, I'm creating a Windows Forms control that functions in a manner similar to a PropertyGrid, but Read More...

WPF Found a Home!

The more I see about Silverlight, both 1.0 and 1.1, the more I realize that WPF has found a client to service. From the moment I heard about XAML and WPF, I questioned where it was going to fit in the real world. A large part of the 'coolness' of XAML Read More...

Computer Canada Feature Article on Employees as Assets

The April 20th edition of Computer Canada had a feature article on (generally) the asset value that employees bring to a company. I mention this because, as it turns out, I'm quoted in the article. I believe that documentation is not the solution to the Read More...

I'm sensing some battle lines being drawn

I’ve gotten my hands a little more dirty with SQL 2005 over the last couple of months. I’ve used CLR triggers and stored procs to implement some functionality that would have been difficult to do using T-SQL. I’ve worked with XML datatypes Read More...

Getting out of the Longhorn Habit

One of the problems with keeping one eye on the next version of software is getting too comfortable with the name. I still say Whidbey instead of VS.NET 2005 and it will take me a while yet before that problem goes away. And Microsoft has just added another Read More...

VB6 Support Coming to an End

Courtesy of Julia Lerman , I am reminded that mainstream support for VB6 comes to an end on March 31. Now contrast that fact with the results of a survey that found over 50% of shops are still using VB6, a fact I blogged about here . Does anyone else Read More...

Putting it into Perspective

One of the dangers of being a consultant, especially one who focuses on cutting edge technology, is that it's easy to get wrapped up in a small, insular world. In my case, that would be .NET. And at this moment in particular, Whidbey, Yukon and Indigo. Read More...
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