Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo

• Thank You - CodeBetter.Com

  This will be my last post on CodeBetter.com. For almost a year now I have had the opportunity to share the blog space with some amazing minds in our industry. I am greatly honored to have had the opportunity to blog with CodeBetter, even for a short time. I am even more thankful for all of the people that I have had the opportunity to share with during my time here. If you are curious about what I am upto, you will still be able to catch up with me on my blog : http://www.jpboodhoo.com/blog . I have been crossposting to both CodeBetter and there for my entire time here, so there will not be any difference in content for the past year. Develop with Passion and keep CodingBetter!! Posted May 02 2008, 12:24 PM by bitwisejp with 4 comment(s) Filed under: General

• Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

  Everyone who knows me will know that I can tend to ramble on about the topic of this post. I am a big proponent of trying to encourage people to stretch and really push to achieve dreams that they have identified that they want to see come to fruition. I could ramble on about this topic and share my own thoughts and ideas with respect to how I personally went about making dreams a reality for myself and my family; instead I would like to share a video presentation from an amazing computer science professor named Randy Pausch. I can't stress enough the importance of outlook with respect to approaching every situation. This man is dying of pancreatic cancer and he still has a passion and fire that he wants to use to light up the lives of the people that he comes into contact with. Though I don't agree with all of the points that he makes in the video, the man is truly an inspirational teacher, and the life lessons he has learned to get to where he is are truly awesome. I have to say a special thanks to Perry Neal for taking the time to send me the link. I watched the video on my second monitor at work, and then went home that same evening and watched it again with my wife. Three points in the video really stuck a chord with me and I hope they will resonate with you long after you watch the video: Brick walls are not only there to make us realize how much we want to achieve a goal, they are also there to keep out the others who are not willing to break through to their achievements. You have to decide whether you are a Tigger or an Eeyore. Your outlook on life and the situations that you are placed in will greatly affect the outcome and potential realization of your own dreams. As someone who wants to impact kids with respect to getting them fired up about potential careers in software, the ALICE program looks like a phenomenal resource. This video is an absolute must see, and I think you could potentially look at transforming your life if you allow some of the ideas and techniques this man is sharing to permeate your very core!! Enjoy. Posted Apr 30 2008, 06:01 PM by bitwisejp with 3 comment(s) Filed under: General

• Nothin But .Net Toronto (May 19th - 23rd) - Last Call

  There are just a little over 2 weeks left to register for the Toronto session of Nothin But .Net. If you have not heard what past attendees have had to say, take a look at a small sample of some of the comments from the the last course in Austin,TX: I absolutely loved everything about this course. It will undoubtedly be one of the most memorable experiences of my life… well worth the money.   As advertised, this course was a very intense experience that stretched my programming knowledge and gave me may new techniques to apply to my current development. In addition, it offered a new approach, Behavioral Driven Design, to software development that I believe has the potential to increase productivity dramatically. Not to take anything away from J.P. as a developer, he is teaching techniques that I believe any programmer can learn to make programming easier. By raising the level of abstraction, he focuses your effort on small parts of the code so that coding seems almost effortless. Also, by letting the specifications drive the development process; his coding style encourages tight implementations without excess baggage. I think that the practice of object-oriented programming with some basic design patterns would move the Microsoft any development community a long way towards creating maintainable software that would change overall quality to the point that broken software would no longer be considered normal   I can’t say enough about the quality of this class. I have never attended a class, whether it was a week long training course, seminar, self study, or a college level class that was more valuable to me as a programmer. This class has been a very good investment into my career that will pay for itself many times over. The cost of this class was a steal! JP is a first class professional and his class mirrored that professionalism. It was obvious that he wasn’t trying to cut corners and milk out the most profit. This class was not just about knowledge transfer, but about being passionate about programming and taking your skills to the next level and how to actually do it.   This is one of the best trainings available. I think everyone should take this course as this provides very useful pointers towards becoming a better developer. I think this course has made me more focused than before on my dream towards becoming a better developer. If you want to break out of a rut for a week, come and spend it with other professionals who are seeking for ways to improve themselves both professionally and personally!! You can register here: http://jpboodhoo.turnstilesystems.com/ProgramDetail.aspx/NothinButNetTorontoOntario Develop With Passion!! Posted Apr 29 2008, 01:47 PM by bitwisejp with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Training

• DevTeach is less than 2 weeks away

  In case you did not know DevTeach will be coming to Toronto for the first time this year!! Are you familiar with DevTeach? If you are, then you know that you have to prepare yourself for excellent content filled presentations; most of all, get ready to spend a great week chatting with some amazing presenters and attendees who are passionate about growing as people and professionals. If you are curious to see if there are people you may want to chat with (from the speaker perspective) then check out the following page: Speakers If you register and you see me at DevTeach, please take the time to introduce yourself!! Develop With Passion!! Posted Apr 26 2008, 08:41 PM by bitwisejp with no comments Filed under: Presentations

• Press On

  I was just listening to one of my favorite podcasts (sorry, not anything remotely technical) and the title for the newest track caught my eye as it is definitely something that I try to encourage everyone to do: The title of the mix is Press on with the following description: Press on to start, press on to keep from stopping Good advice for anyone who wants to find satisfaction in what they do. Develop With Passion!! Posted Apr 25 2008, 02:52 PM by bitwisejp with no comments Filed under: General

• Good to see my thoughts "varified" by someone else!!

  Looks like Ilya Ryzhenkov of JetBrains shares my same thoughts with regards to using implicitly typed local variables!! It is an interesting read that you may want to check out here. Develop With Passion!! Posted Apr 23 2008, 05:12 PM by bitwisejp with 1 comment(s) Filed under: C#

• "The Dream Giver" - Giveaway Take 2

  Having had such an amazing response from the last offer (who would have thought people liked free stuff!!). I thought I would throw this out there again and offer a gift certificate to buy this book to the first 3 people who express interest. In order to manage the avalanche of responses, if you do not receive a response from me by end of day tomorrow, assume that you were not one of the first 3 respondents. The following blurb, is the content from my original post about The Dream Giver: Having recommended this book to a couple of friends I thought I would take the time to write my 2 cents on what could potentially be a life changing book for many people. While reading this book it continually reminded me of the wonders that God has in store when you step out of your comfort zone to follow "Your Big Dream". For the people reading this blog who do not care much for the Christian influence in the book, don't let that discourage you from what could be an amazing read and inspiration. I am positive that you will still be able to read the book and empathize with a lot with the trials and tribulations of the main character as he pursues his big dream. Read the following blurb that will hopefully get the engines cranked for you to go out and read the book: _________________________________________________________________ Are you living your dream— or just living your life? Welcome to a little story about a very big idea. This compelling modern-day parable tells the story of Ordinary, who dares to leave the Land of Familiar to pursue his Big Dream. You, too, have been given a Big Dream. One that can change your life. One that the Dream Giver wants you to achieve. Does your Big Dream seem hopelessly out of reach? Are you waiting for something or someone to make your dream happen? Then you’re ready for The Dream Giver. Let Bruce Wilkinson show you how to rise above the ordinary, conquer your fears, and overcome the obstacles that keep you from living your Big Dream. You were made for this. Now it’s time to begin your journey. ________________________________________________________________ The first 3 people to email me with interest in this book will receive an amazon gift certificate in the amount required to purchase the book. Are you ready to begin you journey? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have to reiterate that I do not profit in any way shape or form from any profits relating to the sale of the book. I truly believe that this book is one of many that has the potential to transform lives. If you are ready to start stepping out of the land of familiar into the unknown then ping me back and get ready to start stepping through the invisible wall of fear to pursue your big dream(all of these terms are shamelessly pulled from the book!!). Live With Passion!! Posted Apr 23 2008, 04:44 PM by bitwisejp with no comments Filed under: General

• So Long Slickrun

  For the longest time I have been running both SlickRun and Launchy on my machine. I kept both as I had not updated my copy of Launchy in a while and I found that slickrun was just much better for launching folders in Explorer. Having had my eyes opened at the last course in Austin, I have now completely removed SlickRun and am completely running using Launchy. The old launchy interface required me to hit tab before I wanted to initiate folder navigation, which is why I still kept slickrun kicking around. I am happy to say that is not the case anymore. Posted Apr 23 2008, 04:11 PM by bitwisejp with 7 comment(s) Filed under: Tools

• Agility@Code Magazine

  The current issue of Code magazine is focused on the application of agile practices. I had the honor of being included with some very well respected developers in the Agile space and contributed a small MVP Corner article titled: Individuagility. The article is a bullet list of steps that an individual developer can take to start down the road of improving their craft. It is a list that I have been able to apply in mentorship scenarios with great success. I am sure that there are other points that I could have mentioned, but you need to consider it one of many routes to arrive at the same destination: A desire for continued improvement in the realm of software development. While you are reading the current issue of Code make sure you check out all of the other amazing articles that can serve as a great way for people to expose themselves to ideas that they may not yet be familiar/comfortable with. Develop with Passion!! Posted Apr 23 2008, 12:23 AM by bitwisejp with no comments

• Got var?

  I had a couple of interesting discussions at the recent MVP summit around my preference to using the var keyword in my recent set of codebases. I argued that people who are already in the habit of expressively naming their variables are going to be much more open to dropping the extra "noise" of specifying the type on both sides of the variable declaration. Having been exposed to dynamic languages (Ruby) has definitely altered my perspective with regards to considering this: IList<Customer> listOfCustomers = new List<Customer>() Much more noisy than this: var listOfCustomers = new List<Customer>() As I strive toward more readable, intent revealing code, I find myself looking at the intent behind the usage of the variable coupled with a meaningful name, vs the actual type. In reality, I find the the argument to not use var is a moot point in a static environment that provides you with all the information you need once you hit the "." How do you var? Develop With Passion!! Posted Apr 22 2008, 05:02 PM by bitwisejp with 38 comment(s) Filed under: C#

• Alt .Net Seattle - Parting Thoughts

  This past Alt.Net experience was amazing as always. I am continually blown away by the level of passion that is exhibited by all attendees. Every single person in attendance comes ready to share and learn. I enjoyed talking with a lot of new faces and spending (too short) time with friends that I have not seen for a while. It is particularly awesome for me to see the growth that is occurring in people as I reconnect with them after 1 year of not chatting with them. It is truly amazing the distance a person can travel with a bit of focus and determination. Even though the conference was going on, I got to spend a considerable amount of time with my family also. On the evening of the second night, we went out to go and see the Forbidden Kingdom with Jackie Chan and Jet Li. The movie was excellent, and served as a great way to break up the Alt .Net event for me. If you are thinking about attending an Alt.Net event, I encourage you to not hesitate to attend/organize one in your local area. This is not a community of people who think they are better, it is a community of people who are continually trying to become better software developers. The ideas and thoughts are an aggregate of concepts that are not yet considered mainstream by a majority of the .Net community. It is particularly encouraging for me to see the increased level of Microsoft involvement at each successive Alt .Net event. I made a comment that it was particularly interesting that the venue (Digipen) happens to be one of the leaders in churning out top quality innovative game developers. The perfect place to host a group of people who are striving for innovation and creativity with respect to problem solving in the software realm. Hopefully I will see some of you at an Alt .Net event in the future!! Develop with Passion!! Posted Apr 21 2008, 11:56 AM by bitwisejp with no comments Filed under: General

• Nothin But .Net Austin - Recap

  What can I say. I could not have asked for a more fabulous group of people to have as a class. The week was full of coding madness, resharper jedi magic, VimFu, and most importantly - amazing conversation between a group of people who are passionate about self improvement!! It was awesome to have the help of Mo as a great as my TA for the week. He saved me countless numbers of hours by taking care of a bunch of administrative tasks as well as ensuring that the flow was not interrupted whenever machine issues would come up. Finally, it was excellent to have Scott Bellware come in and give a session on Behavior Driven Development. All of the students were introduced to behavior driven development over the course of the week, as that was how I was teaching them to write their tests. It was excellent to have Scott come in to reiterate and reinforce some of the ideas and implementation behind BDD. Austin is a beautiful city, and I look forward to hosting another course there sometime in the future!! Develop With Passion. Posted Apr 21 2008, 11:38 AM by bitwisejp with no comments Filed under: Training

• Score 1 For Eliminating your hands flight path

  For the last couple of weeks, I have been integrating Vim and a complementary set of tools into my development toolkit. I am firmly on board with what the pragmatic programmers say: "Learn a good editor, and learn it well!!" I am thoroughly impressed with Vim, Viemu etc. Last week I was recommended a registry hack that would allow my Caps Lock key to have the same behaviour as the ESC key. This results in a much smoother experience when using Vim. So far, I am loving the reg hack and much prefer the need to not have to move my hand to hit the ESC key. Here is the text of the reg file: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout] "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,01,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout\DosKeybCodes] "00000804"="ch" "00000408"="gk" "00010408"="gk" "00020408"="gk" "00050408"="gk" "0001041f"="tr" "0000041f"="tr" "00000423"="us" "00000402"="bg" "00000419"="ru" "00010419"="ru" "00000c1a"="us" "00010c1a"="us" "00000422"="us" "00010402"="us" "00020402"="bg" "00030402"="bg" "00020422"="us" "00000412"="ko" "00000425"="et" "00000426"="us" "00010426"="us" "00000427"="us" "00000411"="jp" "00000404"="ch" "0000041C"="us" "0000041a"="yu" "00000424"="yu" "00000405"="cz" "00010405"="cz" "0000040e"="hu" "0001040e"="hu" "00000415"="pl" "00010415"="pl" "00000418"="ro" "00010418"="ro" "00020418"="ro" "0000041b"="sl" "0001041b"="sl" "00000442"="tk" "00000813"="be" "0000080c"="be" "00001009"="us" "00000c0c"="cf" "00010c0c"="cf" "00000406"="dk" "00000413"="nl" "0000040b"="su" "0000040c"="fr" "00000407"="gr" "00010407"="gr" "0000040f"="is" "00001809"="us" "00000410"="it" "00010410"="it" "0000080a"="la" "00000414"="no" "00000816"="po" "00000416"="br" "0000040a"="sp" "0001040a"="sp" "0000041d"="sv" "0000100c"="sf" "00000807"="sg" "00000809"="uk" "00010409"="dv" "00030409"="usl" "00040409"="usr" "00020409"="us" "00000409"="us" "00000452"="uk" "0000046e"="sf" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout\DosKeybIDs] "00010408"="220" "00020408"="319" "0001041f"="440" "0000041f"="179" "00010415"="214" "00000442"="440" "00000410"="141" "00010410"="142" Create a reg file and copy the contents into it, then merge the file into your registry. Make sure that you want to not have normal use of your caps lock key. Develop With Passion!! Posted Apr 14 2008, 09:59 PM by bitwisejp with 11 comment(s) Filed under: Programming, Tools

• BDD Test Naming Macro - Speed Update

  Ever since I received the BDD test naming macro from Scott Bellware last year, it has gone through several iterations of improvements (mostly due to students taking the time to tune up the macro). Of all of the enhancements to the macro, none of them have done as much for the speed of the macro of the enhancements made by: Todd Berry and Casey Gum The macro now runs so fast that it is a joy to watch (you have to be quick). For those of you who are switching to leveraging context style BDD testing, you may want to pick up the macro and integrate it into your IDE:   Imports System Imports System.Windows.Forms Imports EnvDTE Imports EnvDTE80 Imports System.Diagnostics Public Module CodeEditor     Public Sub ReplaceSpacesInTestNameWithUnderscores()         If DTE.ActiveDocument Is Nothing Then Return         Dim wrCS As Boolean = DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "CSharp").Item("WordWrap").Value         Try             DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "CSharp").Item("WordWrap").Value = False             Dim selection As TextSelection = CType(DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection(), EnvDTE.TextSelection)             Dim index As Integer             selection.SelectLine()             If selection.Text = "" Then Return             Dim methodIndex As Integer = selection.Text.IndexOf("public void ")             Dim classIndex As Integer = selection.Text.IndexOf("public class ")             If (methodIndex < 0 AndAlso classIndex < 0) Then Return             index = CType(IIf(methodIndex >= 0, methodIndex, classIndex), Integer)             Dim prefix As String = CType(IIf(methodIndex >= 0, "public void ", "public class "), String)             Dim whiteSpace As String = selection.Text.Substring(0, index)             prefix = whiteSpace + prefix             Dim description As String = selection.Text.Replace(prefix, String.Empty).Trim             Dim text As String = prefix + description.Replace(" ", "_").Replace("'", "_") + vbCrLf             selection.Delete()             selection.Insert(text)             selection.LineUp()             selection.LineUp()             selection.SelectLine()             If selection.Text.Trim = "{" Or selection.Text.Trim = "}" Or selection.Text.Trim = "" Then                 If selection.Text.Trim = "{" Or selection.Text.Trim = "}" Then                     selection.Insert(selection.Text.Replace(vbCrLf, "") + vbCrLf)                 ElseIf selection.Text.Trim = "" Then                     selection.Delete()                 End If                 selection.Insert(whiteSpace + IIf(methodIndex >= 0, "[Test]", "[TestFixture]") + vbCrLf)             End If             selection.LineDown()             selection.LineDown()             selection.EndOfLine()         Catch ex As Exception             MsgBox(ex.Message)         Finally             DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "CSharp").Item("WordWrap").Value = wrCS         End Try     End Sub End Module   Develop with Passion!! Posted Apr 14 2008, 09:48 PM by bitwisejp with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Programming

• New Horizons

  Well, I have been pretty quiet on this blog for the last little while, so I thought I would take some time to share a little about what the Boodhoo family has been upto. We just recently decided to give away the majority of our material possessions, sell our house and embark on a completely new adventure. That adventure entails us moving to Austin!! Over the last year my family and I have fell in love with the Austin area. The people are friendly, the weather is amazing, and there seems to be no shortage of work for software developers. "Why in the world did you give away all of your stuff?" is the question I am sure that a lot of people are asking. When we talk to people about this, we let them know that we really felt strongly that the Lord was directing us to bless our family and friends with the blessings he had provided us with. The response has been more amazing than we could have imagined, and we know that God used us to impact them in ways we could not have thought about. It also helped us as a family to live what we speak and demonstrate that we are not bound/defined by what we have. The kids are learning amazing lessons about what is truly "valuable" during this process. For the last week my family and I have been living out of a hotel, swimming almost every day and enjoying spending a lot of time together. The kids are having an absolute blast. Next week we are going to be in Austin to do some house hunting, I will be doing the majority of the browsing this weekend as I will be leading another Nothin But .Net Bootcamp. We are extremely excited about the opportunities that the Lord has in store for us, and we bravely step out of the land of "Familiar" in order to pursue our "Big Dream" (if you are curious about those terms, pick up a copy of the book "The Dream Giver"). What does the future hold for us? One day at a time, we are going to find out!! Posted Apr 03 2008, 05:36 PM by bitwisejp with 12 comment(s) Filed under: Family