Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo

February 2008 - Posts

• Hooked on VIM

  After watching the first screencast that Aaron presented on Vim, I thought I would check it out. The first day was a little uncomfortable, 2 weeks later I am happy to report that I concur with Aaron's statement, which is also what I say to people who were not using ReSharper: "I could not use studio without it" ReSharper + Viemu is the ultimate killer combo for increasing your keyboarding productivity. The fact that you can keep your hands on home row to do the majority of your navigation is a huge plus. The core command set does not take a lot of time to learn, you just have to stick with it so that it becomes second nature. Once it does you will be "yanking", "pasting", "changing" ..... up your code in ways that now make studio seem extremely cumbersome. As with picking up any new tool/technique there is a period of ramp up that you have to go through. It was a 2 week road trip where I could not use my mouse, that forced me to learn all of the keyboard shortcuts that I needed to get around windows, studio etc with efficiency. After that 2 week period I realized that there were very few things that I actually needed to reach for the mouse for (game playing aside). To dive in full force, I also purchased the Vim integration that works in Outlook and Word. That way I can completely immerse myself in the Vim experience. I encourage you to check it out and give it an honest and open attempt. You might surprise yourself with the results. Posted Feb 21 2008, 07:25 PM by bitwisejp with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Tools

• ReSharper 4.0 Nightly Builds

  Ever since the nightly builds for ReSharper 4.0 went live, being the REA (Resharper early adopter) that I am, I downloaded it and have been using it on my C# 3.5 projects. I am happy to report that even though it is in the pre EAP phase, it is extremely solid and a joy to work with. The support for the new language features such as extension methods, automatic properties ... is great. So far I have had only one exception dialog pop up. For those of you who have braved prior EAP's for ReSharper (remember ReSharper 2.0 EAP!!!) you have probably already developed a thick skin for the exception dialogs that typically pop up during EAP. So far this is not the case. In all honesty, those of us who love ReSharper would be more than willing to put up with multiple exception dialogs as, let's face it, studio without ReSharper == "I won't use it". So what are you waiting for, head over and download the latest nightly build. Keep in mind that results may vary between use as well as different nightly builds!! Develop with Passion!! Posted Feb 21 2008, 07:11 PM by bitwisejp with 3 comment(s) Filed under: C#, Tools

• Automatic Properties - In case you didn't know

  The following snippet of code (C# 3.5) is allowable, and gives you the benefit of unnecessary extra verbosity with the benefits of encapsulation. Of course, if you need to implement logic in your property, then you don't want to think about automatic properties: public T Item { get; private set; } Posted Feb 20 2008, 12:25 AM by bitwisejp with 3 comment(s) Filed under: C#

• Nothin But WPF Class - Cancelled

  Unfortunately due to low numbers the WPF class is going to be cancelled. I apologize to anyone who was planning on registering. Thanks. Posted Feb 13 2008, 02:37 PM by bitwisejp with no comments Filed under: Training

• Presenter First - Who starts the presenter

  Had a question recently with regards to presenter first development in a smart client application. “How do you tell the presenter to run?” In presenter first style, the presenter will be the first point of contact from the ApplicationController. It will be the presenters responsibility to tell its associated view to render, etc. In my current smart client application I am making heavy use of commands that can be attached to arbitrary elements : buttons, linkbutton, menu items, to initiate the running of a command. Here is a small piece of code that should give away how I am hooking up commands to presenters in the application: public class RunPresenterCommand<Presenter> : ICommand where Presenter : IPresenter { private IApplicationController controller; public RunPresenterCommand(IApplicationController controller) { this.controller = controller; } public void Execute() { controller.Run<Presenter>(); } } Notice that all this command does when told to execute is to dispatch a call to the application controller, telling it to run the associated presenter. This keeps the responsibility of starting up the presenter in the place that it should be, the ApplicationController. Hope that answers the question. Posted Feb 13 2008, 11:57 AM by bitwisejp with no comments Filed under: C#

• Another Handy Shortcut Combination (Shift + F10)

  I might be a little late on this one, but I just learned a new shortcut that will definitely save me time when I am working in my VM on my mac. I love to use the keyboard. And when I use my natural keyboard it is fairly easy to access context menus (right click) by using the context menu key on the keyboard. My MacBook does not have such a key. This meant that up until yesterday (when I learned the shortcut) I had to have a mouse plugged in any time I wanted to access the context menu. Shift-F10 is actually a keyboard shortcut that accomplishes the exact same thing as the context menu key / right click. Thanks to Jay Smith for pointing this out for me.   Posted Feb 12 2008, 09:57 PM by bitwisejp with 6 comment(s) Filed under: Tools