I’m a Web Developer living in sunny London. By day I get to play with ASP.NET MVC, C# & WPF - but by night I like to explore the OSS world. Projects like FubuMVC and RavenDB get me all excited. I'm also monitoring the node.js situation, wondering if I should have a dabble. And one day I might just get round to Ruby on Rails.
The art of coding also fascinates me - cleancoders.com has been the most useful resource in improving the quality of my code. It's such a great feeling when you see your old code and it makes sense.
As a Web Dev in the .NET eco system, I am familiar with Web Forms, Castle Monorail and ASP.NET MVC. In reverse order of prefernce. Monorail I don’t mind, but Web Forms I do.
The .NET OSS community gets a lot of stick, but there are some great projects. Here are some that I have used and recommend:
AutoMapper
Hats off to Jimmy Bogard. Separation of concerns in N-Tier architechture now becomes a lot easier between view and controller.
NHibernate 3.0 (Fluent)
Now with a fluent mapping interface and LINQ provider - the best just got better. Entity Framework keep trying.
SpecFlow
Everyone in the know is talking about BDD as the methodology they use to write code. I, myself like to work in this manner and have taken great advantage of SpecFlow to create the code for this web site. See my blog posts or google SpecFlow if you would like to learn more.
NUnit
NUnit is my chosen unit testing framework. It works, and it plays nicely with express editions of visual studio unlike Microsoft’s testing tools.
Rhino Mocks
For my needs, Rhino Mocks has been perfectly adequate when it comes to mocking objects in my tests.
I'm having a lot of fun studying for a degree in "Computing with Psychological studies". The computing aspect gives me my tecchy fix and the psychology deepens my understanding of how my mind works. Using what I have learnt, my techniques for learning, problem solving, and generally making my environment more conducive to how my mind needs it have significantly improved.
Over the coming years the cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence modules excite me the most. Coupled with my programming skills, this knowledge is going to lead to some fantastic creations.
Much of my life exists beyond computers and programming....ok, a little bit does.
When I’m not reading books and blogs, not writing code, not doing my studies, then I love the buzz of a weights session at the gym - unfortunately I'm still a broom stick with arms.
I also encourage people to eat healthy and minimise their junk food intake. Coupled with adequate sleep patterns, this will improve your day-to-day happiness massively.
F1 is a big interest of mine. But it won't be next year when it moves to Sky.
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Here are a few of my recommendations to fellow software developers.
Here's what I am hoping to check out in the coming months:
