BindOnPreRender Control

One useful little control we wrote for ASP.NET is our BindOnPreRender control.  It simply calls DataBind() on itself at PreRender.
Its utility may not be obvious.  This is sort of related to my post on WebForms DataBinding.  Binding is better.  It lets us bind properties to objects in our markup, which helps reduce code-behind.  I’m not [...]

New MindTree HTML and Clipboard Features

Lindsay has been traveling the world for work a lot lately.  This week she’s in Vegas, and I’m home taking care of Claire, which means I have a lot of time on my hands late at night.  So, I’ve managed to do a bit of MindTree development.
A lot, actually.  But I don’t have much to [...]

C# Hashes, StackOverflow, and SEO

I must give props to Jeff Atwood and the StackOverflow guys.  I hadn’t actually checked it out, but I read CodingHorror a lot, and recently (as in yesterday, in fact) read an entry there about what Jeff has learned about SEO.  It wasn’t very sophisticated in an SEO sense, and basically boiled down to “yay [...]

URL Rewriting and ASP.NET Browsers - is a beating

We’re lucky we have an error handler in our web app that emails us about every single unhandled error, or we wouldn’t know about this one at all.
The dreaded “cannot use leading .. to exit …” error.  If you do URL rewriting with ASP.NET, you probably see this a lot.  If you don’t, it’s probably [...]

C# Namespace Paths are Annoying

I’m really annoyed by the way C# handles partial namespace references.  Mainly because I never want to do it.  I always specify the full namespace (albeit in a using clause at the top).  Sometimes it makes sense to alias a namespace like we do with NHMA = NHibernate.Mapping.Attributes.
I just never have a need to reference [...]

Collection / Query Caching and NHibernate

I originally posted the following for discussion in the NHibernate forums, but since it’s basically an article, I’m going to post it here for posterity as well.

Collection Caching: Findings and Wishlist
I haven’t gone far down the design path yet, but I’d like to just put this out there, because I’m wondering if (a) anyone is [...]

On Powershell

So Powershell is mostly awesome.  I realize I’m a little late to the game in talking about it.  Everyone seems to have gone silent on Powershell.  I wonder why?
Scripting is Awesome
I’m a huge fan.  The linux guys have known this for a while, and even the Mac folks.  The Windows folks, however, have long had [...]

Piccolo.NET blazed the trail for WPF

I’d just like to take a moment to give a shout out to the Piccolo.NET project (which is actually a terrific port, by the original authors, of a toolkit by the same name).  I used it when developing MindTree and loved it.  If you check out MindTree I think you’ll agree that it runs pretty [...]

On WebForms DataBinding

Binding.  I’ve got a lot of feelings about ASP.Net databinding.  Mostly bad.  I think this is part of the reason people wanted to move to MVC.  Databinding, validation, conversion, and persistence are all chained together and ultimately comprise the majority of any application.  Really.  If a platform doesn’t do databinding well, it will probably be [...]

Simplicity vs Complexity: A False Dichotomy

Let me just say that while I believe in the pursuit of simplicity, the aversion to complexity is immature and self-destructive.  I’m tired of MDA and no-code solutions.  Does anyone believe in that degree of simplicity anymore?  I don’t think they do.
There is definitely a growing trend towards simplicity that is, at its core, a [...]