January 2012
1 post
Web Application Performance Testing using Visual...
Visual Studio’s Web Performance Test
The primary vehicle for web application performance testing in Visual Studio is the Web Performance Test.
Visual Studio provides a nice GUI for designing Web Performance Test’s and it integrates beautifully with Internet Explorer which allows for recording a browser session to generate a Web Performance Test.
Additionally, Fiddler’s got...
November 2011
1 post
DevTeach Ottawa - DSL's for automated builds
After attending James Kovacs session on psake, its got me seriously considering upgrading my old-school NAnt scripts to psake. While the NAnt scripts that I have in place, do everything I currently need, I am always nervous about attempting to implement new or change existing pieces of the process as its just so hard to test. The great thing about psake is that its just plain old powershell and...
October 2011
2 posts
DevTeach Ottawa from CodeBetter.com
Brendan Tompkins over at Codebetter.com has announced that I am the winner of CodeBetter Fantasy Football week 4 and I will be receiving attendance for three to DevTeach Ottawa from November 2-4th.
This is awesome and I am super psyched to get the opportunity to head back to DevTeach. Thanks to Brendan Tompkins and the whole CodeBetter/Devlicious crew for hosting this fantastic contest.
Now the...
Developer tools & frameworks which are worth a...
There are few developer tools and frameworks which I am going to be looking at in more detail in the coming weeks.
Here is a brief list:
MSDeploy aka Web Deploy (Microsoft’s packaging and deployment tool) http://www.iis.net/download/webdeploy
Machine Specifications - Context/Specification style unit testing framework https://github.com/machine/machine.specifications
templify - tool for...
September 2011
3 posts
Agile Day 2011
I’m here at Agile Day in NYC. There have been a lot of great presentations (even one by my boss, Bob Viscovich on “A Year In The Life Of Agile at Publishers Clearing House”).
I’m looking forward to the open spaces discussions still yet to come!
If something hurt's, do it more often →
Upgrading my build system to use Web Deploy
The last time I took a look at Microsoft’s Web Deploy, it was still called the “IIS Web Deployment Tool” and at the time, it was little more than a dream of how automated web application deployments for IIS should be done.
The tool was still in its conceptual/beta phase and it lacked a significant set of features which I needed at the time (as in - yesterday), so in order to...
August 2011
0 posts
The Scrum Guide has been updated →
A much welcomed update to the Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland.
They’ve also provided a separate document detailing some of the reasons behind the update. Scrum Update
July 2011
4 posts
2 tags
TDD and bug fixes
Here is a quick tip:
When a bug is found, DO NOT, run off to fix the bug immediately. Instead, I urge you to write a unit/acceptance test first which exposes the bug. Then and only then, should you go and fix the bug.
By following this mantra you can ensure that all bugs which have appeared in your system are documented by specifications (tests) which prove that they no longer exist.
Here is a...
Awesome series on RX →
4 tags
Continuous Integration and Build Automation
Without a strong continuous integration process, a well organized Agile/Scrum project can quickly turn to chaos. Agile is most commonly associated with iterative development, which in turn, implies continuous visibility of a project (Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Stakeholders are always interested in the state of a project) and continuous integration via build automation supply the the ...
4 tags
Executable Specifications - a side effect of TDD
When we write our code test first we are forced to make decisions about how the application will operate. We have to express the intent of our code using expectations and verifications before we ever begin implementing any actual functionality. By writing code test first we free ourselves to mold our API from the perspective of a consumer, almost ensuring that we end up with a simple API...
4 tags
TDD - Test Driven Development
I was really pleased to hear Scott Belware’s recent interview (TDD – The Final Word) on Scott Hansleman’s podcast – Hansleminutes. Scott B was really adamant about explaining that TDD is an activity that is focused on design as opposed to testing. He mentions the term Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and how it would be better suited since the word Test in TDD is often the source of confusion....