Danny Acuna's Blog

Good2Read: Remaining Work is Key for Agile

dannyacuna — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:00:38 +0000

I recently read an article in the Visual Studio Magazine regarding the importance of remaining work when assessing progress. Aaron Bjork talks about why remaining work is the most important measurement on your Agile projects. He discusses about the tension between focusing on finished instead of remaining work and what that does to the project. Overall a really good read.

Enjoy!

Good2Read: Hack-Proofing Your ASP.NET Applications

dannyacuna — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:04:16 +0000

Adam Tuliper has a great article in the December issue of the MSDN magazine where he covers the simple steps one can take to prevent our sites to be hacked. A good book on this subject is Writing Secure Code 2nd Edition which addresses how to secure our application by writing secure code (hence the title).

Enjoy!

Good2Read: Responsive Web Design

dannyacuna — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:00:34 +0000

The MSDN Magazine November 2011 Issue has a really good article in the HTM5 section called Responsive Web Design. The concept that your design should not try to anticipate the devices in which is goingt be viewed but rather it should “…use flexible and fluid layouts that adapt to almost any screen.” This is based on an article back in 2010 with the same title by Ethan Marcotte.

Enjoy!

Good2Read: Assessing Quality

dannyacuna — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:55:52 +0000

J.D. Hildebrand has a really good article this month in the SD Times eMagazine titled Assessing quality where he discusses the fact that in order to be able to accurately assess quality we have to define it accurately first. I like his point that you have to assess quality of intention and quality of execution and how in software development we tend to put a lot of emphasis on the latter and neglect the former.

Enjoy!

Good2Read: The Model-View-Presenter-ViewModel Design Pattern for WPF

dannyacuna — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:00:16 +0000

This article in the December issue of the MSDN Magazine caught my attention. Bill Kratochvil presents the advantages of developing extensible enterprise apps with what he calls the MVPVM pattern. He stresses the importance of architectural patterns chosen and the direct correlation they have on code-reuse and resource allocation. “The patterns you use will determine whether you paint yourself into a corner or keep your back to the open opportunities the future might bring.” The article is a very good read if at all to get the reader thinking about revisiting the proven design patterns available today.

Good2Read: ASP.NET MVC Filters

dannyacuna — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:50:35 +0000

Ben Grover has a great article in the July issue of the MSDN Magazine on ASP.NET Action Filters.

In a nutshel, action filters are attributes you apply to controller actions to modify the way the action is executed. This can have a number of applications, outputaching, authorization and error handling. In this article Ben focuses on a custom filter to handle performance counting.

Enjoy!

Good2Read: Make Agile Work for You in TFS 2010

dannyacuna — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:14:33 +0000

The June issue of the MSDN Magazine has a great article about the benefits and basics of implementing Agile with TFS. TFS integrates with SharePoint providing a great way to not only track your project but provide transparency on the progress of the project. Chris Adams does a great job at selling Agile with the great features TFS 2010 provides.

Enjoy!

Good2Read: Time for Developers to Forget “Web” and Embrace Native Code?

dannyacuna — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:18:51 +0000

With the Internet now a ubiquitous platform, developers may need to drop the word “Web” from their vocabularies and embrace native code.

Herman Mehling has written an interesting article for DevX.com where he discusses the shift from web apps to native applications that function in different environments (web, mobile/tablet and desktop). This requires for developers to stop thinking of one single experience to target but rather concentrate on an underline code that ports to different environments to accomodate to the desired user experience.

Good2Read: Developers Mix and Match Agile Approaches

dannyacuna — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:14:02 +0000

If you have followed the UFC enough you have come to realize that those who cling to their “first love” martial art last but a few seconds in the octagon. They are taken by surprise by a move they’ve never seen and/or end up on the floor covering their face from being punched into a KO. The lesson to be learned is, those who don’t bend break. Those who don’t addapt become obsolete. You have to become a master in more than one discipline to be competitive and stand a chance. You have to be quick on your feet as well as on the mat and just like kicking and punching don’t get you far, the same is true now for grappling because some people just won’t go to the floor and are very quick on their feet. Fighters have realized that in order to make it in the sport you have to employ more than one discipline becoming a hybrid fighter or to use the well marketed term a “Mixed Martial Art” figther.

The software development industry has gone through a similar experience as it pertains to software development methodologies. Many software development shops embraced Agile leaving Waterfall or other methods thinking that this would be the new holy grail of software development. What they found out is that their projects came in different sizes and flavors that were not well suited for the Agile approached they favored. Frustrated they concluded that Agile just did not work. The ones that suceeded were the ones that, just like the new UFC fighter, let their methodology evolve into a hybrid of the different approaches within Agile methodology.

There is a great article in the Visual Studio Magazine that covers this subject in length. What is also just a valueable as the article are the comments below that support the fact that just like Waterfall or other methods before it there is no one-size-fits-all within Agile but rather the best approach is a hybrid of all the different methods within Agile.

Good2Read: Building Data-Centric Web Apps with ASP.NET MVC and Ext JS

dannyacuna — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:58:38 +0000

Juan Carlos Olamendy has a great article in the March issue of the MSDN Magazine. He has a well written and documented example of how to implement different technologies to achieve a great user experience. As a developer/architect the key is to first know well all the tools at your disposal and then knowing how to make use of what and when. This is where science meets art and you go from a mere developer to a craftman. You should always take pride in how well thoughtout the appliation you are writing is. This article is great at getting you there, that is, making the informed decisions you need to make to produce a great, reach user experience.