OCG developers

"The greatest advantage that JetBrains ReSharper provides is that it makes the improving process much cheaper. How it is done? By simplifying both of the improvement steps: Understanding the code - ReSharper provides very quick and simple navigation along with immediate usage information. Changing the code - ReSharper provides extensive refactoring options. Most of the known refactoring techniques are built-in."

For all proper nerds!

Which is faster, QueryLightBulbFrobStatusEx() or __WGetBulbFrobberState2()? Hold it right there, buddy. Before answering that question I must give you my standard six-part rant about why I probably cannot sensibly answer questions that begin "which is faster".

"We've been working with, building, and evangelising message queues for the last year, and it's no secret that we think they're awesome. We believe message queues are a vital component to any architecture or application, and here are ten reasons why:"

"Regardless of software process management type (waterfall, scrum, iterative etc.), there are some main rules which should be considered about software process management."

"Some people claim agile has "crossed the chasm." Certainly, many people are aware of agile. Many people understand that a cross-functional team works in increments, delivering features asking for feedback. That's at the team level. So when I say 'Agile is Not for Everyone' what do I mean? The problem is agile is not just for teams. "

"I'm often asked advice on how to be a better programmer. [..] I've been giving this quite a bit of thought lately and I've come up with what I think are the most important and timeless skills that a software developer can attain which will give them the best career opportunities and make them the most effective."

"This is the first of a two-part series that will tell the long story of the C# memory model. The first part explains the guarantees the C# memory model makes and shows the code patterns that motivate the guarantees; the second part will detail how the guarantees are achieved on different hardware architectures in the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5."

"The singleton pattern is one of the best-known patterns in software engineering. Essentially, a singleton is a class which only allows a single instance of itself to be created, and usually gives simple access to that instance."

"Our Engineering team has a great term called Technical Debt, which is the accumulation of coding shortcuts and operational inefficiencies over the years in the name of getting product out the door faster that weighs on the company's code base like debt weighs on a balance sheet."

"Despite IDisposable having only a single method named Dispose to implement, it is commonly implemented incorrectly. After reading this blog post it should be clear how and when to implement IDisposable, as well as how to ensure that resources are properly disposed when bad things happen (also knows as exceptions)."

"If you're afraid to look at your To-Do list, it's not working.  Your To-Do list should inspire you. One of the things that happens a lot with To-Do lists is they can get overwhelming.  It's easy to pile on more things.  Eventually, you're afraid to even look at your To-Do list.   What once started out as a great list of things to make happen, has now became a laundry list of things that hurts more than it helps."

"This is going to be the first post in a new series that I'm doing on design patterns. [..] So, my idea here is to relate the design patterns in the context of a story rather than a stuffy-sounding taxonomy. Why do people do this? What problem does it solve? Why is my code potentially worse if I don't do this?"

"Let's look at this implementation through the lens of the Rule of Modularity. The above code fails the "simple parts, clean interfaces" sniff test."

"This article will introduce you to hooking into the EntityFramework OnSaveChanges event which is buried deep in the framework. It'll also explain how you can extract the T-SQL which is actually committed when SaveChanges is called."

"A better way is to use a BlockingCollection and have your threads communicate via message classes."