XAF – Distributed Pair Programming and Fast Prototyping

Using XAF recently reminded me of my Smalltalk days in the early ‘90s, more on why that was at the end of the post, but for now let’s talk about pair programming. You know about pair programming right? It’s a practice in eXtreme Programming whereby two programmers sit at the same keyboard and work on the same programming task. One concentrates on the strategic purpose of the task, the other (normally the ‘driver’) concentrates on the tactical aspects of getting the task done. Working this way, the theory goes, both together can be more productive than two programmers working separately and, to be fair, this is generally true.

[A devexpress blog post]

How to Increase your Number of Twitter Followers

Recently a friend of mine (@Ben_Hall) noticed that I’d increased my number of followers on Twitter and asked me how I had done it. I replied that although what I’d done was simple I couldn’t explain it in 140 characters and that I’d write a blog post, so for Ben (and for you if you are interested) here’s what I did:

1. Assume that people following you (with the exception of spammers) are interested in what you have to say.
2. Assume that people following your followers *might* also be interested in what you have to say.
3. For each of your followers…
   1. look at what they have twittered most recently
   2. If it is representative of what you want to say
      1. Look at their first page of followers (they are the most recent followers and are most likely to interested in what has most recently been said)
      2. Follow each (non spam) follower there
4. Do nothing for 48 hours, to allow those that you have followed to reciprocate.
5. Run a script to unfollow those who have not followed you (cos you can’t have a conversation with someone who isn’t listening) with the exception of those who’s views you are interested in regardless of if they follow you or not.

Okay so this is a pretty general solution and YMMV but it works for me. It increases my number of followers but still keeps them relevant to what I have to say and what I am interested in hearing about.

Hope it helps you!

Removing Slowness from Visual Studio 2010 (Dev10)

Yesterday I downloaded Dev10 from the MSDN site and installed it on my Win7 VM on my Mac. The first thing I noticed was that it ran like a three legged dog – that is to say, it was slow.

Hmm, I thought (I actually make that noise when I think) I have this VM set up to provide the maximum recommended RAM and yet this is still soooo slooooooow; I know it’s a beta product but even so, surely it shouldn’t run this slowly. And then I remembered… Dev10 uses WPF heavily. I remembered Oliver had had a performance issue with WPF and he had solved it by (counter intuitively) turning off the 3D acceleration on the VM he was using. So I tried the same thing and lo and behold, my Dev10 installation is now running at a sensible speed.

So if you are using Dev10 on a VM (and if you aren’t why not, it’s beta don’t you know) and you are having performance issues,  then try disabling the 3D acceleration on your VM and see if things improve.

NxtGenUG Manchester you Say?

NxtGenUG are again well chuffed to announce the start of the seventh UK region, this time in Manchester. The group is being run by local developers Steve Robbins and Andy Wilkinson .  The group will have it’s first meeting on 20th May 2009 between 7.00pm and 9.00pm in the  Pennine House, Carrs Road, Cheadle SK8 2BL. The headline speaker is to announced but the subject will be as topical and exciting as the other NxtGenUG events that are held monthly around the country.  There will be the usual NxtGenUG activities of eating Pizza and Swagging-out.  To book your place goto http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=210 where registration and meeting is free.  Come along and enjoy yourself and get involved in the growing UK Community in the North-West of England!

SodThis.com – What Happens When Two Techies Can’t Shut Up!

So being evangelists for Developer Express, Oliver and I can talk – those of you who know us know we can really taaaaalllllkkkk. So, with that in mind, what else could we do but start our own podcast (Sodthis.com). Not only did we start it but we’re on our second podcast already! The first episode featured an interview with Hadi Hariri, whilst this newest, shiniest one features an interview with none other than Richard Campbell of Strangeloop Networks fame. Of course he’s also known for his work on .NET Rocks and RunAs Radio.

So, if you’ve nothing better to  do, and you are looking to kill some time, then why don’t you hop on over to Sodthis.com and check out both the first and second episodes. Oh, and don’t forget to leave a comment, either here or there, to let us know what you think of it.

Microblogging for March 10 2009

Recently I said

@JMBucknall Does he now? How exciting; I need to get me one of those! (View)

@JMBucknall Yeah, I heard a rumour you’d okay’d it too. (View)

@fkerrigan "Lawful reason or reasonable excuse" is all your need. I need a usb drive for work m’lud (View)

@fkerrigan you know you want one (View)

RT Tweet something true that you like about @DevExpress, tag it #DXUSBKnife and get a chance to win this cool USB Knife: http://is.gd/mKSw (View)

IronSmalltalk rumour: @JMBucknall is going to give @garyshort one day off per week just to work on IronSmalltalk. How cool is that?!! (View)

@olivers enough with the IronSmalltalk thing already!! (View)

@hhariri there won’t be software to go with the manual either lol (View)

@omonien Did I mention I wasn’t writing a book? (View)

Why not come and join the conversation at http://www.twitter.com/garyshort

DDD South West Registration is Open!

Go! Quickly! Stop reading this and register now! Registration for DDD South West is now open. Be able to tell your grandchildren that you were there at the very beginning. Remember, there can be only one first time.

DDD South West is a free one day technical event on Saturday 23rd May 2009 at Queens College, Taunton with 13 top speakers providing 19 technical presentations.

Technorati tags: Developer Day, DDD South West, Community

New NxtGenUG Branch!

The NxtGenUG guys have opened another branch, here are the details

"NxtGenUG are well chuffed to announce the start of the sixth UK region this time in Hereford. The group is being run by local developers Ryan O’Neill and Richard Wilde.  The group will have it’s first meeting on 17th March 2009 between 7.00pm and 9.00pm in the Shirehall, Union Street, Hereford HR1 2HX. The main speaker will be Guy Smith-Ferrier with a session on Visual Studio 2008 Tips ‘n Tricks.  There will be the usual NxtGenUG activities of eating Pizza and Swagging-out.  To book your place goto http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=203 where registration and meeting is free.  Come along and enjoy yourself and get involved in the UK Community in the West of England!"

So if you are in the area it is well worth going along and checking out. For extra abuse, tell them I sent you LOL.

Technorati tags: Community, NxtGenUG

Developer Day Scotland and Belfast Voting…

…has opened; so if you want to hear me speak then pop along to the following URLs and cast your votes in my favour; if you don’t then you might end up having to listen to Barry Dorrans speak. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

http://www.developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/belfast/Users/VoteForSessions.aspx

http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Voting/tabid/81/Default.aspx

Technorati tags: Developer Day Belfast, Developer Day Scotland, Voting Now Open

The Latest CodeCast Podcast…

… (episode 10) is available now at http://www.code-magazine.com/codecast/ where we are talking about various Developer Express tools including CodeRush, RefactorPro and DXCore.

Technorati tags: CodeCast, Coderush, RefactorPro, Podcast