Michael Flanakin's blog

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Michael Flanakin's blog Food for thought...

Aug 04

Download UpdateVersion I've been looking at NAnt pretty hard lately. The biggest problem that I've had so far is creating and updating version numbers. NAntContrib has a <version> task that will read in and update a version number specified in a text file, but that doesn't quite give me what I'm looking for. NAnt 0.85 is supposed to come with ......

Posted On Monday, August 16, 2004 2:04 AM .NET , Development

Dec 03

...But Who's Counting?

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I saw an interesting pie chart identifying the top corporate web servers based on a survey done by Port80 Software... I may be wrong, but just so everyone knows, this doesn't necessarily mean that Microsoft-based technologies are used more than J2 technologies. These are just the web servers. As I'm sure you know, J2EE requires an app server as well. ......

Posted On Friday, December 19, 2003 10:24 PM .NET , Java , IT , Development , migrated

Nov 03

Null vs. Zero-Length String ("")

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I had this problem when I used to work with VB and VBScript apps and was hoping that there would be a good way to deal with this, but I guess not. When you have a string and you do not know whether it will be null or zero-length, you need to handle both. Well, what I've always done is: if ( strValue+"" == "" )... I haven't ever heard anything for or ......

Posted On Wednesday, November 19, 2003 5:39 AM .NET , Development

Feb 04

Implementing the Front Controller Pattern (1.0)

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Anyway, while working on this solu

Posted On Sunday, February 1, 2004 8:49 PM .NET , Development

Nov 03

Take That, Open Source!

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I don't mean to pick on anybody in particular, but I think most developers share this concern: deprecation of functionality. I'm sure that everyone who's been in the software development business for a few years has had to deal with this in one form or another. The reason I wanted to talk about this now is because of the up-and-coming Java Server Faces ......

Posted On Friday, November 14, 2003 7:22 PM .NET , Java , Development

C#-VB Rivalries

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I don't know how many times I've read articles and opinions on the whole VB vs. C# conflict, but it's really getting ridiculous. This latest spat (1, 2) seemed to be started by three articles in Visual Studio Magazine: Patrick Meader's Why C# Developers Earn More, Juval Löwy's Pick the .NET Language for You, and Kathleen Dollard's VB.NET Provides ......

Posted On Friday, November 14, 2003 7:34 PM .NET , Development

Rich UI's

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Jon Udell recently wrote an article about "rich" GUI's. In this, he covers a good amount of ideas that I've been thinking of for a while. If you get a chance, go check it out. I'm not sure what everyone else thinks about this, but Microsoft is re-focusing on desktop applications. I've talked to a lot of people about this, and it seems that the majority ......

Posted On Friday, November 14, 2003 7:46 PM Development

Longhorn Upgrade Too Complex?

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I started to read an article that was talking about how simplicity always wins over complexity. This was followed up by a statement about the up-and-coming "feature race." This just made me think about Longhorn, Microsoft's next version of Windows. What are we going to do when it comes out? I haven't seen all of the content released after PDC, yet, ......

Posted On Friday, November 14, 2003 8:09 PM IT

Nov 03

J2 Improvements

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I was rummaging through the web and found an old article that touches on the topic of one of my old posts. I thought the article was pretty good. Check it out, if you get a chance.

Posted On Friday, November 21, 2003 6:33 AM Java , Development

Nov 03

QuickCode.NET Suggestions

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I recently took a look at the QuickCode.NET tool and found it to be pretty interesting. It's definitely worth looking into, but I have a suggestion... Personally, I like to keep my code very organized. I have templates that I use for VB6/ASP, .NET, and Java projects. I think that it would be very helpful to tie something like this into QuickCode.NET. ......

Posted On Sunday, November 30, 2003 9:45 AM .NET , Java , Development

Corporate Web Logs

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I've been thinking of good ways to increase inter-project communication within my organization. I work in the software architecture office and get a chance to talk to most of the software developers. A lot of them ask questions and/or have a lot of comments to make on random topics. I've been planning on setting up a couple of forums, when I get a chance, ......

Posted On Sunday, November 30, 2003 7:29 PM IT , Development

Dec 03

Coding Conventions

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There was a recent survey on the Code Project website that asked, “What notations do you use when coding?” I was surprised to see that nearly 53% of the respondants claimed to use Hungarian notation, with all but a few of those using prefixes (i.e. m_ for member variables). Now, I'm sure none of the respondants use only one naming convention, ......

Posted On Tuesday, December 2, 2003 4:54 AM .NET , Java , XML , Development

Corporate Web Logs Pt 2

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I'm not sure if web logs will be successful communication tool or not. I guess what I'm worried about is that a number of people within the organization have mentioned that they don't know how much it'd be used. When people have questions, they usually call select individuals to answer their question. Everybody knows: programmers are hard-headed - especially ......

Posted On Tuesday, December 2, 2003 7:02 PM IT , Development

Dec 03

Will Linux Take Over the Desktop?

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There's been a lot of talk about Linux taking a chunk out of Microsoft's space in the corporate desktop realm. Now, I don't see Linux ever being a huge threat to Microsoft, but it can possibly make a nice dent in Microsoft's income. With Longhorn 2-3 years out, customers are going to be very hungry for some new features. With the recent Windows Server ......

Posted On Wednesday, December 3, 2003 6:09 PM IT

Dec 03

It's All in the Name

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I'm looking for a good name for a software development conference-summit-forum-thing. This is an internal event to help share information as well as bring in good people to talk about software issues/innovations. Does anyone have any suggestions? Here are some of the ideas I've been mulling over: Application Development Forum (ADF) Applied Technology ......

Posted On Thursday, December 4, 2003 9:28 AM .NET , Java , IT , Crap , XML , Development , Architecture