Marko Rangel :: From start to finish

Things to do to become a better developer

2007-07-13T13:45:00.000-06:00

I was listening to Scott Hanselman's 'Be a better developer in 6 months' and he made reference to a blog entry about becoming a better devloper: http://graysmatter.codivation.com/HowIAmBecomingABetterDeveloperPart1OfInfinity.aspx.

I began thinking of what I have done recently and what I want to do over the next few months to better my skills and overall approach to technology.

First, blogs. I read blogs daily and try to keep up with article/blog series on development, such as Jeremy Miller's Build your own Cab, where I learned more about coding approaches as well as seeing how different programmers do things that I've done before. Usually I like approaches that other's have taken and I adopt them over time. It's a lot like a code review, but instead of me correcting code its more about learning how and why the approach was taken.

Second, new technology. I try to keep up with Microsoft's pace to at least review the new technologies coming out. It is very difficult for me to fully grasp everything that comes out of MS, so I read up on as much as I can, but I do get my hands dirty with beta and ctp's of software that I think I'll use in the future. For example, at the time if this posting, I'm working with Beta1 of Visual Studio codename Orcas. I know I'll be using it, so I check it out with my side projects or just for fun. It's a good way to stay ahead of the game and it's nice to mix it up a bit with a new IDE or a new library to code against.

Third, books! I dont read as many programming books like I used to. I used to get 2-3 ASP books or C# books so that I could understand the language or environment that I was working with, but now I'm tending to choose books that are changing the way I think and giving me new perspectives, for example reading something like Pragmatic Programmer is language and platform agnostic, but a great programming book. I also like to read things that give me deeper insight to the platform, specifically .NET, such as CLR via C#. There are a ton of books that are great, and Scott Hanselman has a good list here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SixEssentialLanguageAgnosticProgrammingBooks.aspx.

Fourth, learn a new language. This is not so much learning another .NET language, rather learning a language that is completely different from your primary language. For example, if I were a completely C# guy and didn't know a thing about any other .NET languages, VB.NET would be good to know so I could read it, but not necessarily learning anything outside of new syntax for the same platform. I'm sure most people have already been aware of the Ruby or Python buzz. It wouldn't be a bad idea to learn something that is completely different than your used to. Every language has it's strenghts and weaknesses. Learning the strengths of other languages may teach you a thing or two about desgin as well as prepare you for future enhancements of your primary language. C# is adopting a lot of old ideas into the language that will be new to most .NET developers, but old to a lot of existing python/ruby devs.

And last but not least: code, code, code, code! Reading books, reading articles, reading blogs and watching movies for a year on how to fly an airplane does not mean you are able to jump in a plane and fly it at night through clouds! Without practice, we all only have is unverified knowledge. For example, Runbot is a robot that is learning to walk like humans. In this video, it tries to walk up a ramp knowing only what it knows about walking level terrain. As it tries, it falls and learns something new about its experience. As it tries over and over, it masters that ability. We as humans have superior ability to learn from our mistakes and learn from others' sucesses and failures. The only way we can make that into our own experience is to practice those skills. No amount of books, articles or books will replace actual experience.

I hope someone finds inspiration and feels challenged after reading this, becaus I know now that I have it up and shared, I will be challenged to become a better developer.

Global.asax and PrecompiledApp.config

2007-06-18T17:02:00.000-06:00

I spent the better part of the day and a bit more a few days back trying to figure out this problem!

I have put some exception handling int he application_error event of my global.asax, and everything ran smoothly on my dev and staging box. For some reason, I could not get our production environment to handle the exception handling for our unhandled exceptions. At first I thought it was our logging mechanism, but after a few tests, we figured the code was ok.

We looked at permissions for the account running the site, but there was nothing wrong there. Finally there was a link that a co-worker gave me that suggested that the PrecompiledApp.Config be removed from the root of the application. As it turns out, that file has been missing (due to some deployment issues), so we put it back in and it started to work. The application_error event was finally firing. I can't figure out exactly why the config file is needed, but it is for precompiled applications. Hope it helps someone!

Creating my LLC

2007-06-06T09:31:00.000-06:00

As of June 5th of 2007, Angle Technologies, LLC is hereby incorporated!

I finally got around to getting my LLC in place after some setbacks. I contacted an attorney referred to me by my brother. After discussing with the attorney what the purpose of my business was (mostly software) we both decided to move forward with an LLC over any other types of business models.

After that, everything just seemed too easy! He asked for the following information:
My name and address
Company name and address
Name and address of any other owners of the company (not required if you solely own it)
Purpose of the business
Name and address of secretary for the business (must be someone other than the owner, as they are responsible for keeping minutes for meetings)

Within an hour, the State of Texas came back with my official documentation delivered to the attorney, who then forwarded them on to me.

I had already gotten my domain names and I will continue to brand the name and get a website up and running to tell the public more about what the company offers in services.

If you are in Texas and would like to get incorporated, please let me know via the comment section and I can pass along the attorney's info.

Microsoft Surface

2007-05-30T10:44:00.000-06:00

If everyone hasn't already heard by now, Microsoft has created a coffee table: Surface/

ASP.NET Web Application Project problems

2007-05-29T09:50:00.000-06:00

This past weekend I was working with a continuous integration build with an ASP.NET project. I was attempting to get a website staged on a staging environment by using msbuild. I build the site and published it to another directory that had IIS pointed to it. Due to some reference issues (particularly, with the default web project template that I was using, I could not get my referenced assemblies to be available for msbuild to build the project), I switched to the Web Application Project template, that basically took the VS.NET 2003 project template, and copied all my files from the old project to the new one.

Everything debugged and ran just fine, but when I published the site and hosted it via IIS, I was being plagued with an error somewhat like this one:

The type 'objectname' exists in both
'c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET
Files\\assemblyName.DLL'
and 'c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET
Files\\assemblyName.DLL'

I couldn't figure out why I had this issue. I could run the site just fine from VS.NET 2005, but could not actually publish it without getting that error. Searching online only yielded deleting my temporary asp.net files, bouncing IIS or even bouncing the machine. None of the issues resolved the problem.

I finally found the resolution, and it I wish I could find the post that had the resolution so I could give due credit to them, but basically the Web Project (default out of VS.NET) uses the CodeFile attribute to find the code behind file. Changing CodeFile to CodeBehind on all my aspx pages resolved the issue.

Hope this helps someone!

Volunteer service

2007-05-19T18:05:00.001-06:00

I am trying to get a volunteer service up and running that will allow users to find volunteer activities by zip code without any log in or required information.

For now, the service will be hosted here: http://www.angletechnologies.com/

Great introduction to StructureMap 2.0

2007-04-09T11:00:00.000-06:00

I've always been intrigued by StructureMap and Spring.net, but I've never known really how or why I should use them. I guess I never had the visibility in their benefits, but I figured that they could come in handy at some point.

Recently Jeremy Miller released version 2 of StructureMap, but it was still hard for me to get solid examples without previous knowledge of what the tools do.

He recently posted an introduction to StructureMap 2.0, and it really helped me get a better understanding of how to use it, and I can see the benfits immediately from the examples on the intro.

I still have a few questions on overall usage, mostly around configuration since the examples that Jeremy has revolve around configuration objects and the default implementation in some sort of startup method/event. If that is the case, would I have this enormous list if declarations? Surely this could be done in a config (and I think it does, so I'll just wait and see!)

ASP.NET Wishlist

2007-03-15T08:52:00.000-06:00

Steven Smith has posted his wishlist for ASP.NET. He's in Seattle for the MVP summit. You can read about the items here: http://aspadvice.com/blogs/ssmith/archive/2007/03/14/ASP.NET-Wish-List.aspx.

I would like to focus my attention on a couple:
1) Recursive FindControl - Would be cool, but, as Steven mentions, there are a few functions out there that provide this. Nice to have, but dont compromise any other deliverables for this.

2) Cache Improvements - This is huge. I dont rely too heavily on Cache, but I do use it enough to say that companies like ScaleOut have stepped up to fill in the gaps that Microsoft has made. I would like to see two things out of Steven's list: Distributed Cache and a Cache Provider Model. I'd like to see the out of the box implementation have distributed cache mechanism, but also have the ability to throw in our own implementation of cache.

I'm really excited to see the next feature set of ASP.NET.

Invoking an ajax/atlas modal dialog off a postback

2007-03-05T20:02:00.000-06:00

Recently I was working on a scenario where I had to show an ajax/atlas modal dialog using ajax' ModalPopupExtender after some server side processing had been done. This was very hard because one of the control's required properties is the TargetControlID, which responds to a click event and throws up the modal dialog, all before the postback occurs.

I tried looking for a fancy way to be able to get this modal up and running by assiging some dummy control in the markup and calling .Show() to make the dialog show up, but that didn't yield me much.

I found a bit of a hack, which is pretty much creating a control (in my example, a label) on page_load, adding it to the UpdatePanel's ContentTemplateContainer's control collection, assign the ID of the dummy label to the ModalPopupExtender's TargetControlID property and then on a postback I could call .Show() on the MPE (ModalPopupExtender) and the dialog would show up as I needed it.

In the following example I am displaying the current timestamp on a label that is set off of a button click postback event.

default.aspx:

   1:  <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>

   2:  <%@ Register Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" TagPrefix="ajax" %>

3:

   4:  <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

   5:  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

   6:  <head runat="server">

   7:      <title>Untitled Page</title>

   8:  </head>

   9:  <body>

  10:      <form id="form1" runat="server">

  11:          <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server" EnablePartialRendering="true" />

  12:          <asp:UpdatePanel ID="upShowStuff" runat="Server">

  13:              <ContentTemplate>

  14:                  <asp:Button id="Button1" runat="Server" Text="Process Postback" OnClick="Button1_Click" />

  15:                  <ajax:ModalPopupExtender ID="mdePopup" runat="server" PopupControlID="pnlShowStuff"

  16:                  OkControlID="btnOK" />

  17:                  <asp:Panel ID="pnlShowStuff" runat="Server" Style="display:none">

  18:                      <div style="border:solid 1px #000">

  19:                          <asp:Label ID="lblShowStuff" runat="Server" />

  20:                          <asp:Button id="btnOK" runat="Server" Text="OK" />

  21:                      </div>

  22:                  </asp:Panel>

  23:              </ContentTemplate>

  24:          </asp:UpdatePanel>

  25:      </form>

  26:  </body>

  27:  </html>

default.aspx.cs:

   1:  public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page

   2:  {

   3:      protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

   4:      {

   5:          Label lbl = new Label();

   6:          lbl.ID = "tempholder";

   7:          upShowStuff.ContentTemplateContainer.Controls.Add(lbl);

   8:          mdePopup.TargetControlID = lbl.ID;

   9:      }

10:

  11:      protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

  12:      {

  13:          lblShowStuff.Text = DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString();

  14:          mdePopup.Show();

  15:      }

  16:  }

March CTP for Orcas (Visual Studio)

2007-02-28T12:08:00.000-06:00

Good news: March CTP for Orcas is out.

It's unfortunate that I have not had time to keep up with Orcas as of yet. Just recently I downloaded the last CTP for Orcas, but haven't cracked it open yet. Now I get to download this new version and trash the older one.

Hi-def Vista wallpapers

2007-02-26T10:26:00.001-06:00

Just a reminder for myself...

Hi-def Vista wallpapers: http://www.hamaddarwish.com/content/index.html

FlipCalc

2007-02-26T10:14:00.000-06:00

A couple of friends of mine are working on this really great site. The idea is a calculator that gives you an idea of the investment and return on trying to flip a house. The great thing about this site is that it uses real data on a house (given the address) and the expenses and investments.

I really do think that FlipCalc is a novel idea, and also proves that with the right idea and some invested time, you can get a small business off the ground. Where FlipCalc will go from here, I dont know, but I can really see some great extensions and partnerships taking off from here.

You can find it here: FlipCalc.

Short blogging siesta

2007-02-26T10:06:00.000-06:00

I had to take a little siesta on this blog as I re-evaluated my stance on starting this business at this point in my life. I have recently moved and gotten a new full time job, and I didn't know whether I would be able to continue my endeavours with my new business. As such, I decided to move forward with my start-up so that I can have some of my ideas perculate while I find ways to make them grow.

I'll resume writing as I make progress on filing my paperwork with business.

Heat ray, rail gun and more and more guns!

2007-01-25T15:50:00.000-06:00

New heat ray created by the US Army: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16794717/wid/11915829?GT1=8921.

Looks like it was made out of plaid. Also sounds like something Dr Evil was behind. Also, the Navy is working on a rail gun: http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/11038/Navy+Gets+8Megajoule+Rail+Gun+Working+32+and+64+in+the+works/.

In other news, the Air Force is working on a pretty powerful large weapon code named "Death Star."

Sysinternals Suite

2007-01-25T15:21:00.000-06:00

I'm really exited now that I can download most of the tools that I use from Sysinternals in one simple download.

http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/SysinternalsSuite.zip

Close to 70 helpful exe's.

Running background processes in a medium trust environment

2007-01-14T21:49:00.000-06:00

I was recently in a situation where I needed to run some background processes against some data and in-memory data structures that contained information that needed to be processed from time to time.

My application is an ASP.NET application hosted in a 3rd party environment where they have their trust level set to medium. They host the web applications in such a way as to not disrupt other applications due to my programming, so in a way, its a bit of like sandboxing. The host more than likely set these trust permissions in the machine.config file and didn't allow for the applications to override the settings, as most hosts would. Asking them to add a scheduled task would be an option, but highly unlikely due to security constraints.

One option is to create an .aspx page that had the functionality that I needed to get done and ping it every x seconds and have it do my work, but that requires an external source hitting my website, and it feels and smells dirty.

I ran accross Rob Howard's 10 Tips for Writing High-Performance Web Applications article on MSDN and found an entry on using a timer as a background thread. I decided to pursue this idea further by creating an HttpModule that loads up assemblies at runtime into AppDomains and executes a common method (much like a plug in pattern) to do the work. I ran into a really big issue using AppDomains, so I came up with an alternate way of loading the assemblies using reflection.

In the end I came up with a solution that would run in a high/full trusted environment AND a medium trusted environment. The HttpModule will basically "dumb down" to the lowest setting specified and load the assemblies in that fashion. This allows for better isolation in higher trusted environments, but maintain the base functionality of running tasks in the background in the case of medium trust.

The concept is pretty simple: load assemblies from a given directory (or current executing directory), load types specified in the configuraiton file for the given assemblies, make sure they are compliant to the proper plug in interface, and finaly execute methods on them. It's not very difficult to get something like this up and running, so I'll be posting a binary and possibly the source code as soon as I get it cleaned up, documented, tested and a bit more pretty, so it may take me a few days or week or so.

Linux in a Microsoft shop

2007-01-07T22:39:00.000-06:00

I've always been a Microsoft guy. Mostly because of chance. I started off by playing games on Windows, then learning a bit of HTML and using FrontPage 98. Shortly after that came ASP, then VB6, .NET and here we are now with .NET. Granted, this all happened over a large period of time, and a few technologies where sprinkled throughout.

During most of my time developing, I couldn't see myself making a jump over to *nix. I always thought Linux desktops were cool with their transparent windows and nice screen savers, but I didn't know much about Linux past that. Granted, it was free and if I ever wanted to be truly type casted over to the "hardcore" developers, I thought I at least had to install Linux on at least one of my computers. That never happened. I had no reason to dabble in Linux, I felt nice in cozy drinking Microsoft's Kool-Aid, so I just turned my head to anything Linux... and Mac!

Now, here I am as a small business owner to be, and I'm faced with making cost conscious decisions. How can I run my business at a low cost? Well, I'm fairly new to the market, so I will be learning as I go. I can use my common sense and not go for the most expensive software/hardware/etc... just for the sake of it. I also knew that I had to have at least the bare essentials for my consulting business, two of which are source control and defect tracking.

In comes Linux and VMWare. Shortly after purchasing VMWare Workstation (roughly $200 from time of writing) for testing and development purposes, I noticed that the VMWare site had a section (VMTN) where you could download pre-built Linux machines with applications. We're talking about applications that run bug tracking software, source control, firewalls, software load balancers, coffee makers (latte's not available)... Furthermore, leveraging VMWare's free software to run virtual machines, you can run these solutions pretty much free!

There are some limitations of course, there is no such thing as free lunch, that is of course unless you take it from someone weak, but that's just the bully in me. Some of the VMWare pre-built applications weren't exactly what I was looking for, they were either too hot or too cold. I had to modify something or another to get them to work properly, so in the end I decided to download the image for Ubuntu (flavor of Linux) and install everything myself to my own taste. I preferred this route because I accomplished something I thought I never would, I learned Linux and the outcome benefited me by having software that I could rely on.

I plan to keep on using the VMWare/Linux combination until I find better alternatives that include the cost-benefit/functionality advantages that this duo offers.

But I still don't like Macs.

A new year, a new beginning

2007-01-02T10:03:00.000-06:00

I've always been one to not like New Year’s resolutions. I’ve tried to convince myself that I shouldn’t wait until the new year to change my life, rather when I have the thought of changing, that I immediately make an effort to change my life for the better. Whether it is personal, work or any other aspect of my life, there is always room for improvement. Yet despite my efforts of continually changing to better myself, I find myself stuck in the same type of plateaus.

Despite the fact that I do not like waiting until the New Year to enforce change, I feel especially positive about the turn of the year, leading into 2007. Primarily because I’ve been starting my new efforts prior to the year’s end.

Part of the reason I’m writing this is to document what I will change in this upcoming year, whether by 180 degrees or just marginal improvements.

One of the places I will improve on is my sense of getting things done. With the help of 2 really good books that I will write about soon, as well as the support of my loving wife, I will accomplish a self satisfying sense of accomplishment. Now let me get something clear: I get things done now. I want to get things done in such a way that I am not distracted by auxiliary tasks and other responsibilities. It comes for a sense of focus and determination to work on a given task without interruption, be it external or internal (distractions, such as email or other tasks to be done).

Continuous education in my professional life which includes learning a new language, not so much for applying it, but allowing me to keep an open mind about new approaches. Learn a new aspect of .NET, perhaps the new Vista technologies (.NET 3.0) and such.

Health is another aspect of my life that I hope to improve on. I will continue my martial arts training and start to attend a gym (that I currently pay for but don’t go to) and start eating better. In the process of eating better comes bringing healthy food to work instead of eating out.

There are other more personal items that I will disclose later, but I wanted to bring up three things that I think are essential in getting my business off the ground: focus and accomplishment, continuing education and the ability to perform my duties for my customers.

One final note: none of this is possible without my sense of faith. Without my faith I will not be able to complete anything noted above. Faith is what wakes me up in the morning, motivates me to finish things and gives me the inspiration to learn new technologies. This is a personal pillar of my life that I will sparingly share through these entries.

Starting off with domains and email

2006-12-27T22:46:00.000-06:00

I've always wanted to start a business for myself, as my dad did and my brother did as well. I knew that if I were to start a business that it would be something I did on my spare time initially and finally grow into it. There are a lot of people that would disagree with me on my approach, but in my situation, I figured that this would be the best scenario.

One of the biggest worries that I have in starting this sucker up is the seperation of my work (as a corporation) and myself as a person. This implies that I want as much protection from my company and my personal life. Furthermore, I want financial independence for both my company and my personal life as well.

This works just fine, but unfortunately for most of us, we dont just get handed seed money for our companies without a hitch. Some people borrow money (be it from an external investor or their own assets), or personally invest into their company. Personally, I'm putting some personal money into my company to get started off.

First thing is getting a domain and getting a site up and running. I've decided to go with GoDaddy to get my domain, not so much because of their pricing or marketing (girls), rather they have other services that I really like, such as dedicated virtual servers (which I will get to in a bit), and I'd like to have things consolidated.

I decided to host my email through GoDaddy for fairly cheap (around $30 a year at the time of this writing), and get a pretty good deal on a dedicated virtual server. I like to have ultimate control of my server when it comes to hosting a website and any other applications that I need running for the success of my operations. It's a bit more then just shared hosting, but I dont mind paying more for complete control.

There is a lot more things to do before I can call my company "up and running." Legal papers, tax papers, incorporation papers, supplies, hardware, software, vaporware (just kidding), just to name a few. I have a lot of stuff to get done and buy (or borrow) to get this sucker going, but looking out for deals is imperative.

I hope to go over a few items in the future, specifically source control, platform choice (for software), marketing (including blogs and search engines), target industries to name a few.

This is an exiting time and I really want to be part of making my slice of the world a better place. It will be a great learning experience trying to get from here to there.

A new beginning

2006-12-27T19:33:00.000-06:00

I hope to really keep this blog up and running as a chronicle of my new business. I will be incorporating soon and hope to venture off into a new era of my life.

I currently have a full time job and intend to nurse this company into a full fledged income machine so that I can focus on my dreams. I will be referencing resources such as the 'Going Independent' yahoo group, Bob Walsh's Micro ISV book, Joel Spolsky's blog, and Eric Sink on the Business of Software, among others.

I hope to go over topics such as incorporation and legal issues, accounting, marketing, sales, work life balance, development processes and everything else that makes a small company tick. Initially, I will be doing consulting as my bread and butter for my company, and hopefully launching a product/service in the near future... but that's a little secret!

I hope that you can find this blog interesting and that it may serve some service to you getting started, or as a comic relief as you see me struggle through this endeavour.

I thank the Man upstairs for giving me this opportunity, my wife for her continuing support and my family and friends for guidance and encouragement.

Above all, let's remember that the main thing is that the Main thing is the main thing.