Snowing Code

If dark matter could talk

Sat, 30 Jan 2016 16:55:10 -0000

A couple of days ago we had a bit of drama on twitter. Nothing too shocking or serious. someone complained about the state of OSS in the .NET ecosystem and the discussion has turned very quickly to other issues, namely what Microsoft is doing to encourage OSS and its MVP program. The main discussion turned around some of the more active and contributing members of the .NET OSS community and their frustration with what MS are trying to push and advocate for. They were suggesting that part of the problem with OSS in the .net world is the fact that Microsoft tend to favourite and nominate as MVPs developers with preferences to solutions created by Microsoft over open source and community driven solutions. It was very easy to understand and sympathise with the arguments that were made. These were developers who spent a ...

Pitfalls of feature toggles

Wed, 27 Jan 2016 21:20:38 -0000

I read this great post on the shortcomings of feature toggles by Sebastien Lambla (as good as any other blog post by him, I should add; and it's great seeing him back to blogging in full throttle) and started writing a long comment since I had quite a few things to say about the subject, and then I decided there's enough content there for a blog post of my own, so here I am. Following Scott Hanselman's recommendation, I am attempting to own my own content.

So Seb talks at length about some of the technical aspects of introducing feature toggles everywhere in your code base, focusing on the problems of maintaining a code that is forwards compatible. In a talk I gave a couple of months ago about pitfalls of...

How did we go NoEstimates?

Sat, 29 Nov 2014 18:26:36 -0000

This is an account of how the IT department at my work place has decided to drop our old process that relied on estimates and go the #NoEstimates way. This should serve as a testimonial reading of how we got to this position and what worked for us. I will try to update my blog from time to time to say how this new situation is working for us. In no way this should be read as an attempt to voice an authoritative opinion or anything of the kind- this is simply what works/worked for us and if you find any help in these words- tant mieux!
While I talk about how things were done at my work place, this post and the whole blog is a reflection of my opinions only and represent me alone.

Recently the company I work for has gone through a rather rough patch and reached a point where some decisions had to be taken...

Do we need estimates?

Thu, 03 Jul 2014 20:54:10 -0000

Do we need estimates? Are they helping us to deliver better software and products? Lean and the Toyota principles have a couple of tools that can help us to answer these questions. Trying to roughly calculate the effect that working with estimates have on our work flow and the value added work we produce, could help us know whether estimates actually work for or against us.

Recently, I've seen more and more people on the blogshpere expressing their despair with estimates. Even the #NoEstimates hash tag also seems quite alive and kicking. At my workplace (just like in any other company), this issue has been the subject of an ongoing, never ending war where we gain ground in baby steps- two small steps forward, one big ...

Git pre-push hook for your .NET project

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:40:21 -0000

Only recently, on version 1.8.2, git has added the long awaited pre-push hook. Windows received this feature as part of the 1.8.3.1 release since we don't get every new git release (as far as I understood). As I was already looking for a solution for compiling my .net code and running my unit tests every time just before I push my code, and making sure that if anything fails, the push is stopped, I already had some ruby code to do just that. When I heard the pre-push hook was available, I thought I could share that bit of code with other people looking for a similar solution. So I wrote a small ruby gem to do just that.

So if you want to add a pre-push hook to your git repository simply:

make sure you have ruby installed on your machine.
run gem install pr...



Git pre-push hook?
Sun, 23 Dec 2012 14:22:48 -0000

So it seems that git doesn't have a pre-push hook, which could be used for running tests for example, making sure that no code would be pushed to your origin master without verifying the code doesn't fail any tests. Apparently, a couple of patches have been submitted (one of them was by Scott Chacon), but denied unfortunately. So I set out to find another way of doing just that. One of the ideas I had was using pre-commit and post-merge hooks to run only on master to make sure master is never soiled by code failing tests, but it just felt somewhat clumsy and a kind of a workaround, not a real solution.
I have therefore went with a different idea, inspired by what Chacon himself said on the thread linked above. The idea...


Running and Debugging MonoDevelop Add-Ins in MonoDevelop
Wed, 30 May 2012 13:48:14 -0000

So you've decided to give MonoDevelop a go and what would be 
a better way to start than 

writing your very own MonoDevelop Add-in? However, seeing that an add-in
takes the format of a class library, you'll need to run it through MonoDevelop
in order to debug it; this post will be a short explanation on how to do this.


Open your addin solution in MonoDevelop, go to the solution view and right 
click on the project. Select options and then under Run select Custom Commands.
From the '(select a project operation)' drop down select Execute, then in the
Command box browse to the folder where the MonoDevelop.exe that you wish to use 
sits. This quite simply tells MD to run the current project with the MD executable
whenever you hit start debugging.

So now that we've got that sorted, all t...


Progressive enhancement for JQuery templates with ASP.NET MVC
Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:12:13 -0000

It's been some time now that I'v been looking at backbone.js, playing with the framework
and trying to discover its capacities. One of the most important resources in this learning
process is the line of posts Derick Bailey has been writing about backbone.
One of the recent topics Derick was discussing was 
using jquery templates for rendering backbone views, while 

prioritising accessibility and progressive enhancement.
In a nut shell, Derick was suggesting using partials for rendering jquery templates,
which will then allow us to load them as fixtures in our jasmine tests.
The o...