#.think.in

#.think.in infoDose #43 (11th September - 22nd September)

brodie — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:08:15 +1000

Announcements

Architecture

Moving your SQL Server Database to the Clouds Try the SQL Azure
My learnings AntiXSS v3.1 new features
Simple auditing using an NHibernate IInterceptor (Part 4) - Scott's Blog
MapReduce On Windows Simpable - qizmt from MySpace
qizmt - Project Hosting on Google Code
AutoMapper - Home object to object data transfer - good for DTOs etc
Pex, Stubs, QuickGraph, MbUnit, Reflector Addins - Pex 0.16.40915.5 Moles, a lightweight Detour Framework, and
Embedded SQL database engine for .NET developers - VistaDB
Space based programming in .NET, video - alternative to the traditional n-tier model for enterprise applications. Instead of a vertical tier partitioning, space based applications are partitioned horizontally into self-sufficient units
Developing for Surface, part I
The cost of latent logging code - good example of asynchronous logging
Lazy loading, Inheritance, and Persistence ignorance (part 2)
Fluent API for .NET RIA Services Metadata
Introducing DynamicWrapper
IT Conversations Technometria with Phil Windley Brian Ellin, Doug Kaye (Free Podcast) - RPXNow/OpenID

Developer

Management

ASP.NET MVC/Web/jQuery

Singularity Watch

Other

Top 5 Web Trends of 2009 Internet of Things
God No! ...The ReBuilder - hilarious

#.think.in infoDose #42 (3rd September - 10th September)

brodie — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:57:05 +1000

Announcements

Architecture

Developer

Management

ASP.NET MVC/Web

Design

Silverlight

Tools

Other

Intro to iPhone Development at ALT.NET Geek Dinner

#.think.in infoDose #41 (17th August - 2nd September)

brodie — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:50:41 +1000

Developer

Architecture

Management

Design

65 Must-Know CSS Strategies and Tutorials

ASP.NET MVC

Books

gladwell dot com - blink

Singularity Watch

Other

Neill Blomkamp Short Films Navigation with Cooliris - district 9, yellow
Amazing Short Films from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp
“Information bad for you,” says older generation.
A Manifesto for Slow Communication
The Real Live Search - bing api ajax search
Top 100 Aussie Web Startups - August 09

#.think.in infoDose #40 (5th August - 16th August)

brodie — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:24:04 +1000

Architecture

#.think.in infoDose #39 (28th July - 4th August)

brodie — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:53:50 +1000

Architecture

Developer

HOW TO Convert PowerPoint to Silverlight (Deep Zoom) like presentation
pptPlex - tool for creating silverlight presentations
Vista and Office 2007 Preview Handler Pack released « Tatham Oddie
The First Few Milliseconds of an HTTPS Connection
How To Stay Happy If You Work For Someone Else Brazen Careerist
charliedigital - 6 Books That Should Be On Every .NET Developers Bookshelf
Laid Off It's Good for You and Good for the Tech Industry
Replace Comments With Code

Management

Moserware Just Enough MBA to Be a Programmer - " Every developer painfully learns that technology doesn't win on its own. "
Business Plan Template
Good Programmers Don’t Need No Marketing
Agile Commentary Post agile, one third of you will be gone...

Code

The .NET Reactive Framework (Rx) Enables LINQ over Events
LINQ FAQ Part 3 - CRUD
STM.NET on DevLabs
Workflow Web Services
Using .NET Avoid Common Performance Pitfalls for Speedier Apps
sqlitecs - Project Hosting on Google Code Windows C# port of the SQLite3 library.

ASP.NET MVC/Web

Include Stylesheets and Scripts From A WebControl In MVC
ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 1 with Phil Haack and Virtual Scott Scott Hanselman Channel 9 – talking about new MVC 2
ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 1 Released
ASP.NET MVC V2 Preview 1 Released - ScottGu's Blog
Bing Community - Common errors that can tank a site (SEM 101)
Developing Web 2.0 Portal using Asp.Net MVC, Microsoft Ajax Client Templates and jQuery with drag and drop widget
jQuery TOOLS - The missing UI library for the Web
Put Your Views (and Pages) On a Diet
ASP.NET MVC Northwind Demo Using the Spark View Engine

Silverlight

Building WPF and Silverlight Applications with a Single Code Base Using Prism
Quakelight – quake ported to silverlight
2009 July 30 - MEF/Silverlight extensibility
Navigation Dynamically Loaded Pages… Now MEF Powered!
Silverlight, SEO & ASP.Net MVC – Part 1 (Proof of Concept )
New snippets for Silverlight and WPF

Designer

Things about user experience, usability, IA, SEO, tutorials, blogging and Microsoft

Books

Utilities

LINQPad - new version

Singularity Watch

Other

#.think.in infoDose #38 (20th July - 27th July)

brodie — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:53:00 +1000

Architecture

Developer

TDD Anti-Patterns
Blog - Robert Bogue [MVP] What does an OutOfMemoryException in .NET (on 32 bit) really mean?
Protecting your precious code! - obfuscation
Basic Unit Testing Guidelines
Refactor ForEach to Join
Leading by Example
Agile Groups

Designer

Silverlight

Web/ASP.NET MVC

WPF

Differences between Label and TextBlock - useful to know when doing White automation
What is the difference between the WPF TextBlock element and Label contro
THE MODEL-VIEW-VIEWMODEL (MVVM) DESIGN PATTERN FOR WPF
Data virtualization

Utilities

Free PowerShell EBook
Ease The Pain of Office Interop - export to excel

Singularity Watch

Artificial brain '10 years away'
Daily Kos State of the Nation - Exponential Solar, Politics, and Ray Kurzweil
TED2009 Cities in the sand, theremins and more whooping
NASA Nanotechnology in particular Buckypaper

Other

Fun

This is the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever. You will be tested. – it’s not that tough
Interpreter - JavaScript Interactive Interpreter

Python and Farseer: 2d Physics in Silverlight

tarn — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:59:12 +1000

I’ve got a tiny Acer Aspire “netbook” I use while commuting to work. It’s a very low spec’d machine but it has a very functional keyboard and I love programming on it!

I think I enjoy programming on it because it doesn’t have Visual Studios installed. I have the Windows SDK so I can build .NET projects with MsBuild, but I mainly use it for developing Python code. With some free tools and notepad++ plug-ins its a great light weight environment for coding simple Django and Google App Engine web applications and dynamic language .NET applications.

I’m not really into computer gaming, but I do like 2d physics games. I remember losing days work when I first found Magic Pen. I decided to try using the cool Farseer Physics Engine, which is described on the Codeplex page as;

The Farseer Physics Engine is an easy to use 2D physics engine designed for Microsoft’s XNA and Silverlight platforms. The Farseer Physics Engine focuses on simplicity, useful features, and enabling the creation of fun, dynamic games.

Getting started

The Farseer engine is written in C# and I found once I’d installed the Silverlight SDK I could use MSBuild to build the Farseer engine that targets the Silverlight runtime. The Farseer engine doesn’t itself reference anything Silverlight specific, but it does need to be built against the limited .NET framework available in Silverlight.

I’ve previously blogged about writing dynamic language Silverlight applications; the Silverlight Dynamic Languages SDK contains the Silverlight IronPython assemblies and a command line application called Chiron. Chiron is a web server that runs from the command line and dynamically packages up XAPs as they are requested.

A little about XAPs

XAPs are packaged Silverlight applications that are downloaded and run on the clients Silverlight runtime. It turns out the XAP is just zip files containing the assemblies, resources and in the case of dynamic language applications, some plain text source code!

Additionally there is an AppManifest.xaml included in the XAP which tells Silverlight about what is included in the XAP and where to find an entry point. Below is an example of an AppManifest.xaml automatically generated by Chiron.

<Deployment xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007/deployment" 
            xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 
            RuntimeVersion="2.0.31005.0" 
            EntryPointAssembly="Microsoft.Scripting.Silverlight" 
            EntryPointType="Microsoft.Scripting.Silverlight.DynamicApplication">
  <Deployment.Parts>
    <AssemblyPart Source="Microsoft.Scripting.Silverlight.dll" />
    <AssemblyPart Source="Microsoft.Scripting.ExtensionAttribute.dll" />
    <AssemblyPart Source="Microsoft.Scripting.Core.dll" />
    <AssemblyPart Source="Microsoft.Scripting.dll" />
    <AssemblyPart Source="IronPython.dll" />
    <AssemblyPart Source="IronPython.Modules.dll" />    
    <AssemblyPart x:Name="FarseerPhysics" Source="bin/FarseerPhysics.dll" />
  </Deployment.Parts>
</Deployment>

This would probably be more interesting compared to a non dynamic language manifest file, but here are a few things I found interesting about it;

There is a whole lot of additional referenced assemblies required to compile Pyhton code in the Silverlight client, and yes, they are included in the XAP sent to the client.
The FarseerPhysics assembly is also included the XAP and is referenced in the manifest.
The EntryPointType is really the only difference between XAP manifest files generated for statically typed languages. For dynamic languages there are additional assemblies that compile the dynamic code, there doesn’t seem any reason you couldn’t feasibly write EntryPoint assemblies that interpreted lol-cat or brainfuck code.
And, I’m still targeting Silverlight 2! (Just haven’t got round to upgrading..)

Writing an application

I started by having a play with the Farseer engine by writing some IronPython scripts and running them from the console. As it’s just a physics engine, it can be coupled with any user interface, even a console.

When I tried to get the same script working in Silverlight I did encounter some difficulties referencing the Farseer assembly. I had to use the assemblies strong name, which I found using Reflector, but seems unnecessary given it was sent in the same XAP as the code referencing it!

Instead of just hacking this demo together in one giant script I decided to structure my code a little, including separating the view and the simulation model over different namespaces. Generally I’m learning heaps about what is pythonic, what I carry over from C/C++/C# and what is good software design.

I’m not entirely happy with my view classes, which are just wrappers around Silverlight controls. Even though the Silverlight control can be accessed through a property, I feel this isn’t the elegant solution I should be able to build in a dynamic language. It seemed more right for the physics wrappers, but still overly verbose.

Conclusion

I limited the example for this post to a very simple, but interactive 2d physics demo. Clicking any of the objects in the simulation creates a spring between the object and the mouse cursor until the mouse click is released or leaves the simulation view area.

The Farseer physics engine is a lot of fun to use, it’s easy to get into and you can do some really cool stuff with it.

The source code is sent as plain text and compiled (or interpreted) on client. As the XAP is just a normal zip file, it can unzipped by almost any zip tool. Inside is all the plain text source code, compiled assemblies and manifest file.

It’s awesome to be able to develop Silverlight applications with physics libraries using a high level language and light weight development environment. Happy hacking..

#.think.in infoDose #37 (12th July - 19th July)

brodie — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:41:00 +1000

Win Stuff!?

Write a Win7 App, Win $17,777 (need to be a yank though)

Developer

Lessons Learned A Grand Post-Mortem
NDepend Static Analysis Poster
Free Ebook Developers Developers Developers Developers - some good articles, worth a read!
Throw away and rebuild or refactor from within
A programmers secret weapon the humble to-do list
Episode 15 Bug Review
Continuous Integration Community College Discussion at Mark Needham
Stack Overflow Architecture High Scalability
Hanselminutes - Return of Uncle Bob - Are you professional?

Architecture

More On SubSonic’s Simple Repository
LINQ to SQL and Transactions
Minimizing unit Test Fragility – 8 features in Typemock Isolator to help
Building a 3-Tier App with Silverlight 3, .NET RIA Services and Azure Table Storage
User Interface Patterns
SQL SERVER – SELECT 1 vs SELECT – An Interesting Observation
How to improve your LINQ query performance by 5 X times
Create your own C# Code Generator with DSL in 15 minutes [part 2]
Bistro - a compositional .NET MVC framework inspired by REST, AOP and Django and directly support F#
Common Service Factory - great for DI and WCF services
SOLID - S Single Responsibility Principle Coding Efficiency

Silverlight

Utils

Games (as in board games)

Singularity Watch

Other

Google PowerMeter - measure electricity consumption – please can i get one of these
A Basic Introduction to Quantum Mechanics
Simple F# Game using WPF – tanks
Bill Gates What does 'browser' mean these days, anyway

#.think.in infoDose #36 (4th July - 11th July)

brodie — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:40:00 +1000

Announcements

SubSonic 3.0 is Released
Will Code for Green! Developer Contest - any proxy americans out there?
Google Set to Take On Microsoft With Desktop OS
MSDN Up North Downloadable NDC2009 videos
See the Light
Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek
Silverlight 3 Relase Download Links and Installation Instructions
The MossyBlog Times. Australian Silverlight & Expression 3 Tour.

Architecture

Developer

UI

Code

Utilities

Singularity Watch

Other

How does the Universe work and What is Reality

#.think.in infoDose #35 (25th June - 2nd July)

brodie — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:06:35 +1000

Announcements

Architecture

Developer

How to Make Efficiency Infectious When Working With a Team
The 7 Software Development Wastes - Part 1 Agile Software Development
A Lifestreaming Workflow - tools for lifestreaming
Top 200 Blogs for Developers (Q2 2009)
CouchDB and Me - watch this if you ever considered breaking away from the corporate shackles and go it alone
The HaaHa Show visits .NET Rocks
Did you know... You can get the name of the calling method
Understanding expression trees
Given When Then (GWT) extension for xUnit.net

Silverlight

Utilities

Singularity Watch

The Coming Artilect War - Hugo de Garis reckons gigadeath is imminent
TransAlchemy
Singularity Watch - hey, that's my idea!
Congratulations Human, You've Been Accepted to Singularity University - funny
Msg to our decendants File 0001 – umm, … yea??
TransAlchemy The Age of Transitions - brainwashed, Darwinism, eugenics, big brother matrix styled post human society, worth a view
Scientists create first electronic quantum processor

Books

Compare book & DVD prices in Australia with Booko – next time you’re thinking of buying a book (in Australia) go to this site first
Fishpond.com.au – this book ecommerce site seems to be pretty good for Aussies

Other

Introduction to Nanotechnology • Nanotechnology 101 • Nanotechnology Project
Andrew Brodie, Institute of Fundamental Sciences, Massey University - yea, didn't you know, I study nanotech in my spare time ;-)
Book Lists 100 Books Your Child Should Hear before Kindergarten at the Library
Microsoft misses the Outlook point
StackExchange™—The Stack Overflow Knowledge Exchange Platform

#.think.in infoDose #34 (18th June - 24th June)

brodie — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:52:42 +1000

Announcements

Remix Australia Videos - if you didn't get to Sydney, like me :(, check out the presentations.
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R2 Released - maybe
Microsoft Tech.Ed Australia 2009 - Register for the event - early bird registration - $300 off ... now I just need another $1699

Architecture - data access, languages, tech choices

The Only Pattern for Data Access is - There Are No Patterns for Data Access
NHibnerate Handling the Special Cases
Getting Started First Project in Fluent NHibernate
NHibernate - natural-id
Data Access Stored Procedures vs. ORM (ad hoc) Queries
Windows Mobile Developers Australia Codemasons' Guild
Focus on the Extension of WCF Behavior
Installing Windows SharePoint Services Application Template Core and All Templates
Ruby at ThoughtWorks - Fowler discusses experiences with Ruby based projects
dnrTV - F# screncast
Getting the Scoop About Olso and M

Developer - processes, learning

Who's the owner Shared code vs. code ownership Agile Software Development
Effective software development - Mentoring the value of pairing
Patterns and Practices of Lean Software Development
Values
Corporate Information - Our Philosophy - Google Philosophy
Lean Concepts for IT Professionals
Stop and Refactor
SQL Server Reporting Services and Working with Overlay Data
Adopting Agile Practices
Microsoft Learning Manager - start here if iinterested in getting certifications
9 Important XML Syntax Rules You Must Know
Episode 1 The Code Room Channel 9 – gold geekiness
ThoughtWorks - Audio Series

Silverlight/WPF

Utilities

Singularity Watch

Are Commercial Buildings Ready for Open-Source Energy Management
Kurzweil in the Lyons’ Den - Ray cops a beating for being the glass is half full guy
H+ Cafe - Upload Your Thoughts
'Lightbulb' molecule has a bright future - teeny-tiny lights!
Brain could adapt well to cyborg enhancements - I want my terminator hand!

Other

Wookah - I was wondering if there was an aggregated search engine out there
Geeky Innovations - Geekdom - Kingdom of Geeks - this seem to be a v.cool company
Revision3 Current Shows - if you are a geek, you don't need ever need foxtel ... or a tv for that matter!
Warning over 'superbug' risk from pets - anyone want two cats ... cheap!
The Real Lessons From Twitter

#.think.in infoDose #33 (10th June - 17th June)

brodie — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:04:00 +1000

Development

Architecture

Silverlight/WPF

eventr - reference application using SuperDeepZoom control
Binding Events to Commands
WPF Bindings and CurrentCulture Formatting
SilverZine Tutorial - Splash screens and Loaders in Silverlight
Hanselminutes - Silverlight 3 with Tim Heuer

Utilities

NHModeller - Home
smtp4dev - developer/tester smtp server
Subversion 1.6, Tree Conflicts, and the Incompatibility of Subversion 1.5 What You Need to Know

Books

Beautiful Teams

Fired Up or Burned Out How to Reignite Your Team's Passion, Creativity, and Productivity Michael L. Stallard

After the Software Wars by Keith Curtis (Book) in Computers & Internet

Singularity Watch

Other

#.think.in infoDose #32 (2nd June - 9th June)

brodie — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 07:22:00 +1000

Announcements

Server Fault – stackoverflow for NOCs :)

Development

Architecture

Training – software architecture training
The role of a hands-on software architect
Domain-Driven Design Two basic premises - DDD
I don’t believe in ORM object as your domain model
To ORM or Not to ORM.

Unit Testing

A Look at CreateMock, DynamicMock and PartialMock Methods in RhinoMocks

.Net

Books

Singularity Watch

Other

Quotes

" Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." - Gandhi

NGourd BDD for WPF Applications

tarn — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:40:46 +1000

I checked out NGourd, a project to build a BDD tool based on Cucumber which Michael Minutillo has started. I’d never previously used or even heard of Cucumber, but as I read on I liked a lot about it. It’s an agile development tool and it has a colourful console!

The concept is illustrated beautifully at http://cukes.info/, but here is my take anyway. Behavior is described in the form of a series of plain text steps. The steps are then implemented as parameterized test methods. Using some reflection and regular expressions the plain text steps are mapped to corresponding implementations and run as red/green light tests.

I started wondering if WPF applications could be tested with NGourd. There’s a great IronPython sample in which a WPF application is started in a new thread and built dynamically from the IronPython interactive console.

Could something like this could be done in NGourd steps?

	
Scenario: Can Perform basic arithmetic

Given I start the application
When I enter 2 + 2
And I click GO
Then I should see 4

By using a thread to run the application and a dispatcher to invoke methods on it I had a crude framework to write the steps to make a System.Windows.Application dance. The steps class library has references to the application (to run and test it) and to the NGourd.Core (which has the Attributes I need to decorate the step classes and methods). I’ve exposed the controls of application publically to make the test easier to write.

[Steps]
public class Behaviour
{
    public Thread _thread;
    public Dispatcher _dispatcher;
    public App _app;

    [Step("start the application")]
    public void StartApplication()
    {
        AutoResetEvent are = new AutoResetEvent(false);
        _thread = new Thread(() =>
        {
            _app = new App();
            _app.Startup += (sender, eventArgs) =>
                    {
                        _dispatcher =
                            Dispatcher.FromThread(_thread);
                        are.Set();
                    };
            _app.Run();
        });
        _thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
        _thread.Start();
        are.WaitOne();
    }

    [Step(@"enter (.*)")]
    public void EnterScript(string script)
    {
        _dispatcher.Invoke(
            new Action(() =>
            {
                _app.MainWindow.UserScript.Text = script;
            }));
    }

    ...

    public void After()
    {
        _dispatcher.Invoke(
            new Action(() =>
            {
                _app.MainWindow.Close();
            }
            ));
        _thread.Join();
    }
}

Writing the application

The demo application is a trivial calculator that executes Python statements.

The method below is the model for this application. It’s worth mentioning it’s very easy to include C# objects to the scope of the ScriptSource, but only for this post, I’ve restrained myself to the more simple behavior I specified earlier (but I did add it to the demo which can be downloaded here)

public string EvaluateExpression(string expression)
{
    try
    {
        ScriptEngine engine = Python.CreateEngine();
        ScriptRuntime runtime = engine.Runtime;

        ScriptSource source =
          engine.CreateScriptSourceFromString(
                       expression,
                       SourceCodeKind.Expression);

        return (source.Execute() ?? "").ToString();
    }
    catch(Exception ex)
    {
        return ex.Message;
    }
}

Of course this could be unit tested itself.

[TestMethod]
public void ModelCanDoBasicArithmetic()
{
    Model model = new Model();
    string output = model.EvaluateExpression("2+2");
    Assert.AreEqual("4", output);
}

So what are we testing? I guess its this

public void Execute_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    output.Text = _model.EvaluateExpression(input.Text);
}

The only thing I had to do the application specifically to get it working in test environment was delete an attribute in App.xaml root element

StartupUri="Window1.xaml"

This has consequences. No window loads on start up! By added a constructor in my App class I was able to remedy this. This may have wider reaching consequences I’m not aware of, and I’m also not sure if using the OnLoad event is better practice. Anyway it’s working fine for now.

public partial class App : Application
{
    public App()
    {
        MainWindow w = new MainWindow();
        w.Show();
    }
}

It was fun implementing the steps in my scenario then writing the application and watching the behavior test turn green like a cucumber!

Isolating scenarios in separate application domains

Even though everything looked looks like it was working, I wanted to add another scenario (which won’t surprise readers of my recent posts)

	
Scenario: Can Execute Python statements

Given I start the application
When I enter “hello”.upper()
And I click GO
Then I should see HELLO

It turns out this extra test didn’t need any additional step implementations or changes to the WPF application itself, but did show a very real deficiency in what I was doing. I was reminded of the rule enforced by InvalidOperationException:

Cannot create more than one System.Windows.Application instance in the same AppDomain.

I knew of this rule, I still tried to get round it anyway. Can I close one somehow? Delete one? Delete one and de-reference its friends and family?

Creating a new AppDomain seems a clever way round the rules reasoning, but the wary fear this may be some type of pandora's box, at very least additional complexities. Just thinking of MarshalByRefObject proxies makes me feel I should be spending more time enjoying life with my friends and family.

I got some way using DoCallBack until I realized I couldn’t make the steps parameterized as DoCallBack doesn’t have any parameters! (I also stubbornly know it throws runtime errors if one tries to use the looser lambda scoping to cheekily pass data across application domains, luckily though it’s the same stubboness that stopped me giving up this post all together).

As I was thinking I should use WCF for communication betweens application domains, another way I could do to it clicked. I just needed to create my original steps class in a new application domain. By deriving the test class from MarshalByRefObject I could call its step methods from the control domain using it dynamic proxy. I then created a wrapper class which creates a new AppDomain, creates the previous steps in the new domain and uses the dynamic proxy to call the steps. This wrapper class now has the Step attributes for NGourd to pick up.

[Steps]
public class BehaviourWrapper
{
    AppDomain domain;
    Behaviour behaviourProxy;

    public void Before()
    {
        domain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("TestDomain");
        behaviourProxy = domain.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap
            ("DLRCalculator.BehaviourTests.dll",
             "DLRCalculator.BehaviourTests.Behaviour") 
                as Behaviour;
    }

    public void After()
    {
        behaviourProxy.After();
        AppDomain.Unload(domain);
    }

    [Step("start the application")]
    public void StartApplication()
    {
        behaviourProxy.StartApplication();
    }

    [Step(@"enter (.*)")]
    public void EnterScript(string script)
    {
        behaviourProxy.EnterScript(script);
        Thread.Sleep(5000);
    }

    [Step(@"click GO")]
    public void ClickGo()
    {
        behaviourProxy.ValidateOutput();
    }

    [Step(@"should see (.*)")]
    public void ValidateOutput(string expected)
    {
        behaviourProxy.ValidateOutput(expected);
    }
}

Running some tests with NGourd

I’m impressed with NGourd and have generally had a lot of fun and success playing with it. It’s a little disappointing that no results are displayed until all the tests are complete. Perhaps it’s because my tests take ages and it would be nice to see what they’re doing (starting an AppDomain and running an Application in it isn’t a lightweight task). Mainly though, I wanted to include an action shot of it firing up windows during the test.

Some thoughts and reflection

I didn’t write this to actually use it in a real project, this was a personal project deliberately devised to cover some some things I was interesting in learning about and trying out. To do automation on a real project I would look further into White an open source project released by ThoughtWorks, which I hear is really good.

The concept of Cucumber is pretty cool and I was nice to have a look at the NGourd source code. In writing this post I enjoyed putting in practice what I new could be done relatively easily (creating and managing multiple AppDomains, Applications and Threads in a process) and I was happy to find I had no problems at all with NGourd itself getting the UI tests working.

This is all I planned to do with NGourd, the UI steps and the Calculator, but I’d be interested to hear what you think of all this rambling. I know I got a lot out of it, did you? What of the other behavior driven development tools MSpec, NSpec or NBehave? What are your experiences?

I’ve upload the project from this post here.

#.think.in infoDose #31 (24th May - 1st June)

brodie — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:41:00 +1000

Google’s cupcakes from Google IO… – Google developer lovefest – got to check out Google Waves – awesome email/messaging/collaboration application – can transmit characters as they are typed!

Developer

Architecture

Silverlight/WPF

Utilities

TSql Unit Test Generator

Books

Singularity Watch

The Future of Artificial Intelligence
FOREVERISM
Create an AI on Your Computer ... this should help to to get singularity v0.1 out the door
The QB1 Computer No Mouse, No Keyboard. Just Gestures
6 in 1 Solar Robot Kit Standing on the Shoulders of Giant Memes - i will need this
The Emotiv Headset - Gaming With Thoughts Alone - i will definitely need this
The secret to a really long life. Be happy. Exercise. Eat right. And sign up now to get nanobots in 2030
The Future Brain
Will enhancement destroy the real you