Fearless Bytes 3

I finally caught up with my RSS feeds. Here’s what I found useful:

10 skills developers will need in the next five years
- Of the 10, the one that most resonated was that the author believes that most developers will need to at least one of the following three development systems (note: not language): ASP.NET, PHP, and Java
Unit Testing: Can You Afford Not To?
- Need help making a case for Unit Testing? This is a good metaphysical-level argument for it. I’m coming to understand that the only way to effect this kind of adoption within an organization is to take it upon yourself to use the technology/methodology yourself such that you become the person who has the least buggy code and develops faster; then people will ask how you did it, and you can tell them how. It also helps to have the framework and examples in place for others to build on.
How I Learned to Program Manage an Agile Team after 6 years of Waterfall
- I’m not a program manager but I find this story based on the author’s personal experience fascinating. I found the moments of clarity and the examples of what’s being used at CodePlex very useful.
Effective Windows PowerShell: The Free eBook
- I recently got interested in PowerShell. I wish I’d done it earlier. This is a great Cliff’s Notes for PowerShell.
The C# Programming Language Version 4.0
- I’m always looking forward to the next C#/.NET evolution. Here’s a good overview of what’s coming up.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 12:06 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to Fearless Bytes 3

John says:

April 6, 2009 at 9:33 am

oooh. thanks for the powershell link. the little powershell i have learned has made me ever so slightly more competent on windows. 😀

Reply
- Ben Goodwin says:
  
  April 6, 2009 at 9:45 am
  
  The key to Powershell is remembering that every command returns an object. You then realize you can do stuff like this:
  
  (Get-Process -name winamp*).Path
  (Get-Process -name winamp*).VirtualMemorySize
  (dir AUTOEXEC.BAT).CreationTime
  (dir AUTOEXEC.BAT).CreationTime.Year
  
  And then this
  
  Get-Content c:\boot.ini | ForEach-Object { $_.Length }
  
  Reply
  - john says:
    
    April 8, 2009 at 3:13 pm
    
    yeah — that took me a little while to figure out.
    I still think I prefer ‘ls | wc -l’ to ‘(get-childitems .).count’. On the other hand, process stuff I like much better in powershell.
    
    get-process | sort-object -property cpu -descending | select-object -first 20
    
    makes a lot more sense than
    
    ps -are -o “comm cpu” | head -20