Electric Head Software

Building .NET Apps in VSCode (Not .NetCore)

With all the fanfare around .NET Core and VS Code, you might have been lead to believe that you can’t build your boring old .NET apps inside of VS Code, but that’s not the case.

Get Coding! — I wrote a book.

Through late 2015 and the start of 2016 I was working on a “secret project” that I could only allude to in conjunction with Walker Books UK and Young Rewired State – to write a book to get kids coding. As a hirer, I’ve seen first hand the difficulty in getting a diverse range…

Why code reviews are important

Making sure that more than one set of eyes has seen all the code that we produce is an important part of software development — it makes sure that we catch bugs, keep our code readable, and share patterns and practices across the teams.

Projections in Agile Software Development

Preparing a timeline for the development of software is a difficult problem – teams have proven time and time again that they’re tremendously bad at estimating how long it takes to develop software at any kind of scale.

Using C# 6 Language Features In Your Software Tomorrow

Visual Studio 2015 dropped today, along with C# 6, and a whole host of new language features. While many new features of .NET are tied to framework and library upgrades, language features are specifically tied to compiler upgrades…

Passenger — A C# Selenium Page Object Library (Video)

A lap around Passenger — a page object library I’ve been working on for selenium.

In this video, we’ll discuss the general concept of page objects for browser automation testing — then we’ll work into a live…

Page objects for browser automation — 101

The page object model is a pattern used by UI automation testers to help keep their test code clean. The idea behind it is very simple — rather than directly using your test driver (Selenium / watin etc) you should encapsulate the calls to it’s API in…

We need to talk about configuration.

The vast majority of software that you build and use needs to be configured – feature toggles, file and directory paths, startup options. We build configurable software every single day – especially if you build line of business apps.

Cutting CODE!–A livestream show for programmers

I’ve spent some time recently thinking and discussing the idea of live-streaming coding sessions. It started with conversations with my brother about how there’s not really a Twitch TV for programming, but if there was I’d be really into that.