SDN event june 2014

The SDN – Software Development Network – is a special interest group for dutch developers. Four times a year they organise an event where people present and talk about their passion.

As a member of the SDN you are aware of the latest developments. You are part of a network of professional developers who assist each other in word and deed. This means there is a technical helpdesk at your fingertips so you can book considerable time savings in solving problems.
sdn.nl with Google translate

Here are the talks I attended.

Agile, why it works

Freek talked from experience about the cycles in agile. At the end of each cycle it it moved to the next step until the cycle is accepted.

  • design, designing and building the software
  • feedback, show it to the customer and get feedback (fix it)
  • accept, final demo, now customer must accept or accept ‘when’*
  • *Accept ‘when’ means accept feedback, but when that is fixed customer must accept.

Make sure to do workshops and use timebox – bugetbox.

AngularJS

angularjs
Henk Jan (aka Nacho Libre) showed us how AngularJS emerged from the Google Feedback project. After a little sidestep to todomvc.com he showed us how to do it.
You need to learn the directives first, but than it is very declarative. As a special handicap he did it all on someone else’s machine (he forgot the VGA-HDMI converter) Nicely done :mrgreen:

Microsoft Application Insights

Next up is Hassan who is a MVP and VS ALM Ranger. He talked a lot about the microsoft ALM suite and ended his talk showing Insights.

You can add Insights to web, windows phone or windows store applications. It reports about

  • Availability,
  • Performance,
  • Usage,
  • Diagnostics

All you need to do is add some code that is handed to you in the portal. See this Azure Friday video for more detail.

Hybrid app

Roland shows cordova and cordova based frameworks (phonegab, telerik appbuilder) to build cross platform apps. The key is that you build a website that is hosted in a chromeless browser inside a native app.

The paid frameworks deliver more features, but are still cordova based. This means that after the license expires you can stil use the code and build your app.

Look at phonegap build to overcome the “not having a mac” issue. Keep in mind that you still need an Apple developer certificate. It is free for one private app and unlimited open source apps.

Final thoughts

Next event is scheduled for September 9. Check the SDN site for details.
For edition 121 of the magazine I wrote about octopus deploy. Read it here (dutch, registration required).

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Week 23 roundup

Last week recap and links:

Image courtesy of kanate / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

  • Installed TimeManage.me to help me pomodoro. Looks and works great. Getting things done!
  • Had some issues with multi thread database access like described here. Turned out to be not using IoC on one place in my code, which bit me. When you decide to go IoC, go all the way.
  • Found an awesome youtube channel that teaches you Aikido (the martial arts). Brings back memories. Howcast – Aikido

Image courtesy of kanate / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What are your best reads this week? Leave them in the comments below.

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Allow incompatible platform in schema comparison

Schema comparison of SQL Express 2012 database and SQL Server 2008 gives an error

A project which specifies SQL Server 2012 as the target platform cannot be published to SQL Server 2008.

Set the allow incompatible platform in the options (little gear icon) and you’re good to go.

allow.incompatible.platform

Saving the comparison to a file (.scmp) will include this setting. No more complaints about versions.

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Browserstack first look

Browserstack offers a free trial. Signup through modern.ie for an extended 3 months trial. I’ve tried it and found it very useful. The features are highlighted in this post.

Live

browserstack.start

Type the public url and choose the platform and browser. Within seconds there is the website in a virtual machine in your browser.
All common developer tools are available.

I was somewhat surprised the iOS browser was the emulator on Mavericks. But how would they automate access to an actual iPad browser?

When you want to test a local website (development) use the browser plugin. Starting from your development environment can be done with the plugins. This creates a tunnel from your machine to the browserstack cloud. Debugging local, browsing in the cloud, good stuff.

The free trial gives access to all live features for 30 minutes, trough modern.ie that is 3 months. Enough time to convince the management 😉

Automate

Testing websites with selenium is supported too. They provide the setup code and off you go. Finally use selenium to run the same test on multiple platforms and browsers, just by changing some setup.

The free trial provides you with 100 minutes of automation.

Screenshots

Automatically create a screenshot of the website on the provided url. Somewhat like Browsershots.

Nice feature is the share option. This creates a link to the screenshots result on browserstack. Here are the screenshots of this blog. Some default selected browsers timed out which looks like a bug.

The free trial allows for 100 screenshots.

Responsive

Motorola.droid.razr
Browse your website with real browsers for screenshot purposes. Finally create a screenshot on the Motorola Droid Razr browser without actual owning it.

First impressions

The platform feels very well thought. Pricing looks expensive, but what is the price of not testing because of the setup hassle?

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Week 22 roundup

Last week recap an links:

Image courtesy of kanate / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

  • Old but handy script to reindex sql server
  • Through this post discovered Noisli a nice background/white noice app and website.
  • Tried the myEcho app from Scott. Unfortunately there is no dictation on iPhone for dutch keyboards. But works great in English.

Image courtesy of kanate / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What are your best reads this week? Leave them in the comments below.

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