Anti-patterns

Simple little things. The 42 extension method anti-pattern

By shoogend at 2 September, 2010, 4:49 pm

Extension methods are a powerful feature in .NET, and have been increasingly adopted by the developer community. Also, LINQ and other framework features rely heavily on extension methods. In fact, extension methods were originally invented to be able to implement LINQ without having to change a lot of .NET framework base classes. Basically, an extension [...]

Sander’s talk at TechEd US 2010. How frameworks can kill your projects and patterns to prevent getting killed

By shoogend at 20 June, 2010, 12:48 pm

Last week, the Microsoft TechEd North America 2010 took place in the great city of New Orleans. I was lucky to be invited to do a talk on how frameworks can kill your projects. When it comes to Microsoft .NET-connected development, more and more frameworks enter the market. Both from Microsoft and from open source. [...]

Horrible web design (I) – HP Help Form

By shoogend at 17 June, 2010, 10:49 pm

Every now and then you see really horrible examples of software development. While I was try to scan a document using my printer/scanner, the software by HP failed miserable. Being the nice customer I am, when HP invited me to fill in an enquiry about the quality of their service. The form presented to fill [...]

PowerPoint Architecture

By shoogend at 8 June, 2010, 6:00 pm

It’s a mildly sunny April morning in 2002 when I park my car outside of a huge government agency office in a small suburban city near Utrecht. I am invited for a brainstorm session with the agency’s enterprise architects. Although I do not consider myself an enterprise architect, and explained that upfront, they were eager [...]

Death by landscape

By shoogend at 25 May, 2010, 9:35 pm

Suppose you are in the IT department of a (very) large organization and have been developing systems for your organization for quite some years. Chances are that you will have a landscape of systems great and small that all serve a particular purpose, or that have served a particular purpose. Systems that were built in [...]

Alzheimer Architecture

By shoogend at 14 April, 2010, 12:48 am

Let’s suppose for a moment that it’ is 1986. And let’s suppose you are starting a new company. A company that sells products or services to customers, as most companies do. Let’s say you selling (surf) board wear. You start selling your first t-shirts and you decide that you need to automate stuff. So you [...]

Identifying services we might need in the future but don’t know right now?

By shoogend at 27 November, 2009, 1:23 pm

Earlier this week I attended the Landelijk Architectuur Congres in Nieuwegein. Besides the noteworthy percentage of attendees with mustaches, grey hair and ties, a pleasant and friendly event. In the afternoon of the first day of the event I did a lively talk on shaping service oriented projects using smart use cases. During the talk [...]

December 10, 2009. “Agile development in everyday practice”

By shoogend at 29 October, 2009, 10:23 am

IT Works, Hotel Pullman Brussels Airport, Diegem, Belgium (www.itworks.be) Although agile software development approaches, principles and techniques are slowly becoming more mainstream, it is still necessary to promote them for the larger part of the IT community and organizations. Together with my Belgian guest speaker Stefaan van Royen (now of BoonDoggle), who can talk very [...]

October 15, 2009. Seminar. “Agile software development in everyday practice”

By shoogend at 15 October, 2009, 10:12 am

Array Seminars, Hotel Amrath Lapershoek, Hilversum (www.arrayseminars.nl) Although agile software development approaches, principles and techniques are slowly becoming more mainstream, it is still necessary to promote them for the larger part of the IT community and organizations. Together with my Belgian guest speaker Stefaan van Royen (now of BoonDoggle), who can talk very lively on [...]

De bug als feature (in Dutch)

By shoogend at 2 September, 2009, 11:23 pm

This column will be pulished in the September 2009 issue of Software Release Magazine (www.release.nl). Eind augustus gleed er een opvallende leaflet in mijn gloednieuwe brievenbus. Een leaflet van McDonalds. Niet dat ik daar normaliter veel acht op sla, maar deze trok mijn onverdeelde aandacht. “Ook Utrecht Leidsche Rijn heeft nu een eigen McDonalds. Uniek [...]