Mercurial is a very appealing distributed source code versioning system. I used it with Google code and also for some local work when no server repository was available. Worked great. This time I wanted to go through the scenario of setting up Mercurial as a team repository with a centralized server. This would be still useful for an individual developer to have local commits (better than committing every single change just to ensure it’s captured) and would allow to push an entire change set to be versioned on the server and allow others to retrieve that change set with all the “intermediate bookmarks”.

This is a great explanation of Rx Framework given by Bart De Smet on InfoQ. Very good explanation and samples.

JetBrains has released the beta version of their tool that can replace Reflector. Just the navigation around with R# like shortcuts is worth trying it. I tried Telerik’s JustDecompile, though it wasn’t as good as dotPeek. ILSpy is another player on the field, that I have tried to use. So far the leader is dotPeek. Let’s see how the game will go. Once thing is obvious – Reflector is loosing.

Generic Repository (something like Repository) is a good concept with intention of keeping code DRY, though problematic. Here are a few drawbacks of a generic repository:

1. It is not always logical to call behaviours Save, Delete, etc on all repositories
2. Support (logging as an example) requires to know what specific repository was invoked, and not just Repository

Just recently I ran into a log with an exception, where operation on …Repositories.Repository`1.Save(T obj…) failed and there was no way to figure out what repository out of 4 different one actually failed save operation.

I really loved the last exhibit at the Royal Tyrrell Museum (door with the words):

Species come and species go. The only constant in life on earth is change.

Agile Fundamentals is an online course ThoughtWorks is provided free of charge. The subjects discussed are

• Origins
• Core Practices
• Technical Practices
• Quality
• Planning/Communicating

This is a good primer for Agile. If you want to have a quick introduction, this course will be helpful.

I have started this book long time ago, but never got to end of it. Finally, I had a

In the past, I did a lot of WebForms work. These days I spend a lot working on ASP.NET MVC and like it way more. Primarily for the reasons of testability and being closer to the real web (stateless and mark-up).

This a neat shortcut assignment I probably will end up using a lot

TDD causes different people react to it in a completely different way. Some just jump on it like on a glass of a cold sparkling drink in the heat of a summer day. Some run away from it like it’s a wild dog ready to take a bite. Some feel that there might be a value for them in it, but don’t really want to move away from the comfort zone. And the last group of people always have an interesting way making an attempt to justify why having no TDD is good.