Today run into what I think is a bug in Windsor Container. After googling a bit, found a post that is similar to what I have - need to have a constructor in implementer component (ctor(string)) and configure Windsor to call it, rather than overloaded version of constructor. For some reason Windsor is not going to the default constructor.

I have posted before about the subject, and there was a strong hold on both sides (for and against). Yesterday I run into a blog that mentioned a software called Mingle 2.0 - obviously not the first version according to the name, but I have never heard of it before, so it might be a naming game (all the Web 2.0 thing) - who knows? And probably someone knows. If you a successful survivor of the software or have  a few words to drop, leave your comment after the beep.

We have some very talented and blade sharp people here. So why can't we start ALT.NET Calgary local group? This would definitely promote excellent ideas around, enrich our dev community, put more stress on quality, agility, and much more. Feel free to contact me if interested.

PS: I am quite inspired by what is going on right now at the ALT.NET conference. Wish would be there...

Inspired by people like JP. Thank you.

The Matrix has you…

- Ever have that feeling where you’re not sure if you’re awake or dreaming?

- How did you do that?

- Right now, all I can tell you… is that you’re in danger. They’re watching you, Neo.

- Who is?

- Please just listen. I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing. I know why you hardly sleep… why you live alone and why, night after night… you sit at your computer. You’re looking for him. I know, because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me… he told me I wasn’t really looking for him…

After a long time I had the book sitting idle, finally I had a chance to get my hands on it - Who Moved My Cheese. A very nice, fairy tale kind-of book teaching how to cope with changes. I loved it, especially it’s nice to read if you are trying to wrap around the agility concept.

Be ready for changes, be ready to change. Be ready for things become and stay dynamic. You have to be dynamic. Don’t be a littlepeople, with a two complicated brain analysis to adopt to changes, be quick and pragmatic, adopt and period. Nice book, worth reading.

While pairing today with one of the developers from our team, we decided not to let the mice to distract us, and unplugged it. That was awesome - within seconds we diagnosed ourselves with a mouse-have-to-touch addiction symptom. Every single moment a hand was reaching to the sacred location two things happened:

1. The mouse wasn’t working- The brain was realizing that there’s an alternative - keyboard

It probably took an hour to digest the great loss, but we started to rely on R# and keyboard shortcuts to do the job. I can definitely see the difference between the start and the finish.

Over the weekend I had a chance to play a bit with the tutorials provided by Gabriel Schenker for NHibernate 2.0 TDD style. A few thoughts on the subjects:

• NHibernate is powerful for especially Domain oriented solutions
• Feels a few orders more mature than the ADO.NET* approaches (Have to admit, I am not a big fan of ADO.NET - and at work people don’t like that. Hopefully they will be able to see in NHibernate what I saw for myself)
• Definitely helps to shift the focus on the right problems (not how to persist and cache, but how to resolve the real problem - logic of the solution for the domain, not technology)

I will be continuing with those tutorial, trying to learn more and see how and when can introduce it in our code. The fact that you can do you testing without having an actual database is thrilling (in a good way) and exciting. What I am missing at this point is some good literature recommendation that is more .NET oriented, with accent on the version that supports Generics and HCQ (HQL is a bit too SQL-ish to me).

An interesting book where author sharpens things that are quiet simple and have lots of common sense. I loved a few things that are very applicable to myself:

Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.

People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of.

It’s easier to be mediocre than it is to confront the reality and quit.

At the company I work for we are trying to do things in a more agile way. And one of the things that people hesitate to do is to stick to something to ’taste’ it. It doesn’t necessarily means that there will be no value delivered to the client, or the work will be entirely stalled. To me it means don’t turn down right away something until you know what are you talking about. And you won’t know what you are talking about unless you do it. So this one is about whiteboard with stickers vs excel spreadsheet.

Today JP Boodhoo has visited the place I am working for to give a short idea what we should be doing to become more agile and walk the path of true developers. It was short, and we didn’t have a chance to hit the base code (code never lies), but this is definitely will wake some up from the Matrix (later on this one).

So what did JP said? Mostly the same things he’s being saying lately everywhere - be masters of your profession, put proud in what you are doing by perfecting it, and always remembering that client value is the priority number one. Do not stop trying to do better than you doing now, build you expertise in cores, don’t chase the latest technology trends. Value communication with your fellow developers. Be honest with yourself and others on how well you perform and how much you need to improve.