Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 CodeLens rocks!

We've been using the CodeLens feature of Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 for a few months now. All the years of diligently creating Work Items and Changesets with clear titles really pay off now.

It's a feature you really get used to very, very quickly. As many other people, I do not really get why this should be a feature reserved for the Ultimate edition of Visual Studio, as it is useful for any kind of developer and not just architects.

Nice kitchen analogy about avoiding too much "Work in Progress"

Dan North has written up a parable about a "Busy Kitchen" that serves as a nice analogy to people requesting features and changes in software. 

I like it much better than all the "car ordering" and "house building" analogies I've had to endure over the years. :-)

SQL Server Days Pre-conference

De SQL Server Days Pre-conference is een ganse dag uitleg door dezelfde spreker. Wij kozen voor de uitleg van Klaus Aschenbrenner over "Performance tuning for the SQL Server Developer". Deze uitleg bleek erg helder. Hij startte met het absolute beginsel van databanktheorie: verzamelingenleer. Van daaruit bouwde hij z'n uitleg verder op tot en met Window Aggregation Functions.

Ondertussen heb ik ook z'n "SQL Server Quickies"-reeks ontdekt op YouTube waarin hij een duidelijke theoretische uitleg geeft over elementaire zaken als de verschillende soorten joins (waaronder Hash Joins) en de verschillende soorten indexen.

Top 12 technology podcasts I listen to

These are some interesting technology podcasts I regularly listen to:

1. .NET Rocks!
2. This Week On Channel 9
3. Herding Code
4. Hanselminutes
5. Windows Weekly
6. This Week in Tech
7. This Week in Google
8. All About Android
9. Security Now
10. Triangulation
11. The Boagworld Web Design Show
12. Critical Enterprise Architecture netcast

These are some interesting non-technology podcasts I sometimes listen to:

1. Freakonomics Radio
2. This American Life
3. Stuff You Should Know
4. NPR Topics: Economy Podcast
5. NPR: Planet Money Podcast

I'm always looking for new podcasts to listen to. What other technology podcasts would you recommend?

Great technology history audiobook: "Open: How Compaq Ended IBM's PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing"

I never realized the role Compaq had played during those first years of the Personal Computer. The PC market could have turned out entirely different if either IBM or Compaq would have taken different decisions during that period.

An interesting read / listen and a throwback to the days of the 80286, 80386 and 80486 computers.
http://www.audible.com/pd/Science-Technology/Open-Audiobook/B00EZBAFOQ

What technology history audiobook would you recommend?

I finally started reading "Clean Code - A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship"

The book "Clean Code" has been on my reading list for ages. Hearing the extremely experienced "Uncle Bob" speak in London during the New Developers Conference was very inspiring, so it looked like it was worth finally checking out his books. The summer time turned out to be an excellent time to catch up on some reading.

I'll be sure to check out the successor to this book: "The Clean Coder - A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers".

What tech books are on your summer reading list?

Team Foundation Server Update 2 has a bug that causes scheduled builds to launch 1 hour too early

Today we noticed a scheduled build was launched one hour too early by Team Foundation Server. After figuring out what Microsoft meant with "Roman Daylight Time" and wether we are in "UTC+1" or "UTC+2" or "UTC+1+1 Daylight Savings Time" it turned out we configured our systems correctly, but a bug was introduced in TFS 2013 Update 2.

The good news is that Microsoft promises the bug is fixed TFS 2013 Update 3, for which there is currently a Release Candidate.

So if you are running TFS 2013 Update 2 it is worth checking out if your scheduled builds are actually running at the time you expect them to. :-)