My wife and I welcomed our son, Keegan James Eichert, into the world monday evening.  Needless to say posting will be slow for a while until we're all adjusted, as well as until I finish up the other projects that have been keeping me busy lately...such as the LINQ book. :)

I would have liked it better if Dave started writing his series 6 months ago, but, none-the-less he's got a great series of posts going that are a must read for anyone who is thinking of writing a book, or in the process.

Most of the stories I hear about using an agile/iterative development "methodology" are from those in the consulting world.  It's nice to hear about people in product organizations, such as Adobe, using agile/iterative development successfully.  I've heard a number of people say it isn't possible due to the nature of product organizations, it sounds like the Photoshop development team might disagree.  They switched to a more agile approach and cut their bug count by approximately 1/3, ended up with a higher quality product with plenty of features, and ended up working fewer nights and weekends.

I'm going to document the things I run into as I transition from the May 2006 CTP of LINQ to the full March 2007 CTP of Orcas. Tonight after sorting out my data source issue I ran into a compile error with my Visual Basic code samples that are using XML Axis properties. The error is "XML Axis properties do not support late binding". Hopefully I'll be able to post back here shortly with an answer to why I'm getting this....

UPDATE:  Thanks to a comment from Avner I figured out that this is due to a regression in the capability of VB9 to infer types.  Previously things worked swimmingly with the following code:

    Dim rss = XElement.Load("rss.xml")
    Dim items = rss...<item>

With the March CTP the type of "rss" needs to be explicitly defined like so:

    Dim rss As XElement = XElement.Load("rss.xml")
    Dim items = rss...<item>

I like the old way better :)

Yesterday I mentioned I was having some trouble adding a Data Source in Orcas. I'm happy to report that following the instructions in the Orcas March CTP on Vista Database Connections Problem Solved post resolved my issue. Once I commented out the SQL Server CE Data Provider in the machine.config everything was back to normal.

There has been a lot of talk about LINQ as well as LINQ to SQL.  People seem to be genuinely interested in what they're going to offer.  LINQ to XML on the other hand doesn't seem to be getting much love.  I for one think it deserves it.  In the coming weeks I'm going to start a marketing campaign for LINQ to XML that will aim to convince you that LINQ to XML deserves some love as well.  Before getting started, let me ask the question, why aren't you giving LINQ to XML any love? 

I had a jolly good fun time tonight updating my code samples to the March CTP of Orcas.  Well, actually, I'm not quite finished as of yet because of the wonderful error in the title of this post.  It appears VS.NET Orcas doesn't want to let me recreate my data connection for my database that I'm using for some LINQ to SQL examples. Woot!  Hopefully I'll figure out what the dealy is shortly because I've got chapters I need to finish. :)

Simple, use the acts_as_enterprisey plugin!  It doesn't get any easier than that does it?

Let’s face it, we all want the big bucks. And we all know Consultancy Law No. 1:

    Your Rates Are Proportional To Your App's Enterpriseyness

Or, as Shakespeare would have said:

    Enterprisey Apps Invite, Nay Demand, Enterprisey Rates.  Verily, Sunshine.

Rails make life easy for us but — and it’s a big but — we don’t want it to look easy. acts_as_enterprisey is your friend.

How does acts_as_enterprisey make webapp development look hard? Well, the only way your client can judge your app is by playing around with it. What better gives the feeling of heavy weights being lifted behind the scenes than slow response times? Exactly. That’s what acts_as_enterprisey does.

So while your client clicks, …waits…, and then gets the page, you can blather on heroically about wrestling with clustered indexes, cache expiration strategies, n log n seek times, etc ad nauseam.

http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/acts_as_enterprisey

On a more serious note, the http://agilewebdevelopment.com/ site has a lot of good information on Rails plugins.

Aaron just recently mentioned this TextMate screencast that shows how you can use TextMate as a blog editor via the Blogging Bundler. This is an attempt to see if it actually works! :)

As you may have noticed, I spend my mornings and evenings going to and from work on a train.  I usually use this time to read, unless I have a pounding headache in which case I stare out into space until I hear the call for my stop.  Anywho, I recently finished Everyday Scripting with Ruby: For Teams, Testers, and You by Brian Marick. 

A while back when I was learning about Ruby on Rails Migrations I got a chance to learn a bit of Ruby.  This was mostly due to the fact that the SQL Server adapters for Rails Migrations wasn't exactly up to snuff, and in order to get a proof of concept going Aaron and I needed to write some Ruby code.  The experience gave me a pretty good understanding of Ruby as a language. 

Fast forward a year, and all the sudden there I am forgetting everything that I learned.  That is...until Everyday Scripting with Ruby.  Brian has put together a really nice introduction to the Ruby language that should be approachable for programmers, testers, and anyone else who likes to dabble in scripting.  I don't think I fit exactly within the target audience, but I still found the book a worthwhile read and would recommend it to anyone who would like to learn Ruby.  Along with Programming Ruby you should have all you need to master the Ruby language.  Brian does a good job introducing the Ruby language, as well as offering valuable insight into his world and how he goes about writing scripts.

In summary, Everyday Scripting with Ruby is a great edition to your bookshelf if your interested in learning Ruby.  Those with many years of experience in the industry will likely find parts of it "skippable" or "skimmable", but no matter how much experience you have your bound to find a couple nuggets of wisdom that make it worth the twenty (or so) bucks you'll plop down for it.

I'm not sure what's up next but I just made a mass purchase of books from Amazon.  One of the following will make it into my work "briefcase" shortly.

Anyone care to guess what I've decided about the right time for a new technology? :)