Productivity gains with the ServiceStack web framework

I am using the ServiceStack web framework with great success for almost a year and I want to expand  on why I have chosen it, its benefits and why it should be an essential part of  your software toolbox.

Automated testing as a return on investment proposition

 A while ago I presented an automated testing overview which was geared towards developers at first. Following initial feedback I realized that I needed to provide a wider context where I explain the immediate business benefits that automated testing brings to the table. This post is a long delayed accompanying note for the first part of my original presentation.

SharePoint 2013 supports open source / non-Microsoft platforms

    At this point in time (early 2013) almost all the Microsoft web frameworks and libraries are distributed as open source software: ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web Api, Entity Framework, Reactive Extensions, SignalR. You can contribute back to the original source or you can fork it and start developing and distributing your own flavour.
If you are a .NET web developer you are now using an open source development stack.

Post-Silverlight remarks

    After spending a year and a half in XAML land using Silverlight extensively I leave with pleasant memories but also with a bitter feeling.

    The main strength of Silverlight is creating complex applications for Windows/Mac OS X with ease while maintaining a low deployment footprint. Silverlight XAML is almost identical with WPF XAML minus a couple of features and this versatility seems to make Silverlight an essential tool for the enterprise application developer. But since Microsoft abruptly shifted focus from Silverlight to HTML5 in 2011 the Silverlight open source ecosystem has imploded rapidly.

Automate Entity Framework 4.x mocking using T4 templates - part 2

  In my previous post I described how to use T4 templates to customize the Entity Framework(EF) code generation in order to introduce EF testability. My test code sample showed a very simple way to inject data and test the business logic without using a physical database. However the code that injects the test data could do with a bit of automation itself.

Hello world

I recently achieved a professional milestone: a round number of years working as a (.NET) software developer. The number does not mean a lot in itself apart from the fact that it made me think a bit more about my past and current experience.
This in turn helped me realise a couple of things:
I still want to find answers to some of the questions I accumulated so far.
I learned so much from the software community and it is great to be part of this unprecedented sharing of software knowledge.
And as a conclusion to my retrospective I want to try and give something back to the community.
I hope that starting this blog will help me accomplish that.