End Your If

Why is my calendar always full?

Published on May 15, 2013 by Jamie Munro

Curse you full calendar! I find it impossible to get anything accomplished when most of my day is spent in meetings. More importantly, meetings with the “big wigs” always seem to be the worse. Really, we need to spend 30 minutes to review a three page Word document that we could have read before the meeting!

Tags: Rants | meetings | rants

Simple Things Make Me Happy

Published on May 14, 2013 by Jamie Munro

I often go to a drive-thru, whether it’s to order food or my favorite coffee, whenever I finish ordering I always say “Thank you”. I think this is an important thing to do. What makes me really happy is the 1 out of 5 (maybe 10) times the person says “You’re welcome”.

This simple statement makes me happy; it’s a really great way to start my day.

There are of course many other examples of simple things that make me happy, as a parent for example, I watch my kids on an almost daily (even hourly) basis learn new things. This is turn makes me really happy and it’s always the simplest things that they learn.

I feel like this is an important trait that also applies to the world I live in: web application or web game development. Simple things make me happy.

Tags: Theory | simple | less is more

Entity Framework Beginner’s Guide Done Right

Published on May 13, 2013 by Jamie Munro

Entity framework is a great ORM provided by Microsoft. There are a ton of examples of how to get up and running with it really quickly. The only problem with all of them, is the get you off on the wrong foot.

In all of the EF example guides, the DbContext class is typically deeply embedded into the core of your code. This of course is great for Entity framework because the effort to change will be next to impossible – speaking from experience of course here.

Instead, by making some subtle changes we can integrate Entity framework in a separate layer in case at some later date you wish to replace it. Of course, you might never need to replace it, but following these simple techniques will allow better segregation of code and even provide simpler unit testing.

Tags: ASP.NET | Theory | c# | entity framework

Why Java Makes Me Tremble In My Boots

Published on May 6, 2013 by Jamie Munro

Let me begin by saying that I have not spent a lot of time in Java. I learned it in college (some 12 years ago) and I’ve used it sparingly throughout my development career. To date I’ve never done a full project using only Java. And ironically, one of the main reasons I haven’t is I don’t know where to start…

Trial and Error – Your best friend and worst enemy!

Published on Apr 29, 2013 by Jamie Munro

I've recently had my eyes open, mostly since becoming a parent. My oldest kids are now 3; they are right at the stage of wanting to do everything for themselves. It’s important to let them! Kids learn through trial and error, so why shouldn't I?

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