I didn't realize that the Express Editions of Visual Studio 2005 are only free until November 2006.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/faq/default.aspx#pricing:

We originally announced pricing of Visual Studio Express at US$49. We are now offering Visual Studio Express for free, as a limited-in-time promotional offer, until November 6, 2006. Note that we are also offering SQL Server 2005 Express Edition as a free download, and that this offer is not limited to the same promotional pricing period as Visual Studio Express.

 

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Keane Canada is looking for 20 Mainframe Programmer/Analysts in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  I hope they pay well because these jobs are, um, not terribly appealing:

Required Skills:

• COBOL
• JCL
• DB2
• Strong analysis skills
• Strong communication skills
• Independent Learner

Be part of a significant project maintaining software components based on specifications and test changes. Work hours will be early (8:00-5:00) & late (12:00-9:00) shifts with late shifts every other week (50% of the time).

COBOL and JCL with night shifts half the time.  Ugh.

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Are you going to MIX 06?  I really wish I could make it but too much is going on here to make room in my schedule.  Grrrr.  I'm going to regret not going to this conference.  It looks like some really interesting stuff is going to happen.  The one I most hope is available online (live or on-demand):

http://blog.mix06.com/blog/archive/2006/01/24/58.aspx:  Bill Gates in an unscripted conversation with Tim O'Reilly.  I love listening to Tim O'Reilly speak.  If you haven't heard him, check out some of the podcasts featuring him over at IT Conversations (http://www.google.com/custom?q=Tim+O%27Reilly&sitesearch=itconversations.com).

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It's all over the news sites this week, but in case you missed it:  a definition file update for the beta release of Microsoft Anti-Spyware incorrectly identified Norton AntiVirus as a password-stealing trojan virus.  Then again, not everyone thinks that calling Norton AV a virus is off-base:  http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/02/11/2259232.shtml.

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After a round of voting from a short list amongst friends and family, we have a final 3 set of logo options for our new church software.  We would really appreciate your comments on which logo you think is best.  Leave a comment below or send us some feedback at http://www.ardentdev.com/Feedback/.  Thanks!

Logo 1:

Logo 2:

Logo 3:

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I spoke at the Fredericton .NET User Group last night on Team System.  It went well - a lot of the stuff in Team System is fun to show and professional developers really resonate with it.

Well...  I use the Address toolbar in the Windows taskbar.  It just so happened that the last site I visited via that toolbar was www.x-rates.com, which is where I regularly check the current US to Canadian dollar exchange rate.  In the middle of my presentation I noticed the URL and it dawned on me that it might not be obvious to everyone that the site is, um, family friendly.  So if you were at the presentation and the noticed the URL, X is for exchange.

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To check for a network connection in .NET 2.0 use this:

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What are the .NET Framework and Visual Basic .NET features that every VB developer should know?  I suggest the following as a starting list (in no particular order):

1. Object-oriented features:  classes, objects, constructors, inheritance, interfaces, polymorphism, methods, overloading
2. Shared (static) Classes and Methods
3. Converting data types and casting objects
4. Manipulating strings and using StringBuilder
5. Basic File I/O (open, read, write)
6. ADO.NET:  DataSet, *DataAdapter, *Command, and *DataReader classes
7. Basic XML processing (opening a file/stream and finding an element)
8. Exception handling / Try-Catch blocks
9. Difference between late binding and early binding (and the existence of Option Strict On)
10. Assemblies, referencing DLLs, and importing namespaces
11. Basic collections (lists, dictionaries, arrays)
12. Security fundamentals (CAS, authentication vs. authorization, validating input)
13. Basics of threading
14. Basics of garbage collection
15. Spitting out data and getting data back (varies with type of application of course)

Comment away!  Please don't just say C# (or Ruby)...  I'm not looking for yet another VB vs. C# debate.

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Last month I was looking for a tool to automatically announce posts on www.ardentdev.com and www.2signals.com at my weblogs.asp.net blog.  After a modest amount of searching I gave up on finding a tool that did exactly what I wanted.  Tonight I just threw together something simple.  It uses the .Text Simple Blog Service and the RSS.NET Class Library (with a few minor tweaks).  I point the tool at an RSS feed and select the posts I want to announce.  There is a little preview of the announcement HTML and an easy-to-acquire Announce button.  It's pretty simple at this point (a mere 80 lines of VB code including whitespace).

I'll gladly share the code if anyone cares.

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JavaScript is one of those technologies that you can use for years knowing only very little about it.  Do you know what the following <script> block will do?  Post your guess as a comment before you test it out!

<script>

(function()
{
  function A() { document.write(A) }

  A();
})()

</script>

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A regular "feature" we will have here at the Ardent Dev Blog is a series of "Tool I Love / Tool I Hate" posts (kind of like the "What's On Your Hard Drive" column in Queue magazine).  A new addition to my tool set is the Venkam JavaScript Debugger for Mozilla.  The latest version as of this post was 0.9.85, which would not install for FireFox 1.5.  The XPI (add-on package) was hard-coded to a max version of 1.1.  Fortunately add-on packages for Mozilla are just Zip files that you can extract and hack pretty easily.  Here is how I got Venkman to install with FireFox 1.5:

1. Downlowd Venkman 0.9.85.
2. Change file extension to .zip and unzip.
3. Open install.rdf with your favourite text editor.
4. Find <em:maxVersion>1.1</em:maxVersion> and change the maxVersion to 1.5 (or any arbitrary number higher than 1.5 - it might or might not work on future releases of FireFox).
5. Save your changes and close your text editor.
6. Rezip the files and change the file extension from .zip to .xpi.
7. Open the new XPI file in FireFox (using File | Open File menu or just drag-and-drop).

If you are a brave and trusting sort of individual, you can just download my modified XPI here: Modified venkman-0.9.85.xpi (209.03 KB).

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Welcome to The Ardent Dev Blog (http://www.ardentdev.com/blog).  I (Derek) am very lucky to be able to work with a top-notch group of development / IT professionals here at Ardent.  I figure it is time to share them a little bit with the rest of the world.  From this blog you will hear about the tools and technologies we work with (.NET, C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, NUnit, NAnt, etc.), our thoughts on software development process / methodology, and perhaps a little about what it is like to work for a small software company.

This blog will be a collective effort but will respect individual voices.  Every item will include the name of the author who posted it.  I hope you enjoy that format!

A unique feature of this blog is our Ask The Experts page.  Send in your technical questions and quandaries.  We will do our best to answer your question and post our response to this blog!

If you need more than just a single question answered via a blog, check out our mentoring, training, and consulting services including .NET Experts On Tap.

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