Is so that you don't have to ask someone if a particular element is needed or not.

I finally had an opportunity to make a real life application with Linq, and I must sure the experience has been GREEEAAAAATT!!!

It's really something to go from using table adapters, TSQL code, to do all your queries to a simple syntax like

query=from authors in ctx.authors where authors.name.startswith("john") select authors

directly in my code to do selection. Why is it easier and how different is this from using typed data adapters? well the main difference is the speed at which you can make a new query.

With a typed data adapter you'd have to fiddle around with a designer to create your queries, slowing down developement time. With Linq, you just keep pounding away on the keyboard to build your data layer and queries, so the time for code to go "from brain to actual code" has decreased, thus improving developement time.

Either great, there are some developement choice changes that come with using Linq, and I'm still fiddling with it to see if it can be as flexible as a dataconnection in a pinch.

The Internet is a great resource, when you hit a brick wall when coding you can just post a question up on the various forums and hopefully someone will answer your queries.

But one thing to remember when posting your queries!!

NEVER REVEAL PRODUCTION SERVER ADDRESSES AND PASSWORDS!!

For example, let's say you need to call a web service which is sitting on an internet accesible server. If you need help asking about how to call the service in the language and how to fit something on the SOAP headers. When posting a query in the forums, do not use the REAL IP ADDRESS, and AUTHENTICATION DETAILS!

One of the partners we were working with did such a mistake and god was there a party (a bad party!) of hurt that went to them after that!

Please read and write XML using the proper XML read/write functions. Every major language should now already have proper classes or utilities to read and write XML. Therefore an XML chunk of.

<root>
      <branch>some node</branch>
</root>

should be no different to

<root><branch>some node</branch></root>

since they're exactly the same XML, but if you weren't using a proper XML reader function to read it, but instead waited for a new line, then obviously you wouldn't get the value you wanted in the 2nd chunk.

so please, use the proper functions when you're dealing with XML!

My colleague came across an interesting problem with a mobile web portal he was working on. It was the typical problem description that you'd get when you work on mobile web portals, something that worked on other phones weren't working on another phone. Only thing was, the phones that failed weren't dumb low end phones, but a Nokia Series 60 N73 smartphone. I wrote down my little adventure finding the solution.. it's a full page of text so only continue if you're interested.

I interviewed a guy with 12 years of programming experience already, he lead multiple developement teams, and has been in charge of designing frameworks for various sites.

Yet he didn't see a problem when given a SQL Injection scenario, and when asked why didn't he verify user input on the server side in addition to the client verification that he's already doing. He kept stressing that the websites he creates are for consumers, normal users, they don't have the time or need to add in all the data verification.

But, as I mentioned in a previous post. It costs almost NOTHING to protect against SQL Injection so there really isn't any excuse for NOT doing it!

Well, the security company came and went without much of a problem. So I guess I survived my first code review pretty well with no major problems reported.

Experience, and of course this book (absolute must read for ANY programmer) helped ensure that our code was pretty tight (yes it wasn't perfect, but we did very good).

Best quote from a member of the review team.

Generally .Net code has fewer security problems.

I know a few people who would love to have you make that an official statement. ;)

I just conducted an interview just now. The interviewee mentioned that he knows ASP.Net 2.0, the MS Ajax Toolkit, and Ajax via Javascript. And yet everytime I probe him to see how much he understands the topic, he back pedals and says he doesn't know what I'm talking about.

Then after all that he says something about my voice, and that he can't concentrate and needs to go to the bathroom. When he comes back he tells me he isn't feeling too well and has to go...

On one hand, maybe he wasn't feeling too well. On the other hand maybe he was just trying to put up a good image during the interview when I asked him what he knows and just said yes to everything.

Update : It seems like the guy was sick, he felt that it wasn't nice to cancel the interview and decided to wing it even though he was having a high fever. Hmmmm.. not sure how to look at his choice of priorities.

We need to cater for people who don't read instructions.

So? Our application is supposed to encourage people that it's ok to do anything they want because they can't read simple instructions?

I'm gonna chalk this one up on my own inexperience but... AAAARRRRGGG... Visual Sourcesafe, how you pain me so much!!