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May 10

Stack Of Cash

Am I Due a Raise When I Graduate?

I’d like to give the company the benefit of the doubt, but in my experience they don’t deserve it. They probably hired you at lower rate to get a steal. Remember, all businesses are in the game to make a profit otherwise they die, which is bad for you. At the same time, if you leave the company, they also loose. They have hiring costs and training costs invested in you and you have part of the company mind-share. They do not want to loose their investment in you.

If I was hiring you, I would bring you in as low as possible. Let’s say at 50k. If this your first professional job, you are probably use to making 10 to 15 dollars an hour. That is roughly 30k a year. They offer you 50k a year. That seems like a lot of money to you and you accept.

You graduate with a degree, yes you are worth more, but we started you out at 50k. We’ll give you a 10 percent raise. They will give you some line of crap about how a 10 percent raise is almost unheard of in the industry and it’s tough times! You can tell them it’s not enough and explain to them the average wage is 65k for your position and that you’ll cut them a deal and accept 70k. Because that’s how good you are. Or you can do what most people do and accept the 10 percent wage and feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Are you willing to find another job? Your bargaining chip is you leaving. I’ve seen people ask for a raise and not get it. They leave company and come back a year later taking a higher position and making double their old salary.

Apr 17

191935013_36f9e4569b

WordPress 3.5.1 MultiSites on Windows Azure

Out of the box the web.config included does not work with sub-directories.

The following web.config worked for me on Windows Azure:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<configuration>

<system.webServer>

<rewrite>

<rules>

<rule name="WordPress Rule 1" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^index.php$" ignoreCase="false" />

<action type="None" />

</rule>

<rule name="WordPress Rule 2" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+)" ignoreCase="false" />

<action type="Rewrite" url="wp-includes/ms-files.php?file={R:2}" appendQueryString="false" />

</rule>

<rule name="WordPress Rule 3" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$" ignoreCase="false" />

<action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}wp-admin/" redirectType="Permanent" />

</rule>

<rule name="WordPress Rule 4" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^" ignoreCase="false" />

<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny">

<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" ignoreCase="false" />

<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" ignoreCase="false" />

</conditions>

<action type="None" />

</rule>

<rule name="WordPress Rule 5" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(wp-(content|admin|includes).*)" ignoreCase="false" />

<action type="Rewrite" url="{R:1}" />

</rule>

<rule name="WordPress Rule 6" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(.*.php)$" ignoreCase="false" />

<action type="Rewrite" url="{R:2}" />

</rule>

<rule name="WordPress Rule 7" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="." ignoreCase="false" />

<action type="Rewrite" url="index.php" />

</rule>

</rules>

</rewrite>

</system.webServer>

</configuration>

Apr 5

Comparing Enums With the Same Values

Recently I came across some code where a switch statement was used to convert one Enum to another Enum. There were over 20 cases in the switch statement. The kicker was the values were the same. Why did they not use a single Enum? I’m still trying to figure that out.

I wrote some code that eliminated the massive switch statement:

        public TTo MapEnum(TFrom from)
            where TFrom : struct, IConvertible
            where TTo : struct, IConvertible
        {
            System.Diagnostics.Contracts.Contract.Requires(!typeof(TTo).IsEnum, "TTo must be an enumerated type");
            System.Diagnostics.Contracts.Contract.Requires(!typeof(TFrom).IsEnum, "TFrom must be an enumerated type");
          
            string fromValue = Convert.ToString(from);

            TTo toEnum;
            bool found = Enum.TryParse(fromValue, true, out toEnum);

            if (!found)
            {
                throw new Exception("Could not find value {0} for type {1} in enum {2} ");
            }

            return toEnum;
        }

Mar 28

Writing the SVN Reversion to a File in TeamCity

I spent hours trying to figure this one out. It turned out brain dead simple.

  1. Add a build step
  2. Select the command line runner type
  3. Set the working path to the path you’d like to save the version file too.
  4. In the Custom Script Text Field add the following text: ECHO %build.vcs.number% > version.txt

Mar 21

iStock_000007846219_ExtraSmall

Considerations When Throwing Exceptions

A co-worker sent an email with some code he’s struggling with. He’s trying to avoid using try/catches to drive business logic.

The problem is not the try/catches it’s simply a symptom of the problem. Can you spot the problem? You’ll have to make some assumption, but I have faith you’ll come to the same conclusion I came too.

The code is below; I changed it to protect the innocent:

private Customer GetOrCreateCustomer(long customerTelephoneNumberOrCustomerId)
        {
           Customer customer;
            try
            {
                customer = this.DoMagic(customerMasterTelephoneNumberOrCustomerId);
            }
            catch (DataException)
            {
                try
                {
                    //TODO: I know this isn't ideal. Still thinking of a better way to do this. 
                    customer = this. GetCustomer(customerMasterTelephoneNumberOrCustomerId);
                }
                catch (DataException)
                {
                    customer = this.GetCustomerFromExternal(customerMasterTelephoneNumberOrCustomerId);
                    customer.CustomerId = this.CreateCustomer(customer);
                }
            }

            return customer;
        }

There is an underlining philosophy in this system that nulls are bad. In most cases where a null can be generated an exception is thrown. At first I did not see a problem with this. I saw it as an architecture decision, an aesthetic, but as I interface with the code, it’s apparent to me it’s an architectural mistake.

You might ask, why is throwing an exception in the case of nulls bad?

Below are some guidelines when considering throwing an exception:

  1. The fact that you have to check for the null to throw the exception should be a hint that it is not needed. It an expected outcome, thus not an exception.
  2. Throwing an exception is a resource intensive operation, one of the most resource intensive operations that can be done in .Net.
  3. An exception is just that, an exception. It’s an exception to the assumptions made in the code – when these assumptions are broken, the system must terminate, it cannot move on because the system is in an unknown state (i.e. the database is no longer available) this could also be an attack vector.
  4. Throwing an exception means you have to wrap the upstream call in a try/catch block to enforce business rules. A null value is a business opportunity to control the flow of the application. The action upon the null value should be done at the point in which a business decision must take place. For example, a customer variable is null, at the UI layer a message is shown to the user stating the customer with id ‘1234’ cannot be found.

Mar 7

iStock_000017613670_Small

Naked WHERE Clause

In a conversation today, my coworker mentioned a ‘naked WHERE clause’. I’d never heard of the term. I posted a question on StackOverflow and an answer was posted shortly thereafter.

A naked WHERE clause would refer to something that always returns true.

WHERE 1 = 1

This is commonly used on something like a search form where the user can enter one or many values and rather than checking a counter to see if you need to add a WHERE clause you add a generic WHERE clause and build everything up in an AND clause. You can run into issues if you aren’t checking to make sure there is at least on AND clause added.

My first reaction was, why would someone do this and what is the big deal.

Then it hit me. A naked where clause is the same as a select without a where clause.

Feb 17

capital

A Year as a Government Employee

Truth be told, I was not actually a government employee. I was a contractor, but the agency I worked at treated me as a full-time employee.

I was hesitant in taking the job. I’d heard bad things about government positions: the red tape will drive you crazy, you cannot get anything done, government workers are only there for the paycheck, they are lazy, they sleep at their desks, they cannot be fired… the list goes on. Some of this is true, most of it is not.

To say government employees cannot be fired is a stretch of the truth. They can be fired, but it takes detailed documentation of disobedience, and even then rehabilitation must have been tried and clearly documented.

By far the most shocking experience was walking around the office the first week and seeing everyone and when I say everyone, I mean EVERYONE watching NetFlix. WTF!?! Really? It’s even talked about in the office. “Oh, I am waiting for Ed to get done. He said he’d be done in about 30 minutes. In the meantime I’ll watch some NetFlix.”

I’m a man who works best when I have a goal. In profit driven organizations the ultimate goal is simple: Be profitable. In government agency there is no such overarching goal. This makes sense. You don’t want a profit motivated fireman or police officer — Only the wealthy neighborhoods would be patrolled. The dark side of this mentality is there is no motivation to saving money. This is seen in the 10,000 dollar hammer. In my government position, I coded many projects 3 times over. I would spend weeks on a project that would be canceled, why? The vision had changed.

Would I work a government contract again? Yes. However, I would not take a full-time position as a government employee. I found it hard to be motivated when I could not see how my efforts fit into the success of the agency.

Jan 22

Don’t Write ETL in C#

Unless ETL is the company’s core competency there is very little reason to write and maintain ETL in C#. In the short term it’s going to be expensive, it will be slow, there will be mistakes (i.e. corrupt data), there will be edge cases, there will be duplication between ETL implementations, it will be fragile and it will be increasingly expensive in the long run. Honestly, what developer wants to spend his/her days writing and maintaining ETL in C#? I’ve done it. It’s about as far away from creative work as one can get.

Use a tool like Informatica, a company whose business is ETL. They’ve been working this problem for over 15 years. They have it solved. Their tools are drag and drop, reusability is built-in, as is performance. Most anyone (i.e. developers don’t have too) can create ETL with Informatica tooling. I’m not trying to sell Informatica, use any tool. Just don’t re-invent the wheel and write custom ETL code.

In the long run buying a tool, such as Informatica or using SSIS will save the company potentially millions. And best of all you will not have to maintain the ETL or be responsible for it when it breaks.

Dec 19

Hypersonic is Open

Hypersonic started as an attempt to ease the pain of writing CRUD with ADO.NET. My goal was to simplify data persistence and retrieval.

In the early days of .NET, ORMs did not exist. ORMs were a foreign idea. Most companies had their own data access strategy. As a contractor, I’d seen many of these strategies. .TEXT was released by Scott Watermasysk in 2003. It was the first popular open source, if not THE first .Net blogging engine. I studied the code. I liked Scott’s approach to data access. He had elegantly decomposed the operations needed to persist and retrieve data. I leveraged his approach in Hypersonic.

In early 2006 I finished the first build of Hypersonic. It was one of many tools in my toolbox. It was not called Hypersonic then. I soon realized the value of what I had created and made it a stand alone library. Friends began to use it and before I knew it, it developed a small following.

Hypersonic is now at version 3. I have successfully used it for many projects over the years — it is still my tool of choice when developing against stored procedures.

I have decided to open source it. The data access problem has been solved with frameworks like nHibernate and Entity Framework.

My hope is others will find success using it.

The source is at GitHub.

The binaries are available.

Nov 21

ADO.Net or ORMs?

There is nothing wrong with using ADO.NET. It’s what drives all the ORM solutions in .NET. The current attitude is using raw ADO.Net is a bad thing. If it gets the job done, then what’s the issue?

Yet it seems .NET developers are running in droves to jump on the ORM bandwagon. ORMs are just one of many tools in the data access toolbox.

In the early 2000′s ORMs took the Java world by storm. Store procedures were shunned. It was ORM or nothing. A half decade later Java developers realized that the best solution uses both an ORM and stored procedures, each has strengths.

Use the best tool for the job. ORMs can automate much of the CRUD from the application. Stored procedures are good for adding abstraction, adding a layer of security and optimizing area’s that need to be highly performant.

Choose the best tool for the job.

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