Dotmad.net

Two days ago Jeff Atwood wrote a post entitled Why Can’t Programmers.. Program? about the level of candidates in job interviews.
He gave an example of a very simple “Fizz Buzz” test given by Reginald Braithwaite, meant to rule out people without the bare minimum of programming skill.

As it turns out, developers who read weblogs stop reading once they reach any kind of “test”, since many people took this trivial task as a challenge, and at this point there are 105 comments, most of them with “solutions” to the test.
Jeff wrote a second post trying to explain his original point, telling people WHY that test was needed and that solving it proves nothing, and Phil Haack wrote a post entitled “Why Can’t Programmers… Read?” mocking the people who answered Jeff’s original post.

As it turns out, there are still people out there with reading difficulties, as I was amazed to find someone actually wrote a PHP code in a comment to Phil’s post!
Someone like that is worse than a developer that can’t code, since you can teach a person to code, but how can you deal with someone who ignores what you are saying (or writing)?

There is a new free tool from Microsoft meant to view and edit MSI files, called Orca.
However, to get it you need to download the entire SDK kit for Vista and .NET Framework 3.0.
As it turns out, there are nice people out there making the tool available on it’s own, like Brent Norris.
Thanks Brent!

Modifying subscriptions is not something most Team System developers look forward to, since it requires the use of the bissubscribe.exe tool on the server, which is a not-very-friendly command line utility.
Jeff Atwood posted a UI tool that should ease that burden.

I just read the IDesign newslater, anouncing the release of Michele Leroux Bustamante’s “Learning WCF: Rough Cuts Version” and Juval Lowy’s “Programming WCF Services“.
According to the later, the first is for beginers to intermediate, while the second begins where the first stops, and moves to advanced topics (design guidelines, best practices, pitfalls):

“Actually, Michele’s book and mine differ a great deal. For once, I aim at the intermediary to advanced developer (not necessarily in WCF knowledge but more in general .NET system skills), while Michele targets the beginner to>intermediate developer.
But more important, my book focuses on the system side of developing WCF applications, that is, what happens after the wire, while Michele covers also what happens on the wire, and the required interoperability techniques.”

Oren Eini wrote a review of Lowy’s book basically warning beginners from buying it, although I disagree with some of his comments (I see no problem with specifying both XML and C# code, since I remember many people had trouble doing the switch during the beta).
Tad Anderson wrote another review on this book.

As for “Learning WCF”, you can get a feel for the book yourself here.

There is also a third book, not from IDesign members, called “Pro WCF: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation” and it’s reviewed here.

Scott Hanselman’s article is very entertaining and highly recommended.

Dudu Shmaya wrote about a way to start a team build using BuildProgressForm.

There is also a webcast in Channel9 regarding branching strategies, which is something many developers need.

Just finished watching episode 13 from season 4.
So far the pair of plastic surgeons the show revolves around managed to get mixed up with a drug lord, a serial killer/rapist, and a gang of organ thieves.
Something to ponder next time you are considering a plastic surgery……