John Petersen
John is a Philadelphia, PA-based author, and technologist. John’s content and opinions are his alone and neither are reflective of, nor endorse, any consulting organization.
Detailed Bio
John is a Philadelphia, PA-based author, and technologist. John’s content and opinions are his alone and neither are reflective of, nor endorse, any consulting organization.
Contact Information:
- Email: johnvpetersen@gmail.com
- Phone: 6105745201
Articles Authored
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10 Reasons Why Unit Testing Matters
Last updated: Thursday, April 8, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2019 - January/February
If you’ve ever argued with management about how unit testing is beneficial, speeds up the process in the long run, and makes the software work better, you’ll recognize John’s point of view. If you haven’t (yet) had the argument, you’ll want to have this article handy.
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A Practical Use of Indexers
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2010 - March/April
Consider this hypothetical: You need to track different ways it is permissible to contact a customer.Or perhaps there are multiple attributes you wish to attach to an entity. Further, perhaps you want to define new attributes that can vary from entity to entity. From a database perspective, this can present a thorny problem. Fortunately, indexers in C# provide an elegant solution to the problem. In this article, I will show you how to use indexers to expand an organization’s data and at the same time, have minimal impact on an organization’s database structure. I will also show you how to incorporate this technique with NHibernate and how to verify your results with the MBUnit and TestDriven.net unit testing frameworks.
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ADO.NET in Visual Studio .NET: Part 1
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - July/August
By now, you have been exposed to a lot of information about Visual Studio .NET.Of all the new technologies associated with .NET, perhaps no other technology is more mysterious than ADO.NET. The purpose of this article, the first in a series, is to give you a brief overview of ADO.NET and how it is implemented in Visual Studio .NET. Future articles will expand on the material presented here. After reading this article, you will be able to understand how the various ADO.NET objects and generated code work to provide data for your applications.
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ADO.NET: Building Your First Data-Aware Form
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - September/October
The first article in this series detailed how to build data-aware forms in Visual Studio .NET using the Data Form Wizard. It demonstrated how easy it is to build forms using a point-and-click interface. You also learned that the generated form was especially suited to production development. This article continues where that article left off and introduces you to techniques to improve data-aware forms created with the Data Form Wizard.
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Architectural Tools in VS
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2014 - May/June
John explains the dependency graph and the layer diagram tools in Visual Studio. Once you see how they work and what they can do, you’ll use them as part of every project.
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ASP.NET MVC 4 Highlights - Part 2: Bundling and Minification
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2012 - July/August
In the first installment of this series, I explored a few of the new features in ASP.NET MVC 4, including the new default project templates, mobile templates, and display modes. Since that article, ASP.NET MVC 4 has been released to beta. For brevity’s sake, when I refer to MVC the design pattern, I’m referring to the ASP.NET implementation of the pattern. In this installment, I’m going to focus on one of MVC’s most useful features: integrated JavaScript and CSS bundling and minification.
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ASP.NET MVC 4 Highlights, Part 1
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2012 - March/April
Microsoft released ASP.NET MCV 3 just over a year ago. If history is a good indicator of timing, we can expect the next ASP.NET MVC release in the not too distant future. As of this writing’s date, Microsoft has not announced a firm release date. You don’t, however, have to wait to get your hands on the bits. You can download the developer preview here: http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc4. ASP.NET MVC 4 also runs inside of Visual Studio 10 and the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview. MVC 4 can be hosted alongside MVC 3. You can find all the details concerning installation in the aforementioned link. As with all developer preview/pre-release software, features sets are subject to change, which may range from minor tweaks to major changes. Please keep that in mind as you evaluate any developer preview as to how you can incorporate it into your development efforts.
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Blockchain: A Practical Application
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2020 - November/December
Learn blockchain basics through sample code examples in VS Code and .NET Core, separate from a blockchain's use in digital currency. Understand block as a container of business data, a nonce value and the previous block's hash. Use a data class, a block class and a chain class.
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CODA: Agility
Last updated: Monday, June 27, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2022 - July/August
Not everyone understands the true meaning of running an agile software development team. John reviews how to keep focus on agile principles and get the most from this philosophy. Do planning, do documentation, inspect the tools you are using, and adapt to improve.
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CODA: An Architectural Approach to Risk Management and Quality
Last updated: Thursday, November 10, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2022 - November/December
There are quite a few moving parts on any given project. John looks at some fundamental truths to help you decide how best to proceed.
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CODA: Challenging Orthodoxy
Last updated: Tuesday, June 8, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2021 - May/June
John realizes that sometimes conventional wisdom about software development may be what's holding you back today. Learn to recognize it and how to adapt to it.
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CODA: It was 30 Years Ago This May…
Last updated: Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2022 - May/June
John remembers the good old days of FoxPro and revisits some of the lessons learned from the Fox community.
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CODA: Jazz
Last updated: Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2021 - January/February
John makes an interesting comparison between writing code in teams and improvising in a jazz band.
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CODA: Modern Consulting
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2022 - September/October
There’s more to the role of a consultant than showing up and pounding out line after line of software code. Modern consulting includes recommendations and the basis for making them. A consultant should steer clear of pipe dreams. John explains the nuances.
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CODA: On Avoiding OSS Regret
Last updated: Thursday, August 26, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2021 - September/October
You know you’ve done it. You’ve used some open source software that was exactly what you needed at the time. But then things changed. John talks about preparing for the inevitable and avoiding the remorse.
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CODA: On Commitment
Last updated: Friday, July 9, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2021 - July/August
John looks at the nature of commitment in terms of getting things done at work.
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CODA: On First Principles
Last updated: Monday, December 7, 2020
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2020 - July/August
John talks about the four basic principles for building great software. (1) Theory matters; (2) People, processes and tools, in that order; (3) Do the right thing for the right reason; (4) Build competent software.
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CODA: On Forcing Functions
Last updated: Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2020 - May/June
John considers how live will change as he writes at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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CODA: On Plain Language
Last updated: Thursday, December 23, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2022 - January/February
John uses the Agile movement to explain why simple is better.
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CODA: On Responsibility: Part II
Last updated: Friday, February 24, 2023
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2023 - March/April
John looks at what happened with Southwest Airlines and the FAA during the 2022 holiday season and puts it in context of technical debt.
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CODA: On Rules and Procedures
Last updated: Tuesday, December 7, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2021 - November/December
Sometimes rules are good for you, and it’s important to recognize when they’re not only good for you but they’re good for the whole project.
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CODA: On Tool Selection
Last updated: Friday, February 18, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2022 - March/April
John looks at what to consider when new tools are up for discussion.
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CODA: Ritual
Last updated: Tuesday, June 8, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2021 - March/April
John reacts to current events by taking the lessons from the news into coding and corporate structures. How do our work rituals make our teams work better or worse? Can we stand back and examine them objectively enough to make them better?
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CODA: There Are No New Problems
Last updated: Wednesday, June 9, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2020 - September/October
John V. Petersen points out that today's software problems have really already been solved. The hard part about modern software development is how we go about solving the same basic problems.
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CODA: What Makes a Leader: An Objective Analysis
Last updated: Wednesday, June 9, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2020 - November/December
What makes a good leader more than just the boss? John offers his insights.
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CODA: Why "Because" Matters
Last updated: Thursday, December 8, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2023 - January/February
Drawing on anologies used to make judgements in the legal system, John argues that using facts to make decisions on development teams will help teams make better software.
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COM Interop in Visual Studio .NET
Last updated: Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - March/April, VFP Conversion Papers
The .NET Framework presents exciting new opportunities for developers. By now, you may have heard that .NET represents a departure from COM, the focal point of Windows development for the past several years. Because of the investments in COM, it is quite likely you will want to implement COM in VS .NET. Conversely, the .NET Framework has a number of nice features that you will want to implement in COM-based applications. This article illustrates how COM and the .NET Framework can work together.
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Editorial
Last updated: Thursday, September 2, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2014 - September/October
In this issue, Rod discusses the cost benefit analysis of tools.
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Handling Business-Related Date Tasks in T-SQL
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2010 - March/April
How many times have you found yourself in need of knowing what the next or previous business date is?What about the dates when a particular quarter begins and ends? Have you had to handle the thorny issue of daylight savings time (DST); when does DST begin and end for this or another year in the US, UK or some other region? And finally, once you have determined you have a need to calculate these various date values, where do you host that logic? This article answers those questions.
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Hertz v Accenture
Last updated: Monday, March 29, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2019 - July/August
In an interesting court case between rental car giant Hertz and international consulting firm Accenture, claims were filed that one party is in breach of contract. John uses this case to show how even small-shop independent consultants should carry some sort of liability insurance.
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Immutability in C#
Last updated: Thursday, April 1, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2019 - May/June
If your application uses multi-threading, immutability should be part of it. John covers how to enforce and work with immutable objects, despite C#’s lack of native support for them.
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Incorporating ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server Reporting Services, Part 1
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2010 - September/October
Your ASP.NET MVC application needs reports. What do you do? In this article, I will demonstrate how simple it is to weave SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) into your ASP.NET MVC Applications.Your ASP.NET MVC application needs reports. What do you do? In this article, I will demonstrate how simple it is to weave SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) into your ASP.NET MVC Applications.Your ASP.NET MVC application needs reports. What do you do? In this article, I will demonstrate how simple it is to weave SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) into your ASP.NET MVC Applications.Your ASP.NET MVC application needs reports. What do you do? In this article, I will demonstrate how simple it is to weave SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) into your ASP.NET MVC Applications.
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Incorporating ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server Reporting Services, Part 2
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2010 - November/December
In the last issue, I introduced you to the basics of incorporating SQL Server Reporting Services into your ASP.NET MVC applications. In this issue, I’ll finish the series by illustrating how we can transfer data between the ASP.NET MVC context and the SSRS report context. In addition, I will also cover deployment issues such as authentication.
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Interactive Unit Testing with .NET Core and VS Code
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2020 - September/October
John continues exploring unit testing using .NET Core 3 in VS Code, and steps to get ready for .NET 5 and VS Code.
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Introducing jQuery Mobile
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2012 - January/February
The newest member of the jQuery family of projects is jQuery Mobile. A good way to describe what jQuery Mobile is to think of it as jQuery UI for mobile devices. If you have wanted to write mobile-optimized UIs over your applications, jQuery Mobile is a library that you will want to add to your bag of tricks. Like jQuery UI, jQuery Mobile is themeable. This article makes two assumptions. First, you are familiar with jQuery and second, you are familiar with jQuery UI. If you are not familiar with jQuery or jQuery UI, I suggest that you take a moment to familiarize yourself with those libraries. Fortunately, the websites for these projects (jquery.com and jQueryUI.com respectively) are replete with comprehensive documentation and code examples. jQuery Mobile is no different. The official website for jQuery Mobile is jquerymobile.com. As of this writing, jQuery Mobile 1.0 Beta 3 has been released. Its beta status notwithstanding, jQuery Mobile is ready for primetime and has been incorporated into many applications already. In this article, I will cover what you need to get started with some simple examples that illustrate how to create one page and multi-page apps. In addition, I’ll touch upon the theming capabilities in jQuery Mobile.
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Introducing Visual Studio .NET Macros
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - July/August
Visual Basic has featured extensibility for quite some time.Unfortunately, extending the Visual Basic IDE has been anything but intuitive. In comparison, you have been able to extend the Microsoft Office IDE through macros since Office 97. Not only could you use Visual Basic to do so but, best of all, you had the benefit of a macro recorder to jumpstart the process. One question always loomed, "Why can't Visual Basic have macro capabilities like Office?" Thankfully, Microsoft has delivered robust macro capabilities in Visual Studio .NET that are easy to learn and implement. This article introduces the new macro capabilities in Visual Studio .NET.
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Introducing Windows Azure Hosted Node.js
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2013 - January/February
In a previous article, I wrote about how simple it is to deploy an ASP.NET MVC Web Application to Windows Azure using Team Foundation Service hosted at tfspreview.com. In this article, I will build on those concepts and show you how to build and deploy a simple Node.js website to Azure using Git as the source code repository. One of Azure’s core strengths is its openness. In addition to the .NET SDK, Azure has SDKs for Java, PHP, Python and for the purposes of this article, Node.js. That openness also extends to Azure hosted Virtual Machines where Ubuntu, openSUSE and SUSE Linux are supported in addition to core Microsoft server technologies such as Windows Server 2012/2008 and SQL Server. In this article, I’ll provide a brief primer on Node.js, Git and how those technologies are first class citizens in Azure. One technology you will not find in this article is Visual Studio! We’ll use Notepad as our sole developer IDE!
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JavaScript Corner: Math and the Pitfalls of Floating Point Numbers
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2018 - November/December
Numbers and arithmetic can be a challenge in any language, and John shows you how to deal with them in JavaScript.
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JavaScript Corner: Try Catch
Last updated: Friday, April 12, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2018 - July/August
John elaborates on a useful preventative in JavaScript.
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JavaScript Corner: Variables and Scope
Last updated: Monday, April 26, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2018 - May/June
John starts his new series on JavaScript with a list of interesting problems and solutions.
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JavaScript Testing in VS Code and Node.js
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2020 - March/April
Learn to test JavaScript using the Visual Studio Code editor using Node.js as a JavaScript execution environment.
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Legal Notes: Code of Conduct
Last updated: Thursday, June 24, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2016 - January/February
If you’ve ever been to a conference, you’ve seen a code of conduct. Are they binding? What do they really mean, anyway? John tells us what’s wrong with most of them and how to create one that’s inclusive and legal.
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Legal Notes: Copyright and Fair Use
Last updated: Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2015 - March/April
If you’ve ever wondered what you can use from other people’s work, you’ll find the answer in John’s article. He tells us the legal realities about copyright and fair use.
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Legal Notes: Employment Agreements
Last updated: Monday, July 12, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2015 - July/August
Before you sign on the dotted line, be sure you know which rights you retain and which you give up when you accept that great new job. John makes sure that we read the contract and understand what it says.
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Legal Notes: Five Tips for Vendor Management
Last updated: Monday, May 17, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2017 - July/August
John takes a look at the pitfalls and foibles in using outside staffing to finish your project and gives some good advice.
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Legal Notes: HIPAA and What It Means to You
Last updated: Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2016 - March/April
The HIPAA laws are about more than keeping medical and health information private. John tells you what exactly your security obligations are, whether you are an employee or a freelancer.
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Legal Notes: OSS Licenses
Last updated: Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2015 - May/June
If you ever wondered what the difference was between a license and a contract, or if you’ve ever wondered how to safeguard your app, you’ll want to read John’s interesting look at the nature of such things.
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Legal Notes: Potpourri
Last updated: Thursday, April 29, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2018 - March/April
John lets you know about some recent legal changes, such as Facebook’s ReactJS licensing reversal, the new EU General Data Protection Regulation, copyright enforcement, professional liability insurance, and the new Linux Foundation Community Data License.
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Legal Notes: Say Goodbye to Most Software Patents
Last updated: Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2017 - May/June
If you’ve ever wondered whether you need a patent or if a copyright is good enough, you’ll find John’s research into the subject fascinating.
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Legal Notes: Selecting and Operating a Legal Entity for Your User Group
Last updated: Monday, May 24, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2017 - March/April
Your user group has some serious experts in it and it’s time to share the knowledge. If your group wants to host conferences, offer classes, or even go into business, you’ll want John’s advice about what you need to start the process.
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Legal Notes: Should Software Developers Be Subject to Professional Standards of Ethical Conduct?
Last updated: Friday, May 7, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2017 - November/December
John takes a look at what makes a person a “professional” and how the development climate is changing.
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Legal Notes: Trade Secrets
Last updated: Monday, June 28, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2015 - November/December
What’s the difference between a trade secret and a patentable idea? What about copyright—how does that work into the equation. John makes it all clear with a focus on trade secrets.
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Legal Notes: What’s the Deal with ReactJS’s Licensing Scheme?
Last updated: Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2017 - January/February
Facebook’s ReactJS copyright is a curious combination of the BSD OSS license and a grant document. John tells you what that means and whether or not that’s good news for your project.
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Legal Notes: Who Owns the Code
Last updated: Thursday, July 1, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2015 - September/October
When you work for someone, whether as a direct, full-time employee, as a contractor, or as a statutory employee, who owns the code that you produce? John explains who owns what and why.
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Legal Notes: You’ve Been Fired. Now What?
Last updated: Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2017 - September/October
Leaving a job is always stressful, but it’s worse when it’s not your idea. John looks at the legal implications for the end of a work assignment, and discusses pre-emptive things you should know when you’re signing that next contract.
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Nerd Dinner on Rails
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2010 - May/June
It is often said that ASP.NET MVC was inspired by Rails. What better way to test that assertion than by writing the Nerd Dinner ASP.NET MVC application in Rails? In this article, I’ll take you through the steps I used to get Nerd Dinner up and running in Rails. A few points to keep in mind:
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New and Useful Features in Visual Studio 2012
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2012 - November/December
Here we are again with a new Visual Studio. It’s hard to believe that 10 years have passed since Visual Studio .NET (codename Rainer) was released. Rainer represented a watershed moment for Windows developers as the promise of a unified language environment had finally been delivered.
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Responsible Package Management in Visual Studio
Last updated: Thursday, March 18, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2019 - September/October
If you use a package management tool, like NuGet, Node Package Manager (NPM) for JavaScript, or Maven for Java, you already know how they simplify and automate library consumption. John shows you how to make sure that the packages you download don’t cause more troubles than they solve.
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Simplest Thing Possible: Dynamic Lambda Expressions
Last updated: Friday, June 11, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2016 - July/August
Lambda expressions have been around for a while, but they seem poorly understood and generally underused. You can juice up your code with these dynamic types from .NET, according to John. Find out how!
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Simplest Thing Possible: Dynamic Lambda Expressions—Part 3
Last updated: Wednesday, June 2, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2016 - November/December
If you want to re-use some of the concepts John introduced in the last two issues, you’ll want to learn all about Dynamic Lambda Expressions work in .NET.
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Simplest Thing Possible: Introduction to Knockout.js
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2013 - March/April
It seems you cannot turn in one direction or another and not hear about a new JavaScript library or CSS framework that promises to be the silver bullet-to be THE thing that will make web-based application development a breeze. This article will introduce you to Knockout.js (http://knockoutjs.com/). Knockout.js is an open source library (under the MIT License) that is pure JavaScript that works with any existing web framework and every mainstream browser. Further, Knockout.js is fully documented with a complete set of online tutorials. What does Knockout.js do? It simplifies the task of building data-aware web UIs through the application of the Model-View-View-Model (MVVM) pattern. Regardless of the business problem your web applications are built to solve, all web applications, and just about every other application for that matter, shares the following characteristics:
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Simplest Thing Possible: Introduction to TypeScript
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2013 - May/June
TypeScript is a new Microsoft offering that seeks to change the way we write JavaScript. As the name implies, TypeScript associates a strongly typed layer in conjunction with JavaScript. TypeScript also associates an object-oriented layer with JavaScript.
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Simplest Thing Possible: Leveraging and Querying String, Object Dictionaries (Lambda Expressions - Part 2)
Last updated: Monday, June 7, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2016 - September/October
John explores the flexibility of dynamic queries and multiple data types within the same dictionary. You’ll be amazed at how simple it really is!
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Simplest Thing Possible: Tasks
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2022 - January/February
John revives his old series with an interesting study of Tasks so you can take your .NET feature to the next level.
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Taming the HTML5 Audio Control
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2016 - May/June
If you want your Web page to hold audio recordings that play when users want them to, you’ll want to read John’s article. He shows you that it’s not only quick, but it’s easy!
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The Simplest Thing Possible: A File Directory-based NuGet Feed
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2013 - January/February
Increasingly, we rely on NuGet Packages in our .NET Development efforts. When you need to add a library to your project, whether it is Entity Framework, AutoMapper, jQuery, etc., NuGet makes that task a simple one. What happens when you are on a plane, train, an automobile - in some circumstance where you are not online and consequently, not connected to your NuGet package source? This is where a local NuGet package source comes in handy. Locally, we can easily stand up an IIS-based NuGet package source. While useful, that is not the simplest thing we can do. Fortunately, the NuGet authors had the foresight and wisdom to allow us to create file directory-based NuGet package sources. This brief article will take you through the steps to create your own local NuGet package source.
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The Simplest Thing Possible: Better JavaScript with the Module Pattern
Last updated: Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2013 - September/October
The Module Pattern is not a new topic or unique to JavaScript. Yet for many that are new to JavaScript, the Module Pattern is a topic that eludes. Whether you are an experienced JavaScript developer or are just getting acquainted with the language, knowing what the Module Pattern is and how to implement it, it is absolutely essential if you hope to attain success with JavaScript. In this article, I will briefly cover what the Module Pattern is and how you can immediately apply the pattern.
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The Simplest Thing Possible: Creating Push Notifications with SignalR
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2012 - September/October
The ASP.NET team has created lots of new goodies. One of the most useful, SignalR, is an async library for .NET to help build real-time, multi-user interactive web applications. Imagine this scenario: you have a web application and would like a simple way to push notifications to any number of clients. Perhaps you want to inform the client when something happens. You could write a polling mechanism, but that is inefficient. An event-based approach is a much more efficient approach. Event-based systems that can publish and subscribe to events are typically loosely coupled systems that easily adapt to change and are highly scalable. The SignalR library makes it very easy to build loosely coupled scalable applications that can send real-time updates to specified clients. In this article, I will take you through the some basic steps to get up and running with SignalR.
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The Simplest Thing Possible: Design
Last updated: Thursday, July 29, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2015 - January/February
In this interesting exploration of design, John looks at all kinds of design, from architecture to household appliances, showing us the best way to figure out what’s necessary and what isn’t.
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The Simplest Thing Possible: Git and Visual Studio
Last updated: Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2014 - November/December
John installs Git and explores how Git and Visual Studio streamline even a novice’s work.
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The Simplest Thing Possible: Managing JavaScript Performance
Last updated: Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2013 - November/December
This oft-maligned language is made compelling when John takes it apart for us.
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The Simplest Thing Possible: New and Improved Features in Visual Studio 2012 and ASP.NET
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2013 - July/August
Recently, Microsoft released the Visual Studio 2012.2 ASP.NET and Web Tools Refresh and the Visual Studio Update #2. In this article, I will highlight a few of the new and improved features that you will want to consider using right away. Before you can take advantage of these features, you will need to download and install these updates:
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The Simplest Thing Possible: Promises in JavaScript
Last updated: Thursday, December 30, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2014 - January/February
In another of his edifying series, John shows us how to get a response whether your code fails or succeeds using promises.
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The Simplest Thing Possible: Understanding the Visual Studio Architectural Tools, Part 2
Last updated: Friday, September 3, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2014 - September/October
John builds on the modeling tools he showed us in the last issue (Dependency Graph and Layer Diagram) using UML diagrams in Visual Studio.
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The Simplest Thing Possible: Windows Azure Web Site Deployment with TFS 2012
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2012 - November/December
In the last 12 months, Windows Azure has undergone a dramatic transformation. It’s gone from “What is it?” to “We need it!” in very short order. Much, if not all of this, can be attributed to the stellar leadership of Scott Guthrie and his team. It should come as no surprise the ASP.Net team, which includes all the goodies from ASP.Net MVC, Web API and SignalR to name a few, were and continue to be under ScottGu’s leadership. It’s another reminder of what the power of people (really smart people to boot), working together in furtherance of a common vision can accomplish. Today, Windows Azure is a manifestation of that accomplishment. Windows Azure is actually many things. It can host TFS, Windows (obviously), SQL Server as well as other non-Windows technologies like PHP, Ubuntu, Java, Node.js to name a few. Windows Azure also has the capacity to host “Big Data” and to be a full-fledged media server. One of the biggest catch phrases today is “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS). Though its virtual machine features, Windows Azure delivers this capability as well. For the full details on what Windows Azure can deliver, navigate to windowsazure.com.
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The Windows Scripting Host
Last updated: Wednesday, December 8, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2000 - Spring
Remember batch files? They were simple, easy to program, and very productive since many tasks could be automated.Windows still allows batch files, but batch files don't allow any control over the Windows shell and Windows environment. By introducing the Windows Scripting Host, Microsoft has introduced a script and COM based engine that can access the Windows Shell, the computer's environment and network settings using simple VBScript or JScript code. In addition you can even access any COM component, including your own. This column will introduce you to the basics of how the scripting host works and how you can incorporate its features into your Visual FoxPro Applications.
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Using Configurations to Manage SQL Server Extended Properties
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2011 - May/June
Before you start hard coding parts of your project to work with metadata in SQL Server, make sure that the functionality you want isn’t already part of the product.
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Visual Studio 2013
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2014 - March/April
Keeping up with Visual Studio’s frequent and often simultaneous releases from multiple sources can be nearly impossible. In another of his edifying series, John Petersen gives us the scoop.
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Working with Extender Classes
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - January/February
Extender classes do just that; they allow you to extend the functionality of a .NET control class. The Error Provider and Tooltip classes are two examples of extender classes in the .NET Framework. The Tooltip class represents a significant departure from how tooltips were implemented in earlier versions of Visual Studio. The Error Provider class provides a new way to inform users about invalid input. Although each class serves a different purpose, their implementation is quite similar. This article introduces these two classes and gives a brief, yet comprehensive primer on how to use them
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Working with iText for PDFs
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2020 - January/February
Learn the basics of using iText for reading and writing data to and from a PDF file.
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Yes, User Prompts and Unit Tests Can Co-Exist
Last updated: Friday, April 2, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2019 - March/April
If you thought that pages and dialogs that need a response from a user couldn’t be unit tested, John will show you how it’s done using dependency inversion.