Author: Chad Michel
Saving Time with the DataTestMethod Attribute
Automated testing has come a long way over the years. I remember using NUnit back in the early days of .NET when you needed a separate application to run unit tests. Since then, support for automated testing has improved to the point where we can run unit tests right from within Visual Studio. In this…
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Making the Most of Your Design Analysis Documents
Sometimes it isn’t easy to get everyone onto the same page. Everyone on a development team can think we are all moving in the same (and right) direction. Still, we often have different underlying assumptions about how certain features will be implemented. When we don’t have visibility into those assumptions, headaches can ensue. An excellent…
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Configure SQL Server Column Encryption with Azure Key Vault
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is my favorite Zelda game. Actually, it is one of my favorite games of all time. In my opinion, it is nearly perfect. It’s not too difficult, but it also makes you work. Lots of things to do. Nice 2D graphics. Just a very enjoyable game….
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Quick Look – Mocking in the UI with Xamarin Forms
Xamarin Forms is a handy UI framework. It provides a way to create a UI that works on both iOS and Android. But it has something else that is novel: it gives us an easy way to create a screen with mock data. With Xamarin Forms, you can preview within Visual Studio (both Mac and…
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Microsoft Build 2020 Recap
Despite the virtual nature of this year’s Microsoft Build developer conference, there were a lot of great updates and news to be shared. There’s no way I could cover everything in one post, so here are some of my favorite parts. Blazor There are few things in software I am hungrier for information about than…
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Anti-Design: An Activity
When we ask someone to design something, we usually focus on the good. If you ask someone to build a notification service, it is expected to be a good one. But what about asking people to design a bad one? Asking participants to develop a poor design is what we do in our Software Design…
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Xamarin Forms Revisited
I like going back to take a fresh look at tools and technologies every once in a while. It is always interesting to see what has changed and what has stayed the same – especially mobile platforms because it feels like an area where there is a lot of room for improvement. I am very…
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Quick Look – A Console on the Web
I love console applications. For some reason, the simplicity of the interaction appeals to me. But today we do a lot of web development where many of our solutions end up with some web portal. Couldn’t we have a console/terminal on the web? Yes, we can! There is an awesome project to get Xterm support…
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Developing for Good: A Quick Look at MyLNK
The team at Don’t Panic Labs has worked on a lot of software over the years (10 years last month, by the way). We have stood up numerous new applications and platforms for our customers and have transformed many platforms into more modern and stable platforms to help customers grow their businesses. But the single…
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Quick Look – Azure App Configuration
Application configuration has always been a pain. It was a pain back in the WinForm days. It was a pain in the ASPX days. It is a pain in the cloud days. Why is app configuration a pain? Quite frankly, it is because of the lack of a reliable and coherent solution. With no real…
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