BigFont Blog

Checklist for the Spiral Software Development Lifecycle Model (or How to Spiral into Control)

This post contains a checklist only. It assumes the reader has familiarity with the Spiral Model of Software Development.Six InvariantsThe spiral model recommends six invariants to include in every cycle through the

software-development

Task: On a dark night, use a flashlight to find a diamond ring that fell into a pothole on a road that has several potholes.

This is an analogy about trying to find a specific bug in a codebase that has multiple bugs. It is 1 am in the morning on a moonless night. A very important person

life

He/they from my perspective as a middle aged, privileged white male living in Western Canada

This blog post is for those with little exposure to sex and gender conversations over the last five years or so. If you feel surprised when you see she/her, he/him, or

Enable long paths in Windows with PowerShell

Run this in PowerShell to overcome filename too long errors. New-ItemProperty ` -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem" ` -Name "LongPathsEnabled" ` -Value 1 ` -PropertyType DWORD ` -ForceSee also: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/

powershell

Check whether two C# builds result in binaries that are functionally identical (within reasonable limits).

I spent some of my weekend determining whether the IL changed between builds. The following script builds a solution, generates intermediate language from the build result, filters out stuff that always changes (such

How I tend to do salary negotiation when interviewing as an employee.

In the workplace, I value psychological safety more than I value salary. The salary negotiation strategy that I used has two purposes. The obvious one is to increase my salary up to the

powershell

How to use PowerShell to release a locked Windows port?

Let's say we want to release port 8081 (and we do not want to restart our computer). First, find the Process ID that is using the port. The easy way: Get-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection

Run a specific VS Code Launch Configuration from the Command Palette.

I have a launch.config named .NET Attach. "launch": { "configurations": [ { "name": ".NET Attach", "type": "clr", "request": "attach", "requireExactSource": false, "processId": "${command:pickProcess}" } ], },Here are two ways to run it. CTRL + P to enter

For me, quality code is not about love of the craft, quality code is in service of long-term feature delivery velocity.

My motivation at work is rapid development over the long-term. I could really not care less about "the craft of development". I would rather be shipping features and enjoying the sun than be

soft-skills

Handling the perpetual problem re: time spent improving code quality vs time spent creating new features... in a way that fosters career satisfaction and engagement.

A change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points. ~ Alan KayRecently I was faced with a familiar situation at work. As I saw it, my team was pulling me off a bug fix

Online Pilates Resources

I bought a Pilates reformer in early 2021. After four months of experimenting with it, I am looking for online resources. Here are some that I've found useful. June 2021John Garey TV, Beginner

What connection string do we use to connect the Azure Cosmos DB Data Migration Tool to the Cosmos DB Emulator?

Use this connection string: AccountKey=C2y6yDjf5/R+ob0N8A7Cgv30VRDJIWEHLM+4QDU5DE2nQ9nDuVTqobD4b8mGGyPMbIZnqyMsEcaGQy67XIw/Jw==;Database=Library;AccountEndpoint=https://localhost:8081Woot! Connected. See also Tutorial: Database migration tool for Azure Cosmos DBTutorial: Learn how to use the open-source

powershell

List all the keyboard shortcuts that are available in PowerShell.

From within PowerShell, run the following commandlet: Get-PSReadLineKeyHandlerThat prints all the key bindings that are available out-of-the-box in PowerShell Desktop 5.1 and PowerShell Core 7.1. Some of them are more like

DevOps Praxis

Praxis (noun): practical application of a theory. This page enumerates DevOps ideas from literature and from community conversations, including citations, and pairs them with how, if at all, to implement these ideas in-real-life.

Find your business in British Columbia by business name or business number.

Sometimes it can be hard to know about all the different names and numbers associated with a business. This website helps by letting us search within the BC Registry Services. Very helpful. British

c#

GetEnumerator and GetAsyncEnumerator both return a new instance of an enumerator.

GetEnumerator and GetAsyncEnumerator return a new instance of an enumerator. As a result... var e1 = sequence.GetEnumerator(); var e2 = sequence.GetEnumerator(); Console.WriteLine(e1 == e2); // false!!!Corollary1: if we call e1.MoveNext(), the

Install and use StyleCop in a .NET or .NET Core project from the command line (without needing your whole team to do the same).

This is my workflow for using StyleCop.Analyzers in a repository, without needing my entire team to use the tool. At a high level, I install StyleCop, use it, and then remove it

What was it like working a four day work week for two-and-a-half years?

It was lovely - and focused. Statutory holidays were awkward, though, because then it became a three-day workweek, which was too short. If I were to do it again, I would set it

Debug an IIS Express web application from VS Code.

Here is how to build, run, and debug your .NET Framework Web Application with msbuild, iisexpress, and VS Code. From PowerShell, build your app with a portable Program Database (PDB) output. msbuild ` /property:

Considerations for C#.NET code formatting in a distributed microservice application that spans multiple Git repositories.

The problem is...it is expensive for a company to format code manually, but it is also expensive not to format code at all. Summary from ThoughWorks Tech RadarFor as long as we

git

Push and pull files between Windows 10 and WSL2 file systems with Git.

This shows how to push and pull files between the Windows file system and the WSL2 file system. The unrelated photo shows some integration composting we are doing at the Fernwood Road Cafe

git

Output the number of Git commits a person made each day of the year in bash.

It's the end of the year. Sometimes I want to know how many commits I made per day. This also helps me to see how many days I worked per year. (The unrelated

Combine git, sort, and tail to view the most changed files.

The following lets us see the top 20 most changed files in a git diff. git --no-pager diff master | sort -k3 -n | tail -20Use man sort for details on the options.

The A method for evaluating a potential employer.

Recently I read "Who: The A method for hiring." It calls for creating a scorecard to evaluate potential employees. I thought, well, that's a good idea. I could do the same for an

typescript

When using TypeScript and streams in NodeJS, use the stream.Stream type until there is reason to use a wider type.

It's easy to build a big ball of mud when working with technology we do not understand. Two years into a project, we found ourselves converting among typed arrays, streams, and buffers, without