The art of simplicity

On a DotNetRocks episode following link was shared: http://www.nullskull.com/a/722/the-top-ten-rules-of-software-development.aspx It starts with the following 10 rules: Order the T-shirts for the Development team Announce availability Write the code Write the manual Hire a Product Manager Spec the software (writing the specs after the code helps to ensure that the software meets the specifications) Ship Test (the customers are a big help here) Identify bugs as potential enhancements Announce the upgrade program Luckily it’s followed by the real rules afterwards…

If our ‘What’s next for JavaScript?’ session got you interested, here are some useful EcmaScript 6 resources: Overview of ECMAScript 6 features by Luke Hoban: http://git.io/es6features EcmaScript 6 series by Scott Allen: The features of ES6 - Part 1 - Let: http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2014/07/31/the-features-of-es6-part-1-let.aspx The features of ES6 – Part 2 – Const: http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2014/08/06/features-of-es6-part-2-const.aspx The features of ES6 – Part 3 – Default Parameter Values: http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2014/08/13/features-of-es6-part-3-default-parameter-values.aspx The features of ES6 – Part 4 – Rest parameters: http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2014/08/18/features-of-es6-part-4-rest-parameters.aspx The features of ES6 - Part 5 - The spread: http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2014/09/02/features-of-es6-part-5-the-spread.aspx The features of ES6 - Part 6 – Destructuri...

Interested in learning EcmaScript 6 in a fun and entertaining way? Try Warrior.js . This is a game designed to teach JavaScript and artificial intelligence in a fun, interactive way. You play as a warrior climbing a tall tower to <insert something that motivates you here> at the top level. On each floor, you need to write JavaScript (with full ES6 support) to instruct the warrior to battle enemies, rescue captives, and reach the stairs. To run the game,  first install it by running npm install -g warriorjs from a command prompt . You can start playing by typing warriorjs . This will generate a player.js file you have to edit. Inside this file, you’ll find a player class with a playTurn() function that you have to edit. Once you are done editing Player.js, save the file and run the warriorjs command again to start playing the level. The play happens through a series of turns. On each one, your playTurn method is called along with any enemy's.

At ng-conf Shai Reznik brought this great ‘ng-wat’ session inspired by the ‘Wat’ sessions by Gary Bernhardt(a must watch ). Maybe not so informative but certainly entertaining!

The amount of controls for Xamarin.Forms is rather limited. Luckily with the help of the community and control vendors like Telerik, Syncfusion,etc… this is changing. One of the open source initiatives is Xamarin-Forms-Labs : “Xamarin Forms Labs is a open source project that aims to provide a powerful and cross platform set of controls and helpers tailored to work with Xamarin Forms” It offers a wide range of controls, services, helpers and plugins. A must have for every Xamarin.Forms developer… Available controls AutoComplete (beta) Calendar Control (beta) Checkbox (beta) DynamicListView (beta) ExtendedContentView (beta) ExtendedEntry (beta) ExtendedLabel (beta) ExtendedScrollView (IOS beta) ExtendedTabbedPage ExtendedTextCell (beta) ExtendedViewCell (beta) HybridWebView (alpha) GridView (IOS beta) ImageButton (beta) RadioButton(beta) RepeaterView (beta) SegmentedControlView (IOS beta) Web Image (beta...

Yesterday while creating a new Xamarin.Forms application,  it failed to build for iOS with the following error message: No valid iOS code signing keys found in keychain I first thought that there was something wrong with my iOS configuration, but when I tried to create a ‘traditional’ iOS application, it just worked. On the Xamarin forums I found the following solution that worked for me: Open your Xamarin.Forms projects. Unload the iOS project in Visual Studio. Open the csproj file and search for the following element <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|iPhoneSimulator' ">     <CodesignEntitlements>Entitlements.plist</CodesignEntitlements> </PropertyGroup> Remove ‘ Entitlements.plist’ from the ‘CodesignEntitlements’ <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|iPhoneSimulator' "> <CodesignEntitlement...

MsBuild is a complex beast. It’s easy to get lost inside the XML and hard to discover what exactly is going on. One tool I recently discovered is MsBuild Explorer : Use MSBuild Explorer to help you find your way around the make-up of your build file(s). It presents you with a treeview to see the targets that you have available. A series of tabs provide access to more information including detailed target information, custom target execution, detailed property, item, import and using information and evaluation.