The usual post from Scott GU is at: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/01/27/asp-net-mvc-1-0-release-candidate-now-available.aspx

I have had some issues though – it seems that Visual Studio wants to keep hold of a reference to the old DLLs. Even after uninstalling the old, reinstalling the new and using direct file references, I still had some issues with Visual Studio just crashing witrhout any warning and leaving some cryptic error in the event log.

It seems to happen when opening .aspx files so I would certainly recommend closing all of the files in the solution before upgrading – otherwise one gets stuck never being able to open the solution. Deleting all of the compiled bin and obj folders seemed to help a little and I think clearing the resharper cache was useful too.

The problem seems to have just gone away for the moment so I haven’t really got to the bottom of it. I think it is more a problem with VS than MVC.

There look to be some small updates that look nice according to Scott. I certainly have some base classes and extension methods that do a couple of them already. The best looking update at the moment is, in my opinion, the ability to have a view without a code-behind even when having a strongly typed viewmodel – looking forward to using that one!

I was recently part of a small talk with a selection of the dev team at Elateral about fluent interfaces. I was introducing the concept of method chaining with an example based upon Martin Fowler’s post that I had worked on when discussing some best practices with some of the guys at DisplayLink.

I had a small slide deck that really served only as a prompter for me to introduce the concepts and worked through the example. I promised to upload them all somewhere for general access so here it is.

All the files should be accessible here – they are as follows (individual links):

Slide deck
C# “ComputerBuilder” example
C++ “ComputerBuilder” example

I have already started using the C# example to further investigation into nBehave. I now have an acceptance test that reads something like:

story
        .AsA( Computer )
        .IWant( "to be configured" )
        .SoThat( "I work" );

story
        .WithScenario( "Martin Fowler's example" )
        .Given( "a new computer builder", () => chain = Computer.New )
        
        .When( "I give it two cores", () => chain = chain.WithCores( 2 ) )
        .And( "set it to be an i386", () => chain = chain.OfType( Processor.i486 ) )
        .And( "add a 150GB disk", () => chain = chain.WithDisk.OfSize( 150 ) )
        .And( "add a 7200rpm 75GB SATA disk ", () => chain = chain.WithDisk.IsSata.OfSpeed( 7200 ).OfSize( 75 ) )

        .Then( "I expect to get a Computer out", () => ( computer = chain ).ShouldBeInstanceOf<Computer>() )
        .And( "I expect to have a computer with $expectedCores cores", 2, expectedCores => computer.NumberOfCores.ShouldEqual( expectedCores ) )
        .And( "an $expectedProcessor processor", Processor.i486, expectedProcessor => computer.Processor.ShouldEqual( expectedProcessor ) )
        .And( "$expectedDiskCount disks", 2, expectedDisks => computer.Disks.Count.ShouldEqual( expectedDisks ) )
        .And( "the first disk should have a size of $expectedSize GB", 150, expectedSize => computer.Disks[ 0 ].Size.ShouldEqual( expectedSize ) )
        .And( "the second disk should have a size of $expectedSize GB", 75, expectedSize => computer.Disks[ 1 ].Size.ShouldEqual( expectedSize ) )
        .And( "the second disk should be SATA", () => computer.Disks[ 1 ].Sata.ShouldBeTrue() )
        .And( "the second disk should have a speed of $expectedSpeed rpm", 7200, expectedSpeed => computer.Disks[ 1 ].Speed.ShouldEqual( 7200 ) )
        ;

I am also using this example as part of a continuous integration experiment and hope to refactor to use interfaces and a single builder – more on these things later…

I don’t understand why iTunes is so bad. Is it because I am using it under Vista or is it just because Apple doesn’t actually care much past selling the hardware?

I have a simple set of requirements for iTunes – I don’t use it for managing a music library – I use it because it is the only piece of software that does a half decent job of putting podcasts onto my iPod shuffle. I say ‘half-decent job’ – because that’s all it seems to do really – half a job. Basically – without it I can’t really use the iPod. But which one is free and which one is crap?

So I have some ‘functional’ issues:

If it fails or loses an episode of some podcast (which can happen frequently!) it puts a little explanation mark next to it helpfully telling me it doesn’t know where the audio is. IS THERE A BUTTON TO RE-DOWNLOAD? NO! One has to delete the entry, collapse the menu, re-open the menu with pressed which not only restores the one I just deleted but ALL of the deleted ones – so I have to remember which ones I haven’t listened to – and then I can re-download. Argh!

It seems to forget which podcasts go on the iPod (I want ALL of them) – and if I choose the podcast and select ‘add to Ronnie’s iPod’ I get duplicates of the ones already there (admittedly this has only happened recently since v8 – things getting better?). Argh!

Most of the time it works out which ones I have played and deletes them – but I would like to be able to set a threshold for how much I have to listen to so that I don’t have to listen to all of the credits at the end of the podcasts just so that it automatically gets deleted – this is about the most reliable feature at the moment - when I first started using the shuffle it was the worst – so there are improvements…

My biggest beef (and only because I have to do far too much clicking about in the UI – if it just sync’d up my podcasts without touching like it ought to then this wouldn’t be an issue) is the complete sluggishness of the UI. I have never seen a piece of software that takes so looooooong for something to happen when I click the mouse button – is iTunes this crap on a mac? I hope not! I put this one down to Apple just not caring too much about the PC market.

But for some reason I still love walking around the Apple store – they do make some sexy stuff! Just go fix bloody iTunes – I don’t actually care how sexy the UI is – I just want podcasts on my iPod – how hard can that be?

Since Ronnie has already got in and done the initial intro – I had best do a more formal introduction of myself and where I sit within this new venture.

I’ve previously worked as developer, technical architect and software architect in both permanent and contracting roles but have always wanted to start an agile based service company where we can provide real value to our clients in a very agile manner. The Agile Workshop is the realisation of that dream.

It’s early days right now but we have high hopes and aspirations (doesn’t everyone) and so you should expect blogs from me about our travels down this road. I’ll also be continuing with the Monorail series of posts that I started (and then ‘paused’ for a while) on my other blog.

So what else should you expect from me. Well, I believe in principles above actual technologies so you should expect some posts around the Agile Patterns, Principles and Patterns SOLID principles, as well as more general posts on the human aspect of software as well. There will also be the technology focused posts as well (Monorail being one of those) so there should be a good mix for all people.

But anyway, enough talking from me, and welcome to The Agile Workshop.

The Agile Workshop Limited – officially incorporated on the 5th September 2008.

This is the first post on what I hope will become a thriving area of interest in software engineering and starting a business.

Currently there are only two of us but as things get going there may be some guest contributers and other members of The Agile Workshop joining in. Let’s see how well it all goes.

So in introduction – I am Ronnie Barker. My fellow co-founder of The Agile Workshop, Stephen Oakman, and I will be posting a journal of our journey here in-between all of the things that we have to do starting a new business. Our families are likely going to get neglected a little but part of what we want to promote is sustainability and quality of life in this software dev game so that shouldn’t happen too much…