Articles by Derek Ferguson

Timing the Market with Distributed Genetics

Fri, 30 May 2008 12:30:00 EDT

I've always been puzzled by the ability of some traders to consistently make money. A cynic would say that anyone who is able to profit in all adverse economic environments (recessions, depressions, etc.) is most likely able to do so because they are getting information that is not generally available. Although the cynic might mean 'inside' information by this statement, I believe that there is a non-cynical interpretation of this statement that is, to some degree, correct.

From the .NET Developer's Journal Archives: Getting Reacquainted with the Father of C#

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:15:00 EST

In our premier issue, back in October 2002, we ran a full-length interview with Anders Hejlsberg, the Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft responsible for the creation of the C# programming language. Then, in March 2005, we presented a follow-up interview conducted by .NETDJ's editor-in-chief, Derek Ferguson, at Microsoft's Tech Ed 2004 conference in San Diego, California.

From the .NET Developer's Journal Archives: A Talk with the Father of C#

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:15:00 EST

In this interview with the editor-in-chief of .NET Developer's Journal, Microsoft's Anders Hejlsberg discusses the origins and the future of C#. The interview appeared in .NET Developer's Journal, Vol 1 issue 1 - in October 2002.

Product Review: RadView's WebLOAD

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 09:00:00 EST

One of my key tasks at Wine.com (the Magenic project for which we were awarded Microsoft's 2005 Worldwide Partner of the Year Award for a Custom Development Solution) was architecting a sales tax calculation Web service capable of supporting the tremendous volumes of traffic encountered by the main Wine.com Web site. The software package I used for this purpose was a Web service-testing package that just happened to have some load-testing functionality built into it. One of the things I like best about RadView's WebLOAD product is that it is 100 percent focused just on load testing - allowing for much more breadth and depth of functionality within this category. The way that the product works is illustrated in Figure 1.

Let's Face It, We're All Screwed

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 09:00:00 EST

When I was a kid, I remember someone saying, 'If you like where you're sitting, you had better stay there!' They were referring to a prediction that the Earth's population was going to increase to the point that there wouldn't be enough room for everyone to sit, so we'd all have to stay standing forever, or some such nonsense.

Five Microsoft .NET Development Tools I Wish I Had

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 13:30:00 EST

I've been doing a lot of coding lately. This has been a bit of a departure from my usual work as a technology evangelist or a development manager, but - as you might imagine - it has been quite a lot of fun! Having said this, the process of actually sitting down and coding for 12 hours a day over the past few months has left me wishing that Visual Studio .NET shipped with a handful of additional capabilities in the box.

Corporate Dalliance

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 21:45:00 EST

What would it take for your organization to move to all the latest-and-greatest Microsoft tools - Visual Studio 2005, Team System, etc.? This is a question that I have been more interested in since my move from being principal consultant at Magenic Technologies, a premier provider of Microsoft platform software-development consulting, to associate director of Information Technology at Bear Stearns, a leading global investment banking, securities trading, and brokerage firm.

The Evolution of .NET

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:00:00 EST

I am writing this on the morning of the day on which Microsoft will officially launch Visual Studio 2005, along with SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006. I think that it is fair to say that this is the most important technology launch in the history of Microsoft - and I'll tell you why!

Derek Ferguson on "Pragmatic Unit Testing" An Introduction to NMock

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 06:30:00 EDT

I differentiate what I like to call 'pragmatic unit testing' from the two alternate approaches to unit testing that I have seen at organizations. The first 'alternate approach,' which I have seen at 95 percent of .NET organizations, is best referred to as 'no time for quality.' The other approach, which I have mainly seen at J2EE organizations, can be labeled 'quality, even if it puts us out of business.'

Linux - Mono - .NET: An Exclusive SYS-CON.TV Interview With Miguel de Icaza

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 21:00:00 EDT

Mono is the leading non-Microsoft implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification. The CLI is the foundation of .NET. Because Mono runs on a number of platforms, it is the main choice today for people who want to run .NET applications on non-Microsoft platforms such as Linux.

The Great OS Shoot-Out

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:45:00 EDT

I have been redoing our 'family computer' this week, as I am changing jobs and have needed to use a computer in between the end of my work at Magenic and the start of my work at my soon-to-be employer (more details on that shortly). As a part of overhauling our family computer, I moved from Windows Media Center Edition (never a good fit for the older hardware on our family computer) to two new operating systems on separate partitions: Windows Vista Beta 1 and Novell's Linux Desktop (SUSE, if I correctly understand the nomenclature).

i-Technology Viewpoint: "SOA Sucks"

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 00:30:00 EDT

From time to time, I find myself lassoing a sacred cow in this Editorial space, dragging it over to the slaughterhouse of rhetoric, and ultimately barbecuing its falsehood over the stainless-steel, six-burner, propane-powered grill of real-world experience. To wit, the current industry obsession with SOA as a panacea for every information system ill from performance to security is, in my humble opinion, a phenomenal load of crap.

.NET Developer's Journal's Derek Ferguson Introduces ASP.NET 2.0 Focus Issue

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 03:00:00 EDT

As I write this, I am simultaneously preparing to present on ASP.NET 2.0 at three local MSDN Events (www.msdnevents.com), building an advanced ASP.NET 2.0 Web site for my client at Magenic, and pulling together the last bits of the magazine that you now hold in your hands - our ASP.NET 2.0 Focus Issue for 2005. While the specifics of each of these ASP.NET 2.0 projects differ from each other, the one thing that they all have in common is that they all involve a lot of master pagination.

Parasoft's SOAtest 3.0

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 06:45:00 EDT

Recently, a client asked me to create a new .NET Web Service that would let them do sales tax calculations from any computer on their network. The product they had been using was an old-fashioned C program meant for a single computer.

An Exclusive Interview With Rocky Lhotka, the Creator of CSLA

Sat, 20 Aug 2005 08:45:00 EDT

Derek Ferguson has recently interviewed Rocky Lhotka, the creator of CSLA. In this interview, Derek discusses some of the things that originally led to the creation of CSLA, as well as where Rocky sees object-oriented development heading in the future. A lot of the inspiration came because, at the time, I was working with a group of the premier Forte consultants in the country. This was back in 1995 and 1996, when Forte was the preeminent client-server development tool. The guys that I was interacting with were some of the smartest people I have ever met ? very object-oriented.

The Fun of Being Bound. Web Applications Suck!

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 19:00:00 EDT

Web applications suck! Well, perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement. Let me rephrase: Web applications are not appropriate for all situations. In my case, I have spent the last few months working on a series of ASP.NET applications that should really have been done as Smart Client applications. While working on this, I have been playing with the new Object Data Binding features in .NET 2.0 and falling in love with them.

The Cutting Edge of .NET

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 21:15:00 EDT

I'm constantly impressed by the imaginative uses to which people put Microsoft's .NET technology. As I reviewed the articles for this month's issue of .NET Developer's Journal, it occurred to me that the microcosm of applications presented in our magazine this time around are just about as varied and imaginative as they come!

Book Review: Pragmatic ADO.NET

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 16:00:00 EDT

My first big assignment for Magenic was described to me by one of our salespeople over a rather expensive dinner involving a copious amount of alcohol. For these reasons (reason #1: salesperson, reason #2: alcohol), by the end of the conversation all I really knew about what I'd be walking into was that it was going to involve a database of some kind. This distinguished it from other projects in pretty much no way whatsoever.

Delphi Review

Fri, 20 May 2005 12:00:00 EDT

My first exposure to Delphi came during my interview with Anders Hejlsberg at Tech Ed 2004 in San Diego. 'Whatever happened to Turbo Pascal,' I asked him? God bless Mr. Hejlsberg for the patience with which he responded to this rather foolish question. 'Well,' he said, 'that would be Delphi.' I turned three shades of red, realizing that I had failed to 'connect the dots' in my understanding of Anders' pre-Microsoft career at Borland. Oops!

InRule Review

Fri, 20 May 2005 12:00:00 EDT

I have, in the past, worked on a few software products that were years ahead of their time. As it turns out, being years ahead of your time in the world of Information Technology is not necessarily a good thing. You wind of spending a lot of your time convincing prospective customers that they have a need for software like yours, rather than simply convincing them that your software represents the best choice in an already-established market segment.

Visual Studio Tools for Office 2003

Fri, 20 May 2005 11:00:00 EDT

The following editorial will have little or nothing to do with the content of this issue. Admittedly, it will be about development and, in fact, it will be about development using .NET. However, I will leave it to Patrick Hynds, this issue's Guest Editor, to focus your attention on security - which is the primary topic of this issue. For further information on this, please see his Guest Editorial.

WebZinc

Wed, 11 May 2005 09:00:00 EDT

Shortly before this magazine was launched, I was sent a product announcement for something known as WebZinc. The first thing I noticed about it was that the company producing it, White Cliff Computing Ltd., was in Yorkshire, England. 'That can't be a very common place for software companies to be based,' I thought to myself.

Windows Mobile 5.0 Unveiled by Bill Gates: Live Keynote Report

Tue, 10 May 2005 23:00:00 EDT

Speaking at the Microsoft Mobile & Embedded DevCon 2005 (MEDC) in Las Vegas, Bill Gates today unveiled details of Windows Mobile 5.0 reports .NET Developer's Journal editor-in-chief Derek Ferguson. Gates also talked about Visual Studio 2005, which he said will Release to Manufacturing this summer, and indicated that there should not be any need to change any code created on Beta 2 once Visual Studio 2005 is RTM'd.

Accelerating Mobility

Tue, 10 May 2005 10:00:00 EDT

Welcome to the 2005 Mobility Focus issue of the .NET Developer's Journal. Long-time readers know that mobility is an area of special interest to me. In 2001, I wrote the first book about .NET mobility - Mobile .NET. From 2001 to 2004, I was chief technology evangelist for the world's first mobile IT management software company, Expand Beyond. Then, last year, I was named one of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professionals for the .NET Compact Framework - a dream fulfilled!

Windows Mobile Version 5.0 Revealed

Tue, 10 May 2005 10:00:00 EDT

There has never been an operating system release more important to .NET developers than the release of Windows Mobile Version 5.0. With this release, Microsoft is poised to take your productivity in writing mobile applications higher than it has ever gone before. Rich multimedia capabilities, integrated messaging, and world-class telephony support are just a few of the benefits you will realize when you develop applications for the Windows Mobile 5.0 platform.

The Glory of Web Services Edge 2005

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST

Last week, I was happy to spend a few days serving as .NET track chair for the Web Services Edge 2005 conference in Boston. It was the fourth time I had served in this capacity, and the conference continued its proud tradition of improving on itself year-after-year.

How Well Does Work-At-Home Work?

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 00:00:00 EST

Fate likes to urinate in my breakfast cereal! Just days after submitting my previous editorial for publication - wherein, you may remember, I had extolled the virtues of local software expertise over those of off-shore development - I was asked to extend my consulting engagement in San Francisco for a period of several months.

Outsourcing Viewpoint: The Future of Our Profession

Wed, 12 Jan 2005 00:00:00 EST

I am new to consulting. For the past eight years, I have worked as a full-time software developer with a couple of startups here in Chicago. Joining Magenic Technologies - a Microsoft-platform consulting company - has been a change of pace for me, both in terms of no longer working for a startup (we're currently celebrating our 10th year in business) and in that I now move from client to client on a much more regular basis.

.NET Track - Intro to SPOT

Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST

SPOT is a new Microsoft technology intended to dramatically increase the usefulness of everyday objects by bringing them firmly into the era of high technology.

A Look Back - and Moving Forward

Tue, 07 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST

And so, we come to the end of 2004. This is the end of this magazine's second year in print, and we have made substantial progress over the past year in pursuing our goal of becoming the premier source for information of interest to .NET software developers!

Exclusive .NETDJ Interview with Brad Abrams: Talking Frameworks, Namespaces, and Programming

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST

.NET Developer's Journal editor-in-chief Derek Ferguson and Don Box, a leading authority on COM and architect in the Microsoft .NET Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, recently sat down to talk with Brad Abrams, Lead Program Manager for the .NET Framework, about that framework.

Politics and Microsoft

Mon, 08 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST

By the time you read this, the election here in America will (hopefully) have been decided. I inserted 'hopefully' in there because, as I write this, both candidates are tied at exactly 48% of the vote - indicating a very high likelihood of another extremely close election like we had in 2000, followed by another round of vote disputes, also like we had in 2000.

Where Do You Want to Go for the Next Four Years?

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST

I develop mobile software for a living. I also train developers to create their own mobile applications using the Compact Framework. This issue is focused on mobile development. However, because this issue was largely put together by our Mobility Editor, Jon Box, I will leave it to his guest editorial to give you more of the mobility vision for this magazine.

NET: Platform of Choice

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

I recently wrote an editorial as editor-in-chief of .NET Developer's Journal in which I openly questioned the value of re-architecting existing systems to use the latest and greatest technologies. Specifically, I illustrated my argument with the case of a local ISV (independent software vendor) I know that spent several months re-architecting a successful COM-based application to use .NET while its competitor continued to add features to its existing system.

Product/Book Reviews

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

The Compact Framework is not perfect. In particular, its class library represents an abbreviation from the Framework with which we are all familiar on the desktop. This means that in many cases, the classes and namespaces that one wants to use based on one's knowledge of the desktop Framework are not available for use on devices.

Make a Great First Impression

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Maintainability and extensibility are over-rated. If you work in a start-up environment, at least, you should focus primarily on bringing your products to market in the fastest, most bug-free manner possible. The market never gives a second chance to make a great first impression, so - in a start-up environment - you should focus on making sure that your company's product is the first in its space and that it rocks...regardless of what's going on underneath the hood!

An Interview with Rob Howard

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EDT

.NETDJ: How did you come to work for Microsoft on the ASP.NET team? RH: I was originally on what was then known as the Developer Relations group at Microsoft. I was a technical evangelist. I was part of a team of folks that Microsoft would send to the top 100 'media metrics,' which was a ranking tool that ranked the top Web sites and destinations during the dot-com boom.

Certifications Reconsidered

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EDT

A few months ago, you might recall, I publicly declared that Microsoft's new Partner Points system had dissuaded me from renewing my long-since lapsed MCSD certification. For only slightly more than 1% of the total points my company, Expand Beyond, would need in order to remain a Gold Certified Partner in 2005, I reasoned - why bother?

Exclusive .NET Developer's Journal "Indigo" Interview with Microsoft's Don Box

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EDT

I am an architect in the Distributed Systems Group. I am responsible for the protocols and the plumbing that we do in that group. I'm on an architecture team, so the responsibility is distributed, but basically five other architects and I work on the WS-* protocols, Indigo, and the stuff that leads up to Indigo, such as work on ASMX and Web Services Enhancements (WSE).

Product/Book Reviews

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EDT

I took the 70-315 exam at Tech Ed 2004, which was held just two months ago in San Diego, California. I hadn't been planning to take it for several more weeks. However, I was encouraged to take it earlier on the basis of two key facts: