This week has been a bit upside down in a already hectic period. My mum had a TIA (?) which is hospital-lingo for stopper in the brain (sorry ‘bout the English).

Of course a lot of thoughts runs through your mind when something like that happens and it takes it toll on you mentally and physically.

But it all seems to go well now and there are not lasting problems. Hopefully something good can come out of this and she can reduce the stressing workload that she carries at work.

In a upcoming project we’ll be using VB.NET. The customer has chosen that language as their company standard and there no use or point to argue about that. … Although I can’t see the advantages with VB.NET over C#.

The last time I started a discussion about this it resulted in ca 30 mails with suggestions about why C# is superior… but at the end of the day it’s only syntax. Since the compiler will translate the code into MSIL (intermediate language) which then will be executed by the runtime there is no performance gain using C# or VB.NET.

C# seems to be the most popular choice though - I tried a Google-search on “vb.net for c# developers” and almost all hits has to do with converting a VB.NET developer into a C#-developer and not the opposite.

A popular point in why to chose VB.NET is that if you...

This weekend was spent at my sister, Therese, in Linköping. This is the fifth (or so) town in Sweden, in size but the difference from Stockholm is very obvious when you are in the town. You can feel that different styles from the cities just by walking around in the cities.

So in a way we made a small vacation, to another place (not another time though) over the weekend. Even the weather was weird with sunshine and hailstorms interchanging each other.

Today we’re kicking off a new sub project at my customer. And except four new features the customer has ask for only one (1) bug to be fixed. I don’t think that this will hold.

So…. I am saying the magical words; “if this release on contains that one bug-fix I will eat my USB-mouse”

I have read somethings about the LINQ-project at Microsoft. I haven’t fully understood it yet but from this video i see that it’s really cool.

Also - as I understand it - this could be a way to build Hibernate-like functionality with Microsoft products… for anyone who like that ;)

Have been reading up on SCRUM and found some nice articles and presentations.

This is an overview from a company that apparently has developed a Add-in for Visual Studio Team System to use on SCRUM-projects, but don’t mind that but focus on the important stuff about SCRUM instead.

Here’s another good introduction site: http://www.scrum-master.com/, especially check out Ken Schwaber’s top ten tips

Coming from the RUP-methodology I like the presentation but I also realize that this a bit against the whole “agile”-concept. In short - i like it.

I am always interested in finding stuff that simplifies my day-to-day use of computer software. I love shortcuts and macros or rather I hate doing repetitive stuff that just is boring and tedious…

Here is an great article about shortcuts in Visual Studio 2005

On my way to work today I noticed that the Easter was initiated in the windows of the shops I passed. This is a discussion you don’t hear so often; the shops starting Easter earlier and earlier each year. I mean the same is said for Christmas … wonder why.

Anyhow - these times are always hectic and this year is no exception;

• 40 years jubilee for the Vasa Corps
• Concert with brass band
• A lot of different meetings and committees
• etc

But - as always - most of these are fun things to do so I am not that worried. Besides - spring is in the air. There is something about the light and air this time of the year that fills you with hope, like “you know what? We just might make it to summer. Again”

Have a good one - peace out.

Found the site InfoQ (do NOT mix this with AvenueQ) that contains some very good articles, presentations and even books about agile development and related stuff. Have up to now just seen and read some parts but it all looks very promising.

Here are my shortlist so far:

• Book on Domain Driven Design
• Great OOP presentation
• Visual Studio tips and tricks

This will be often visited by me in the future. I promise…

During the last months I have snowed in on Agile development. I don’t really know why I first started to look at it but I think it has to do with that all the problems that agile methods claims to solve they always state in the outset of the description of the method. For example:

• Does the requirements often change in your project?
• Would you like a system that improved in quality over time?
• Is your system hard to test?
• Is it hard to predict how long time or how big a change in your system is?
• … and more of the same kind…

It’s all very “sell oriented” and provocative but I have actually ran into most of these points in projects, recent and distant.

Altogether this force me into looking into it more which probably (and hopefully) will reflect on the blog.

Here is a quite...