This is a useful technique to keep interviews creative and interesting for all involved and some bonus tips for good measure. — If you want to grow through the ranks and build your career as a software engineer, you will only take on more responsibility over time. One consistent thing that happens for everyone is you start interviewing other software engineers. This can be daunting at first and then easier over time…

A cleaner approach to application startup and configuration in .NET 6 after Microsoft both killed and kept the old startup file. — After reading the .NET Migration Documentation in the past week, I have formulated an alternative to the suggested methods from Microsoft. To be honest, I created this approach last year and recently refined it, to make it ready to share with others. The starting point was finding some posts about…

Is it possible for AI to create a civil discourse? Given their training material, would this vary from civil to vitriolic? Let’s find out! — Usually, when I write, it concerns Software Engineering. This morning though, while thinking about how AI will affect my industry for years, I wondered whether the two biggest tools out there ChatGPT and Google Bard, could communicate sensibly with each other. Given that AI has been a hot topic all…

An update on Mocking DateTime in .NET. Microsoft has finally made an official way to make it hurt less. — I have previously written a post with a similar title (Bending DateTime in .NET to Test Your Code Better). I hope it helped some people using and testing DateTime in .NET. It was about solving the age-old problem of validating DateTime values in your tests. You can’t validate the actual…

Have you ever wondered why you see people around your city growing dirty moustaches in November? — What is Movember? Movember is a global event where men grow moustaches during November to raise awareness of men’s health issues, such as prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and men’s suicide. …

What technology tags have the most followers and the most chance of being found and followed on Medium? — Should I Use Tags? When you’re writing articles on medium tags will enhance your article's discoverability. They help your content reach a wider audience by applying a category to it. This also makes it easier for readers interested in specific topics to find and engage with your articles. …

Benchmarking is important! Problem is running those tests can make your machine unusable. Let’s make Microsoft and GitHub feel that pain instead. — We’ll cover a few other details before we get to the Microsoft and Github fun and games. Firstly, what is benchmarking anyway? Then set up a simple benchmarking example that anyone can run and finally down to how to offload those tests. For the TL;DR; crowd, this isn’t magic. We’re…

Finding the fastest way to iterate arrays while accessing their value in .NET using BenchmarkDotNet validate performance at scale. — I have spent some time recently looking through an older system, wondering how I can make it perform better. There are many avenues to make a system like this faster and more performant, but I wanted to avoid large scale refactoring to keep the risk to a minimum. Specifically I…

Finding the fastest way to iterate lists while accessing their value in .NET using BenchmarkDotNet validate performance at scale. — I have spent some time recently looking through an older system, wondering how I can make it perform better. There are many avenues to make a system like this faster and more performant, but I wanted to avoid large scale refactoring to keep the risk to a minimum. Specifically I…