What I Learned at the University of Illinois Web Conference 2013

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University of IllinoisThe web conference at the University of Illinois was an excellent event! This conference was not my normal scene. Being a web conference, the sessions covered all pertinent topics from pure design and UX all the way to distributed real-time apps and TDD. Along with the heavier design focus, this conference was outside of my normal circle of friends. In fact, I didn’t know a single other speaker or attendee before the event!

This was a great growing opportunity, and I met some very engaging personalities! I highly recommend this event.
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What I Learned At Nebraska Code Camp 2013

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nebraska-code-campA couple of weeks ago I was at Nebraska Code Camp in Lincoln, NE. This was a very good event. All of the sessions I attended were excellent! In the hallway between sessions, and during the after-party, I met with some excellent individuals. The software development community is thriving in Nebraska!

After such a productive code camp, I thought I would post some highlights of the most useful and/or interesting things I have learned/re-learned. Unlike my last “what I learned” post, I am just going to include some of the highlights this time. This means you might have to think a little bit to digest these notes.
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Coding Practices I Love To Hate

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Love and hate what a beautiful combination by Perrenque, on FlickrI’ve been writing software long enough to have developed a few opinions. Many of the practices and patterns that I have encountered have been great! Some have taken me down a dark, winding path. Here are a few that I find more bittersweet.

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

I am a huge proponent of TDD. It has saved my bacon a number of times, and has surely saved me hundreds of hours of troubleshooting and re-factoring.

What I Love About It

  • My boss and team members like the higher test coverage
  • Easier to communicate test cases and test plan ideas to QA
  • Better idea about work remaining to complete a feature
  • Greater confidence in re-factoring, since I know my tests will catch most bugs I might introduce

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What I Learned at South Florida Code Camp

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South Florida Code CampSouth Florida Code Camp 2013 is now over. This was a large event on the campus of Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The organizers did an excellent job, especially considering that there were about 80 speakers, over 1200 registrants, nearly 90 sessions and a blizzard in the northeast (which prevented a number of speakers from attending). A big thank you to Rainer Habermann, Dave Noderer and everyone else that was involved in making this event happen.

Since I have been attending a fair number of conferences and code camps, I have decided that it might be worthwhile for me to start sharing what I learn at these events. If this goes well, I’ll likely continue.

Here are my notes from the event. Some of these are things that I just learned. Most are things that I knew already, but enjoyed the reminder.

So here we go. What I learned (or re-learned) at South Florida Code Camp.
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Geek and Nerd In-Jokes: Monty Python and the Holy Grail

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Monty Python and the Holy GrailThis next installment in my inside-jokes sequence is a very fun movie that my wife can’t stand. The only thing she likes from this movie is the logical method for determining if someone is a witch, which was screened and discussed in her college logic class.

As for me, this film is one of my favorites, and I can be caught quoting it frequently.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a movie that was made by the British comedy group that called themselves Monty Python. It follows the adventures of Sir Arthur of Camelot and his Knights of the Round Table as they quest to find the Holy Grail. Comedy ensues throughout their exploits. I won’t tell you how it ends, but it is both disappointing and humorous.
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Determinism in Dispose and Finalize Execution Timing

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...Time... by ĐāżŦ {mostly absent}, on FlickrI get a surprising number of questions about when objects are disposed or collected. Usually people will have some limited logic to cleanup their objects (releasing file handles, removing references to large objects, etc.), and they don’t know when this logic will execute. Here is a little bit of insight into when objects are disposed and finalized. (If you are looking for more information about Disposable and Finalizable patterns, check this post)

When Does Dispose Execute?

The Dispose method on an object is only executed when it is called by the application. What I mean by that, is the CLR does not automatically call Dispose on your objects. If you don’t call dispose, it can result in a memory leak that does not get cleaned up until the process exits.

This doesn’t mean you necessarily have to call Dispose() explicitly. In C#, there are a number of times that Dispose() is called implicitly:
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Be Kind to Your GC: Examining IDisposable and Finalize Patterns

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Through my discussions with various developers, I have noticed a common theme when it comes to disposing objects. Most developers are confused, or at least unclear, on why and when to use dispose and finalize.

Let me start off with this: The purpose of dispose and finalize is the same… to improve the performance of the application and the host system. You don’t need to implement either. When the GC runs, unused managed memory will be reclaimed. When your process exits, the entire process’s virtual memory will be released. When the system re-boots, any open native handles will be closed. Dispose and finalize are two patterns that make it easier for your application to be a “good citizen,” releasing memory as soon as it is no longer needed and closing handles as soon as you are done with them.
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Automatic Memory Management Concepts in .NET (Garbage Collection)

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Annotated Sagittal T1 Midline MRI Scan of Reigh's BrainAs Raymond Chen so aptly explained, the purpose of garbage collection is to simulate a computer with an infinite amount of memory. This is another piece of the puzzle that gives application developers freedom through abstraction. Freedom to focus on the logic and structure of their code without being unnecessarily concerned about the constraints of the system it is running on, including managing physical and virtual memory. Unfortunately, this seems to result in some gross misuse of system resources.

So that you do not fall into the same fallacies and abuse, let’s learn some more about memory management in .NET. This article will be a higher level overview of Garbage Collection (GC) in version 4.5 of the .NET Framework. There will be more articles to follow that will go into more depth of some of the different parts of the .NET Garbage Collector.

Memory Management?

The Garbage Collector (GC) in .NET can be thought of as the subsystem that handles allocating and de-allocating managed memory. Ever used variables in c?

main() {
  char *name = malloc(50);
  doSomething(name);
  free(name);
}

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Central Ohio Day of .NET 2012

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I have been honored with another speaking opportunity. This time at the Day of .NET conference in central Ohio. My presentation will be an in-depth session on garbage collection in general, and specifically as it is implemented in the .NET framework.

If you have the opportunity to attend, you will certainly leave as a smarter developer. The agenda for the conference has been posted, and it looks like all attendees are in for a treat!

The conference will be on December 8, 2012. Register early if can!

Strict Mode in JavaScript

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JavaScript strict mode tells the interpreter to be more particular about what is allowed. In general terms, strict mode makes your code a little safer by turning some bad coding practices into exceptions.

For existing code, this is good and bad. It’s good, because it helps you find some potential bugs, like accidental globals. It’s bad because code that used to work, might now be broken.

Here’s the kicker: for new code, it is almost always good.
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