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Sitecore and WebApi Living in Harmony

We all seem to love WebApi. On the Microsoft technology stack, it is probably the most well-conceived method of building a REST-like web service. If you are building a Sitecore website, though, you may have a problem. Sitecore takes over most of the ASP.NET request cycle, which poses a problem for other ASP.NET technologies, including WebApi. That is not the end of the story, though!

If you would rather just skip all of the boring explanation stuff, then go install this Nuget package in your web project and get off my back!
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What I Learned at the University of Illinois Web Conference 2013

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

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

I’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

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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