Featured Blog Posts (410)

Microsoft has come a long way when it comes to support for unit tests.  They basically co-opted NUnit as their basic building block for testing.  Of course they re-branded it as MSTest and added feature/bug tracking and some more stuff all bundled together into TFS.

Given their willingness to get that deep into the unit test craze, their choice of interfaces for ObjectContext (on the server side) and DataServiceContext (on the client side) seems a bit odd.  There is no interface to be…

This post is just a friendly reminder for those that practice TDD/BDD to make sure they are not putting more ceremony into their tests than is necessary.  Use mocks and stubs instead!

Mocks are just stand-ins that behave like the thing we want it to represent.  Stubs will fake a method call and return a canned response.  These save time both in setting up the test and in running it (depending on if your real objects are persisted in a test database).  When you test a method…

Aloha TechHuians,

Apologies for being a bit late this month. I just returned from New York and I'm prepping to leave for Tokyo in a couple days. I'm getting too old for this :-)

This month we had some excellent blog posts including:

• Security Wargaming: Capture the Flag by Dan Nishimura…

When I talk to people from software development industry about usage of agile practices vs. waterfall they always tell me agile (e.g., Scrum) is the standard in project execution, that there is almost never a reason not do to it. The only reason I hear for waterfall usage are projects that actually require waterfall usage by contract (e.g., government projects) or projects that cannot be done in iterations (e.g., writing software for fighter jet).

To get to the bottom of this…

Recently Microsoft released ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta.  The new Web API framework is included along with this release as part of the ASP.NET and Microsoft web platform family.  The Web API framework is Microsoft’s latest solution to creating simple RESTful web services that can be consumed by a large range of clients. Unlike asmx and WCF services the Web API aims to be a simple RESTful way to create web APIs.



Getting Started:



If you do not have Visual…

I often find myself responsible for designing system architectures. This isn't an accident. I like figuring out the big picture that causes all the pieces of a system to fall into place. The better the architecture is, the more the answers to follow-on decisions (e..g, system boundaries, class hierarchies, internals APIs) seem self-evident. With a solid architecture, first-order features have elegant solutions that automatically extend to second-order features and system…

So, your jealous about all the new technology stacks that seem to make life so much easier? You no longer have to be.  With the help of a javascript library available at codeplex.com and a very simple implementation of WCF Data Services utilizing the latest Entity Framework, you can open up your data store to the world with ease.

Lets start with the Entity Framework.  It's the 3rd or 4th attempt by the boys at Redmond to provide a serviceable ORM with a Microsoft logo.  This…

Pacific Corporate Solutions has partnered with the Aloha United Way to assist in grassroots fundraising for the most vital needs in our community. You now have the opportunity to invest in your community by donating your…

House bill HB 2319 is legislation that would provide funding to establish venture accelerators in Hawaii.  Venture accelerators are entities that combine hands-on mentoring of startups with some seed capital to "accelerate" a startups' growth and prepares them to compete for follow-on funding from venture capital investors.

The following link will take you to the Hawaii State Legislature website that…

Productivity and concentration are two very important words to someone who writes code for a living.  There is a wide variety of tools, methodologies, tricks and “hacks” out there that claim to help one improve in these areas.  One such technique that I've adopted over the past couple of months is known as the “Pomodoro”.



The Pomodoro Technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980's and is easily summed up in a few simple rules.  It encourages you to accomplish more in a…

I would like to share with you a message from Kym Pine.  I asked her to address the concerns mentioned here on Tech Hui and she did. What she says here about legislators being open is true, her quick response to my request is a great example.  Here you go:

"Aloha TechHui members, I am writing to deeply apologize for any

offense we have caused you or your industry this legislative session.

I have whole heartily supported the tech industry for…

It's said that…

For the past week I've been experimenting with writing a Flex/WPF/Swing-like widget framework on top of HTML5 using Dart. Dart is what I've always wanted for client-side web programming. Its a class-based optionally typed programming language that is, in the words of Dart team member Lars Bak, "high performance, structured yet flexible, familiar and natural." Anyone who knows…

As I write this HB 2288, which requires anyone providing internet connectivity to keep detailed records of users' browsing history, is being heard in front of the Committee on…

Normally when we discuss user experience design on TechHui we are talking about web or mobile apps, but UX design is a much broader field. Wikipedia defines UXD as, "Creation of the architecture and interaction models that affect user experience of a device or system."

During my time in Japan over the past two weeks I've been struck by how much attention is paid to UX for everyday things ranging from…

Aloha TechHuians,

Hau'oli Makahiki Hou! I hope the holidays treated you well.

Many thanks to all the participants in last month's TechHui conference including the speakers, panelists, sponsors and organizers. It was a tough time of year to do a conference (my fault for being in NY and Tokyo on business during the usual time), but we pulled it off. This year I was overwhelmed with work and being a new dad so I…

Dan and I had the opportunity to chat with Silicon Valley icon Tim Bajarin over the summer and the result was a thoughtful Q&A. We discussed a wide array of topics ranging from Hawaii's Broadband initiative in Hawaii to tech trends in the Valley.

A native of San Jose, California, he is known as…

Aloha TechHuians,



There are only a few more days to register for the TechHui conference happening on Dec. 10 at UH Manoa. The conference features everything from Garrett Lisi presenting his Geometric Theory of Everything to an …