What is the difference between GridView and Repeater? This is one of the most common questions that beginners ask when they are trying to get familiar with data bound controls. Both of these controls have their own using context and I try to explain when one should use GridView and when it is okay to use Repeater.

I was asked through this blog how to become a good developers. I think this is the question that many beginners want to ask. For every question there are throusands of answers. Okay, there are many answers like these but these ones are mine. :)

Building up a good business library is art. Because every bad decision made early will eat project's time later. Bad decisions will also waste many time of developers who have to use this library in their work. One of the most common mistakes made is mixing DAL functionality to business objects. At first it may seems like a good idea - why not have a smart objects? - but as project goes this solution causes more and more problems. And, be warned, each next problem is worst than previous.

During one of my current projects I wrote some useful extension methods for DateTime class. I had to write custom calendar component and therefore I needed manipulate dates a little bit. Here is some extensions I would like to share with you. And, of course, comments and suggestions are welcome as always. (more…)

I will continue my little serie about anti-patterns of decisions and activities that may screw up projects and make developers (and why not also others) life hell. Now let's look at silver bullet anti-pattern. It is about using unknown tools and technologies in the place where one shouldn't never do that.

I am sure you have all read this book and this book needs no further introduction - Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans! I readed this book couple of months ago and now I am trying to apply good ideas I got from this book. Instead of writing usual introduction I tell you a little bit about my experiences when applying ideas represented in this book.

Keyword var is cool thing we can use to make our code more readable for other programmers and why not - reviewers. But var can also be used to make our code difficult to understand. In this case, lte's say, we are overusing var. So, var is like wine - if one takes glass of it then everything is okay in the morning, but if somebody takes it couple of bottles then the morning will be awful. Or let's say - too much var will kill you?

I discovered once myself automatically writing some redirects on ASP.NET pages and I started thinking about API behind these redirects and code readability. Here is what I came out with.

Code Complete 2 is very good and must-be book by Steve McConnell for all developers. The book covers many aspcets of coding and gives very good advices about how to organize and write your code, how to comment and document it and how to write code without ruining yourself.

I had to write one data import/export utility that moved data from one database to another. Once I was finished the first round of coding I found one thing that needed refactoring - the import/export process wasn't generalized. It was part of importer/exporter utility main class (it was console application). After some refactoring I got some common things to use in other tasks like this.