Setting up role based security for a website is a Very Good Thing (tm) if you require flexibility in security.  Many organizations I've come across in my career struggle with security because they use a system based on user type instead of groups and roles.  The obvious flaw with user type is that over time you end up with a new user...

Call it temporary insanity.  Call it an experiment to see if the "community" can really support a useful software program that isn't a browser or operating system.  Call it what you will, but I have decided to release Easy Assets .NET as free open source software.  You can download it here.   As per the license restrictions...

Peter blogs about why not to focus on building richness into your web applications.  I'd like to go on record that I both agree and disagree with him. Know Your Audience Are you building an inward-facing application where all the user's hardware is known and everyone is using the same version of a browser?  This is the perfect...

Recently I was tasks with some of the other senior developers at my employer to come up with a code review system.  I'd been pushing for this for a while since the company previously did very little in the way of formal code reviews.  Way back when in my vb 6.0 days the team I was on used to use a program called PrettyCode.Print to...

Here's a fun one I did for the IAmBrilliant project.  There are several places in the system where there is entering and editing of address information.  So we wanted to come up with a nice little user control that could be shared across pages.  (You can download the source page here since community server is a pain in...

Yeah, I've been scarce lately.  However my custom built domain pattern has saved my butt. Project came down to build the administrative and customer portal for a new division www.iambrilliant.com Very little in the way of specs, no database, no layout. Project deadline: 3 weeks. Myself and my two teammates were able to design the database...

The more projects I see the results of where the customer lives in a vacuum, the more convinced I become that for a project to be very successful there must be close ties between the developers and the customers.  For those of you familiar with the latest buzzword methodologies like Agile and XP Programming, it is becoming pretty popular...

<Begin Musing> I was reviewing some code the other day from one of my developers who recently made the jump from classic ASP to ASP .NET and I found that the developer was using a lot of the old VB core functions like cint(), dateadd() etc instead of their new .NET Framework counterparts. In my opinion, it is preferred to use the .NET...

Another weekend, another chance at a learning opportunity missed.  I was hoping to download and install the latest CTP of SQL Server 2005 but once again my "broadband" provider is happily charging me $44/month for high speed service that isn't what any reasonable human would call high speed. If I was in charge of the FCC I would nail a...

A very common mistake I see being made by developers involves the signing of their employment contracts.  Oftentimes there are clauses, like invention clauses, in the contract which can have a signficant impact on your personal time and pet projects.  The purpose of this article is to make you more aware of the legal issues involving...

It's politics day on CodeBetter.com, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to weigh in on a few concepts about wages, unions, personal finances, and the IT business in general. The American Dream Sahil makes an interesting point in his post about the "American Dream" and people living beyond their means today.  The American Dream...

Link from the BSA: http://www.bsa.org/usa/press/newsreleases/BSA-Collects-from-Marketing-Solut ions-Company.cfm Notice that this company was not in compliance with their software licenses (something that can be tracked in Easy Assets .NET) and the cost?  $65,000 Suddenly spending a few thousand on a good Asset Management solution doesn't...

Excellent article here for you wannabe consultants about abusive client relationships that you should end at the first opportunity. Here's some of my own comments on these 11 clients you need to fire right now: THE DISILLUSIONED consistently expresses disappointment with your work even though it is of good quality and conforms to spec. This...

Trying to console myself for missing TechEd due to it filling up so damn fast.  So here's something I found humorous: http://www.yourish.com/archives/2005/june5-11_2005.html#200506601

A common question I get from developers new to OO programming and VB .NET is what the difference is between inheritance and interfaces, particularily when should you use one over the other. At its most basic level, the difference between inheritance and interfaces is that inheritance is intended to allow you to share an implementation, while an...