Let me start by saying that I do believe that Story Points are if not one of the best ways to provide high-level project estimates. However, in my experience the usage of Story Points and their underlying benefits are greatly misunderstood, which affects their usefulness and reputation. 1. Story Points are for HIGH-level project estimates. In the past, during the waterfall era, projects were analysed, estimated, and planned upfront using time-based estimates and presented using Gantt charts.

Let me start by saying that I do believe that Story Points are if not one of the best ways to provide high-level project estimates. However, in my experience the usage of Story Points and their underlying benefits are greatly misunderstood, which affects their usefulness and reputation. 1. Story Points are for HIGH-level project estimates. In the past, during the waterfall era, projects were analysed, estimated, and planned upfront using time-based estimates and presented using Gantt charts.

It’s just a tool I’ve heard this argument many times over, and I tend to agree here. If we think about AI as simply a tool to leverage for our jobs, then we can liken it to the introduction of the calculator. I like this analogy, as it transcends more than just jobs, there is also the impact these tools have on our education systems. Admittedly, it was well before my time, but I am led to believe the introduction of calculators was met with resistance from educators.

It’s just a tool I’ve heard this argument many times over, and I tend to agree here. If we think about AI as simply a tool to leverage for our jobs, then we can liken it to the introduction of the calculator. I like this analogy, as it transcends more than just jobs, there is also the impact these tools have on our education systems. Admittedly, it was well before my time, but I am led to believe the introduction of calculators was met with resistance from educators.

It’s just a tool I’ve heard this argument many times over, and I tend to agree here. If we think about AI as simply a tool to leverage for our jobs, then we can liken it to the introduction of the calculator. I like this analogy, as it transcends more than just jobs, there is also the impact these tools have on our education systems. Admittedly, it was well before my time, but I am led to believe the introduction of calculators was met with resistance from educators.

What do I want to be when I grow up? A Doctor, A Teacher, A Policeman… Here is a question we are all asked from a very early age, and even now at 41 I’ve never had an answer to this question. I’ve just ended up where I am, as I have meandered from one job to the next, without much deliberate consideration as to where I am heading. Recently, kids at my daughter’s school were asked this question.

What do I want to be when I grow up? A Doctor, A Teacher, A Policeman… Here is a question we are all asked from a very early age, and even now at 41 I’ve never had an answer to this question. I’ve just ended up where I am, as I have meandered from one job to the next, without much deliberate consideration as to where I am heading. Recently, kids at my daughter’s school were asked this question.

What do I want to be when I grow up? A Doctor, A Teacher, A Policeman… Here is a question we are all asked from a very early age, and even now at 41 I’ve never had an answer to this question. I’ve just ended up where I am, as I have meandered from one job to the next, without much deliberate consideration as to where I am heading. Recently, kids at my daughter’s school were asked this question.

From the beginning of my UTA100 journey I set myself the following goals: Base: Finish; Target: 20hrs; Stretch: 18hrs. After an extended training season, in often treacherous conditions, the race is finally here. I’ve put in all the effort to get this far, and I am now hours away from finding out if I have done enough.

Ok, so it turns out that yes I am more stupid than I gave myself credit for (see part 1). Suckered into an event that I know is impossible unless I commit 100% to my training. This time it is different. I now have family commitments, a wife, two young kids and less flexibility in my work. And my training load will be significantly more than I’ve ever done before.

Yesterday I completed something that I have long thought I would never be able to achieve, and not only did I finish it, but I smashed all my expectations. The story is hard to tell, without going back to the beginning. As it turns out this 100km (62mi) trail run didn’t just take me 13 hrs and 55mins to get to the finish line, it was the previous 12 years that got me to this point.

I’ve never been one to set myself new years resolutions, not for any particular reason, I just don’t. However, last year I set myself several goals and/or challenges.

1. Read 12 books in 12 months
2. 12 blog posts

So how did I go?

From the beginning of my UTA100 journey I set myself the following goals: Base: Finish; Target: 20hrs; Stretch: 18hrs. After an extended training season, in often treacherous conditions, the race is finally here. I’ve put in all the effort to get this far, and I am now hours away from finding out if I have done enough.

Ok, so it turns out that yes I am more stupid than I gave myself credit for (see part 1). Suckered into an event that I know is impossible unless I commit 100% to my training. This time it is different. I now have family commitments, a wife, two young kids and less flexibility in my work. And my training load will be significantly more than I’ve ever done before.

Yesterday I completed something that I have long thought I would never be able to achieve, and not only did I finish it, but I smashed all my expectations. The story is hard to tell, without going back to the beginning. As it turns out this 100km (62mi) trail run didn’t just take me 13 hrs and 55mins to get to the finish line, it was the previous 12 years that got me to this point.

From the beginning of my UTA100 journey I set myself the following goals: Base: Finish; Target: 20hrs; Stretch: 18hrs. After an extended training season, in often treacherous conditions, the race is finally here. I’ve put in all the effort to get this far, and I am now hours away from finding out if I have done enough.

Ok, so it turns out that yes I am more stupid than I gave myself credit for (see part 1). Suckered into an event that I know is impossible unless I commit 100% to my training. This time it is different. I now have family commitments, a wife, two young kids and less flexibility in my work. And my training load will be significantly more than I’ve ever done before.

Yesterday I completed something that I have long thought I would never be able to achieve, and not only did I finish it, but I smashed all my expectations. The story is hard to tell, without going back to the beginning. As it turns out this 100km (62mi) trail run didn’t just take me 13 hrs and 55mins to get to the finish line, it was the previous 12 years that got me to this point.

I was recently asked by @mattgoldman if I’d like to put together a post for https://twitter.com/hashtag/MAUIUIJuly. After struggling for some inspiration recently for posts I figured this is the perfect excuse opportunity to jump back into it. For those of you living under a rock and aren’t quite sure what .NET MAUI is and why you want to use it. Lets start with what is .NET MAUI. What is .NET MAUI Simply speaking MAUI stands for Multi-platform App UI.

As a junior developer, one of the key principles that were drummed into me was that hardcoding values is a BAD thing (amongst many other principles). But then more often than not, the pressures of deadlines, project managers and product owners don’t afford us the luxury of building an engineered solution the first time around. So we revert to simply hardcoding just to keep everyone happy and deliver a feature. What no one ever mentions is that there are two ways to hardcode values: the RIGHT way and the WRONG way.

A colleague and I recently finished a short 3-week project with a client, the result of which is one very happy client, and an MVP finished before the deadline. Below are the lessons that I learnt during that project.

A colleague and I recently finished a short 3-week project with a client, the result of which is one very happy client, and an MVP finished before the deadline. Below are the lessons that I learnt during that project.

A colleague and I recently finished a short 3-week project with a client, the result of which is one very happy client, and an MVP finished before the deadline. Below are the lessons that I learnt during that project.

tl;dr Let Visual Studio generate your overrides for Equals() and GetHashCode() so you don’t need to remember the best practices. Don’t roll your own GetHashCode() algorithm or even rely on StackOverflow, use the .net framework to work it out for you.. HashCode.Combine(Long, Lat, Altitude); Background When trying to check the equality of reference objects in c# we simply cannot apply the ‘==’ operator, as this will only compare memory locations and not data.

tl;dr Let Visual Studio generate your overrides for Equals() and GetHashCode() so you don’t need to remember the best practices. Don’t roll your own GetHashCode() algorithm or even rely on StackOverflow, use the .net framework to work it out for you.. HashCode.Combine(Long, Lat, Altitude); Background When trying to check the equality of reference objects in c# we simply cannot apply the ‘==’ operator, as this will only compare memory locations and not data.

tl;dr Let Visual Studio generate your overrides for Equals() and GetHashCode() so you don’t need to remember the best practices. Don’t roll your own GetHashCode() algorithm or even rely on StackOverflow, use the .net framework to work it out for you.. HashCode.Combine(Long, Lat, Altitude); Background When trying to check the equality of reference objects in c# we simply cannot apply the ‘==’ operator, as this will only compare memory locations and not data.

tl;dr Let Visual Studio generate your overrides for Equals() and GetHashCode() so you don’t need to remember the best practices. Don’t roll your own GetHashCode() algorithm or even rely on StackOverflow, use the .net framework to work it out for you.. HashCode.Combine(Long, Lat, Altitude); Background When trying to check the equality of reference objects in c# we simply cannot apply the ‘==’ operator, as this will only compare memory locations and not data.

tl;dr Let Visual Studio generate your overrides for Equals() and GetHashCode() so you don’t need to remember the best practices. Don’t roll your own GetHashCode() algorithm or even rely on StackOverflow, use the .net framework to work it out for you.. HashCode.Combine(Long, Lat, Altitude); Background When trying to check the equality of reference objects in c# we simply cannot apply the ‘==’ operator, as this will only compare memory locations and not data.

SignalR has been around for a few years now (since 2013), offering real-time notifications to our .Net applications.

In an earlier post I described how to leverage the power of RxJS and the combineLatest() and startWith() operators to tidy up my code. I have since updated the code on that page to reflect the new RxJS6 pipe operators.

Out of the box, Angular provides a convenient method for setting environment variables for each our local dev environment and our production environment.

Not long after publishing my recent post on minimising Async bindings in Angular by using the *ngIf=“obs$ | async as obs”; construct, I received the following comment on twitter:

In my [previous post]({{ site.baseurl }}{% post_url 2018-03-26-rxjs-combinelatest-startwith %}) I came across a quirk with Angular, Observables and the Async pipe. That is, each subscription to an observable will initiate the observables execution. Hence we were calling the api once per async subscription. A subscribe call is simply a way to start an “Observable execution” and deliver values or events to an Observer of that execution.http://reactivex.io Original version <p>{{ (result$ | async).

05 June 2018 Update: Follow up post with further refactoring. 01 June 2018 Update: Updated code to RxJS6. Scenario In my Angular5 application I have a search results page that contains three components: Text-based filters component Paged results list Pagination component After wiring up my code I ended up with something similar to below. This all worked fine, but as you can see it’s quite repetitive and not to mention hard to maintain.

SignalR has been around for a few years now (since 2013), offering real-time notifications to our .Net applications.

SignalR has been around for a few years now (since 2013), offering real-time notifications to our .Net applications.

SignalR has been around for a few years now (since 2013), offering real-time notifications to our .Net applications.

In an earlier post I described how to leverage the power of RxJS and the combineLatest() and startWith() operators to tidy up my code. I have since updated the code on that page to reflect the new RxJS6 pipe operators.

In an earlier post I described how to leverage the power of RxJS and the combineLatest() and startWith() operators to tidy up my code. I have since updated the code on that page to reflect the new RxJS6 pipe operators.

In my [previous post]({{ site.baseurl }}{% post_url 2018-03-26-rxjs-combinelatest-startwith %}) I came across a quirk with Angular, Observables and the Async pipe. That is, each subscription to an observable will initiate the observables execution. Hence we were calling the api once per async subscription. A subscribe call is simply a way to start an “Observable execution” and deliver values or events to an Observer of that execution.http://reactivex.io Original version <p>{{ (result$ | async).

05 June 2018 Update: Follow up post with further refactoring. 01 June 2018 Update: Updated code to RxJS6. Scenario In my Angular5 application I have a search results page that contains three components: Text-based filters component Paged results list Pagination component After wiring up my code I ended up with something similar to below. This all worked fine, but as you can see it’s quite repetitive and not to mention hard to maintain.

Out of the box, Angular provides a convenient method for setting environment variables for each our local dev environment and our production environment.

In my [previous post]({{ site.baseurl }}{% post_url 2018-03-26-rxjs-combinelatest-startwith %}) I came across a quirk with Angular, Observables and the Async pipe. That is, each subscription to an observable will initiate the observables execution. Hence we were calling the api once per async subscription. A subscribe call is simply a way to start an “Observable execution” and deliver values or events to an Observer of that execution.http://reactivex.io Original version <p>{{ (result$ | async).

It’s time to stop procrastinating… For many years now I’ve spoken on many occasions with colleagues about the importance of keeping a blog, even tonight I interviewed Thiago Passos for SSW TV on his last year or so (still waiting for it to be published), and how he has been working on building his profile, both as a blogger and as a speaker. In closing the interview, I promised Thiago I’d write my first post, and now I’m out of excuses.