I've recently found myself discussing a technique at work called the Tracer Bullet Technique. This technique is something I first learned in a book called The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. The tracer bullet technique…

As I've been reading books this year, I've found that I've wanted to start capturing notes and thoughts about the reading I'm doing somewhere. I've begun to use Azure DevOps' Wiki functionality to write down the takeaways from my reading. Azure…

Last week, I wrote a post about Gitlab CI/CD and how I'm using it to deploy Azure Functions for a personal project. While writing that article, I discovered a fantastic extension for Visual Studio Code that I think is worth sharing. That extension…

I use Gitlab for my source code for most of my personal projects. There is a lot that I like about Gitlab. There are unlimited repositories, and I can choose to make any of them private if I'd like. One of the features that I like most about Gitlab…

For a good portion of my career, I've enjoyed investing in my learning by reading books. What started as a membership in a developer book club at a previous job eventually turned into a yearly habit of reading two or three books about developing…

How do you grow in your career? You have likley asked yourself this question. You probably want to get to the next rank or job title. You may want to obtain a higher salary. Usually obtaining this requires learning some new skills and taking on more…

I recently finished reading Drive by Daniel Pink. This has been on my list of books to read for a long time. Drive has come up a couple of times over the last few years of my career in conversations with coworkers. After having a hallway…

Yesterday I had the chance to checkout Summerfest Tech , a local event held here in Milwaukee focused on the tech ecosystem in our region. I've heard this was a good event in previous years, and I was excited to attend this year's sessions…

One of the recent episodes of .NET Rocks was very interesting. Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell interviewed Dimitry Layalin from Microsoft. He is a Program Manager working on multiple products, including Hot Reload, a new feature in .NET that…

I've been reading Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers recently. I'm currently about half way through the book, and there has been a lot of good information so far. The chapters I've read so far have largely been about changing…

How do you know that the work you do has created value? You have a customer for the software you deliver. Ideally, someone is attempting to use the solution you work on. You may have product owners, product managers, project managers, business…

In 2015, I found my career in a transitional moment. I had just taken a job in the .NET space for the first time after spending a few years working in Enterprise Java Beans. I was being exposed to modern tech and practices at a pace I had not…