Late last night I was doing some development work on a website for our investment club. I had a strongly-typed collection of “Stock” objects, and wanted to be able to sort them on any parameter (StockName, SharePrice, Volume, MarketCap, etc..) in either descending or ascending order. I didn’t want to have to write a separate comparer for each property. Reflection to the rescue! Below is a GenericSorter class, the use of which allows for the development of a Sort() method on the collection taking as a parameter the name of the property on which to sort. Smart. ...

There’s so much good open-source .Net development going on these days – .Text, nGallery, nUnit, etc – it’s a really interesting time to be a developer. My colleague Colin just drew my attention to nHibernate, an object persistence library for relational databases. TheServerSide.net has an excellent article summarising its use. Having just finished a long project where a large amount of time was spent writing “plumbing” code to persist objects to and from a SQL Server database, I’m finding the idea of using an O/R mapper such as this very appealing the next time round. Just as incorporating the MS DAAB block into solutions has reduced the amount of data access code required, I’m hopeful that embracing frameworks such as nHibernate will leave us with more time to spend focusing on addressing the business needs and less on re-solving technical issues. ...

A major project I’ve been working on for the last ten months has just gone live, giving me some time recently to take stock, do a bit of R&D, and catch up on some reading. I’ve been reflecting on how to approach things better in the future, and to this end, I’ve just finished two very different books about the software development process. O’Reilly’s Extreme Programming Pocket Guide is a handy little summary of the approach (only 81 pages), depicting a near-utopian development shop where everyone is happy, and projects come in under budget and on time. It got me quite fired up, actually, and some of the concepts described are interesting. But deep down, I just know this would never happen in the real world—too much politics, too many personalities at play in the workplace, in my humble opinion. ...

Update (25/02/2006) – Hey, we now have String.IsNullOrEmpty, you know! What’s the quickest way, in C#, to test whether a string is empty? This is a question which came to my mind yesterday. I’ve always been fond of: if (myString==String.Empty) but it occured to me that this necessitates the creation and destruction of a second object (the empty string with which we’re comparing), so maybe it would be quicker to write: ...

For months now, I’ve been desperate for a decent excuse to make a custom ASP.NET server control, so I was secretly pleased today when a CustomValidator originally coded for use on a single page was required elsewhere. It’s surprisingly easy to do, although it took me a while to find a decent example online, which eventually came courtesy of the 4GuysFromRolla. In my particular scenario, I needed to check that the text entered into a TextBox did not equal any of a selection of “banned” strings (which was available via a static property on another class). ...

Once more into the breach, dear friends. Six years since my navel-gazing online journal, why start a blog? For no better reason than I can, and it’s so easy now, and I really do need something to fill the void at ianfnelson.com. I vaguely considered writing my own blogging software in ASP.NET, but then I found .Text and realised that there was no point wasting my days reinventing the wheel – .Text is sufficiently open and customisable for my purposes. Besides, I have plenty other challenges to occupy my days – a rework of the Filthy Lucre Investment Club site, a site to host our wedding plans (not to mention actually planning the wedding!), Millie’s site, etc. ...

Remind me again why I do this kind of thing in January? Thanks to Alex for the companionship on this greyest of days. Geal Charn (917m) A’Mharconaich (975m) Beinn Udlamain (1011m) Sgairneach Mhor (991m)

Popping my Torridonian cherry on Beinn Alligin. Sgurr Mhor (986m / 3235ft) Tom na Gruagaich (922m / 3025ft)

Two of the hills that rise above Glen Carron. Moruisg (928m / 3045ft) Sgurr nan Ceannaichean (915m / 3002ft)

A superlative day in the hills with Richard, Melanie, Hugh and Harriet. A cloudy start at low heights, but as we ascended higher we broke through a cloud inversion, being presented with stunning blue skies and incredible views across to Ben Nevis and the Carn Mor Dearg arete.

A great day bagging the two Munros that make up Beinn a’Bheithir – Sgorr Dheargh (1024m) and Sgorr Dhonuill (1001m)

The little sibling to Buachaille Etive Mor.

A couple of fine Grahams bagged on a short, steep lunchtime walk. Ben More Coigach (743m) Sgurr an Fhidleir (705m)

Four big ones in the bag, thanks to an overnight stay at Corrour Bothy: Braeriach (1296m) The Devil’s Point (Bod an Deamhain) (1004m) Cairn Toul (1291m) Sgor an Lochain Uaine (1258m) It was at some point on this day that my Nokia 5510, won during last year’s Nokia Game, got wet and died.

On which I bagged the UK’s highest peak, Ben Nevis (1344m), via the curvaceous Carn Mor Dearg arête.