Wicked Coding

I just started a new project with a repeat Firefly Logic client. I’m working with two very enthusiastic young developers on my team, and I get to introduce them to Moq and mocking as part of our unit testing strategy.  Both of these developers are new to mocking but they seem excited to jump in with both feet. I reached out to Moq initially a while back when I found the other mocking frameworks overwhelming. I’m looking forward to seeing how quickly my team picks it up. I’m hoping we can use the cool, geeky wow factor in Moq to help sneak in some best practice habits for TDD in general. It’s also a good leaping off point for a practical introduction to lambda expressions, which seguays nicely into linq.

Our company, Firefly Logic has been wrestling with adding mobile capability to our repertoire. In an ideal world, we’d be able to use familiar technology on a platform that people actually want to use. So far it’s been tough on both counts for .NET developers. The iPhone changed all the rules and over the last few years, nearly all of our clients requesting mobile software are specifically interested in the iPhone. The iPhone is a capable and compelling platform and people certainly want to use it.That’s why we’ve made the investment in learning to write applications for the platform. I think we’d call it a success, but a hard fought one. Objective-C, the language you use to write applications for the iPhone has a steep learning curve for .NET developers and the application frameworks are completely new unless you’ve done some Mac programming in the past.

All of this is why we’re so excited about Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7. As I type this, I’m sitting in the convention center at this year’s MIX conference in Las Vegas where Microsoft is planning to reveal the new platform to developers and designers. The first session is titled, “Changing Our Game”.

The rumor is that this platform is complete departure from the past and a serious contender in the mobile space. I hope so. It would be huge to have a serious  .NET option in the mobile space.