Whilst checking out MVC6 recently (which I think is brilliant and took no time to get up and running with) I had the misfortune to have to faff around with some CSS again. I rarely go near it and only have painful experiences of trying to do anything useful with it. Took about 3 hours to get my head around MVC6 and create a new site and about the same to try and solve (unsuccessfully) a single CSS issue. Am I right in thinking that to be good at CSS one of the main requirements is that you've been through the pain of solving a million different layout and browser problems?

What? Did Apple replace Swift already....? Or is this the new name for Angular? Am I on CodeProject?? :|

Well if you can cope with another language (and there's lots of support for learning it if you can) then the answer is southern Germany! Dunno about oil/gas industry so that could be a deal breaker but wouldn't be surprised if Munich had work somehow related to that. Ticks all the other boxes nicely!

>>> Personally, I think anybody who has been programming a while should be able to look at a block of code for a few minutes and instantly identify why it's slow. Are you serious!? Maybe for a single method or simple application, but for a complex application there's no way you can "just see it". Here's a simple real world example, recently I used a profiler to see where the bottleneck was in a web service which sits on top of 3 or 4 other layers (and I won't elaborate cause I'm keeping this simple). It turns out the bottleneck was in a piece of Microsoft code used within the ORM we use, so that was refactored to use a different method to do the same thing. No way you would have just seen that by looking, not least cause the code wasn't there to see. I'd happily admit I also wouldn't be able to just see an issue in my own code some of the time. In the above example we're talking 1000s of lines spread over multiple assemblies, why would I bother trawling through all that when I can just use a profiler? I was lucky enough to be able to test this for a single thread, good luck if you come across an issue that only occurs when you've got multiple threads involved.... :) The profiler is your friend. PS. does this mean you never use SHOWPLAN/EXPLAIN either?

Well this is probably common knowledge but make sure you DON'T use godaddy! Tried them out for some .NET service hosting and they're very ropey. The .NET version constantly resets and needs changing back to v4, it's slow and worst of all when I signed up and created a new DB I could see someone else's database! They looked into this and told me that the user in question had "created a global user".... Uhuh.

Since learning BASIC about 20 years ago, and since then lots of languages in between, only a few key things have changed the way I've worked as a programmer over the years. One of them is definitely TDD, trust me it is worth learning. Also IoC and DI are very relevant here - these three things together in my experience make you create better designs, work quicker and protect you from changing requirements (and very often from yourself!). The best situation is that you enjoy learning new stuff - my approach is to try to use a little of something new with each new project, that's worked really well for me over the years.

Both with business sponsored visas (451 visas I think they are), i.e. they arranged work before they got out there, these last 4 years but can be renewed. Despite what people might tell you though it is possible to go in on a 3 month tourist visa and change to a business sponsered one, so you can arrange work when you're there or go for interviews on a tourist visa. With a young family I guess you would want to try and arrange work first. It's quite possible things have changed since these guys went out but I would think it's very unlikely that the government over there would ever stop businesses bringing in people they say they need.

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate. You should go, it's awesome, don't know about the software industry but if you move to Sydney (and don't live out west) you'll love it. That said it's not so cheap living near the coast but that depends how fussy you are about where you live. Sydney has everything and the only reason I came back was because it was too far from friends and family, if that's not an issue for you it really does have everything. Email me if you want any specific info, I've helped a couple of friends move out there and neither of them regret it.

I think the main problem with unit testing is the assumption that anyone can right a "complete" set of tests. If anyone was capable of doing that their code probably wouldn't need testing in the first place because they'd have covered all scenarios in the code itself as well. But the thing I love about unit testing is the fact that you can test stuff in minutes that would literally take hours to test properly otherwise. For example you've got a web app in which you need to login, navigate down a couple of pages then fill in a form then click GO! The old approach to testing starts when you click GO! With unit testing you can simulate the login process and the form data and have a whole range of tests without needing to use a browser or make up another set of form data. In practice I've found it means you test stuff much more thouroughly even if that doesn't mean "completely" and also that you can test those bits of code that may never have been touched by navigating through some front end or other in order to do your testing.

That just reminded me of something. "What upsets me about the job? Wasted talent. People could come to me, and they could go, 'Excuse me, David, but you've been in the business twelve years. Can you just spare us a moment to tell us how to run a team, how to keep them task-orientated as well as happy?' But they don't. That's the tragedy." :)

Honestly, it doesn't matter. Toss a coin to choose and then just be consistent, if anyone moans about your choice, put on your most patronising face and tell them to get a life.

You're not getting much support here.... I think what you're talking about is the future though, and currently we use things like google desktop to sift through our files - even if you have a good directory structure and name files sensibly you still forget where things are. I think the index you're talking about is the index inside a search facility like google desktop and this index(ing) is becoming more intelligent all the time, e.g. indexing images from their actual content, music files from their music genre, etc. I think directories and filenames will definitely become secondary in the future (and are already) as search becomes more comprehensive and search will become less about search and more about the normal way to interact with your personal data.

1. Because it's something I'm interested in. To get my own ideas clearer in my head. To show off. Because I'm stuck on my own work. 2. Seeing a list of open questions, categorised. 3. Probably having another section on the newsletter showing latest/top/unanswered questions. And see below. 4. Most sites just do this with points or fancy names for contributors but how about this, code project pay 1c (or 5?) per correct answer, chosen by the asker. Users can also by question credits (in real money) and stump them up for important questions, chosen answers take the cash. You might only make 10 or 20c a question but every now and then it buys you a beer/burger/screenwipe. You'd overtake Expertsexchange in no time. 5. Question always shown at the top of a page, answers shown with clearer votes by contributors (i.e. no need to click an answer to open it or at least to see the score) and chosen answer flagged in a different colour when the asker decides.

If you go to Cornwall you have to do some of the coastal footpath walks, take in a pub for lunch on the way (or probably better, at the end). Hopefully you'll get some decent weather so you can chill out on some nice beaches, have a bbq on the beach and watch the sun set. The Eden project is worth a visit although a bit of a drive, the 9 yr old might love it or might think it's naff.... There are the lost gardens of Heligan nr St Austell too. Eat some fish and chips, eat as many pasties as you can (but ask a local for somewhere good - the bad ones are rank), if you like cream have loads of cream teas. I would avoid the bigger towns, e.g. Falmouth, stick to the smaller places, lands end itself is a complete eye sore if you ask me, but the beaches and small towns around it are lovely, you sometimes see dolphins around Sennen. The Minack theatre is lovely and cheap, but you have to book early if its busy, lovely walks around it on the coast and a great beach just next to it (Porthcurno). Polperro, Fowey, Mevagissey, Mousehole are all lovely little towns to visit (some a bit of a drive from Mullion though). The Lizard is also nice, actually it all is! Enjoy!

I definitely avoid this for three reasons: 1. It winds people up, sometimes a lot. 2. You look very stupid when you amend something for style and accidentally introduce a new bug. 3. You introduce changes into the source history in your source code control software that aren't meaningful and actual changes become harder to see. A guy where I work got hold of a copy of resharper and did all of the above in a big way (yep bugs too). I use resharper and it's very good but it's not a good idea to randomly open other people's code with it just to reformat...

There are various service providers that allow you to send sms through them via their own APIs, a quick google should bring some up (e.g. http://zeepmobile.com/[^]). Some are free and some aren't, looks like that one is though I haven't used it.

That architecture astronaut rant is so good... I like to re-read it occassionally as it stops me worrying about all the "new technologies" that I still haven't had time to look at.

Can your client not just use the vb6 dll as is, even though the vendor is out of business? I've never tried to do what you're trying... but, it sounds like it could be a great source of unexpected (and worse - hidden) bugs waiting to happen. It may be worth weighing up just writing from scratch with the existing dll as something to test alongside the new one you write.

Just out of interest, how many users do you expect to have on version 1.0 of your site that are on the Thai Buddhist calendar? In other words, maybe you should leave this for version 2 (or 22).

Definitely. And this is more pronounced the harder the problem is. Sometimes I feel I'm getting lost in a problem for weeks and when I come out the other side with a working piece of code I think that no-one else in the universe will ever fully understand what I've done. I think there's a few things to say about this: 1. Walk away from the problem and come back to it. Your brain will somehow make sense of what you've been doing and things will seem clearer after a break. 2. Use a structured design methodology. I wish I could recommend you one, I've been playing with a few for years but nothing seems to get over the issue of getting lost in a piece of code or a programming problem. Of course you can do all the standard OO stuff, use patterns, follow the code complete bible, etc. but you'll probably still end up looking at a blank class/function that needs writing. 3. Know your options. Maybe somebody has already done what you're trying to do, maybe there's a library or framework that'll speed things up, etc. Sometimes you can search for stuff like this, sometimes you just get lucky and find it whilst doing something else. It's worth spending some of your day/week playing with new stuff for this reason. 4. Know that there will always be another way to do it! There might be 10,000 other ways, but if yours works, is quick enough and is robust then stop worrying! God knows how many programmer hours are wasted on finding the "best" solution.