"Simpler" Is Subjective: How Bad Assumptions About Architecture Kicked My Ass

I'm doing some heavy refactoring on a project that I've recently joined but that has been underway for months. The code is a mishmash of different styles [http://www.exceptionnotfound.net/big-ball-of-mud-anti-pattern-primers/] and an uncertain architecture, so my task up to this point has been to make it more consistent,

Writing Custom Middleware in ASP.NET Core 1.0

One of the new features from ASP.NET Core 1.0 [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ASPNET5IsDeadIntroducingASPNETCore10AndNETCore10.aspx] is the idea of Middleware [https://docs.asp.net/en/latest/fundamentals/middleware.html]. Middleware are components of an application that examine the requests responses coming in to and going out from

Using Ghost's Public API to Select Five Random Posts

One of the changes I made recently to this site is the addition of the "Five Random Posts" area on the left sidebar. Here's a screenshot in case I decide to change my layout later: I use Ghost [https://ghost.org/] as my blogging engine, and recently they've unveiled a

Exploring the JSON Configuration Files in ASP.NET Core 1.0

As I have mentioned before, my team and I are working on getting up and running with a new ASP.NET Core 1.0 application. I've spent some time with them going over the new JSON-based configuration files like project.json, global.json, and appsettings.json, and now I'm finally

Performance Doesn't Matter (Unless You Can Prove That It Does)

I get bombarded with questions like these all the time from my fellow developers: * "Which is faster, .Count() or .Any()?" * "Should I use a Redis database for my reads rather then SQL Server? I heard Redis is amazingly fast." * "Won't [Snippet X] be faster than [Snippet Y] because it's more