New book! The art of unit testing

Hi, I just read the post from Roy Osherove where he anounces that his book "The art of UNit testing" is published and you can purchase it on PDF or print book.

He says that he wished he could haave had this book when he started writing his firts tests. When Roy published his first chapter on PDF for free I gladly downloaded it and have used it to start teaching developers on what unit testing is. So, I am sure his book is really useful for anyone who likes unit tests or works with Test Driven Development.

Wanna give it a try? I will!

Check this brief from http://www.manning.com/osherove/ where you can buy it:

Unit testing, done right, can mean the diff erence between a failed project and a successful one, between a maintainable code base and a code base that no one dares touch, and between getting home at 2 AM or getting home in time for dinner, even before a release deadline.

The Art of Unit Testing builds on top of what's already been written about this important topic. It guides you step by step from simple tests to tests that are maintainable, readable, and trustworthy. It covers advanced subjects like mocks, stubs, and frameworks such as Typemock Isolator and Rhino Mocks. And you'll learn about advanced test patterns and organization, working with legacy code and even untestable code. The book discusses tools you need when testing databases and other technologies. It's written for .NET developers but others will also benefit from this book.

You can also preorder it on Amazon.com.

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Just type in SAVE10 at checkout and save 10% on a MozyHome Unlimited annual or biennial subscription!

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Unit Testing in VB.NET – with Typemock Isolator (with a free license offer)

Programming Visual Basic applications?

Typemock have released a new version of their unit testing tool, Typemock Isolator 5.2. 
This version includes a new friendly VB.NET API which makes Isolator the best Isolation tool for unit testing A Visual Basic (VB) .NET application.

Isolator now allows unit testing in VB or C# for many ‘hard to test’ technologies such asSharePoint, ASP.NET MVC, partial support for Silverlight, WPF, LINQ, WF, Entity Framework, WCF unit testing and more.

Note that the first 25 bloggers who blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Free Full Isolator license (worth $139). If you post this in a VB.NET dedicated blog, you'll get a license automatically (even if more than 25 submit) during the first week of this announcement.

Go ahead, click the following link for more information on how to get your free license.

_

I'm giving a try to Online / Offsite backups

When my sister's Macbook harddrive crashed a year ago, we learned the leason. Backups are vital! So, we bought an external harddrive and upgraded to Mac OSX Leopard, that has Timemachine built-in (an in-site backup solution from Apple). Timemachine is cool, but what happens if my backup drive crashes too? Now, I want to try-out an off-site solution.

Now Im giving it a try to Mozy. Mozy has a free account type that lets you use 2GB for backups. Its cool since it runs on my Mac and I configured it to backup every night. Since I "only" have 2GB of online storage, I'm using it just for my personal pictures (got 1.6 GB already only in pictures from 2007 and 2008!).

It runs unattended each night and it feels nice having my data on a server (or servers) somewhere in the world. If my Mac's harddrive crashes some day, I'll have my backup Harddrive, and if that crashes too (hey, disasters happen!), I can have my Mozy backup ready for restoring. The unlimited space account is just $5 per month, and I think that's a good deal.

If you want to be nice to me giving me 256MB of free storage on Mozy, please, click on the next link and subscribe to Mozy:

https://mozy.com/?ref=M7G7DF

On your first backup, I'll be given my free additional storage! Thanks if you want to do that!

30GB Zunes Failing worldwide!

Wow, just read some posts stating that Mirosofts Zunes (30GB HDD model) are failing all over the world... It seems that they are rebooting by themselves and then freezing. How weird is that?

Sorry for my friends who own a Zune :-) No cure yet...
And for making things worse, Microsofts support lines aren't open today! What can I say? Get a Mac :-)

What will happen this New Year switch from 2008 to 2009? Better be far from a Zune!

And what do you think will bring New Year for you? Are you sure you will be alive the whole year? Please visit www.goodpersontest.com

Bye!

Google attention to details and the G1

OK, I generally love Google software. A lot of my data is in their servers (mail, photos, calendar, feeds, blogs, pictures) and they are awesome. Today, they unveilled the new G1, Google's first Android phone, with T-Mobile.

Looks cool, and totally open (you can even unlock the Sim after 90 days of use). However, I concur with this gizmodo post about how the G1 fails in paying attention to details...

Check the analog and the digital time in this image:



9:10 or 2:47? What are they thinking in?

Yes, its just a mockup, but where is the coolness in a gadget that doesn't even show the correct time? Also, when you look at the apps they have no consistent UI style.

Well, maybe you'll wanna check this gizmodo post and take a look at other images...

Got a Stack Overflow error? (or any other programming related question?)

If you're like me, you frequently search the web for answers on programming stuff, and its frustrating to just find old forum posts with losts of spam or irrelevant answers. And maybe you've found a place that boasts in having the exact right answer but it's a paid suscription site!

Well, I just read that Stack Overflow has become a public beta!

In their own words:

Stack Overflow is a programming Q & A site that's free. Free to ask questions, free to answer questions, free to read, free to index, built with plain old HTML, no fake rot13 text on the home page, no scammy google-cloaking tactics, no salespeople, no JavaScript windows dropping down in front of the answer asking for $12.95 to go away.

Just check it out the next time you got a programming related question!