Resource Links #4

Developer Links

• A mess is not a technical-debt: Bob Martin of Object Mentor elaborates on the oft-misused term ‘technical-debt’. What follows is an insightful discussion.
• Changing prompt for cmd.exe: I needed this for a couple of tweaks to my command line building environment. Very handy.
• .NET University: A great resource to catch up on latest in .NET world.
• Code Rush eXpress: Download this handy Visual Studio Add-in that makes life a lot easier for developers. Lots of nice refactoring features.
• Code Rush eXpress video trainings: If you one of those visual learners, then this resource is for you. Shows the handy Code Rush features as short screen casts.
• Big Balls of Mud: A commentary on one of the cool articles in software engineering (html | pdf). Big Balls of Mud is the term given to “haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy, duct-tape and bailing wire, spaghetti code jungle.” If you have seen this type of code, go through the article.
• Documenting your Air, Food and Water: Why you should document each and everything you know about your development environment.

Programming Practice Links

When was the last time you tackled a programming problem that truly got your head involved? When was the last time you learned a different language? (No, learning C# after Java or vice-versa is not counted). Here’s you change to keep or pick this hobby with online judge systems that give you a plethora of programming problems to solve in different languages.

• Code Chef: With a wide variety of languages at your disposal, use your language  to solve problems and get paid. Code Chef has monthly competitions as well.
• Code Golf: Show you code-fu by trying to solve problems in minimum possible number of keystrokes. Use Perl, Ruby, Python or PHP to solve problems and sharpen skills.
• Programming Praxis: Programming Praxis is a blog dedicated to posting programming problems and readers submit code by comments. Any language is acceptable.
• Project Euler: Project Euler is an ambitious project to get mathematical knowledge out there using programming tools. It has a series of regularly posted challenges which are mathematically or programming intense. They require more than just programming or math knowledge.
• Top Coder: TopCoder is a crowd-source based company that’s gaining momentum very quickly. It has the most extensive set of competitions for programmers. One of the most loved one is the Algorithms competition that happens fortnightly. They also have attraction for software engineers and designers by putting different phases of software development to competition (i.e. Software Conceptualization, Software Specification, Software Architecture, Software Design, Software Development, Software Assembly, Testing etc.).
• UVa Online Judge: An extensive list of problems to be solved using C++, JAVA, C, PASCAL, as used in university of Valladolid.
• Timus Online Judge & Sphere Online Judge:  Provides a lot of problems and language support to train yourself to algorithmic problems.

Other Links

9 ways marketing weasels will try to manipulate you: Jeff Atwood picks from Predictably Irrational. Quite an eye-opener and interesting read (to stay away from and still use on others :P)