Derek Ferguson

Someone once said, "You can never be too rich or too thin." I've been thinking a lot about this statement lately, but possibly not in the sense in which it was intended. Specifically, I - like many of you - have been watching the stream of announcements coming out of Microsoft's ... (more)

At the end of my previous article (DNDJ, Vol. 6, issue 4), I explained the theory behind the two major technologies to be used in timing the market. On the one hand, we are dealing with distributed computing - a process whereby large computationally intensive tasks can be broken ... (more)

I’ve always been puzzled by the ability of some traders to consistently make money. A cynic would say that anyone who is able to profit in all adverse economic environments (recessions, depressions, etc.) is most likely able to do so because they are getting information that is n... (more)

In our premier issue, back in October 2002, we ran a full-length interview with Anders Hejlsberg, the Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft responsible for the creation of the C# programming language. Then, in March 2005, we presented a follow-up interview conducted by .NETDJ's edi... (more)

In this classic codehead-to-codehead interview with the editor-in-chief of .NET Developer's Journal, Microsoft's Anders Hejlsberg discusses the origins and the future of C#. The interview appeared in .NET Developer's Journal, Vol 1 issue 1 - in October 2002. .NETDJ: Why did you ... (more)

One of my key tasks at Wine.com (the Magenic project for which we were awarded Microsoft's 2005 Worldwide Partner of the Year Award for a Custom Development Solution) was architecting a sales tax calculation Web service capable of supporting the tremendous volumes of traffic enco... (more)

When I was a kid, I remember someone saying, "If you like where you're sitting, you had better stay there!" They were referring to a prediction that the Earth's population was going to increase to the point that there wouldn't be enough room for everyone to sit, so we'd all have ... (more)

I've been doing a lot of coding lately. This has been a bit of a departure from my usual work as a technology evangelist or a development manager, but - as you might imagine - it has been quite a lot of fun! Having said this, the process of actually sitting down and coding for 12... (more)

What would it take for your organization to move to all the latest-and-greatest Microsoft tools - Visual Studio 2005, Team System, etc.? This is a question that I have been more interested in since my move from being principal consultant at Magenic Technologies, a premier provide... (more)

I am writing this on the morning of the day on which Microsoft will officially launch Visual Studio 2005, along with SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006. I think that it is fair to say that this is the most important technology launch in the history of Microsoft - and I'll tell you ... (more)

I have staunchly advocated what I like to call "pragmatic unit testing" at every client I have been at for the past year. I differentiate pragmatic unit testing from the two alternate approaches to unit testing that I have seen at organizations. The first "alternate approach," wh... (more)

Mono is the leading non-Microsoft implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification. The CLI is the foundation of .NET. Because Mono runs on a number of platforms, it is the main choice today for people who want to run .NET applications on non-Microsoft pla... (more)

I have been redoing our "family computer" this week, as I am changing jobs and have needed to use a computer in between the end of my work at Magenic and the start of my work at my soon-to-be employer (more details on that shortly). As a part of overhauling our family computer, I... (more)

From time to time, I find myself lassoing a sacred cow in this Editorial space, dragging it over to the slaughterhouse of rhetoric, and ultimately barbecuing its falsehood over the stainless-steel, six-burner, propane-powered grill of real-world experience. To wit, the current i... (more)

Derek Ferguson (pictured), editor-in-chief of .NET Developer's Journal, writes: As I write this, I am simultaneously preparing to present on ASP.NET 2.0 at three local MSDN Events (www.msdnevents.com), building an advanced ASP.NET 2.0 Web site for my client at Magenic, and pullin... (more)

Recently, a client asked me to create a new .NET Web Service that would let them do sales tax calculations from any computer on their network. The product they had been using was an old-fashioned C program meant for a single computer. They used to wrap this in a COM component and... (more)

Derek Ferguson has recently interviewed Rocky Lhotka, the creator of CSLA. In this interview, Derek discusses some of the things that originally led to the creation of CSLA, as well as where Rocky sees object-oriented development heading in the future. .NETDJ: Who are you? RL: We... (more)

Web applications suck! Well, perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement. Let me rephrase: Web applications are not appropriate for all situations. In my case, I have spent the last few months working on a series of ASP.NET applications that should really have been done as Smart Clie... (more)

I'm constantly impressed by the imaginative uses to which people put Microsoft's .NET technology. As I reviewed the articles for this month's issue of .NET Developer's Journal, it occurred to me that the microcosm of applications presented in our magazine this time around are jus... (more)

My first big assignment for Magenic was described to me by one of our salespeople over a rather expensive dinner involving a copious amount of alcohol. For these reasons (reason #1: salesperson, reason #2: alcohol), by the end of the conversation all I really knew about what I'd ... (more)