Anders Norås' blog

The geeky best of lists

Earlier today I posted an off topic list of the best albums this year. Judging from the read count, lists are popular. I probably shouldn’t be surprised about this since: a) most people who read blogs are geeks; b) geeks love to compile lists of their favorite stuff.
Here are some more, even geekier lists of the best things this year had to offer. Enjoy!

Top 5 tools

1. Test Driven .NET
   Makes NUnit and other testing frameworks available at your fingertips within Visual Studio .NET.
2. ReSharper
   Does exactly what the box says – boosts your productivity. ReSharper is tightly integrated with Visual Studio .NET to automatically add using references, provide smart context aware templates and intellisense on steroids.
3. Reflector
   Reflector is a Swiss army knife for the curious programmer. Not only is Reflector an excellent decompiler, but with the numerous plug-ins for everything from graphing to code metrics makes this tool a must have.
4. Snippet Compiler
   The end to all those experimental projects littering your hard drive.
5. NUnit 2.2
   The tool of the year wouldn’t be much without this one.

Top 5 open source frameworks

1. Spring.NET
   The .NET port of the J2EE community’s most hyped framework is so much more than a mundane port. With the new additions such as Spring.Web this is a framework to look out for in 2005.
2. NHibernate
   Super powerful yet easy to learn, configure and use. With NHibernate you might not have to write a single SQL statement again, ever!
3. Log4Net
   Sometimes System.Diagnostics.Trace is isn’t enough!
4. iBatis.NET
   NHibernate for those who like SQL.
5. NMock (for dynamic proxy features)
   After the class builder was factored out, NMock is a powerful framework for creating dynamic proxies for all your dynamic needs like AOP, mock object and similar.

Top technical books

1. Lighter, Better, Faster Java by Justin Gethland and Bruce Tate (O’Reily)
   It is mostly about lighter, better and faster and it gives superb tips on how you can make your application more transparent.

2. Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity by Joel Spolsky (Apress)
   Its insightful, its fun and its different.

3. Enterprise Integration Patterns by Gregor Hohpe (Addison-Wesley Signature Series)
   This book will change the way you think of systems integration. It is a must read if you ever will couple or have coupled disparate systems together.

Top dotnetty things going on

1. It is 2005 next year.
   ...say no more.
2. Leading open source projects are becoming household names.
   Continuous integration, automated testing lead the way with frameworks such as NHibernate close behind. With Microsoft Enterprise Framework being added to the mix in January we’ll have a wide selection of frameworks to choose from.
3. Final wave of “late adopters” are moving from Visual Studio 6.0 to the .NET platform.
   There is an increasing demand for .NET 101 tracks on conferences and with training centers from people working with legacy applications staring to make a late transition to the platform and leave the world of Visual Basic 6.0 behind.

4. Microsoft is making beta software such as Whidbey, Yukon and Avalon available to a broad audience.
   The attention is so massive that you might think that more people are writing code with Team System than Visual Studio .NET 2003.
5. Inversion of Control and Aspect Oriented Programming is becoming mature.
   Having been the property of academic circles for a while, pragmatic programmers striving to become more agile by the day are looking to AOP and Inversion of Control (IoC) to loosen their architectures. Interesting, very interesting…

(OT) Best albums of 2004

It's that time of the year...

01. Mos Def - The New Danger
02. The Divine Comedy - Absent Friends
03. The Bees - Free The Bees
04. Plant Life - The Return of Jack Splash
05. The Delays - Faded Seaside Glamour
06. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
07. William Shatner - Has Been
08. Zap Mama - Ancerstry in Progress
09. Max Richter - The Blue Notebooks
10. Raymond och Maria - Vi Ska Bara Leva Klart

11. Madvillain - Madvillainy
12. Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days
13. Moving Units - Dangerous Dreams
14. Van Hunt - Van Hunt
15. Damn! - Youth Style
16. Badly Drawn Boy - One Plus One is One
17. The Shins - Shutes too Narrow
18. TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
19. Eric Roberson - The Vault 1.5
20. Build an Ark - Peace With Every Step
21. Cowboy Junkies - One Soul Now
22. Alice Coltrane – Translinear Light
23. Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
24. Ben Harper with The Blind Boys of Alabama - There Will Be a Light
25. RJD2 - Since We Last Spoke
26. Quantic - Mishaps Happening
27. Interpol - Antics
28. Troubleman - Time Out of Mind
29. Skapel - Skapel
30. Grand National - Kicking The National Habit