Ignore files in your subversion repository

After reading the pragmatic programmer in my holiday I decided it was time to put theory into practice.  Whenever I perform an check-in in my subversion repository I usually deleted my bin and obj folders manually to make sure they didn't got checked-in.  Of course tortoiseSVN and subversion provides ways to automatically exclude them when you check-in.

So in order to 'avoid my repetitive tasks' and win those crucial couple of seconds on every commit (have you ever count how much this could add-up to on a year basis?) I browsed the tortoise site and found the following documentation:

http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/nightly/TortoiseSVN_en/ch05s11.html#tsvn-DUG-ignore-glob

Here are the settings that I've applied on my projects : */bin */obj */_ReSharper* *.suo *.user *.resharper

Right where can I win some more time, maybe I can achieve my 4 hour work week!

Book Reviews: the holiday books

Just returned from my holiday where I had the time to catch up on my reading. I choose a couple of books from my shelf and went on my way to France.

The pragmatic programmer This book is all about becoming a better and more productive developer.  The book contains tips and tricks to let you focus on the job at hand instead of distracting you from it.  It reads like a novel so it is perfect as holiday lecture (buy this book if you are leaving in the next couple of weeks). I simply cannot believe that this book is written 10 years ago.  It still is burning accurate and besides the referral to the "upcoming language of java" and "in the future there will be refactorings tools available" you simply cannot tell it is this 'old'.  I really liked the way the book compared the continuously studying everyone has to do with investing in your stock portfolio, it's all about diversification!  As a nice extra for one of my colleagues  the books describes nicely the pussy way of development.  :-)

Agile principles, patterns and practices in C# A must read book for everyone doing agile development in C#.  It starts of with a section explaining what agile development is all about and what are its cornerstones.  The section ends with an hilarious 'role play story on pair programming'.  The second section is more interesting where all the basic principles of software development pas the revue.  If you don't know what the Single Responsibility  principle, what the open/closed principle has to do when there are no doors involved, when LSP, DIP and ISP are just meaningless acronyms then this book is for you.  The section finishes of with an overview of UML and how to express design in various diagrams. Section three and four covers the patterns part of the book and it does this by following a case study about a payroll system.  If you have heard of NDepend you will probably be familiar with the principles (REP, CRP, ....) Robert explains when packaging our case study. I would advice this book to everyone who wants to start with agile development!

I then started to read Implementation patterns from Kent Beck, but the didn't finish it yet.  The swimming pool looked more appealing...