Jerome's Blog

Recently I needed to reproduce an Entity Framework deadlock issue. The test needed to run in NUnit, and involved firing off two separate threads. The trouble is that in NUnit, exceptions in threads terminate the parent thread without failing the test. For example, here's a test that starts two threads: the first thread simply logs to the console, while the other thread turfs an exception. What I expected was that this test should fail. However, the test actually passes. readonly ThreadStart[] delegates = { () => { Console.WriteLine("Nothing to see here"); }, () => { throw new InvalidOperationException("Blow up"); } }; [Test] public void SimpleMultiThreading() { var threads = delegates.Select(d => new Thread(d)).ToList(); foreach (var t in threads) { t.Start(); } foreach (var t in threads) { t.Join(); } } Peter Provost posted an article that describes how to make this test fail. It

Introduction In this post I'll give a quick way to get some basic web performance metrics using both JMeter and Gatling . JMeter is a well known, open source, Java based tool for performance testing. It has a lot of features, and can be a little confusing at first. Scripts (aka Test Plans), are XML documents, edited using the JMeter GUI.  There are lots of options, supports a wide variety of protocols, and produces some OK looking graphs and reports. Gatling is a lesser known tool, but I really like it. It's a Scala based tool, with scripts written in a nice DSL. While the scripts require some basic Scala, they are fairly easy to understand and modify. The output is a nice looking, interactive, HTML page. Metrics   Below are the basic metrics gathered by both JMeter and Gatling . If you are just starting performance testing, these might be a good starting point . Response Time – Difference between time when request was sent and time when response has been fully rec

Below is my top books that have influenced me as a software developer. The Pragmatic Programmer : From Journeyman to Master, Andrew Hunt, David Thomas Clean Code : A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, Robert C. Martin Code Complete : A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, Steve McConnell Test Driven Development : By Example, Kent Beck Extreme Programming Explained : Embrace Change, Kent Beck Working Effectively With Legacy Code , Michael C. Feathers Refactoring : Improving the Design of Existing Code, Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, William Opdyke, Don Roberts The Practice of Programming , Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister The Mythical Man Month : Essays on Software Engineering, Frederick P. Brooks Jr. Java Application Architecture : Modularity Patterns With Examples Using OSGi, Kirk Knoernschild Design Patterns : Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, Erich Gamma, Richar