Software isn’t deployed. It’s launched…

Intro Software isn’t deployed. It’s launched. As human beings, we are prone to making mistakes. In fact, we make so many mistakes that even religions have attempted to provide reasons to why we are so error prone. To combat this human flaw, we humans now rely on checklists to support our decision making process when …

Xamarin.Forms: Portable Class Library (PCL) and Code Coverage

.NET developers have used the [ExcludeFromCodeCoverage] attribute to focus validation on their business logic's code coverage. However, when building Xamarin.Forms applications, the [ExcludeFromCodeCoverage] attribute is not supported within the Portable Class Library. To workaround this issue, use the [DebuggerNonUserCode] attribute instead. Be aware that the debugger will be disabled for the code associated to this attribute. As a result, …

Xamarin.Forms: Unit Test a Confirmation Dialog

Intro It is absolutely essential to protect our code base from breaking changes. “We must protect this house!” One of the most important tests that need to be performed in software is testing user confirmations. Many professional debuggerers only know how to test this by launching the actual application to display a confirmation dialog. There …

South Florida’s Xamarin User Group: Composing an App via User Stories

Intro I recently gave a presentation last night on constructing an application out of user story modules. I presented my thesis to an audience of mobile developers. They found the idea to be interesting but ultimately impractical. They argued that a solution could be spread so thin with granular projects that it would be overwhelming …

Xamarin.Forms: Unit Testing the Database

Intro Xamarin.Forms integrates well with SQLite. It also supports WCF and some other web service frameworks. Whether we are performing CRUD operations on the local database or on a network server, we need to be professional developers and not professional debuggerers. Hence, we should unit test our business logic. This article provides some ideas to …

Bar Charts and Xamarin.Forms

Intro I recently experimented with bar charts for Xamarin.Forms. I tried to use Oxyplot, which is a popular open source tool for implementing graph charts. However, I ran into versioning issues between my Xamarin.Forms assemblies and Oxyplot. After an hour of frustration, I searched for an alternative approach. I soon found one. It was Syncfusion. …

Clean Architecture: Xamarin.Forms

Intro I have experimented with some architectural ideas for building applications and would like to share my thoughts. Quote Builder I wrote Quote Builder using Clean Architecture. I built the app with the lessons I learned from the last implementation in 2012. This app (Windows Store) has about 10,000 downloads. Clean Architecture I am a disciple of Martin's teachings. …

MVVM and Visual Studio’s UserStory Extension

Intro I have improved my software development practice by building a Visual Studio extension. This extension has boosted my productivity by enabling me to rapidly generate user story modules to support my emergent design practice. Bizmonger Extensions One extension that I have built to support my development efforts is the UserStory project template. This project template …

Are you a Professional Debuggerer?

Intro Are you a professional developer or a professional debuggerer? Find out by answering the following questions: o    Do you spend most of your time building software or debugging it? o    Do you spend a significant amount of time stabilizing the software that you wrote when a build is requested or is your code typically ready …

From Windows to Xamarin.Forms

Intro I recently wrote an Android app using a framework called Xamarin.Forms. Xamarin.Forms is a cross-platform UI framework that enables developers to share code across all major mobile platforms (IOS, Android, and Windows Phone) that’s written in C# and XAML. After implementing this app, I would like to report my findings. Test Automation Writing an …