Tim Hoolihan

Tag: Microsoft

  • On a Feeling of Ownership, and How it Changes With Size

    Through the years, a fair amount of my projects have been with small companies and startups. One thing I notice almost universally, is that members of smaller teams tend to have hunger for success, and a real feeling of ownership over their product. They take personal pride and consider themselves invested in the project. That […]

  • New Questions the Build Conference Causes

    Build answered a lot of questions for developers who wondered about the future of the Microsoft platform. WinRT is the new API for “Metro ” applications, which are streamlined enable both tablet and pc inputs. These applications can be built in .Net or native C++ using XAML, or in JavaScript with Html5. The traditional desktop […]

  • Understanding CPUs and the Business of CPUs Better

    I’ve been reading Jon Stokes’ Inside the Machine, and it’s a very good read. In particular I was struck by a couple of simple aspects of how CPUs work. ISA First, let’s discuss ISAs (instruction set architecture). x86 is a famous one created by Intel. POWER is an ISA created by IBM. PowerPC was created […]

  • Source Control Considerations for ConnectionStrings in .Net

    For .Net projects that have multiple developers, configuration differences can be a real problem. For this post, we’ll use the example of connection strings, but it could just as easily be a directory location, or some other difference. Let’s say that we have two developers, one is using SQL Server, while the other is using […]

  • The Sun Also Rises (on the Technology Coast)

    One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. -Ecclesiastes 1:5-6 Apple released Mac OS X in 1999, using a BSD core and embracing many libraries and utilities of the open source world.  […]