All Blog Posts

Being able to query and manipulate data effectively is a valuable skill for any software engineer to have in their toolbelt. In this post, we're going to take a look at Window Functions and the functionality they provide. Although this post is going to focus on using window functions with T-SQL, it's important to note that window functions are part of the ANSI SQL standard and are available in other SQL database implementations.

As developers, we are exposed to many tools. How we learn and use those tools can make a big difference in our productivity and happiness. In this post, we'll be looking at the git plugin for Oh My Zsh and how it can be leveraged to increase our productivity using Git in the terminal.

In January 2021 I created this blog without any expectations of what would come of it. I had a plan but wasn't sure I'd be able to execute it. In this post, I'll take a moment to reflect and look back at this year going over what I've learned, what went well, and what didn't go so well, as well as take a look ahead at next year to see how I can improve.

As software engineers, we frequently tackle complex problems in code. The source of a problem's complexity may be from the problem itself, from the code's architecture, or from something else entirely. In this post, we're going to compare writing code to pulling on a loose thread from a piece of clothing. There comes a time when writing software that we need to know when to "cut the thread" or we'll risk the whole thing unraveling.

As software developers, we are bound to encounter scenarios where our code behaves in unexpected ways. Some of those unexpected behaviors could be caused by null object references. In this post, we're going to take a look at the different language constructs that C# provides for working with null. My goal is to provide information that leads to more tidy code and fewer bugs.

Code style and formatting can be polarizing, to say the least. One way to remove subjectivity about code style preferences within a codebase is to enforce specific rules. In this post we're going to talk about how using the EditorConfig file standard can help provide consistent styles throughout a codebase.

Since its creation SQL Server has been synonymous with Microsoft and Windows, but this all changed with SQL Server 2016. SQL Server is no longer just a database for Windows and in this post, we'll be going over the steps to get Microsoft SQL Server running on Linux in a Docker container using Docker Compose.

If you've ever looked at the Network tab in the Browser Dev Tools, you may have noticed a lot of OPTIONS requests being sent to the server. Oftentimes these requests are not being made from our code, but made by the browser. In this post, we'll be covering the purpose that the HTTP OPTIONS method serves in our web applications.

Git's rebase functionality could be one of the most polarizing features of the ubiquitous version control system. Some have horror stories of rebasing branches, while others use it whenever possible. In this post, we'll be touching on the interactive rebase feature which can reduce a lot of the anxiety around rebasing Git branches.

There are certain operations performed in code that lend themselves to being executed in parallel. Some might even call these tasks "embarrassingly parallel". In this post we'll be going over how we can use C#'s Parallel.ForEach to iterate over collections in parallel.

If you've used the SQL unit testing framework tSQLt before you may have come across the need to uninstall it from a database. There are a couple of ways you could go about this, but we'll look at the quickest method.

Recently I've been using C# and ImageSharp to work with images in code. In this post we'll be taking a look at how we can read and write IPTC Metadata properties for a given image.

In this post, we'll be going over how we can use Selenium WebDriver and C# to scrape HTML from websites. I recently started working on a personal project that I plan to use for gathering English Premier League player statistics for my fantasy team. I had a fun time getting Selenium set up and working so I thought I'd share.

For most of my career I've known the general purpose of an SQL (read S-Q-L) index, but I've never taken the time to dig a little deeper to understand more until recently. In this post we'll be taking a look at SQL indexes from a high level, as well as how they can be used effectively (and not so effectively) to impact the performance of SQL operations.

Podcasts have become very popular over the years and you can almost guarantee that there is a podcast available for any of your personal interests. In this post, I'll describe how I believe podcasts have helped me grow as a developer. We'll also take a look at some of my favorite podcasts and discuss a little bit of what they're about and why I enjoy them so much.

In my last two posts, we've covered C#'s async programming model and also using async/await for asynchronous execution. In the final post of this series on async programming in C#, we're going to take a look behind the scenes at all the work the compiler does for us to make code execute asynchronously. Let's dive in!

Async and Await are important keywords in C#. In this post, we'll be looking into how we can use `async` and `await` to write asynchronous code in the same manner that we write synchronous code. For a higher-level look at asynchronous programming in C# check out my previous post where we discussed the Task-based Asynchronous Programming pattern and more!

Writing code is hard. Writing asynchronous code is even harder. Luckily C# provides us with the `async` and `await` keywords to make asynchronous programming a little easier. This is the first of a series of posts in which I'll be going over writing asynchronous code in C# as well as a bit into the internals of how it works under the hood.

As software engineers, we are constantly learning in order to grow and stay relevant. I've found that trying to learn something new without a plan is difficult. This is why I created a framework for learning, which is what I'll be covering in this post.

There are many great themes available for Visual Studio Code, but I'm definitely the type of person who enjoys tailoring my development environment to my specific needs. So I created my own theme called Selenian.

If you're storing JSON data in Postgres, you'll eventually need to update it. In this post, we'll talk about a couple of functions that can be used to update JSON data.

Entity Framework Core is an amazing tool for interacting with databases of all kinds, but it doesn't come without potential pitfalls that can impact performance if you're not careful.

Storing JSON provides flexibility, but can add complexity. Let's take a look at how we can store and query this data in PostgreSQL.

The number of options for setting up a blog can be overwhelming. Let's take a look at what worked well for my goals and expectations.

JWTs are used heavily in front and back end development. Let's open the hood to see how they're put together.

The proverbial "hello, world" blog post introducing myself to the interwebs.