Dot Net Monkey

I enjoy the occasional podcast to satisfy my nerd cravings on my cycle to work... who doesn't, right?

Sean Deasy has a blog entry on 5 podcasts that every .net developer should be listening to.  No big surprises in here, however, I'd also include the video resources from Channel9.msdn.com and the insightful dnrTV.  Mind you, it's pretty difficult riding and watching videos at the same time ;)

I strongly believe that to be a good developer you need to have a firm grasp on the various shortcuts and productivity tools within your development environment. The problem is that with so many tools and so many things to remember it becomes a problem trying to hold it all in your head.  Let's face it, there is no shame in keeping a set of cheat sheets close by to prompt you into using your tools in a more productive manner.  I'd much rather keep brain cells for more abstract and solution based things rather than shortcut keys. 

Here are a bunch of cheat sheets for the tools I use:

• Visual C# 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster: This poster contains the default keybindings for Visual C# 2005, and is available as a PDF download in either color or grayscale for you to print.
• ReSharper 2.5Default Keymap: That's right, the ReSharper 2.5 default keymap.  You can gain some really great productivity gains if you can reference these puppies!
• .NET Format String Cheat Sheet: String.Format is awesome in every way, including the bizarre number of combinations of format strings.
• John Sheehan also keeps an excellent collection of .NET Cheat Sheets on his blog.

Keep checking back as I plan to keep adding more in the future...

I'm a bit of a sucka for coding standards and style guidelines.  That's why I thought I would throw up a quick link to the Microsoft article Reviewing Managed Code. It's all pretty straight forward really, but would make an excellent checklist for an anally retentive organisation. (or maybe if you are doing something uber-important like building third-party components, aircraft avionics or rollercoaster braking systems).

I really like the installer for Visual Studio Power Tools.  Not only does it look funky but it also consumes an RSS feed to dynamically update the components that can be installed.  For an application that potentially has hundreds of components that can be installed this is a great model.

Good work boys!