Michael Knopf

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Databind Options in Silverlight: Pros and Cons of each
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Author: Michael Knopf
Recently I read an article by Sean Wildermuth concering the State of Data Access in Silverlight 4. He provided an excellent chart outlining the Pros and Cons of each data access choice.
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:Silverlight :Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
What's This MVVM Thing and Why Should I Care?
Friday, March 26, 2010
Author: Michael Knopf
A frank and easy to understand overview, in straight forward language, of the latest buzz word MVVM: what it is, how to use it, and if we should even care about at all.
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:Code Camp - Orlando :Model View Controller (MVC) :MVVM :Programming :Silverlight
Rethinking the IDE: Coding with Bubbles
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Author: Michael Knopf
Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets.
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:Programming
Embrace Life - Always Wear Your Seatbelt
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Author: Michael Knopf
A brilliantly executed video that delivers a compelling and emotional message to the audience about seat belt safety.
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Its all about the development team
Friday, February 12, 2010
Author: Michael Knopf
In this fascinating talk given by Ed Catmull, a founding member of PIXAR, he provides critical insight into the success and failures of teams of people and companies as a whole. You should really watch the entire talk, it is well worth your time
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:Programming :Project Management
Growing stronger by stretching yourself
Monday, January 25, 2010
Author: Michael Knopf
Developers (good and bad) can grow stronger by stretching themselves and learning new ideas and approaches. Even if they ultimately don’t use something new directly, the act of learning it can sharpen them in positive ways.
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:Programming
There is never only “one right way” to develop something
Monday, January 25, 2010
Author: Michael Knopf
There is never only “one right way” to develop something. As an opening interview question I sometimes ask people to sort an array of numbers in the most efficient way they can. Most people don’t do well with it. This is usually not because they don’t know sort algorithms, but rather because they never think to ask the scenarios and requirements behind it – which is critical to understanding the most efficient way to do it
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:Programming
The Least I Can Do: Designing Applications People Can Actually Use
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Author: Michael Knopf
If you design applications that anyone in the world, other then yourself, will use then you really need to be thinking about usability during the entire development process. Some of you (hopefully) have heard of Steve Krug, the author of Don't Make Me Think. This is a great video of a talk Steve gave that covers The Least We Can Do to create usuable software.
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:Programming :Project Management
Creating a Weather Map using the Bing Silverlight Map SDK and WeatherBug
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Author: Michael Knopf
Bing has release a Maps SDK for use in your Silverlight projects. In this white paper we will cover how to use the SDK to display weather conditions for cities across the United States. The real-time weather data will be retrieved using the WeatherBug API and shown on the map. We will animate the weather conditions (a glowing sun for Sunny conditions, a raining cloud for Rain, etc...) and cover some core concepts along the way, specifically use of a Controller mechanism in your Silverlight projects, parsing XML into your own data model that can be returned from a Web Service, and of course getting up to speed with the Bing Maps SDK for Silverlight.
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:C# Coding :Distributed Applications :Object Relational Mapping (ORM) :Programming :Silverlight :Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Silverlight Straight Talk: The Awesomeness, Disadvantages, and Difficulties in Silverlight
Monday, September 07, 2009
Author: Michael Knopf
Building Silverlight application takes time, effort, patients, and tools (yes, you have to have some tools). In this post we will cover: where to get the necessities and some useful additional tools, as well as straight talk about the awesomeness, disadvantages, and difficulties of building Silverlight applications. We will also cover the basics of XAML, referencing and using related assemblies, and the how Expression Blend and Visual Studio make it all happen.
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:C# Coding :Code Camp - South Florida :Code Camp - Tampa :Distributed Applications :Object Relational Mapping (ORM) :Silverlight :Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Building Real-World Data-Driven Silverlight Applications
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Author: Michael Knopf
In this post we will cover Silverlight from start to finish; including architecting, coding, testing, and deploying real-world Silverlight apps. We will also discuss security, its limitations, and what you need to know to secure your application and WCF services and deploy them to IIS.
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:Code Camp - Jax :Code Camp - Tampa :Database Design & Coding :Distributed Applications :Object Relational Mapping (ORM) :Silverlight :Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Upgrading From Silverlight 2 to Silverlight 3 Breaks Existing WCF Service References
Monday, July 13, 2009
Author: Michael Knopf
I've been working for several months on a Silverlight project and decided to upgraded from Silverlight 2 to Silverlight 3. The installs of the Toolkit and Visual Studio SDK's went well as did the upgrade to the project, however once the upgrade was done I compiled the project and was promptly smacked in the face with 182 compilation errors, 4 of which were Error 6 Custom tool error: Failed to generate code for the service reference 'Your Service Ref Name Here'. Please check other error and warning messages for details. 'Path to your Service Ref Resources File Here' and the rest were the typical cannot find, are you missing an assembly reference?
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:Silverlight :Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Learning Fatigue, Sustainable Pace, and a Programmers Death March
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Author: Michael Knopf
Have you ever been at the gym, running on a treadmill, while the guy next to you (who is in much better shape I might add) is not only running faster than you but appears to be doing it with ease. You adjust your speed trying keep up, it works for awhile and you feel good about it, but eventually fatigue sets in and you find it increasingly more difficult to stay on pace. Eventually you have to slow down to something thats "sustainable", something you can keep up for your entire workout. Learning (and working) can, and often is, just like this.
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:Career Management :Code Camp - Jax :Programming :Project Management
Preparing for technical job interviews
Friday, March 27, 2009
Author: Michael Knopf
At some time in your career you will need to interview for a job, if you own your own consulting firm then you are most likely interviewing for jobs on a weekly basis (by pitching clients to contract you for work). Preparing for technical job interviews requires a great deal of research, work, and most of all patience. This article provides a list of questions and answers that I fielded while interviewing for senior level software development positions, it is a collection of my experiences during 17 different job interviews with 10 companies including NASA (who offered me a job)...
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:ASP.NET :C# Coding :Career Management :Code Camp - Jax :Code Camp - Orlando :Code Camp - Tampa :Design Patterns :Distributed Applications :Model View Controller (MVC) :Object Relational Mapping (ORM) :Silverlight :Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
What's the Difference Between the GET and POST HTTP Request Methods
Friday, November 14, 2008
The GET method appends name/value pairs to the URL, allowing you to retrieve a resource representation. The big issue with this is that the length of a URL is limited (roughly 3000 char) resulting in data loss should you have to much stuff in the Form, so this method only works if there is a small number of parameters. What does this mean for me? Read more and find out...
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:ASP.NET :Distributed Applications
What is REST and why we care about it
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Representational state transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. As such, it is not strictly a method for building what are sometimes called "web services." The terms “representational state transfer” and “REST” were introduced in 2000 in the doctoral dissertation of Roy Fielding, one of the principal authors of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) specification...
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:Distributed Applications :Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) REST Starter Kit
Thursday, November 13, 2008
With REST gaining popularity at an exponential rate Microsoft released the ASP.NET WCF REST Starter Kit Alpha on Oct. 27, 2008 to provide a solid starting place for developers interested in building WCF applications using Representational state transfer (REST).
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:Design Patterns :Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
ASP.NET MVC Framework Beta 1 is released
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Microsoft's newest initiative for ASP NET, the Model View Controller (MVC) Framework, has been released as a Beta 1 after 5 iterations in "Preview" mode. After many years of ASP.NET's major reliance on its Web Forms technology, which has regularly under performed especially in larger application, we see ASP.NET moving back toward the traditional HTML posting...
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:Model View Controller (MVC)
When ORM becomes a problem
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Author: Michael Knopf
ORM (Object Relational Mapping) systems are useful in getting you started with a project. They help you to quickly create objects that model your Data Source letting you interact with the data in a simple and intuitive manner, however there are problems that you need to be aware of...
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:Object Relational Mapping (ORM)
Making your website project a success
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Author: Michael Knopf
Making your website project a success requires effort from everyone involved. Finding a talented reliable and responsive development firm that has the skills you need can be an enormous challenge. Here's some information you need to know...
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:Project Management
ASP.NET Web Form Disadvantages
Monday, September 15, 2008
Author: Michael Knopf
the basics of building a site using ASP NET are straight forward and made easy with tools such as Visual Studio. ASP.NET web forms have come a long way since they were first introduced with the .NET framework, however we have come to discover that Web Form are problematic and regularly under-perform...
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:ASP.NET
Normalized vs. Denormalized
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Author: Michael Knopf
When most of us design our databases we tend to think of them as related (and un-related) tables that contain data. It is common to normalize our tables in order to create a cleaner, more manageable, and intuative Database design. Normalized means separate tables via foreign key relationship, there are however things that we should consider before we normalize our system...
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:Database Design & Coding
Double vs. Decimal - Why you need to know the difference
Monday, August 04, 2008
Author: Michael Knopf
Both Double and Float are calculated values, meaning they can result in “off by one” errors. What's an "off by one" error and why should i care? Both the Double and Float values in .NET will have their decimal points truncated results in precision errors. This really comes in to play when dealing with money of any kind, especially if you use the Math.Round() method...
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:C# Coding
Basics of Lazy Loading
Monday, July 21, 2008
Author: Michael Knopf
Lazy Loading is the idea of providing an objects related information only when you actually need it, instantiating related objects and populating its properties when its first requested and not before. This reduces the amount of processing power required by giving you what you ask for in smaller bites (or should i say Bytes)...
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:Database Design & Coding :Object Relational Mapping (ORM)
Responsibility-Driven Design using the Class Card Technique
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Author: Michael Knopf
The Class Card object modeling technique is an extremely easy and simple way to design your applications objects. As an alternative to UML Diagrams, Class Cards are simply 3.5in X 5in pieces of paper (index cards) that you write information on about each object in your application. It helps you think about your design in a "object oriented" manner, something most of us can relate with because we deal with "objects" each and every day of our lives...
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:Design Patterns

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