Too old for this

Got an email from technical recruiter. But, I'm too senior for this kind of challenging. Thank, I'm pass. Let young person take this. 

Computer technical interview does not alway right especially to an experience software developer.

My Development Computer 2017

Here are the essential tools I put in my seven years old personal laptop for my application development during evening and weekend as of July 2017. Most of them are open source and free. My other development machine at work is much better and powerful than this (Intel i7 CPU and 16GB RAM).

1. Mozilla Firefox
2. Google Chrome
3. Notepad++ is a free  source code text editor.
4. WinMerge for compare and merge files.
5. 7-Zip (Compress and decompress files)
6. KeePass the free, open source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager. I don't need to remember password for each web sites or applications.
7. Python 3.6  This programming language is powerful and fast. According to TIOBE Index for July 2017, Python is one of top five popular programming languages. 
8. LibreOffice is a powerful free, open source and cross platform office suite. I used it on other PC Windows, my MacBook Pro, and Ubuntu Linux.
9. SQL Server 2016 SP1 Developer Edition SQL Server Developer Edition is a free download for Visual Studio Dev Essentials members and for development and testing only, and not for production environments or for use with production data per Microsoft SQL Server blog
10. Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2017 (Free version for an individual developer or small business, not for corporate)
11. Microsoft Visual Studio Code. This is free, open source, and runs everywhere. It loaded faster than Visual Studio.
12. Git for Windows. It's a free and open source distributed version control system.
13. Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine.
14. VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
15. Greenshot is the most awesome tool for making screenshots you can get on your Windows PC. It's is better than built-in application Snipping Tools. I can blackout or obscure portion of screen easily.
16. FileZilla® Open source FTP software.

In addition to C# and Microsoft SQL Server, I will spend my spare time to work on Python and Node.js.

My Notes on Microsoft Access

How to open Microsoft Access file in design mode?
Double-clicking the .mdb file while holding the shift key

How to show Navigation Pane?
Press F11
or
File -> Options -> Current Database -> Check the check box "Display Navigation Pane"

How to show these tabs: Create, External data, and Database Tools?
File -> Options -> Current Database -> Check the check box 'Allow Full Menus' in 'Ribbon and Toolbar Options' area

How to show the item menu when right click on it on Navigation Pane?
File -> Option -> Current Database ->  Check both "Allow Default Shortcut Menus" and "Allow Built-in Toolbars"

How to change the View?
On Ribbon select the Home tab and View
or
click View on Quick Access toolbar

How to switch between codes and form?
Press ALT F11

Link table manager:
Use file DSN file
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/use-the-upsizing-wizard-HP005273009.aspx

How do I view the SQL for EXISTING queries and edit it in Access?
http://www.gcflearnfree.org/access2013
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/introduction-to-queries-HA102749599.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/view-modify-or-copy-a-query-s-sql-statement-mdb-HP005188056.aspx

How to create new file DSN?
Control Panel -> System and Security -> Administrative Tools -> Data Sources (ODBC)
Select "File DSN" and click on "Add" button
Select "SQL Server" on "Create New Data Source" and click "Finish" button
Continue to specify SQL Server and database to connect

Office 2013 developer training (Module 21)
http://dev.office.com/training

Unable to view hidden objects in Microsoft Access 2007
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2007-access/unable-to-view-hidden-objects-in-microsoft-access/

How to toggle between tabs in Access
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2007-access/how-to-toggle-between-tabs-in-access/c955f3e0-4ad0-46ca-bbfd-0a0713537c42
Ctrl+F6 will switch between all open tabs (or windows) in the database, regardless of type.

How to view documents in tab
Change Document Windows Option to "Tab Documents" using File -> Privacy Options

Sub-Forms and Sub-Reports
http://www.functionx.com/access/topics/sfsr.htm

Visual Basic 6 on Windows 8

In case you need to support and maintain Visual Basic 6 application on Windows 7, Windows 8, ...:

1. Open command windows as administrator 
2. Create a zero byte file called MSJAVA.DLL in C:\Windows. (Note: This trick does not work with Windows 10. Need to copy a real copy MSJAVA.DLL to C:\Windows\SysWOW64). Read more: http://www.fortypoundhead.com/showcontent.asp?artid=23993 
3. "robocopy \WindowsXP\System32 \Windows\System32 java* " (These files from Windows XP system)
4. "robocopy \WindowsXP\System32 \Windows\System32 msjava*"  
5. Run setup as administrator from the VB6 or Visual Studio 6 installation media 
6. On compatibility, select "Run program without help" 
7. Enter product key and hit next until option list. Choose CUSTOM. 
8. Do NOT select Data Access (Otherwise you cannot install Visual Studio 6 SP 6 later).
9. The install will go straight through and will request a restart of windows 
10. After a restart, start your Visual Basic and confirm all works well, advised to set the program to run in administrative mode so it can write to areas of the registry 
11. Close it down and install the Visual Studio 6 Service Pack 6 components by right click on SetupSP6.exe to run as administrator) 
12. Once installed, restart VB6 and check the help about box to confirm you see SP6 installed 

Source: 
http://www.fortypoundhead.com/showcontent.asp?artid=23993 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pareshj/archive/2013/07/16/visual-basic-6-on-windows-8.aspx

Other readings:
VB6: David Platt’s Inside Pitch 
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/msdnmagazine/archive/2014/06/05/10531518.aspx 

Bring back Classic Visual Basic, an improved version of VB6 
http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/3440221-bring-back-classic-visual-basic-an-improved-versi 

Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1
Update: November 2012
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ms788708 

The Silent Majority: Why Visual Basic 6 Still Thrives 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj133828.aspx 

Installing Visual Basic/Studio 6 on Windows 10
http://blog.danbrust.net/2015/09/14/installing-visual-basic-studio-6-on-windows-10/

Report Data Pane is not Visible in Visual Studio

If the Report Data pane is not visible, and not in the View menu:

View -> Report Data
or Ctrl + Alt + D

Using WHERE with LIKE and ESCAPE syntax

Note to myself. From https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173545.aspx

USE AdventureWorks2012 ;
GO
SELECT *
FROM Production.ProductPhoto
WHERE LargePhotoFileName LIKE '%greena_%' ESCAPE 'a' ;

SoCal Code Camp 2015

Some pictures from Southern California Code Camp in Fullerton last Sunday. This is an event I loved it.

Defensive Programming

 Some Dot Net Tips

Exception Rules

Thank organizers, sponsors, and volunteers. May God bless you all.

15 Years Microsoft Certified Professional

I became a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) 15 years ago. At that time, I took the 70-175 exam "Designing and Implementing Distributed Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic 6" twice. It was not an easy test.

Here is the book I used to prepare.

How to edit an existing append query in Microsoft Access 2013?‏

If you would like to view or edit the SQL codes of an existing append or delete query from Navigation pane in Microsoft Access 2013, you may not open that query or right-click to see the menu since it's not in design mode.

To open an existing append, update or delete query in design mode: 

1. Open the Microsoft Access 2003 .mdb file while holding the shift key, Access 2013 will open with Navigation pane in design mode. 
2. Select the append query. 
3. Right click. 
4. Select Design View. 
5. Change to SQL View to see SQL statements.

Install Eclipse on Mac OS/X

After I upgraded my MacBook Pro from OS/X 10.7 "Lion" to OS/X 10.9 "Mavericks", many my applications did not work correctly so I uninstalled them. Install Eclipse IDE on Mac OS/X is simple, just extract the zip file and you are all set.

How do I put Eclipse icon on launchpad?
Move whole Eclipse folder to your Applications folder

Using Visual Studio 2013 Preview and Team Foundation Service

Back to Microsoft Windows stuff. To maintain my program skills, I alway learn a new thing, practice what I learn and review what I did. This time I work with ASP.NET by using Visual Studio 2013 Preview on Microsoft Windows 8.1 Preview with Microsoft Team Foundation Service, a free TFS on the cloud.

Learning ColdFusion 10

Temporary hold my current projects: Microsoft C# ASP.NET MVC and Google Android Demo App for a week to try out Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 Developer edition and MySQL 5.6.12. I love the opportunity to learn a new thing.

Install Adobe ColdFusion 10 Developer edition on Microsoft Windows.

Install MySQL 5.6.12

Using GitHub on Windows for version control.

Using GitHub for Windows with Bitbucket

GitHub is a popular Git version control hosting but it's not provide free unlimited private repositories like Bitbucket. I end up using both. To push files to Bitbucket.org using GitHub for Windows:

1. Open Git Shell
2. Change to other directory if need (cd "..\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\DisplayRSSFeeds")
3. Add .gitignore
4. Add readme.txt (optional)
5. Initialize empty git repository: git init
6. Add the existing files to the repository: git add .
7. Commit the files: git commit -m "First commit" or git commit -a
8. Log into Bitbucket.
9. Create a new repository.
10. Add a new remote: git remote add origin-bb https://yourusername@bitbucket.org/yourusername/yourgit.git
    (Note: See picture below. You cannot push or remove the remote origin, so just make a new one called origin-bb as I did).
11. Push up the repo for the first time: git push -u origin-bb --all  

Other git commands
# view current remote
git remote -v

# remove remote
git remote rm origin-bb

# Use these sequence git commands to update Git repository in both local and remote later.
git add .
git commit -a
git push -u

Further reading:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Import+code+from+an+existing+project
http://git-scm.com/book/ch2-5.html

My experience with Android Studio

I love to learn or try a new thing everyday. Yesterday, I downloaded Android Studio and installed on both Mac OS/X Lion 10.7  and Ubuntu 13.04 laptop. Here is the screenshot of Android Studio my MacBook Pro.

I'm still figuring out how to fix this error: "emulator: ERROR: unknown skin name 'WXGA720'" when  attempt to load Android Virtual Device without using Eclipse Juno to launch the AVD first.

For Ubuntu 13.04, I must using Oracle Java Development Kit instead of OpenJDK to run Android Studio. With Eclipse IDE, I can use OpenJDK. Here is the screenshot when I make a new Android project imported from my GitHub account:

I also trying to install Android Studio on Microsoft Windows. To save time, you need to read carefully the note on http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html

Since this is a preview release, I don't expect much. I hope Google will make Android Studio tool better.

Error when add the StoreManagerController on MVC Music Store Tutorial Part 5

When I followed the MVC Music Store Tutorial using Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web on Windows 8, I got this error:

Unable to retrieve metadata for 'MusicStore.Models.Album'. Using the same DbCompiledModel to create context against different types of database servers is not supported. Instead, create a separate DbCompiledModel for each type of server being used.

No idea. Let google for a solution. Here a solution from ITorian (http://www.itorian.com/2012/10/unable-to-retrieve-metadata-for.html) :

After I delete this line in web.config, it worked: 

     connectionString="Data Source=|DataDirectory|MvcMusicStore.sdf"

     providerName="System.Data.SqlServerCe.4.0"/>

Thank the author of ITorian.com.

What did I do last weekend?

Look at this picture :)

I played with Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 4, Visual Studio 2012 on Windows 8. Actually Windows 8 hosted on my Apple MacBook Pro. On my Dell laptop, I used Google Chrome on Ubuntu. I love to learning a new thing everyday.

Available for Hire

A developer with 25 years experience in software development, mostly with small start up companies, available for hire. I love to have an opportunity to work full-time on:

1. Mobile application development using Android. 
2. Web application development using Open Sources technology: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS ... 
3. Web application development using Microsoft technology: Classic ASP 3.0, ASP.NET, C#, IIS 7, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, 2008R2

Should Developer Tools Free?

Last week, Microsoft announced the next free version of Visual Studio 2012 (or Visual Studio 11) will not free for develop desktop applications. "To create desktop apps in Visual Studio 2012, you need to use Professional 2012 or higher." Other Express versions used to develop Metro, web or mobile applications still free. It's not a good decision. After a strong objection from developers, Microsoft reversed its early plan.

Actually, I do not care whether Microsoft provides free tools for developer or not. If I need a tool, my company will pay for that. The last time, I developed Windows desktop applications twelve years ago. After that, I spent most my time for web applications. Now, I'm learning to develop mobile application in my spare time. 

I'm enjoy to use free and open source development tools such as Eclipse IDE, MonoDevelop, gedit, Notepad++, WinMerge, Git, Apache, PHP, MySQL, Sqlite, Python, Ruby, JavaScript... for both web and mobile developments in Ubuntu Linux and Microsoft Windows environments. If I need to develop in Mac platform, I can get Xcode 4 for free from Mac App Store. 

Today, it's not make sense to charge developer or anyone interest in programming for development tools. 

Can Visual Studio 2010 Express connect to Team Foundation Server 2010?

Yes. Since Visual Studio 2010 Express does not include the Team Foundation Server or Team Explorer, you need to download its client version, Microsoft Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010, from  Microsoft web site.

I had a hard time in install Microsoft Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010 on my Windows Vista machine that already had ASP.Net MVC3. After installed VSTE2010 successful, it asked me to re-apply Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1. When I ran VS2010 SP1 Maintenance, it looked for Microsoft® Silverlight™ 4 SDK. Microsoft® Silverlight™ 4 SDK alone did not work, it must be Microsoft Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010. The whole process was really time consuming and frustrated.

My second installation on Windows 7 64-bit was much easy. Straight forward. This machine did not have ASP.Net MVC3 and VS2010 SP1.

Further readings:

• How to install and configure Visual Studio Team Explorer
• Team Explorer Included in Visual Studio 2010 Installation
• Using Team Foundation Server and Team Explorer with CodePlex

Google I/O 2011 Sold Out

Cannot believe it. I just read the announcement "Calling all developers! Registration is now open for Google I/O 2011" on Facebook and when I got back to registration page from work, 20 minutes later, it SOLD OUT. VicGundotra tweets: "Google I/O '09 sold out in 90 days, '10 in 50 days... #io2011: 59 minutes"

This is the only developer conference I'm love to attend.