Technology In The Gap

So, after quite a bit of fiddling with code, I’ve managed to implement the code that lets me use jQuery to move WebParts around.

There were two different hurdles I had to overcome to get this done.  The first was a weird behavior I found with MasterPages within my project, and the second was the fact that I didn’t know where this code was supposed to come back to on the server.

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My current task at work has me creating a series of pie charts that we can turn around and use as a dashboard to show the current KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to our customers.  Naturally, since we are using the ASP.NET framework for the UI portion, when I think of dashboards with multiple, configurable user controls, I think WebParts.

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Cryptic error messages—they are the bane of my existence.  I don’t know how much of my programming time has been taken up trying to trace down the meaning of an error message.

Now, I can’t say that I’m perfect.  The first project I worked on coming out of college had “Invalid Key” for just about every error message—without so much as a clue as to why the key pressed on the point of sale system was invalid.

Microsoft, however, has no excuse.  I mean, they have this whole complex exception system built into their development environments, but all they can tell me is “Value does not fall within the expected range,” and I’m left wondering:

• What is the value?
• What is the expected range?
• What control threw the exception?
• How do I fix it if I can’t even see it?

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It’s always tricky to get applications that you’ve written and built on your own pc to run on the target environment.  One of the big reasons is that during development any problem that you encounter you overcome, but that doesn’t mean the target solution will have the same environment, the same tools installed or have some kind of resource contention you weren’t planning for.

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I’m a novice at personas.  I mean, I’ve written some stories before—novels in High School that I’ve posted on a fiction site—but I don’t know that I’ve ever been really good with biographies.

Most of the time my biography consists of what my characters have done in my stories—and I know that they should have a good back story, but like any programmer that loves jumping into code rather than spending all his time trying to do the design work¹, I need work in this area.

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1. I mean, I know that I should do it, it’s just the case that I love coding! [↩]