Announcements

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Below are the notes I took

Book: Accelerated C# 2010 – Trey Nash

Operator Overloading

Common Operator Overloading

• Concatenating strings
• Hooking and unhooking events

Design methods instead of overloading operators

Exception Handling

Bobby demonstrates the basics of exceptions through sample code. He defines the Try, Catch and Finally blocks as well as how to create your own exception.

Who should handle exceptions

Catch where you can fix the problem

Avoid using exceptions to control flow

Exceptions are expensive to generate and handle

void ExceptionNeutralMethod()

{

     //block 1 all code that could thro exceptioms

     //block 2

     //chages are commited

}

Disposable and deterministic destruction

Some system resources need to be returned to the system pool when finished

The garbage collector doesn’t necessarily get around to destroying the resource in a timely manner

Disposable objects can guarantee deterministic destruction. (mostly easily done with a using() statement)

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Gang Of Four – Design Patterns

http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx

Patterns discussed tonight

• Observer
• State
• Strategy
• Template Method
• Visitor

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As always – Free Magazines

In this presentation he talked about the importance of constant learning and refactoring.

Below are some of the high points I picked up.

1. The Goal

• Build the right thing and build it well
• Technical Debt – Shipping the right thing even though it is not perfect
• Do the simplest thing that can possibly work
• Enable change

Build architectural seams or fault lines into your code, so if need be, it can be picked up and “stitched in” somewhere else

*ilities

• Agility
• Testability
• Readability
• Reversability
• Changeability
• Flexibility
• Maintainability

Domain Driven Design

2. The Guidelines

Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) and Separation of Concerns are the yin and yang of Software Development

Examples of Separation of Concerns are MVC, MVP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, (UI+Service+DAL).

SOLID Principals

• Single Responsibility Principle
• Open Closed Principle
• Liskov Substitution Principle
• Interface Segregation Principle
• Dependancy Inversion Principle

3. The Practice

A feedback loop is needed (code reviews, pair programming)

Test Driven Development

Yield keyword

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Additional Information

• QConn Conferences
• Virtual Brown Bag – Weekly meetings held on Thursdays.
• Time Snapper – Automatic screen shot journal
• XUNIT.NET – Testing framework

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The Third-Annual Worldwide PhotoWalk took place on July 24th.

World-wide Photo Walk – Main site

World-wide Photo Walk – Kemah site

Below is the photo submitted to the next level from the Kemah PhotoWalk

 Photo by John Bielick

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David Paulissen demonstrated a nice tip on using Powerpoint 2007 to create a PDF slideshow of your photos. This makes for an easy way to email photo galleries to friends and family.

Start Powerpoint and Select Insert > Photo Album > New Photo Album

Find the folder on your hard-drive containing the photos you want to share and click [Create]

Select a color scheme and add any necessary text to the slides

Select Save As > PDF or XPS

Name your PDF and click [Publish]

The end result is a nicely formatted PDF that anyone can open and enjoy your photos.

Great tip David!

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Software Suggestions

DeNoise – by Topaz Labs

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Links recommended by the group

• League City Photography Group Page
• PhotoSig
• Texas Photo Forum
• DP Review
• DTownTV
• Brazos Bend Facebook page
• SmugMug
• David Paulissen’s Site
• Flickr
• PhotoFocus
• White House Custom Color (WHCC)

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Happy shooting!

^..^

There is a new podcast in town that I have started listening to. It is called the Wizards of Smart and is hosted by Jonathan Birkholz (@rookieone) and Ryan Riley (@panesofglass) and has kind of a “Stackoverflow-ish” format in which they banter back and forth on a range of topics.

I believe it is a great resource whether you are learning application development or trying to keep up with the ever-changing field. Check it out.

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I attended the May South Houston .NET User Group meeting this passed Wednesday. Jason Aubrey did a presentation on iPhone Development Using Monotouch.

High Points Gleaned

Some downfalls of iPhone Development

• Requires a Mac
• XCode/Objective C is difficult to learn
• Objective C is outdated (1986)
• The app store is crowded
• App approval process is painful

Alternatives to Objective C

• Unity – C#/Python
• PhoneGap – Javascript
• Corona – Lua

XCode is the IDE used to develop for the iPhone.

Mono – open-source, cross-platform port of .NET

MonoTouch – C#/.NET SDK for iPhone (developed by Novell)

Requirements for MonoTouch

• XCode
• iPhone SDK
• Mac
• Mono for the Mac
• MonoTouch SDK
• Mono Develop–

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I attended the 2010 Austin Code Camp and like the previous two years, it did not disappoint. There were six session tracks for a day of learning.

Below are the sessions I attended

Powershell Awesomeness in Your Deployment Scripts

Speaker: Eric Hexter (@ehexter)

High Points

• Powershell is basically a command shell on steroids
• Great for scripting
• MS Deploy
• Web PI – Platform installer
• PSake – Powershell build automation tool
• PStrami – Powershell deployment automation tool
• You can bootstrap Powershell via a batch file
• Powergui – IDE for Powershell

Introduction to MongoDB

Speaker: Chris Edwards

High Points

• NoSQL Movement – A movement promoting a loosely defined class of non-relational data stores.
• SQL is not always the best option, nor is it the only one.
• MongoDB – Document-oriented database, schema free
• MongoDB is commercially supported by 10Gen

Other features of MongoDB

• Document-based queries
• Map reduce
• Grid fs
• Geo-spacial indexing

Sites using MongoDB

• SourceForge
• GitHub
• ShutterFly
• bit.ly

Supported OS: OSX, Linux, Solaris, Windows, FreeBSD

MongoShell – the grammar of the shell is pure JavaScript

Links: Slides | Code

Aspect Oriented Programming in .NET

Speaker: Keyvan Nayyeri (@keyvan)

High Points

AOP isolates cross-cutting/supporting functions

It is mainly supported by the Java community

Cross Cutting Concerns

• Logging
• Thread synchronization
• Caching
• Lazy Loading
• Dependency Injection
• Data Binding

Principles of AOP

• Joint-point – points in the codebase where code is executed
• Point-cut – join points using a set theory of advice
• Advice

Potential Issues – Debugging, efficiency

Weaving – Object oriented code with integrated aspects

Frameworks

• Aspect J
• JAC
• LinFu
• PostSharp
• Spring.Net
• Loom.net
• nAspect

Links: Slides

Advance Your Debugging Skills with VS 2010

Speaker: Rob Vettor

High Points

Data Tip – Hover over variables and objects for drillable tips in VS2010. There is also a way to keep the tips visible during debug mode. Using the Pin Tips, you can build your own custom debug windows.

Breakpoint enhancements – Add labels to breakpoints and filter based on those values.

Intellitrace is only available with the Ultimate version of Visual Studio.

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Twitter hashtag: #austincodecamp

My Austin Code Camp 2010 Photos

I did not realize until I was leaving, how close I was to where the plane crashed into the Echelon I building here in Austin a few months back.

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Until next year…

^..^

High Points Gleaned

• Native on the JVM
• Statically Typed w/type inference
• More concise syntax
• Pure Object Oriented, Mix-ins (traits – kind of like an interface)
• (Sca)lable (La)nguage
• First class functions, closures, etc.
• Erlang-style actors (not distributed)
• Message-passing concurrency
• Operator overloading
• Everything is an object, including functions (functions can be sub-classed)
• Pattern matching – “Structural Typing”
• Java + Ruby + Erlang = Scala
• Lift – Popular web framework written in Scala
• Twitter uses Scala on their backend

Links

• Scala-lang.org – Official website
• Programming Scala: Scalability = Functional Programming + Objects – Book
• Programming Scala: Tackle Multi-Core Complexity on the Java Virtual Machine – Book
• Programming in Scala: A Comprehensive Step-by-step Guide – Book

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^..^

I attended my first ALT.NET Houston Open Spaces Conference this weekend. It was very different than any tech event I have ever seen. This kind of conference instills a sense of collaboration which is a really cool thing.

The process is quite ingenious if you ask me. On Friday evening, the attendees come together to suggest topics and then vote on the suggested topics. Next, the facilitators basically set up the agenda for the next 2 days.

Four Principles of Open Spaces

• Whoever comes is the right people
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
• Whenever it starts is the right time
• When it’s over, it’s over

The Law Of Two Feet: If, during the course of the gathering, any person finds him or herself in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must use their two feet and go to some more productive place.

 

Sessions I attended

• Git
• NoSQL MongoDB
• Virtual Brownbag – One Year Later
• Build Scripts w/Powershell
• Promoting an Atmosphere of Refactoring
• Design Patterns

Links and Resources

• ALT.NET Houston Wiki
• Twitter Search (#altnethou)
• My Event Photos

I will definitely be attending this conference in the future and highly recommend for any developer.

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^..^

The speaker was Kevin Kline (@kekline) and the topic was The Top 10 Mistakes on SQL Server.

High Points Gleaned

10.  Disks – Thinking space not IO (insufficient I/O, poor choice of RAID type, not enough spindles, etc.)

09.  Ignorance – As an IT professional you should know how SQL Server works at an “internals” level.

08.  No trouble-shooting methodology

07.  Going with the defaults – Autogrow/autoshrink on DB’s, default filegroups, etc.

06.  Security as an afterthought – SQL attacks are the #1 hack on the internet today.

05.  Inadequate automation

04.  Wrong feature or technique for the job

03.  Apathy without change management

02.  Inadequate preventative maintenance

01.  Backups <> Recovery

Links

• Kevin Kline’s Blog
• White Paper for Top 10 Mistakes on SQL Server
• SQL Server Pedia
• Quest Software

Announcements

May Meeting: TUE 5/11 @ 11:30AM – How to Protect SQL Server with DPM 2010 – Presenter: Javier Calvillo, Microsoft

Special Meeting: TUE 5/18 @ 6:30PM – Essential Database Maintenance – Presenters: Kimberly Tripp & Paul Randal, SQLSkills

July Meeting: TUE 7/13 @ 11:30 – Topic TBD – Brent Ozar

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