Community Blogs

Just as a reminder from the previous post , the July meeting for DC ALT.NET will be on July 24, 2008 from 7PM-9PM. Check out our site and our mailing list for more information as it becomes available. This month, K. Scott Allen, of OdeToCode and a co-host of Herding Code , will present a deep dive into LINQ and a code-along so that we can follow along. The intent is to go as deep as we can with LINQ to find out what works, what doesn't and how to use it effectively. So, bring your laptops and get ready... LINQ K. Scott Allen has recently recorded an episode on Herding Code dedicated to LINQ . It's well worth a listen as he talks about the following LINQ topics: What is it? How introducing LINQ to .NET changed the framework LINQ Providers...

The July meeting for DC ALT.NET will be on July 24, 2008 from 7PM-9PM. Check out our site and our mailing list for more information as it becomes available. This month, K. Scott Allen, of OdeToCode and a co-host of Herding Code , will present a deep dive into LINQ and a code-along so that we can follow along. The intent is to go as deep as we can with LINQ to find out what works, what doesn't and how to use it effectively. So, bring your laptops and get ready... I'd like to thank Cynergy Systems, Inc for sponsoring this month's event. As a side note, they are actively looking for experienced .NET developers with interest in WPF and Silverlight. So, if you're looking for a great company that is a leader in the Rich Internet Applications...

by: Darrell Mozingo This post was originally submitted to The Great Devlicio.us Giveaway . December 2006 was a low point. The company had lost some good developers, projects were stalling, morale was low, and the outlook simply wasn't good. It was the usual story, probably heard thousands of times before and still lived by thousands more: cowboy coding in continuous crunch mode. Page behind line counts were climbing into the mid four digits and the simplest changes had huge rippling effects across not only the current project, but other systems that were so tightly coupled together they were all fused at the hip. I was in the process of flirting with a few other companies at the time too, but after realizing I didn't want an almost hour...

Chicago ALT.NET meets this Wednesday, July 9 th again at ThoughtWorks . You can register and get more information about the event at the link below. Mock Objects In Practice 6:00 pm Pizza and networking time 6:30 pm This month's topic is Mock Objects, or simply "mocking". The agenda to guide the discussion is not set yet, but below is a list of items we like to cover. Feel free to add more to this list by making your suggestions in the mailing list . We want to see code, not just talk What and how hard or easy to use mocks are? Are they just for testing? Aren't they just noise? Tools How to do mocking well Does the habit of using mocks lead to good design? Or the reverse? Is TypeMock evil? Read More...

Well, Canada turns 141 years old today and as we all know, 141 is the Conference anniversary. So in keeping with that, registration is now open for the alt.net Canada Open Spaces Extravaganza . Get your requests in early because only the first 100 will be allowed in and at the time of writing, over 10% of those are filled already. After that, you'll have to do what all Canadians do and try to cozy up to the bouncer . I will personally guarantee satisfaction at *any* cost for all who attend so don't delay. It will be held in the future capital of West Canada: Calgary, Alberta at the University of Calgary. Full details on the site. Organizing, and in attendance, will be a gaggle of good Canucks, including (in alphabetical order by first...

by: Glenn Goodrich This post is the winner of The Great Devlicio.us Giveaway . The story you are about to read is true. The names and identities of the innocent have been changed to protect them and my job. No animals were harmed in the writing of this story. Roughly three to five years ago I was an intermediate ASP.NET Webforms developer. I had produced several applications for various clients that were in different stages of test/production/maintenance /graveyard. Some of these applications were loved by my clients, others were tolerated, and still others were abhorred. The aspects all of these applications did have in common were a high level of difficulty to maintain and an almost violent resistance to change. Most of my clients tend to...

We've just finished tallying up our votes for the Great Devlicio.us Giveaway and we are pleased to announce that the winner is Glenn Goodrich . We had enough entries to make the contest worthwhile and we decided to give prizes for every story. Everyone got one of the books in the original list and the 2nd place also got Visual Studio Team System. You see? I told you that you should tell us your story. Some people asked if there will be a contest where they could submit horror stories instead of success stories. Well, I'm considering running a contest for that, but I'm afraid the prize will be limited to a bag of Doritos. Glenn runs a very nice blog and his story, which will be posted here tomorrow, shows that the quest for a better...

Just a reminder about tonight's DC ALT.NET meeting. I hope some from the FringeDC and the NoVA Language Group can make it out tonight as it's quite on topic. The June meeting for DC ALT.NET has been set up for June 24th from 7-9PM. Check out our site and our mailing list as more information becomes available. Once again, I'd like to thank the Motley Fool for hosting the event as they did back in May. This month, I'll be covering Applied Functional Programming with F# as a continuation of the talks I've been giving lately. The beauty of this group like last month's topic of Lisp and this month's topic of F# is to step outside of the comfort zone, look to the outside for better approaches to doing things instead of...

In a post where Jeremy drops some fluent foo , he responds to my assertion that Windsor and NHibernate are the peanut butter and jelly of ALT.NET: I'll overlook the fact that my friend David also implicitly implied that an IoC container not named StructureMap was the de facto standard. Okay. Okay! Fair enough. Let's call StructureMap the "crunchy peanut butter" (my favorite) and Windsor the "smooth peanut butter" and Ninject the "organic peanut butter" and Unity the "peanut flavored soy-based food paste used on human-powered NASA missions, a.k.a. 'Astronaut Peanut Butter'." Sorry, Glenn , you're name came up when I asked who I needed to alienate next. I guess if this post had a point...

Many thanks to Sebastian Lambla for inviting me to the alt.net London beers this past Tuesday evening. It was a fun evening and if you are in the London area, I'd recommend checking out future meetings. This was the second night out and they have plans to run it every month in the second or third week. You can watch for it on the alt.net list but if, like me, you're stepping back from the list, Sebastian's blog is probably your best bet. He's a good resource to have in your blogroll in any case. As it was only the second one, the format is still in flux but I like what I heard. Future meetings will including a period of tech talk on a pre-determined topic followed by much socializing. And in my experience, few places on earth...