Community Blogs

Just wanted to send out another reminder about the upcoming Chicago Alt.Net meeting on July 9th.  Last week Serigo made the same announcement here . Hope to see everyone out there. Till next time, [----- Remember to check out DimeCasts.Net -----] Read More...

I am happy and proud to announce that my good buddy (man, hope he feels the same) Kyle Baley aka The Coding Hillbilly is the first guest author to release an episode on DimeCasts.Net . The timing this release could not have been better as just yesterday he and Donald Belcham released their first .Net Rocks Episode on Brownfield Applications (btw, the episode is great, both educational and funny). Kyle will be producing a entire DimeCasts series on Brownfield Applications, so be sure to stop by and check them out. Till next time, [----- Remember to check out DimeCasts.Net -----] Read More...

Looks like I was tagged by Javier Lozano to explain to the world how how I got started writing code.  Hold on tight as this may be a long, bumpy ride. How old were you when you started programming? Compared to most of the geeks out there, I was a late comer.  I did not code my first application until I was a senior in high school. What was your first language? QBasic , in fact I am pretty sure I still have the book in a box in the basement.  The first application was some simple little app that would display 'fireworks' on the screen....wow What was the first real program you wrote? I am pretty sure it was a web-site for a local business in the town where I went to college.  In fact I think it still may be up cause...

I've been meaning to post something about two awesome and competing toolsets that recently have some news to report. First, my friends at DevExpress won both the Attendee's Pick : Overall Winner and Breakthrough Product awards at Tech:Ed Developers a couple of weeks ago. DXperience won the Attendee's Pick. CodeRush , their productivity-enhancing Visual Studio tool, won the latter award, and you can watch a video of a complete non-computer user shaming a developer ( Brendan ) last November, here (she also beat me and everybody else who challenged her). Congratulations, DevExpress ! Also new this month, CodeRush/Refactor!'s primary competitor ReSharper (from JetBrains ) version 4.0 was released. Some recent discussions of the merits...

What : Chicago Day of Dot Net When : September 6 th 2008 – 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM Where : Wheaton IIT Overview The Chicago area .Net based users groups are looking for speakers for our forth coming conference on September 6th. This is a one day event that will be hosted by Wheaton IIT and is a free, community based event. This means we are looking for both seasoned speakers as well as ones trying to get their feet wet. Our sessions will last between 1 – 1.5 hours and are meant to teach and enlighten the audience. We are in process of planning a great day of learning and we need your help. We are looking for energetic, charismatic, passionate and engaging speakers. If this is you, we want you to help us out. We need your passion...

Doug Seven of Microsoft is hosting a party at Howl at the Moon during TechEd on June 3rd. He has some details on his blog and the party will include (and require for admission) a rubber duck competition. You'll need to pick up your duck for admission at the Teched Technical Learning Center at the Developer Tools & Languages information desk. One duck will admit two people so bring a friend! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Read More...

In just 10 days (May 10th, 2008), TECHbash 2008 will kick off in northeastern Pennsylvania. The show has been around since 2005 and will include several hundred developers, IT professionals, and industry experts from PA and surrounding states. Joe Stagner from Microsoft will be giving the keynote and my company, Lake Quincy Media , is one of the sponsors of the show. Speakers will include MVPs Miguel Castro, Sam Gentile, and many more. Jason Gaylord (who runs the .NET Valley User Group ) is one of the primary organizers of the event and has done a very good job. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Read More...

Earlier this week, the OpenXML document format was standardized by the ISO/IEC, with a huge 86% of voting countries favoring the format ( news here , among other places). While this is interesting and a win for anyone using Microsoft Office document formats (who isn't?), it's also a bit disappointing that those who opposed the format's standardization have opted not to accept the decision of the global community. Instead, they've shifted into sour grapes mode and are attacking the process and everyone involved (at least the ones who didn't agree with their perspective). Jan van den Beld has a great writeup of the accusations being thrown about by the folks who couldn't enforce their will upon the world through proper...

Well, I think that's about as long as I want to go keeping this under wraps. And what better day to make the announcement than the one day where you can't be sure if I'm actually kidding (especially now that I've called attention to it). I've been pretty silent on the alt.net movement. Not for any political reasons, mind you, hillbillies are what you might call "controversially agnostic", at least if you wanted to be polite. No, the real reason is that I haven't had much to say on the subject. At least since moving to CodeBetter . I did do my civic duty at the previous home though. I've still been following it. And one of the more entertaining aspects of alt.net has been the alt.net pursefight blog. But...

The ASP.NET MVC library's source code has been made available on CodePlex , ScottGu announced today . The project itself is still very much a work in progress, but with this you should be able to get a much better idea of how everything is laid out and working. I think it's great the Microsoft is being this transparent with their development efforts, and the amount of community feedback they are accepting and acting on with this project is outstanding. For a variety of legal reasons they are not accepting patches to the code directly, but that doesn't mean that reproduced bugs and even blog entries noting changes you'd like to see will not be used to improve the product. And of course, you can fix the bug in your local copy and...