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Wednesday, September 17, 2008
VBUG Brighton: MVC, Test 1st and Ajax with ASP.NET
This evening I helped Nick with VBUG Brighton held at Madgex. Our speaker was Sebastien Lambla who
He gave a brief introduction to MVC within an ASP.NET world before moving on to some demos. Seb was a great presenter, obviously understood his subject and continued smiling even when his code failed. He was even prepared enough to pre-post the blog post relating to his talk including a link to the code he was demoing (he promised to tweak it and make it work).
We had some new attendees this evening, mainly because it's ReMix tomorrow and Friday and so people who'd arrived early popped along to join us. Amongst these was Andrew, chairman of VBUG, so it was interesting to find out what his thoughts on all things Microsoft related.
runs Caffeine IT, a .net consultancy, helping the good people of London adopt new technologies, new processes, new methodologies and in general anything that's new and shinyspeaking about ASP.NET MVC, test driven development and Ajax with ASP.NET MVC.
He gave a brief introduction to MVC within an ASP.NET world before moving on to some demos. Seb was a great presenter, obviously understood his subject and continued smiling even when his code failed. He was even prepared enough to pre-post the blog post relating to his talk including a link to the code he was demoing (he promised to tweak it and make it work).
We had some new attendees this evening, mainly because it's ReMix tomorrow and Friday and so people who'd arrived early popped along to join us. Amongst these was Andrew, chairman of VBUG, so it was interesting to find out what his thoughts on all things Microsoft related.
// posted by Jane @ 10:16 PM 
Comments:
Friday, July 04, 2008
VBUG Brighton: Understanding LINQ with Mike Taulty
Last night Madgex hosted an excellent VBUG Brighton session by Mike Taulty on LINQ.
Despite the sunny, warm evening we managed to pack 25 or so Microsoft technologies developers into our boardroom and listened intently whilst Mike talked and demo'd his way around LINQ, explaining some of the newer C#/VB9 language features as he went. Whilst not being the exact same slide deck, after a rummage around Mike's site I found a post about a similar sounding talk complete with presentation in PDF format.
I remain slightly dissapointed by the syntax for Linq to XML
var query = from c in data.DescendantsAndSelf("customer")
select (string)c.Attribute("id");
which as Mike said, involves a bit too much of hoping and praying (relying on no underlying changes, no strong typing etc).
However, I'm really encouraged by the idea of Linq to XSD which seems like a much better idea, tying the query to a schema rather than a document.
Fabrice has some sample code based on Linq to XML and Linq to XSD as follows, which goes to show the improvement using the XSD version
Here is a LINQ to XML query:
from item in purchaseOrder.Elements("Item")
select (double)item.Element("Price") * (int)item.Element("Quantity")
Here is the same query as above, but written using LINQ to XSD:
from item in purchaseOrder.Item
select item.Price * item.Quantity
which I think looks much more elegant and less clunky.
Despite the sunny, warm evening we managed to pack 25 or so Microsoft technologies developers into our boardroom and listened intently whilst Mike talked and demo'd his way around LINQ, explaining some of the newer C#/VB9 language features as he went. Whilst not being the exact same slide deck, after a rummage around Mike's site I found a post about a similar sounding talk complete with presentation in PDF format.
I remain slightly dissapointed by the syntax for Linq to XML
var query = from c in data.DescendantsAndSelf("customer")
select (string)c.Attribute("id");
which as Mike said, involves a bit too much of hoping and praying (relying on no underlying changes, no strong typing etc).
However, I'm really encouraged by the idea of Linq to XSD which seems like a much better idea, tying the query to a schema rather than a document.
Fabrice has some sample code based on Linq to XML and Linq to XSD as follows, which goes to show the improvement using the XSD version
Here is a LINQ to XML query:
from item in purchaseOrder.Elements("Item")
select (double)item.Element("Price") * (int)item.Element("Quantity")
Here is the same query as above, but written using LINQ to XSD:
from item in purchaseOrder.Item
select item.Price * item.Quantity
which I think looks much more elegant and less clunky.
// posted by Jane @ 7:13 PM
Comments:
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
VBUG Brighton - Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5
This evening Madgex hosted the first of what I hope will be many VBUG events. After a really informative session in August on LINQ I had high hopes for this evening, and wasn't dissapointed. Daniel Moth gave a rapid, but informative, tour of Visual Studio 2008 and some of the new features of .Net framework 3.5
As with the last event the format was a talk for about an hour, then a break for pizza and beer before heading back for another half an hour or so.
Looking at my notes, again there is a jumble of keywords to go and find out more about. The multi targeting element of Visual Studio 2008 looks great with the ability to swap which framework you're working against simply by selecting from a list. In fact, it seems like the only downside to upgrading to VS2008 is that it will have to be an all or nothing approach for any project with more than one developer - the .sln file has a different format and is the only bit which won't be compatible with VS2005. The inclusion of the Expression Web seems sensible - I remember being impressed by that when I saw a demo earlier this year at WebDD - and I'm particularly keen to see the CSS and javascript intellisense. I'm also hoping the manage styles window will help me get to grips with the precedences of element vs IDs vs classes in CSS as well!
Some of the new language features seem like they're included to be time savers (like var and anonymus typing), which at the moment at least I can't see being of help to the developer coming along later to maintain the code. I can also imagine the lambda expressions taking a while to get used to.
All in all, another excellent evening, and again a pleasure to see our office space being used for another community event.
As with the last event the format was a talk for about an hour, then a break for pizza and beer before heading back for another half an hour or so.
Looking at my notes, again there is a jumble of keywords to go and find out more about. The multi targeting element of Visual Studio 2008 looks great with the ability to swap which framework you're working against simply by selecting from a list. In fact, it seems like the only downside to upgrading to VS2008 is that it will have to be an all or nothing approach for any project with more than one developer - the .sln file has a different format and is the only bit which won't be compatible with VS2005. The inclusion of the Expression Web seems sensible - I remember being impressed by that when I saw a demo earlier this year at WebDD - and I'm particularly keen to see the CSS and javascript intellisense. I'm also hoping the manage styles window will help me get to grips with the precedences of element vs IDs vs classes in CSS as well!
Some of the new language features seem like they're included to be time savers (like var and anonymus typing), which at the moment at least I can't see being of help to the developer coming along later to maintain the code. I can also imagine the lambda expressions taking a while to get used to.
All in all, another excellent evening, and again a pleasure to see our office space being used for another community event.
Labels: Brighton, event, sussexdigital, vbug
// posted by Jane @ 10:28 PM
Comments:
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
VBUG: An evening with LINQ
Last night me, and some others from Madgex, headed off to a VBUG evening at the Clarendon Centre. Last nights speaker was Ian Cooper and he spoke about LINQ within C# 3.0. A subject I've heard about, but not seen much about. Ian presented highlights of 2 talks he has previously presented, one about LINQ in general and one about LINQ to SQL.
LINQ looks really interesting, and like it might be a really good addition to the toolkit to allow for quicker development of certain projects. It is a shame that LINQ to SQL currently only has SQL Server interfaces available, but hopefully other providers will come along before too long. I really like the idea of having the ability to change the physical database provider without having to write new database access code. I am, however, a database kind of girl, and enjoy writing SQL, so I'll still fight to have some SQL intervention sometimes - Ian said that LINQ won't always be performant, so some intervention will be needed at these points - maybe that is where I'll be able to make use of my SQL skills.
I've never been to any of the VBUG events before, but if the caliber of last nights is anything to go by I'll be heading along again soon. Especially if the pizza, beer and free book are usual.
LINQ looks really interesting, and like it might be a really good addition to the toolkit to allow for quicker development of certain projects. It is a shame that LINQ to SQL currently only has SQL Server interfaces available, but hopefully other providers will come along before too long. I really like the idea of having the ability to change the physical database provider without having to write new database access code. I am, however, a database kind of girl, and enjoy writing SQL, so I'll still fight to have some SQL intervention sometimes - Ian said that LINQ won't always be performant, so some intervention will be needed at these points - maybe that is where I'll be able to make use of my SQL skills.
I've never been to any of the VBUG events before, but if the caliber of last nights is anything to go by I'll be heading along again soon. Especially if the pizza, beer and free book are usual.
// posted by Jane @ 9:21 PM
Comments:
