IUpdateable from Eric Nelson

NEric discovers Dimecasts – a great resource for none-Microsoft .NET technologies and tools

Eric Nelson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:59:08 GMT

I am in step 1 of Project NEric. Step 1 is “Identify the specific technologies, tools and approaches I want to explore”. There are a lot of possible tools and technologies that could fit within the scope of Project NEric and lots of ways of learning enough about them to make an informed decision on which (combination!) to go with. However one resource that stuck out for me this week is the excellent www.dimecasts.net.

Dimecasts includes lots of great short videos on just the sort of technologies NEric will be looking at – Mocking, ORMs (NHibernate and Fluent NHibernate), IOC containers, source control (Subversion), TDD, specific application frameworks such as S#arp and more.

Top stuff and I’m finding it really helpful to get a real feel for specific technologies before committing any significant time on them.

For example when looking at a mocking technology I was considering Moq and Rhino.Mocks. Dimecasts gives me:

And lots more besides. I will let you know how I get on – in the meantime, enjoy!

SQL Azure and SQL Azure Data Platform in a simple diagram

Eric Nelson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:53:41 GMT

In March 2008 we announced SQL Server Data Services.

In October 2008 we renamed it to SQL Data Services, part of SQL Services.

In July 2009 we renamed it to SQL Azure Database, part of SQL Azure.

Same technology, same team – smarter naming :-) Smarter because people were getting confused between SQL Data Services and ADO.NET Data Services (totally different “things”) and the OS you will use in front of SQL Azure is Windows Azure.

I wonder what will happen to .NET Services?

DDD SouthWest in full colour video with sound and everything

Eric Nelson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:47:51 GMT

I previously posted about what a great job Guy and his team had done with DDD SouthWest and the excellent work of DDD.

Chris King has created a great video montage of the event and for some weird reason they have me and Gary Short on the thumbnail at time of posting (My word I need to shed a few stone and get my hair cut and get more sleep and more sun and… )

Well done Chris!

Enjoy

MSDN Flash Podcast Show 005 - Gary Short discusses technical debt

Eric Nelson — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:26:11 GMT

This podcast accompanies the July 1st, 2009 edition of the MSDN Flash newsletter. It includes an interview with Gary Short discussing technical debt and the roll refactoring can play in repaying that debt, plus a discussion of my teams new YouTube channel.

Show Notes:

Three Men and a Whiteboard discuss ASP.NET MVC
Fun look at IE8 web accelerators with Tesco
Anti-Patterns to Avoid in Entity Framework N-Tier Applications
Web Site Improvements Using jQuery and jQuery UI
Great screencasts on WCF, Silverlight 2 and Visual Studio 2008 from RockSolidKnowledge
MSDN Poll June 17th 2009: How many monitors do you use for developing software?
Not mentioned – but this is the current poll MSDN Poll July 1st 2009: Which aspect of your job do you enjoy the most?
CodeRush Xpress for C# and VB
http://www.martinfowler.com/
Technical Debt on Wikipedia
+ lots more links in the original newsletter

I also found this video from Ward Cunningham discussing the debt metaphor (5mins)

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MSDN Flash Podcast Show 4 – Open Source Frameworks and Libraries with Sara Ford

Eric Nelson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:45:20 GMT

This podcast accompanies the June 17th edition of the MSDN Flash newsletter. It includes a twenty minute interview with Sara Ford, the Program Manager of codeplex.com, Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. We discuss her famous Visual Studio Tips (for VS 2008 and VS 2005) , how people can get involved in Codeplex and her move from Waterfall to Agile.

Show Notes:

Moq and Rhino.Mocks mocking frameworks
Excel Data Reader for Excel 97 to 2007
EasyHook for Windows API Hooking
Follow me on Twitter. Follow/join the conversation with the UK MSDN team via hashtag #ukmsdn
User Group NxtGenUG – Oxford
http://www.codeplex.com
Poll “How many monitors do you use for developing software?”
Sara Fords blog post on Waterfall and Agile
+ lots more links in the original newsletter

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Can you teach an old dog new tricks? Or… announcing project NEric

Eric Nelson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:31:31 GMT

I am 41. I started developing software when I was 12 using a Sinclair ZX80. That means I have been developing software for … 29 years!! (Do I get an award of some kind when I get to 30?). I also was a very good developer – but you will just have to take me word for that as I pretty much suck these days :-) The reason “I suck” is for the the last 5 years I have developed relatively little code. Instead I perfected my white boarding skills as a Solutions Architect and my Excel skills as a programme manager. Things did change for the better about 12 months back when I switched roles in Microsoft UK and started doing more development again as a Developer Evangelist (The clue is in the title). BUT… I have still only written hundreds, not thousands of LOC (or better still 10s of thousands).

What I have learnt over the last 12 months is whilst I was off choosing between a red or green pen, the world of .NET development was changing. There are still lots of projects being worked on in a way I recognise from my development days but there is a small but growing number of developers and teams doing things very differently.

Over simplifying hugely, there are broadly two types of developers:

Developers who only use technology, tools, approaches and guidance from Microsoft to build great Windows software.
- Most .NET developers fall into this category, myself included (Bear in mind – I am over simplifying hugely)
- A great example would be the take up of Object Relational Mapping by Windows developers is very low as many developers have waited (years!) for Microsoft to ship an ORM. This is in stark contrast to other parts of our industry – just look at the widespread acceptance of ORMs by Java developers.
Developers who endeavour to use the best technology, tools, approaches and guidance no matter where they originate to build great Windows software.
- Some of this group of developers align themselves closely with a “movement” called Alt.NET. (For more on Alt.NET check out http://altnetpedia.com/)
- Some of this group don’t align with Alt.NET – but still are striving to continually improve how they build software. For example, check out Software Craftsmanship.

Which leads me to “Can you teach an old dog new tricks?” In this case Eric is “the dog” and none Microsoft technology, tools and approaches is “the new tricks”. In other words, I want to jump camp from the majority to the minority and see how it feels.

My plan is pretty simple – to have an ongoing background project to build “something” which as far as possible is “Microsoft free” but is still a great Windows application. Which would be fun in its own right but I also plan to share what I learnt in a “Hi, I’m new to this, but I think I just learnt why X is really helpful” sort of way.

Hopefully by the end I will also be able to say that I am a very good programmer again. Or maybe that is a stretch target and a simple “I don’t suck anymore” is more achievable.

The immediate next steps are:

Identify the specific technologies, tools and approaches I want to explore
- IDEs, Testing Framework, Mocking, ORM, IOC Container, Continuous Integration Tool, Version Control etc
  - Handily I recently create a Flash special in this area and listed a bunch of Open Source Framework and Library Recommendations and before that I did free software for Windows developers
Identify useful resources and forums to help me when I get stuck (which no doubt will happen a lot)
Identify a fairly simple application to build – but something that can be used to explore the above
Set up my development environment
Build a “hello world” that touches as much of the dev environment as possible
Start building the actual app
Extend out what I’m doing in ways I can’t think of right now. Perhaps open source it, perhaps simulate large scale refactoring
Importantly, constantly share what I find out.

Anyway – the above was the easy bit. The hard bit starts next.

P.S. NEric is naff name for this – but a handy tag for these series of posts :-)

Expression Design + WPF + Silverlight + Touch + Bizspark = startup heaven?

Eric Nelson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:10:09 GMT

I had an opportunity to catch up with UK Software Startup IPrinciples. IPrinciples specialises in building Rich Internet Applications (RIA) on the Microsoft Platform, predominantly using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) but also using Silverlight. I have known Richard and Paul who run IPrinciples for many years and I have been impressed with what they have been building over the last year using XAML. When I last popped in I had my trusty Flip Mino with me and I took the opportunity to interview Richard about “Why XAML?” as well as get a demonstration of a couple of their applications and a chat with the designers who helped create the UX. Whilst the quality of the video will never win an award – it does make for interesting viewing.

To me, IPrinciples is a great example of a startup company benefitting from Bizspark to get access to great software and tools to build first class applications. They are using XAML to deliver rich and compelling user experiences which would be near impossible to do in traditional Windows Forms. Well done guys!

Interview with Richard Godfrey (CEO but also still a coder)

We discuss:

The need for designers vs developers
The importance of Expression Design when building RIAs (see “Learn Expression Design” videos)
WPF vs Silverlight – with IPrinciples favouring WPF
Microsoft Bizspark which Richard thoroughly recommended for startups. (I also previously posted on Bizspark in the UK for a little background)

After the interview Richard gave me a demo of two of their applications and I had a chance to talk to the lead designers of each.

Silverlight 2 football team management application

Demonstration covers a walkthrough of the application followed by (3mins 45s in) an interview with the lead designer Adam who shows how he used Expression Design to create it. It was interesting to see Expression Design hosting most of the UI on a single page. I have often wanted that exact feature as a developer as you often work on groups of pages. Something for the wish list for VS2012? :-)

WPF photo album creation application with touch features

Demonstration covers a walkthrough of a feature rich album creation application followed by (4min 16s in) a short interview with the lead designer Phil who shows how he used Expression Design and Blend to create one element, the “big wheel” bottom left. Interestingly they have also started to touch enable the application both for Vista and soon Windows 7.

Only 7 days left to take advantage of great offers on Visual Studio - UK only

Eric Nelson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:56:41 GMT

ADVERT ALERT but hopefully a useful one …

Don’t delay, buy today!

And that ends my attempt at marketing and coming up with catchy slogans. What do you mean, it has been used before! :-(

More seriously, I just got confirmation that some great offers put together in the UK for Visual Studio end this month.

You can see the detail at the offers site but I think the following pictures do a better job of summarising the three offers on that page that expire June 30th:

“Step Up” – shown as “Get a lot more for a lot less” and “Get even MORE for less..”

Or…”Attach an MSDN subscription” – shown as “Save up to £400 on an MSDN Subscription”

Three Men and a Whiteboard: Windows Azure

Eric Nelson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:03:09 GMT

The third Three Men and a Whiteboard, also known as “The one where we forgot about the 10 minute rule of YouTube again” – hence it comes in two parts :-)

In part one, the Whiteboard sees no action as it remains a discussion on where Windows Azure fits into the Azure Services Platform. In Part Two I actually draw stuff as we dig into Windows Azure – sort of :-)

The diagram I didn’t draw for Part One but helps enormously is this one:

The diagram I was (badly) drawing in Part Two is a version of this one:

Three Men and a Whiteboard: Windows Client Technologies

Eric Nelson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:45:17 GMT

The second Three Men and a Whiteboard, also knows as “The one where Mike T strums his guitar” or “The one where the video of Eric was stolen”.

Three Men and a Whiteboard: ASP.NET MVC

Eric Nelson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:40:38 GMT

The first Three Men and a Whiteboard session we ever recorded. Possibly the best :-)

Also known as “The one with the squeaky voices” :-)

Open Source Framework and Library Recommendations

Eric Nelson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:23:31 GMT

As the technical editor for the UK MSDN Flash I get surprisingly free rein to decide what content to place in it . I suspect one day they will notice – but I will enjoy it while it lasts. Every 3 months or so I do a special edition of the Flash, and this week I chose to go with “Open Source Frameworks and Libraries”. I have written before on Microsoft and Open Source and the rosy future I see ahead and I decided it was time (long overdue?) to give some of the great OSS for .NET developers wider visibility. The Flash newsletter is great for this as it goes out to around 70K developers in the UK. With the help of the UK community (see the provisional list of suggestions), I came up with the following 23 OSS projects.

I have tried to strike a balance between some fairly well known projects and some lesser known but equally well respected offerings. Which means we have “old favourites” such as xUnit and Moq (testing and mocking respectively), alongside Argotic (syndication framework), Excel Data Reader (Excel file to DataSet) and #SNMP (SNMP library) as well as some frameworks primarily developed out of the UK such as Fluent NHibernate (no more XML ORM mapping) and OpenRasta (REST based framework for building web applications).

Enjoy!

Download [TEST] xUnit.net
One of several very good testing frameworks to aid with TDD.
Download [TEST] RhinoMocks mocking framework
Ease testing by allowing the developer to create mock implementations of objects.
Website [TEST] White for automation of Windows applications
Programmatically drive Windows applications.
Download [TEST] Gallio Automation Platform
Works with many testing frameworks including MSTest, xUnit, NUnit and MbUnit.
Download [DATA] Fluent NHibernate
Fluent NHibernate lets you write mappings in strongly typed C# code.
Download [OOP] StructureMap Dependency Injection/Inversion of Control
Enable looser coupling between classes and their dependencies.
Download [OOP] Managed Extensibility Framework
Make the shift from applications being statically compiled to dynamically composed.
Download [APPFX] s#arp architecture for web applications
Foundation for rapidly building web applications using ASP.NET MVC with NHibernate.
Download [APPFX]OpenRasta REST based framework for building web applications
Simplify exposing a REST based API to your application.
Download [APPFX]CSLA.NET Application Framework
A comprehensive framework for .NET development.
Download [APPFX]Spring.NET Application Framework
A comprehensive framework for building web applications.
Download [RUNTIME]Mono enables .NET on Linux and Mac
Use those .NET skills to target Linux, BSD and OS X.
Download [UTIL] Sandcastle Help File Builder
Create MSDN-style documentation from .NET assemblies.
Download [HELPER] EasyHook for Windows API Hooking
Extend unmanaged code (APIs) with managed code.
Download [HELPER] Json.NET for working with JSON formatted data
R/W using the JsonReader and JsonWriter or serialize your .NET objects with a single call.
Download [HELPER] Excel Data Reader for Excel 97 to 2007
Read Excel files straight into a dataset.
Download [HELPER]#SNMP Library
A natural API interface to encapsulate SNMP functions.
Download [HELPER] DotNetZip Library
A great ZIP library plus samples.
Download [HELPER] Visio Automation Library
Automate Visio from C#, Visual Basic and more.
Download [HELPER] PHPExcel is not just about Excel!
PHP classes to r/w Excel 2007, PDF, HTML and more.
Download [HELPER] Argotic Syndication Framework for RSS, Atom, OPML and more
Makes the reading and writing syndicated content in common formats very easy.
Download [HELPER] NLog logging library
Easily write diagnostic traces from your application.
Website A great directory of C# Open Source software
Nicely indexed directory of libraries, frameworks and tools.

Slides and links for Windows Azure session for GL.NET

Eric Nelson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:39:35 GMT

Had a great time Wednesday night delivering a session on Azure and SQL Data Services at GL.NET. Admittedly I run over hugely but I enjoyed it and I much prefer lots of questions along the way. The venue is very good. The MessageLabs offices offer a pretty decent sized room, wireless internet and a good projector. Jimmy makes for a very friendly host and the folks that attend are equally good guys and as a bonus, the pub is near by :-) In summary, if you develop software using Microsoft.NET and you live near Gloucester, then you should check out the GL.NET user group.

I did a session which combined two session I delivered at Devweek 2009 earlier this year. Therefore I thought it probably made sense to point direct to the two original decks which contain more detail.

Some useful links:

www.azure.com starting point for sdks and sign ups
http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/ blog of the SQL Services team
http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/ blog of the Windows Azure team
MIX sessions – videos to watch, especially SQL Data Services and Azure Storage
http://www.newcloudapp.com/ the (unfortunately US biased) competition to create applications
My amazing azure application (v2 in VB, v1 in C#) http://sayhello.cloudapp.net/Default.aspx
And a great little azure application that lists other azure applications http://clouddotnet.cloudapp.net/ (developer in the UK by Stuart Lodge – the author i interview in Podcast Pilot 2)
Podcast Pilot http://bit.ly/flashpodcast
Flash ebook http://bit.ly/flashebook1

and the presentations:

SQL Data Service Overview

View more presentations from ericnelson.

Windows Azure Overview

View more presentations from ericnelson.

UK MSDN Flash Poll for June 17th 2009: How many monitors do you use for developing software?

Eric Nelson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:40:09 GMT

I have a couple of days leave coming, hence the early poll to accompany the Flash next week.

I bumped into an old colleague who now has a six monitor setup in his home for developing software – which made my “notebook + 19inch monitor” setup look a little sad. Especially as I share that monitor with an Xbox 360 and a PC gaming rig.

Your chance to sneak in a vote.

I was wondering if folks would like me to organise a full hardware (multi-question) survey via the Flash in the future? I for one would love to know what we all use.

MSDN Flash Podcast Pilot Show 3 Bonus Edition on Windows 7 Compatibility

Eric Nelson — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:10:00 GMT

This is the third podcast pilot to accompany the fortnightly MSDN Flash newsletter. This is an example of a “bonus edition” which we will from time to time interleave with the regular fortnightly podcasts. The good news is we now have a permanent subscription courtesy of Feedburner which will work with ITunes and regular RSS readers.

Feedback good and bad is always welcome.

Enjoy.

Show Notes:

This is an interview with Dave Allen who spent a year travelling the world helping companies get ready for Windows Vista and is now doing something similar in the UK for Windows 7. It contains plenty of good advice on getting your application working on Windows 7.