DotNetDoc - Daniel Egan

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Microsoft today announce that they will release a RC (Release Candidate) for Visual Studio 2010 via Scott Guthrie’s blog.  This means that there will be another release for you to play with before the March 22nd release of VS2010. That is really cool!!  

To read more about the announcement go to http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/12/17/visual-studio-2010-and-net-4-0-update.aspx

DotNetDoc - Daniel

  Hey SoCal Developers, this is something that you don’t want to miss.  If you are looking to get up to speed on Microsoft’s Cloud Services – Windows Azure, then this is the event for you!!  Its FREE!!

This is  3 Day class that is absolutely FREE!!  Tuesday, December 15th – Thursday December 17th – 9am to 5pm each day. This is a instructor led / hands-on event.  (You will need to pay for parking. Parking is NOT validated)

Description :

The Microsoft Developer & Platform is pleased to announce a Metro Instructor Led Training event focused on Developers covering the Windows Azure Platform, for Microsoft Partners and customers. Delivered through workshop style presentations and hands-on lab exercises, the workshop will focus on three key services of the Windows Azure Platform – Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services.

This event is targeted at partners and customers who have projects that they are potentially looking to deploy to the Windows Azure Platform.

Attendee Prerequisites :

This workshop is aimed at developers, architects and systems designers with at least 6 months practical experience using Visual Studio 2008 and C#.

Agenda Topics

× An introduction to Windows Azure

× Working with Windows Azure storage

× An introduction to SQL Azure

× Building applications with SQL Azure

× An introduction to .NET Services

× Building solutions using the .NET Service Bus

Date/Time/Location:

Tuesday, December 15, 2009 9:00 AM - Thursday, December 17, 2009 5:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Microsoft Technology Center - Irvine

3 Park Plaza
Suite 1600 TBC Irvine California 92614
United States

To register please use the following link :

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032428626&IO=He5wNESuIe2vbmj2%2bI%2bSiw%3d%3d

Or go to http://msevents.microsoft.com and use Event ID : 1032428626

Did I mention its FREE!! See you there!!

Are you looking for an easy way to get a Azure Token??  Why don’t you  get and Azure Token and win on contest at the same time??  CodeProject.com is giving away a kindle as part of their Windows Azure in December contest.

First, it is the easiest way to get an Azure token AND you could end up winning a prize too. How great is that?

Just go to http://www.codeproject.com/Feature/Azure/ and follow the simple directions. You will get your Azure token instantly.  But you better hurry, as of this writing, they only have 393 Azure tokens left to give out for the contest.

Good Luck, and if you develop an Azure application, I would love to hear about it.

Happy Programming

DotNetDoc – Daniel Egan

On Monday I spoke to about 50 developers about Visual Studio 2010.  This is a BIG release, not only was the whole IDE rewritten in WPF but it utilizes the MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) to make VS2010  a platform as well.  The community can now create and/or download templates, and IDE enhancements from inside visual studio.  I will be doing some deep dive talks soon on templates and MEF that you will not want to miss.

Below you will find the slides and the code I used in the presentation.

Visual Studio 2010 has a new look. Besides the new logo, it has a couple of new options when you are starting VS2010 for the first time.

• Web Development
• Web Development (Code Centric)

This seems to be part of a shift to recognize and help the two different types of web programmers that now exist.  First we have the developers that prefer to work in the preview, dragging and dropping controls onto the page, and then tying them into the back-end.  The “newer” web developer, which ironically develops more in the Classic ASP style, stays mostly in the HTML preferring to hand code each table, section, and control (Code Centric).  Part of the reason for this is the new ASP.Net MVC framework that inherently puts you in this frame of mind.  In addition, VS2010 also help in this area with new HTML snippets (type in TB and hit tab tab), to increase the speed at which you can “hand code” (sort of a mini Code Rush).  In essence, when you select the Code Centric options, it strips away (or hides) all of the property windows.

Which way do you code? Are you a Code Centric developer?

Let me know.

Doc – Daniel Egan

This week I traveled through the Southland (LA, Orange County, San Diego) talking about some cool new things coming out from Microsoft. (Windows 7 Multi-touch, Silverlight RIA Services, SketchFlow). Below you will find the slides and demos for the talk.

Enjoy.

Daniel

You can find the files for the demos HERE. For the RIA Services Demo,  you will find the step by step snipits in the Presentation folder and the Required installs in the SetupAndResearch folder. 

Let me know if you have any questions.

Daniel

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Join me for one of the coolest things to come out of the dev community in quite a while. I will be doing a seminar on Windows 7 Multi-Touch, and SketchFlow.   You can see the Agenda below, but you will really want to see the MultiTouch and SketchFlow stuff.  See you there.

Irvine
September 9, 2009

1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Click here to register

Event ID: 1032423014

Los Angeles
September 10, 2009

1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Click here to register

Event ID: 1032423015

San Diego
September 10, 2009

1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Click here to register

Event ID: 1032423016

MSDN Presents: The Next Generation Client Experience

Windows 7 for Developers (MULTI- Touch) = Cool ;)

Windows 7 is almost here! With it are numerous improvements and new features to take advantage of in your applications. Watch and learn as we demonstrate how to utilize the new taskbar, multi-touch support and more.

IE8 for Developers ( Showing how to create an accelerator)

IE8 makes your web better… faster, safer and easier.  This is true for developers too.  In this session, we will illustrate how developers can take advantage of some new technologies in IE8 such as accelerators to enhance a user’s web experience.  We will also illustrate the built-in developer tools in IE8 and how to take advantage of them.  These tools include a powerful CSS tool, script debugging and a script profiler.

Building Business Applications with Silverlight 3 and RIA Services

Silverlight 3 has launched.  In this session, we will illustrate how you can build powerful line of business (LOB) applications with Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3.  We will begin with illustrating how you can build powerful prototypes with SketchFlow in Blend 3.

  So I went to the OCDotNet user group meeting last night to see Paul Sheriff. Paul is a great speaker and it was a packed room. He was doing a talk on debugging, which is something that absolutely EVERY developer needs to master. 

Now I will get some grief for saying this next statement, but be that as it may, I think that if you show me a great debugger, I will show you a great developer.  Joel Spolsky. from Joel On Software wrote a book called  “Smart and gets things Done”, and while it hits on the core of my statement in a broader sense, he describes the developer that you WANT in your shop.  It is amazing how many times you run across a developer\coder\engineer\architect (whatever they want to be called at the time) who is so smart, that they make your head spin, but when it comes down to shipping a product they just can’t get it out the door because they are ALWAYS looking for a better way to refactor their code.  They burn through endless cycles on the smallest parts of the code as you watch your deadlines slip past and disappear in the horizon. 

Now, one of the most time consuming tasks for (most)  developers is not  writing the actual code,  or creating the documentation ( um yeah.. we all fully document our code right?), but figuring out what went wrong when your code does not work.  I don’t care how phenomenal of a coder you are or what patents you have pending for your work, ALL of us have spent hours trying to track down a bug in our software. As a matter of fact, I think debugging is an art form for developers. It takes a very keen eye to look over someone's shoulder and pick out a bug in 50 lines of code that the poor developer has been staring at for an hour. When I was teaching at CSUF, I loved leaning over and saying: “Oh, you are missing a semi-colon”, and then watching as their shoulders drop and they let out an audible sigh (part frustration, part relief). 

So make sure you take the time to build up the valuable skill. Go see one of Paul Sheriff’s or John Robbins’ talks, or read that chapter you skipped past in your C# book of choice, it will save you time in the end, I guarantee it.

Paul Working his Magic at the OCDotNet User Group

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Paul will be doing a number of talks in the Southern California area on WPF. These are FREE two 1/2 day events. You don’t want to miss them.

8/24 LA – MSDN Presents : Fundamentals of WPF - http://bit.ly/147fCd

8/25 LA – MSDN Presents : WPF in the Real World - http://bit.ly/sDCxF

9/1 LA – MSDN Presents : Fundamentals of WPF - http://bit.ly/1v8HZS

9/2 LA – MSDN Presents : WPF in the Real World -  http://bit.ly/ivtZl

9/23 LA – MSDN Presents : Fundamentals of WPF - http://bit.ly/JpuO7

9/24 LA – MSDN Presents : WPF in the Real World - http://bit.ly/xKGwg

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There I was sitting patiently at my desk. Drinking coffee (I think) trying to figure out what the next best social networking site was going to be (So I could create it ;)  ),  when   BLAMMM, someone dropped an ORM  into my code.  OK, ok, fine it did not happen that fast but it sure caught me by surprise when I really started to dig into it, and boy was I impressed!!

For those that don’t have any idea what  I am talking about, ORM stands for Object Relational Mapper, and I am specifically talking about the ADO.Net Entity Framework.  I had been playing around with LINQ and LINQ to SQL for quite some time and while it could be considered and ORM, it has certain limitations that stop it from being used in and enterprise level application.  This is not the case with the ADO.Net Entity Framework. One of the things you have to give up when you use an ORM is a little bit of control over your entities.  Weather you are using and ORM that is Attribute-Based, CodeGen-Based, or XML Based (Or a combination of them). You will most likely give control of your entities over to the ORM.  This is not the case with the ADO.Net Entity Framework.  Of all the ORM’s that I have used, this is far and away the easiest one I have ever worked with. Part of the reason for this, is the fact that it is integrated into Visual Studio (3.5 SP1).  I will say that it is still version 1 and that much needed additions are in the works for V2, but I am very excited about its future and will be blogging about my exploits with it in the future.

Doc 

Hmmmm…  Now this could get interesting.    ….  Along upcoming new games for the current console,  Microsoft announce Project Natal, a full body motion capture sensor that allows you to become the video game.  I am not even a gamer and I would get one of these as soon as they come out. 

Check out the Live Demonstration at E3 below.

To get a full idea of some of the features that are set for this console also check out the enhanced preview.

Let me know what you think.

Daniel