Only just catching up on my blog reading from the last week or so this evening - so only just came across this, but its pretty cool! - it's like deep zoom for power point - the project is pptPlex from the OfficeLabs team.

I wonder if anyone at teched / codecamp in New Zealand this year will be using it... I normally do a mind map when I'm structuring a presentation, proposal for a client/whatever - be great to actually present the mind map itself then zoom in to show the details...mmm

Hi all, there's an Architecture chat this Thursday - 21st August @ 11:30am onwards.

Some things that I've caught my eye since last time:

• .Net 3.5 SP1 and VS2008 RTM are here
• VS2K8SP1 and SQL2K8 installs are a big mixed bag, some people no problem, other tearing hair out!
• And so are the war stories such as regressions and critical changes - doh!
• Visibility and trouble with non-developers being unable to quantify the quality of developer outputs - sparked off by this post by Casey.
• Resharper 4.01 RC1 is out.
• ASP.NET MVC now and in the future (i.e. where it's going, and perhaps a discussion on future of monorail vs. MVC and Monorail 2??).
• Security practices on MVC, WCF etc.
  
• Redmine - an interesting (and nicer) alternative to Trac - wonder if there's an easy transition path for existing Trac sites?

Edit: updated this list with some suggestions from others.

If anyone has any topic suggestions - just make a post on this entry, or send me an email / IM message.

Details of previous posts and directions etc. can be found here on the wiki.

Here's the write-up for Architecture Chat #32 (from Thursday 7^th August 2008) ... some of the things we discussed:

• Jabl / Jass  (Javascript abstraction language) - we discussed this approach of writing languages that transform into another language - the tradeoffs of debug experience vs. productivity etc.
  
• Debug experiences in DSL's and in particular the lack of support in these language rewriting/transformation projects.
  
• The magic bullet language i.e. two-way debugging experience, language independent refactoring support, modular/pluggable language support (sorta like Boo).
• Code camp at the end of this month.
  
• Self explaining code / blaming code (i.e. code that can explain the decisions it makes in english, or at least identify the blame (i.e. steps) that lead to the result it selected.  Though we didn't bring it up, I quite like the way Rhino Security does this.
  
• xUnit thoughts after a month of using it on a commercial project.
• Ice ZeroC - WCF alternative?
• Sql Server partitioned tables, and the simpler query plans / improvements in 2008.
  

See the wiki for write up's of previous chats, thanks to all those who attended.

Yesterday afternoon I presented a quick 20 minute presentation to the Enterprise Architect user group - it was an interesting opportunity to talk with both an Enterprise Architect lead developer and analysts/BA's etc. who are using Enterprise Architect on a daily basis - there's nothing quite like doing something and then even more so presenting on what you've done to really firm up some conclusions / ideas around it (and as is often the case with me, spark 20 ideas for new products I could build to make it better/smarter).

For anyone who's interested here's the slide deck I presented - and also some links to things that were discussed:

• Enterprise Architect
• MDG Integration for Visual Studio .Net
  
• OCL (object constraint language) - we also discussed OCL tutorials, of which I've found this site to be useful in the past.
  

Thanks to catch for hosting the group and providing the video conferencing facilities to link Auckland / Wellington (small tip, if you are presenting to two groups be sure to sit at the end of the table looking towards the camera, or your spend your whole time ping-ponging your head towards one group and the other ;) - and also thanks to everyone who came along and listened.

Also of interest was the discussion after the presentation around providing a number of example/sample MDA transformations through Sparx Systems New Zealand site - which should mean that before the end of the year you will be seeing both guidance and examples on developing MDA transformations targeting NHibernate, NHibernate search, ActiveRecord, Monorail and RhinoSecurity starting to emerge (what I tend to loosely call the "Castle stack" for want of a better term.) - which I'll post about it as it starts to happen.

There's a few things going on in Auckland over the next month or so, just to summarize if you haven't been paying attention :)

• Architecture Chat - 7^th August 2008 (Tomorrow at 11:30am).
• Ellerslie .Net User Group - Building line of business applications with Silverlight - 7^th August 2008 (Tomorrow Evening at 6pm) - sign up here.
  
• Enterprise Architect User Group - Model Driven Development with EA (presented by Myself) - hosted in Auckland and Wellington simultaneous via Video conference - 4pm to 5:30pm 14^th August 2008.
• Auckland Connected Systems User Group meeting - AS2 and EDI support in BizTalk - 14^th August 2008 6:30pm - sign up here.
• Architecture Chat - 21^st August 2008.
• Auckland Code Camp - Sunday 31^st August 2008 - sign up here - be quick, filling up fast and don't forget to sign up for the campfire dinner as well.
  
• Teched 2008 - 1^st to 3^rd September 2008.

So plenty of things going on!

I would suggest signing up for the code camp sooner rather then later if you don't want to miss out - also if you know of any other events that I've left off this list, drop me a comment and I'll add them to it.

Architecture chat tomorrow at 11:30am... I'm going to leave it fairly open for topics so all come along with something interesting to say ;o) ... or leave a comment on this post if you'd like to give me or anyone else a heads up on what you'd like to talk about.

Some things I'd personally be interested:

• Auckland recruitment environment.
• Must read books for both new and seasoned developers alike.
• Implementing code that can explain itself - for example security mechanisms able to explain (in English) why you do or do not have access, DSL's that give meaningful reasons for the decisions made, and how to flow those messages through the context of operations etc.

All are welcome - drop me an email if you're a new comer and we'll keep an eye out for you!

Information regarding the location and previous chat write-ups can be found here.

This is a writeup for the last 2 architecture chats - both were pretty free-form, with little of the topics mentioned in the posts getting much discussion as we all had own things to talk about!

As a brief summary:

Plenty of talk about Lightweight code-gen and run-time vs. post-compile IL weaving, debugging integration etc. Hard to cover all the little facets that were explorer - but it's been interesting - it seems like more developers are starting to dabble with IL.

We talked about approaches for introducing cross-cutting behavior such as versioning and history to your data access and approaches for flowing metadata from your domain model up to the UI (including searching, validation etc.) and ways to index, query and flow the information across boundaries in the application.

As a tangent to this I've been talking about how I've been using MDA/MDG to drive the domain model generation (including things like validation, search annotations etc.).

We talked about the recent S3 outages and approaches for placing resources on both European and US data centers simultaneously, and possible ways to mitigate the double-upload bandwidth costs.

Discussions (sparked originally from a email discussion on the NZ dotnet user group) around hiding the implementation details of your ORM from the rest of your application - and the practicalities of how deep this needs to go, using linq through boundaries etc.

Discussions around injecting logic into generated source code, both in asp.net/winforms generated code as well as possible ways to intercept custom tool generation so you could manipulate the output.

Spartan programming got a mention - Peter felt it aligned with alot of his current coding style.

Embedding NHaml as a view engine in non-MVC applications, and the general experience with different view engines including Brail, ASP.NET MVC's default ASPX View engine etc.  (Including the error reporting and debugging experience) - We also talked briefly about the Spark view engine, which looks to be like it could be quite palatable to non developers while still offering a useful syntax for developers.

If anyone has any topic suggestions for next weeks chat just leave a comment on this post or flick me an email.

So I see more people rewriting my container tutorials lately...

First we have the unity tutorials - as covered by Michael McGuire... which I mentioned a while back.

Now we have the binsor tutorials which have sprung up lately - from ruprict covering the same concepts, but with Binsor syntax - which is quite handy for those that are boo-inclined!

I also believe a set of Ninject tutorials are being written by Simone Chiaretta (codeclimber) in his spare time as well (and who is not jealous of Ninject's website! ;o)

It's encouraging to see interest still growing in IoC on the .Net Framework.

Sylvia Park Architecture chat tomorrow - 11:30am - all welcome - see the wiki for more details.

Some possible topics:

• AnkhSVN 2.0 is available - maybe it's time for me to move back to IDE integrated source control?
• More S3 outages this week
  
• Castle Dev Joined Microsoft
• ASP.Net MVC Preview 4
• Normalizaing Not Normal

Also we didn't cover some of the topics from last time, so I'll recycle them.

• Non-paged CLR host - Nno paging during normal operation and no paging will occur when the application is idle.... hmmm... could be useful!
• StyleCop - C# source code analysis for compliance against a set of rules that embody Microsoft's own style conventions.
• Spartan programming
• PSake - build automation tool without the angle bracket "tax" (bit like rake or bake (boo make) - but with more similiarity to existing command line tools).
• Dependency Injection is dead? (A provocatively named article, but really it's just about using compile-time IL-weaving to do lazy loaded DI).
• TypeMock racer - interesting deadlock finder (still under development) - and probably a sign of things to come (i.e. array of tooling to verify sound multi-threaded code).
• AAA style syntax for Rhino Mocks (Arrange, Act, Assert) - I've been using this for the past couple of weeks on a project, it really allows for concise easy to read testing with stubs/mocks.

Look forward to seeing you all there!

Looks like I've been tagged twice - so here goes.

How old were you when you first started programming?

Apple II e when I was like 7, Vic20 when I was like 8... but really my start was about 10 with GW-Basic on a 286 AT 16mhz.

How did you get started in programming?

I was interested in programming from about age 6 or 7.. though I think I was 12 when I taught myselfTurbo C++ (And the object oriented concepts that went with it) - so I've spent over half my life in object oriented languages - not sure if that's good or bad! 

I owe my parents a large amount of gratitude as they recognized my interests early on, and though we had little money they spent a lot trying to encourage my interests (computers were not so cheap in the 80's).

What was your first language?

Basic on the Apple II e and Vic20 - but really I think it wasn't until GW-Basic in Dos4 (and later quick basic) that I became fluent at writing programs and starting to break problems out into a series of functions. After basic came C++ (and in-line assembler), Tcl/Tk and Visual Basic 3 or 4 - then once I started tertiary study I added Pascal, Delphi, Jade, bash, java and perl to the list.

What was the first real program you wrote?

A "real" program ... I'm going to take "real" as something commercial with "users" ... hmm.. I had a part-time job when I was like 14 helping to add functionality to a C based DOS accounting system used around New Zealand - That'd be the first "real" program I added code to.  Around 17 I started writing a lot of code for open source projects [same time I started studying at Unitec] (I think all the projects are dead and gone now) and had a keen interest in writing libraries for game development prior to the advent of hardware accelerated 3D, later transferring that interest to OpenGL once Voodoo and NVidia hardware started getting cheaper.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

Basic (at least 4 or 5 variants), C, C++, Tcl/tk, Bash, Pascal, Jade, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, ASP, T-SQL, Visual Basic 3 and above, VB.Net, F#, VBA, Lisp, Perl, Boo and a few others - though C# has been my language of choice since the early beta's of the .Net Framework v1.

What was your first professional programming gig?

I think probably working as a Junior at Terabyte Interactive (when they were based in Newmarket) on a rowing machine C++/OpenGl visualization app (the infamous RowPro project).

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Without a doubt - I was passionate about it when I was 8... I'm still passionate about it after 20 years. It scratches 2 itches I've had my entire life, a need to create and a need to debate/discuss/analyze problems/challenges.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Learn to learn, and if you don't like learning find a new profession.  I almost feel like learning is my job, and developing solutions is a side-effect of trying to achieve my primary objective of learning.

What's the most fun you've ever had ... programming?

Hmm... I couldn't pick any one project - most fun environment-wise would be my early days a Terabyte, it had a wonderful dot-com feel, and we didn't have much work on (at times), so we got to pursue our own pet projects and take long team breakfasts in the local cafe - A fun environment, albeit a doomed one.

Probably since then I would say the "Syzmk Rich Media Processor" - an application which had a wonderful variety of requirements and an interesting suite of technologies (it was developed with early releases of the Castle project and betas of the .Net Framework 2.0) and was one of the first projects I approached in a TDD fashion.

Who’s next?

• DevHawk
• Sam Gentile
• Jacqui's Dev blog
• Castle Charlton (Insane World)
• Keith Nicholas