Here are some topic suggestions:

• Getting started with AppFabric
• Silverlight 4
• MEF In Silverlight 4
• Sliverlight 4 - Printing support...
• Silverlight 4 - Review of new features etc.
• Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) support coming for Win2k3 in December.
• What's the difference between Covariance and assignment compatibility?
• Been reading "Coders at Work" – interesting view of “elite” developers. 
• BizTalk v.next prototype BizTalk v.next prototype.
• What NZ searched for in 2009 What NZ searched for in 2009.
• Come and learn about VS2010 - with JD.
• Rx Released Interesting - logo looks like the old Volta one... guess because it's the same team?
• Refactor or Rewrite?
• Recycling excess heat from data centres.
• Software Kata Videos ... http://katas.softwarecraftsmanship.org/
• Google Chrome OS Details
• Version 2.0.8.1007 NHibernate Visualizer beta released.

We’ll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Thursday 3rd November.

The above topics are just a fall back in case we run out of anything else to discuss.  Note we’ve also taken to devising the list of topics collaboratively on Google wave – This weeks wave can be found here.

Note: If you are a regular attendee and don’t have a wave account yet drop me an email and we’ll see if we can get you an invite.

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.

Here are some topic suggestions:

• The SOA Manifesto - Pointlessness manifested.
• Pimp My Architecture.
• Willed vs. Forced Development.
• Go or Unladen Swallow?
• InternetNZ announces formation of New Zealand IPv6 Task Force.
• Linq to Sql Profiler Now in public beta.
• Voyage of the Buccaneer Scholar.
• Concurrent programming presentation.
• WPF Memory Leaks.
• ASP.Net MVC 2 Beta 2 Release.
• PDC Stuff, like the Ray Ozzie keynote etc.
• Microsoft open sources the .Net Micro framework.
• It's time for ActiveRecordEngine.Net for ASP.Net MVC.
• Fusion ioExtreme Review.
• Dynamic method bag.

We’ll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Thursday 19th November.

The above topics are just a fall back in case we run out of anything else to discuss.  Note we’ve also taken to devising the list of topics collaboratively on Google wave – This weeks wave can be found here.

Note: If you are a regular attendee and don’t have a wave account yet drop me an email and we’ll see if we can get you an invite.

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.

Architecture chat tomorrow, apologies for the late post.

Here’s some possible topics:

• Scala - I've been learning Scala in my spare time... especially as I'm doing the odd bit of Java/JVM work, and well.. Java sucks... Seems like a great grab bag of features that I'd like to see introduced into C# like Traits… Thoughts? Opinions? – and of course there’s Scala.Net to consider too
• Visualising Windsor Components
• Ninject2 (from Peter) faster, smaller, uses CSL, "just works", auto module scanning "just binds", removed bad features such as private and field injections. Still not finished but very useable. Proper support for MVC
• Javascript MVC
• .Net Needs Spring??
• MEF + IoC - Is anyone using both MEF and IoC container, can they shed any wisdom. I know Glenn is hopefully going to enlighten us soon (see his first part in a series on this) -this is becoming important to me as I'm starting to suffer lots of headaches from choosing to use an IoC container as my plug-in/extensibility framework where 3rd parties can write plug ins (i.e. installing stuff into the container is ok, uninstalling it at run time, and educating other developers... not so much) - also what patterns (like generic decorators etc.) aren't suitable when considering modular applications.
• Mauricio Scheffer also mentioned that Krzysztof is working to bridge Windsor and MEF, and that the initial patch looks promising (for lazy component loading).
  
• Literate Programming… Thoughts?
• Horn Get Live – The next step in Horn’s “Evolution” is here – check out the http://www.hornget.net/packages/ website … I think this is really starting to show promise
• Spec Explorer - Model Base Testing Tool
• Watir/watin and Continuous integration – running tests when your not logged into machines etc.
• WPF 4 Changes...
• Roll Top Concept PC
• Units of Measure in F#
• NHibernate & Execution Plans and Andrei Volkov’s in depth post covering the history of this issue

We’ll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Thursday 5th November.

The above topics are just a fall back in case we run out of anything else to discuss.  Note we’ve also taken to devising the list of topics collaboratively on Google wave – This weeks wave can be found here.

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.

The Auckland Architecture Chat is on tomorrow, at 11:30am, Garrisons, in Sylvia Park.

Here a list of some possible topics:

• Five simple database design errors you should avoid.
• VS 2010 Beta 2 available - some useful link posts here and here.
• Role of P&P Team in Microsoft Development?
• Approaches to sanitizing/parsing html, including regexs, sglm reader, hpricot, htmltidy, antixss, xhtml dtd and approaches employed by social sites like facebook and opensocial (such as you might find in say shindig or pesta).
• Do we still, or did we ever really need http. ( and past thoughts of Blackbird)
• Sharepoint 2010 Development content published.
• Microsoft Ajax Minifier vs YUI Compressor.
• Google wave first impressions - as we all get our google invites and have a play - what do we think?
• Evolving the key/value programming model to a higher level.
• Http Archive Specification - now implemented in firebug and httpWatch. 
• Lightspeed 3.0 beta - including goodies like Migration support.
• LLBLGen Pro version 3 sneak peak.
• Linq to sql profiler private beta.
• Nhibernate shards progress report. 
• IntelliJ IDEA Goes open source.
• Nobody wants my code...
• Tim Berners Lee - Admitting // wasn't required.
  

We’ll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Thursday 22nd October – and the topics above are just there in case we run out of anything else to talk about (which is rare).

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.

The Auckland Architecture Chat is on tomorrow, at 11:30am, Garrisons, in Sylvia Park.

• Lightweight debugging for Hybrid C#/IronPython Apps.
• Asp.Net MVC Preview 2.
• Good Developers Write Good Code Instinctively.
• Texo – Power Shell CI Server.
• Create projects from standard source control templates – Warmup.
• Using seadragon with ASP.Net MVC.
• Duct tape programmers.
• WebsiteSpark Program Announcement.
• XUnit 1.5 Shipped.
• The Visual Studio Documentary.
• Rich Hickey & Brian Beckman – Inside Clojure.
• MySpace Qizmt – Open Source Map Reduce Framework.
• Scratch interface.
• Using a service bus for queries…
• PHP to ADO.Net Data Services bridge.
• Mono touch 1.0 release and the recent monomania on hanselminutes podcast.
• Software transactional memory in .Net 4.0.  Recent podcast on .Net Rocks here.
• Good reason for remove functionality...
• Stack Overflow Careers
  

We’ll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Thursday 8th October – and the topics above are just there in case we run out of anything else to talk about (which is rare).

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.

The Auckland Architecture Chat is on tomorrow, at 11:30am, Garrisons, in Sylvia Park.

• Codeplex foundation announcement
• Blog Reactions from Miguel DeIcaza, Scott Bellware, Phill Haack (1,2) John V Peterson, Jeremy D Miller, Scott Hanselman.
• Letting things die on the vine.
• Microsoft’s secret “Courier” booklet device unveiled.
• Codecamp / Teched Post-mortem.
• Version v0.16 of Pex released – it’s getting better and better.
• MonoTouch 1.0 went live.
• BDD
• Rob Connery – Make BDD your BFF.
• Mspec.. for Boo!
• Roy Osherove – Steal my book…
• Kata – have you done any lately?
• UncleBob’s Karta (bowling game, prime factors etc.).
• Pragmatic programmers – CodeKata.
• Interesting article on xmpp/google wave opportunities by Jason Kolb.
• 10 Reasons pair programming is not for the masses.
• Google jstemplate.
• SunSpider JavaScript benchmark.
• Technology behind Microsoft TechEd New Zealand 2009.
• Make it easy to refactor…
• Why do ref and out parameters not allow type variation? (something I’d always wondered about)
• Writing a Z-Machine interpreter in C#.
• Wither the repository.
• NHibernate Profiler goes 1.0 – anyone else bought a copy?
• DSL 09 Blog.
• Drawing the line between MVC Controlls and Application Services.

We had a smallish turnout last time that focused on mostly reviewing Visual NHibernate – so most of the topics from the last session are still up for discussion too – you can find them listed here.

We’ll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Thursday 24th September – and the topics above are just there in case we run out of anything else to talk about (which is rare).

Update: Jamie from Slyce software will be demoing the first cut of entity-first modeling support in Visual NHibernate.

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.

Thanks to all those people who enjoyed endured an hour of me talking about Domain Specific Languages and Boo :)

Slides

Slides can be downloaded from here, and a zip file containing the code is here.

The DSL Book

If you found this topic interesting and want to learn more about writing Domain Specific Languages with Boo, I strongly encourage you to buy Ayende’s book “Writing domain specific languages in boo”.

It’s very thorough (350 odd pages) – and includes a lot of guidance around not only writing a domain specific language with Boo, but the far larger topic of incorporating a business DSL into real world applications, versioning concerns, batch compilation etc. that must be considered when ever you write a domain specific language to be used in a production system.

Do yourself a favour and buy it today – it’s currently in Mannings EAP (early access program) – but is complete and just undergoing the final editing stages before going to print.

Boo & Boo DSL Resources

• http://boo.codehaus.org/
• Boo language google group
• Boo Tutorials
  • Boo Primer
  • Hello Boo
  • Differences with C#
  • Differences with Python
  • Boo Who
• IDE Support / Development Environments
  • Sharpdevelop website (IDE capable of building Boo projects on windows).
  • MonoDevelop (Mono IDE capable of building Boo projects, windows version does not currently support boo).
  • Boo Lang Studio (Boo plugin for visual Studio .net 2008 – fairly alpha)
  • Booish (A boo command line interpreter / REPL)
• RhinoDSL
  • RhinoDSL Tutorial.
  • RhinoDSL on github.
• Ayende’s Posts
  • DSL posts
  • Boo posts

Syntax highlighting Editors

I had a few questions via email / skype about the WPF syntax highlighting component I used in my demos – it was AvalonEdit, part of the SharpDevelop 4.0 project – you can grab the code via subversion from here:

svn://svnmirror.sharpdevelop.net/sharpdevelop/trunk/SharpDevelop/src/Libraries/AvalonEdit

Ayende’s book also covers building a simple script editor using the SharpDevelop windows forms editor control (know as ICSharpCode.TextEditor)… there is an article on codeplex here which describes how to use that library.

Thanks! and Next Architecture Chat

Thanks all for coming to code camp – and for those that are interested, we have an upcoming Architecture Chat this Thursday 24th September at 11:30am – hopefully we might see a few new faces there this week!

Some possible topics:

• Extensible languages like Boo & Nemerle.
• Boo 0.9.2 released.
• Teched NZ 2009 Next Week.
• Why are so many developer tools orange?
• Myth of Software Development – Open vs. Closed.
• On the fly assembly decompression.
• Interesting .Net / Java Integration projects…
• DotWeb 
• ScriptSharp / ExtSharp
• JSC
• Volta (which is dead)
• Advantages / disadvantages of C# vs IL transformation.
• Debugging experiences / other concerns?
• Doloto on DevLabs – and let’s not forget Aptimize.
• NHibernate Commercial Support.
• Nice set of lucene tutorials from Simone Chiaretta.
• Screen Activator Pattern.
• SharpDevelop goes 32bit by default.
• Scott Hanselman’s 2009 Tools List.
• CodeRush vs. ReSharper.
• RhinoMocks 3.6.
• Fluent NHibernate 1.0 RTM.
• Repository Implementation Patterns.

Edit: Some Late Editions from David (who gives his appologies, and wont be able to make it tomorrow).

• Visual NHibernate Beta Release.
• StoryTeller & Preview Release Blog Post.
  

There is also the code camp this Sunday in Auckland, at which I’ll be presenting on Domain Specific Languages, with a side-order of writing Domain Specific Languages in Boo.  I'll post about that tomorrow, and maybe include a little more detail about what I hope to cover.

We’ll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Thursday 10th September – and the topics above are just there in case we run out of anything else to talk about (which is rare).

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.

Good turn out at the last Architecture chat, including Guy, who hadn't been to one for over a year, and Murray, a new comer.

• Secunia Corporate Software Scanner - How to identify missing patches etc.
• Discussed the 97 things every software architect should know and Beautiful Architecture books - I'll bring them along next time if anyone wants to borrow them.
• Discussed Facebook's key/value database Cassandra.
• Discussed approaches for publishing and consuming RSS, talked about PubSub Hubbub.
• Discussed selecting technologies for building CRUD Apps, and what are good technologies for learning ORM.
• Discussed NHibernate being the Swiss army knife, lots of features, interesting place to learn as you will become aware with almost every facet of ORM nomenclature etc.
• Discussed Summer of NHibernate series of screen casts / tutorials.
• Discussed Entity Framework, Linq2Sql  and others including Lightspeed.
• Discussed difference between highly opinionated vs. non-opinionated ORM's.
• Software Craftsmanship - sparked off by this article in the Herald - general consensus was we didn't agree at all with the article, and that there is an obvious disconnect between the view points of academia and practicing developers.
• Discussed the ideas of Science based engineering rigueur improving software quality and stopping projects running over budget, and it’s rather short-sighted view of how software defects originate / what contributes to overall “software quality”.
• Big discussion was around Software "engineering" - and how far removed from other engineering disciplines we are.
• Discussed fact that most software development focused degrees in New Zealand don't qualify you to join IPENZ - and if we could, most of us wouldn't want to.
• Discussed the laughable Idea of forcing developers to study something every year to “stay current” – everyone agreed if you’re not learning something every day as a developer, your doing it wrong.
• Service Buses & IoC Containers (the conversation got a bit mixed up between these two) – things we discussed were:
• When to adopt, i.e. how big does a project have to be, what problems should you be facing.
• Quite a bit of discussion around the misnomer of "how big" being a reason to adopt any technology, rather then how complex, good fit etc.
• Discussed the dangers of adopting technology and practices prematurely.
• Examples of .Net service bus:
• Mass Transit.
• NServiceBus.
• Discussed the .Net Mailing List - Josh didn't know what it was, which in some way reflects that it’s not longer promoted any more, discussed it succumbing to a slow death, how stack overflow affected question traffic etc. – FYI You can still subscribe to the dot.net.nz mailing lists here.
• Expressed annoyance that dot.net.nz no longer works after the “upgrade” to sharepoint, need the www. prefix.
• Wordpress twitter-like themes/plugins, such as the prologue / P2 theme.
• Pomodoro timers, including tomatoes, footballs, iphone apps and even *gasp horror* on-screen timers.

Some Possible Topics:

• HawkCodeBox – interesting DLR syntax highlighting text box.
• Sustainability verses Maintainability?
• Oslo team merging with Data Programmability Team.
• Simpler Transactions – which is really part of a larger topic, of “abusing using”.  Though something I do on occasion, is it really a good idea? (I link to Phil’s post because there’s a good discussion on this point in the comments).
• Moonlight 2.0 goes beta.
• Tokyo Cabinet,Tokyo Tyrant and Tokyo Dystopia.  There’s a .net implementation of the Tyrant wire protocol here.  Just starting to experiment with these..
• How to get the maximum performance out of your Plinq query.
• Fundamentalist Functional Programming.
• Quantity is not a measure of quality.
• Writing great unit tests – best and worst practices.
• The application and application services in silverlight 3.
• What do you do about inaccurate data?
• Arrays of arrays… or, why language design is never easy.
• Government plans to filter the internet – now in official draft.
• Tips for rich client development.
• How to be a software professional or craftsmen? (From David).
  

We’ll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Thursday  27th August – and the topics above are just there in case we run out of anything else to talk about (which is rare).

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.