Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Code Trip Boise Code Camp Video
The Code Trip guys shot some video at the Boise Code Camp and it's now online. They talked to me about being a roadie and the MVP program. You'll see that at about 2:27 into the video. For you old Fox guys (aren't us all old?), you may recognize Richard Hundhausen, who is now big into Visual Studio Team System. Anthony Testi, a Fox dev from Oregon was also a speaker there and several Boise Fox devs were in attendance.
Labels: Code Camp, Code Trip, MVP
Thursday, March 13, 2008
FoxRockx Ordering Now Available
If you been waiting to get your hands on FoxRockx, you now can. Single issue and yearly subscriptions are available. If you're in the US, Hentzenwerke is handling subscriptions. If you're not in the US, head over to the German FoxPro User Group.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
NUnit: Utah DNUG
The topic at last night's meeting of the Utah .Net User Group was NUnit. Kelly Anderson did a fantastic job of explaining the basics, then did a couple of deep dives that didn't get NUnit neophites like me lost in details. I should tell you that Kelly is one of the volunteers working on NUnit 3.0, so he has great passion and knowledge on the topic. Here are things I noted, some of them I already knew, but it's good to review:
- Remember the process of Red, Green, Refactor
- You can run NUnit tests inside the Visual Studio IDE using either TestDriven.Net or Resharper. However, Resharper does not support NUnit addins.
- Everytime you get green, check in
- When you do test driven development (test first development), you naturally get low cohesion between your classes, so they're more loosely coupled. When you develop the standard way, you write the code first and tend to get more tightly coupled classes.
- Kelly recommended using nCover to check your testing coverage.
- I asked Kelly about how to add unit tests to code that you inherit and he recommend the book Working Efficiently with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. The author defines legacy code as anything that doesn't have unit tests.
If you weren't there, you missed a great presentation. I've tried to use NUnit, but have not had good success in setting up the tests and getting everything working. After last night's meeting, I feel better prepared to try it again.
- Remember the process of Red, Green, Refactor
- You can run NUnit tests inside the Visual Studio IDE using either TestDriven.Net or Resharper. However, Resharper does not support NUnit addins.
- Everytime you get green, check in
- When you do test driven development (test first development), you naturally get low cohesion between your classes, so they're more loosely coupled. When you develop the standard way, you write the code first and tend to get more tightly coupled classes.
- Kelly recommended using nCover to check your testing coverage.
- I asked Kelly about how to add unit tests to code that you inherit and he recommend the book Working Efficiently with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. The author defines legacy code as anything that doesn't have unit tests.
If you weren't there, you missed a great presentation. I've tried to use NUnit, but have not had good success in setting up the tests and getting everything working. After last night's meeting, I feel better prepared to try it again.
Labels: Utah DNUG
Boise Code Camp Wrap Up
Boise Code Camp was fantastic. It was held this past Saturday on the Boise State University campus. They had 500 people register and about 375 showed up. Amazing! I think we had about 100 at the last Utah Code Camp.
My favorite session was "Architecture Fish Bowl". Think of it as a panel discussion where any audience member can get up and join the panel. When someone does that, a current panel member has to sit in the audience. Microsoft's Scott Hanselman moderated. Some things I picked up from the session:
- Architecture does not equal design. Architecture is far more reaching than a single application. The design fits into the architecture.
- One way you can tell you're doing architecture is if there is governance around it.
- The roll of the architect is to provide direction
- I learned a new term, "Refactorbation". It refers to people who just sit around and tidy code.
- Architects aren't the founatain of all knowledge. They should hold "town meetings" to get the input from other members of their teams.
Richard Hundhausen did a great session on Visual Team System Database Edition. I had never seen this part of Team Suite before, but I'm now convinced it's the only way to do SQL Server database maintenance. You can run tests on your TSQL code, store stored procedures in source control, run code analysis on the TSQL and more.
My third favorite session was one on "Prism", a new package coming out of Microsoft's Patterns and Practices group. Glenn Block, who is on the P&P team was there to show it off and this was the first time Prism had been shown outside of Microsoft. Prism is not a new CAB or part of the Enterprise Library. Prism is designed to manage composite WPF applications. This is where you have a form with a menu, toolbar, and maybe some kind of links on the left-hand side. The main part of the form hosts different plugins that are the main UI. The first public test release is available here.
Other sessions I attended include Service Oriented Architecture and NHibernate. My session on Continuous Integration went very well. I heard great feedback on it after.
The Code Trip crew was there too, shooting video for their site and Channel 9. They asked me about being a Roadie on the bus and about the MVP Program. I'm still waiting for the video to be posted.
Saturday evening, The Code Trip crew sponsored a party at the BSU Hall of Fame. Great food and lots of fun. There were three XBox 360s set up. I tried my hand as a drummer in Rock Band and failed miserably. Not surprising since I'm musically declined.
All in all, Boise Code Camp was fantastic. I'm hoping to make it again next year.
My favorite session was "Architecture Fish Bowl". Think of it as a panel discussion where any audience member can get up and join the panel. When someone does that, a current panel member has to sit in the audience. Microsoft's Scott Hanselman moderated. Some things I picked up from the session:
- Architecture does not equal design. Architecture is far more reaching than a single application. The design fits into the architecture.
- One way you can tell you're doing architecture is if there is governance around it.
- The roll of the architect is to provide direction
- I learned a new term, "Refactorbation". It refers to people who just sit around and tidy code.
- Architects aren't the founatain of all knowledge. They should hold "town meetings" to get the input from other members of their teams.
Richard Hundhausen did a great session on Visual Team System Database Edition. I had never seen this part of Team Suite before, but I'm now convinced it's the only way to do SQL Server database maintenance. You can run tests on your TSQL code, store stored procedures in source control, run code analysis on the TSQL and more.
My third favorite session was one on "Prism", a new package coming out of Microsoft's Patterns and Practices group. Glenn Block, who is on the P&P team was there to show it off and this was the first time Prism had been shown outside of Microsoft. Prism is not a new CAB or part of the Enterprise Library. Prism is designed to manage composite WPF applications. This is where you have a form with a menu, toolbar, and maybe some kind of links on the left-hand side. The main part of the form hosts different plugins that are the main UI. The first public test release is available here.
Other sessions I attended include Service Oriented Architecture and NHibernate. My session on Continuous Integration went very well. I heard great feedback on it after.
The Code Trip crew was there too, shooting video for their site and Channel 9. They asked me about being a Roadie on the bus and about the MVP Program. I'm still waiting for the video to be posted.
Saturday evening, The Code Trip crew sponsored a party at the BSU Hall of Fame. Great food and lots of fun. There were three XBox 360s set up. I tried my hand as a drummer in Rock Band and failed miserably. Not surprising since I'm musically declined.
All in all, Boise Code Camp was fantastic. I'm hoping to make it again next year.
Labels: Boise, Code Camp, The Code Trip
Friday, March 07, 2008
Live from The Code Trip
As I write and post this, The Code Trip bus is rolling north on I-15, heading out from Salt Lake City to Boise. This is the same bus that Styx used for their tour.
The guys did a great presentation in SLC on some great new technologies that Microsoft announced at Mix earlier this week in Las Vegas. We saw demos of IE 8, Silverlight 2.0, and Deep Zoom. You can check them out on the Mix site.
After their presentation, we had a geek dinner at Greek Souvlaki (Geek Souvlaki).
We should roll into Boise somewhere between 1 and 2 am, then Code Camp starts promptly at 8:00.
I'll post pictures shortly after I get home Sunday afternoon.
The guys did a great presentation in SLC on some great new technologies that Microsoft announced at Mix earlier this week in Las Vegas. We saw demos of IE 8, Silverlight 2.0, and Deep Zoom. You can check them out on the Mix site.
After their presentation, we had a geek dinner at Greek Souvlaki (Geek Souvlaki).
We should roll into Boise somewhere between 1 and 2 am, then Code Camp starts promptly at 8:00.
I'll post pictures shortly after I get home Sunday afternoon.
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