The Morning Brew

Software

• YUI 2.7.0 Released - The Yahoo User Interface library team announce the release of YUI 2.7.0, which brings with it new functionality in the form of the StyleSheet utility, improves support for IE8, fixes a load of bugs and promotes three components out of ‘beta’ status

Information

• New Release: Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight v2.0 (PRISM) - J.D. Meier announces the official release of the Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight Version 2, often referred to as ‘Prism’. Also, Blaine Wastell shares some screenshots of the sample application from Prism V2 and links to a number of resources about the parts of this release, along with some video content.
• DDD: What Kind of Applications Is It Suited To? - Casey Charlton continues his DDD series with a look at how well Domain Driven Design fits with different types of application development.
• System.Linq.Enumerable.Aggregate - Better Know an Extension Method Part 1 - Chris Hampson gives a nice example rich introduction to the Aggregate Linq extension method.
• Implement Linq to Objects in C# 2.0 - Think Before Coding - Jérémie Chassaing explores how you can implement a lot of Linq like functionality in C#2, looking at how Linq works and how an implementation can be achieved in C#2
• Types of testing - Laila Bougria offers definitions for the various types of testing that can occur in a software project. Many people seem to get bogged down in the idea that testing == unit testing and then actually create ‘unit test’ which are actually different types of test (such as integration test, load test, etc)
• Fluent Interfaces: What am I missing? - David Starr considers what Fluent Interfaces are, and if they are actually useful in many contexts.
• GOF’s Adapters and Some Magic - Erich Ledesma examines the Gang of Four Adapter pattern, and shows how you can antomatically generate Adapter functionality to make implementation easier.
• C#: Extensions methods != Open classes - Mark Needham reminds us that extension methods do not mean our classes all instantly become Open Classes (in the sense of the Open Closed principle). One of the key missing features is the ability to override using extension methods.
• Reflection Speed Test - How slow is it really? - Grant Barrington looks at one of the common uses of reflection, to get a name for an enumeration value, and pits its performance against a number of other ways of achieving the same.
• The M Programming Language - Part 2 - Collections and Extents - Bart De Smet continues his series on the M programming language with a look at implementing collections and extents, comparing to implementations in C# and Linq.
• Effective Error Handling with WCF & REST - Rob Bagby looks at providing good error handling in WCF based REST services using HTTP status codes and error descriptions.

Community

• WebDD ‘09 - Reading - 18th April 2009 - The first of 2 clashing community events announced yesterday, Web DD is a Free conference to be hosted at Microsoft’s Reading campus. Like the other DeveloperDeveoperDeveloper events this is a Saturday event which will cover all things web and web related, and will have information about many of the things that are to be announced at Mix09. Speaker submissions for this event are now open
• Announcing the Alt.Net.UK ‘in the North’ Conference - Richard Fennell announces an ALT.NET event in the north of England, unfortunatly to be held on the same day as Web DD 09. This will be the usual Alt.Net style of an open spaces event with session planning taking place on the Friday evening and the main conference on the Saturday.
• Hereford Falls To The Mighty NxtGen Empire - Guy Smith-Ferrier announces the latest branch of the NxtGen usergroup to operate out of Hereford, with the first meeting being on the 17th May.
• Alt.net London Beers #6 - Sebastien Lambla announces the 6th Alt.Net London Beers event, a short open spaces session ina pub. This time round they event is sponsored by TeQUILA\UK and Thoughtworks

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Slightly later than planned, here’s today’s edition….

Information

• Creating a common generic and extensible NHiberate Repository - Chris Marisic shares his implementation of a Generic repository for use with NHibernate
• Hashing Algorithm Roundup - Beau Monday follows on from yesterdays encryption round up with a similar look at hashing algorithms.
• .NET Circuit Breakers - Tobin Harris looks at the concept of a Circuit Breaker in programming, and highlights the Lokad Shared Libraries which contain nice implementations of the Circuit breaker along with code for handling exceptions, retries, etc in an elegant way.
• ASP.NET 4.0: ViewStateMode…giving you more control over ViewState! - Scott Galloway, in continuation of his series of posts on ASP.NET 4.0 , explores some of the viewstate changes coming in ASP.NET 4.0
• Controlling Time - Patrick Kua looks at how you can provide time based tests with times you want by insulating your dependency on the actual time
• Parameter Order Should Be Consistent - Brendan Enrick writes about an annoyance I also discovered the other day about a lack on consistency in parameter order between some common (and related) exception constructors.
• Long division - Eric Lippert explores why when dividing an int by a long returns a long.
• Tales from High Memory Scenarios: Part 2 - Sasha Goldshtein continues his series on High memory use, looking further into the problems encountered, and talks about the use of the debugger to inspect what was going on.
• Much Ado About Monads – Maybe Edition - Matthew Podwysocki attempts to explain what Monads are and why we should care about them, exploring the origins in Haskell, and looking at implementations in F#
• Anonymous Methods, Lambdas, Confusion - Mike Taulty looks at the evolution of the language support for anonymous methods and lambda expressions, working from first principles through to the format we have available now.
• ConfigSectionHandler for Hierarchical configs - Rohit Gupta gives a (mostly code) run through of how you can easily build custom configuration section handlers to read nested config from the application configuration file.
• Annotating Code with .NET Reflector and Review Add-In - Ben Hall looks at using Reflector with a Reviewing add-in for performing code and API reviews
• ASP.NET MVC Source Code Now Available - The source code for the RC1 release of ASP.NET MVC is now available on the ASP.NET Codeplex site.
• User Experience Changes since Beta 2 - The Internet Explorer team talk about some of the User Interface refinements based on user feedback that went into the latest release of Internet Explorer 8 (RC1)
• ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RC1 and T4 Templates - Add Controller. - David Hayden looks into the new ASp.NET MVC IDE integration with T4 templating, providing nice templates for thinsg like controllers, etc
• SQL Server 2008 System Views poster is now available for download! - Aaron Bertrand highlights the availability of the SQL 2008 edition of the System Views poster which details the data contained and the relationships between the system views in the 2008 release of SQL Server

Community

• UK SQL Server User Group Event - Manchester - 5th Feb 2009 - The opening meeting of a new Manchester based SQL Server User group, with two talks, Tony Rogerson on Bits and Bobs to help the developer and DBA with TSQL and Martin Bell on Table Valued Parameters

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Problems with Ma.gnolia’s web service have delayed this mornings edition of the Morning Brew - as soon as I can build today’s edition I will post it up

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Software

• Minh T. Nguyen’s Mandelbrot Explorer 1.0 in Silverlight 2.0 with source code - I’m a sucker for a nice Mandelbrot Set, and Minh T. Nguyen has created a nice Silverlight application for exploring them, and provides details of how the application was created and full source too.

Information

• The Fat Controller - Ian Cooper explores a bad code smell in MVC projects, the Fat Controller Class (no, nothing to do with Thomas the Tank Engine), looking at how you can end up with Fat Controllers, the side effects and what you can do about them
• .NET Development on Linux - Eric Bergman-Terrell walks through the steps of getting up and running with developing .NET in Linux using a Virtual machine, and introduces some of the tools from the Mono project in this Dr Dobbs article.
• What make a good unit test? - Mark Needham explores what he considers makes a good unit test.
• The Private Life of a Public API - Jeff Moser talks about API design, best practices, and my favourite book (Framework Design Guidelines)
• Tip #32: Did you know… How to easily create your own project templates? - A nice tip about creating your own project templates in Visual Studio - had I know it was this easy I think I would already have made a bunch of my own
• The Weekly Source Code 28 - ASP.NET MVC Beta Obscurity - ModelState.IsValid is False because ModelBinder pulls values from RouteData - Scott Hanselman sees some weird behaviour in ASP.NET MVC due to the DefaultValueProvider, and goes exploring the source to see what is going on.
• Known Installation Issues With ASP.NET MVC - Phil Haack highlights two know installation issues with ASP.NET MVC and explains a work around in each case.
• F# + TestDriven.NET + xUnit.net = WIN - Matthew Podwysocki talks about some tools that he has been finding very useful when combined for developing F#
• Synchronization in WinForms with Lambdas - Patrick Steele shows a nice example of lambda expressions really improving the clarity of the code to deal with updating UI from different threads in WinForms applications.
• Isolation frameworks – lessons from the wild - Roy Osherove talks about some real world reactions to mocking / isolation frameworks based on his collection of students at a TDD master class. Some very good points raised here
• Fluent NHibernate’s AutoPersistenceModel: I Love it! - Chris van de Steeg talks about Fluent NHibernate’s AutoPersistenceModel which takes the pain out of object relational mapping using NHibernate by generating the mappings for you based on common conventions - looks really useful for quick projects.

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Today’s edition of the Morning Brew will be slightly delayed - a combination of factors (including me throwing my physical morning brew [mug of coffee] all over my desk, and the Ma.gnolia web service API timing out) have conspired against me this morning. If the WS doesn’t come back soon I’ll put the post together manually.

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Information

• Where TDD fails for me - Jimmy Bogard talks about some of his current problem areas when working in a test driven way.
• Multi-tenancy part 1: Strategy. - Mike Hadlow talks about Multi-Tenancy in Web applications, and considers what strategy will work well for his ECommerce project. Mike and I talked at length about this subject at the UK Alt.Net conference, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how he goes about doing it - can’t wait for part 2.
• Introducing IronPython - Harry Pierson looks at IronPython in this introductory article, looking at how it differs from C# and VB.NET and yet still allows you to make good use of your .NET experience.
• XML Documentation File For Your .Net Project - It’s Important - Shahar Y reminds us about the XML Documentation Generation in Visual Studio and how that helps with working with the code in the IDE.
• Spike Code and Source Control - K. Scott Allen makes some good sense about not throwing away any code by keeping all your spike code in source code control for a number of very good reasons
• Emergent Complexity - Justin Etheredge talks about complexity in code due to interactions between classes, in the hopes of making people consider complexity when writing their applications
• Constructors and Inheritance – Why is this still so painful? - Tom Hollander talks about the pain points of having lots of constructors that you also want in implemented in subclasses

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Another day, another significant Microsoft Announcement, so today we have a special section dedicated to the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 announcements.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0

• Microsoft Unveils Next Version of Visual Studio and .NET Framework - The official Microsoft Press Release regarding VS2010 and .NET framework 4, focusing on what seems to be a key area, Application Lifecycle Management.
• What’s next for Visual Studio and .NET FX? - Somasegar talks about the key focuses and priorities of the Visual Studio and .NET framework teams looking forward to VS2010 and .NET 4
• Microsoft Announces Visual Studio 2010. Developers Respond. - CIO.com has a great article about VS2010 and .NET 4.0, getting responses from a number of Developers about the news.
• Visual Studio Team System 2010 Week on Channel 9! - The agenda for a week of all things Visual Studio 2010 on Channel 9, starting with the announcement, and moving on to Business Alignment, Software Quality and Team Foundation Server on Friday.
• Visual Studio Development and Database Edition are one - Grant Holliday focuses on one part of the VS2010 announcement - it looks like anyone who owns Visual Studio 2005/2008 Team or database edition will get to use both products from 1st October
• Shining the Light on Rosario - Brian Harry talks about the details of the VSTS plan, and about the three pillars and how the new product supports them.

Software

• NHibernate 2.0.1.GA is released - A point release of NHibernate, fixing a few bugs, making a few improvements and including some patches.
• A Web Based Sequence Diagram Editor - Dev102.com highlight a useful looking Web Based Sequence Diagram Editor, which generates sequence diagram images from simple textual representations.

Information

• My MVC Starter Template - Rob Conery shares his own version of the default ASP.NET MVC site template, with slightly different organisation and some useful features out of the box it looks like it might be a good starting point for new sites.
• Common issues found in code review - Ayende shares some interesting pieces of code, showing how each can be improved by using language features better or making the code clearer.
• Object Oriented F# - Creating Classes - Matthew Podwysocki goes back to F# Basics, starting new series on the object oriented features of F#, looking at creating classes in this part.
• IComparer vs IEqualityComparer - Keyvan Nayyeri thinks about searching and sorting collections, and looks at the two interfaces involved, IComparer and IEqualityComparer
• Introducing Lucene.Net - Andrew Smith gives a brief introduction to using Lucene.NET for full text indexing

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50 editions of the Morning Brew already - time flies when you are reading far too many TechBlogs! I’m still playing catchup from the weekend so today is a little lighter than planned.

Software

• Firefox 3 beta 4 now available for download - Latest Beta of Firefox 3 is now available - I wonder how it stacks up agains IE8
• Graphics Debugger Visualizer. - A neat CodeProject sample, wich gives a functional Visual Studio Debugger visualiser for Graphics objects

Information

• Professional Visual Studio Extensibility - Finally Released - Keyvan Nayyeri announces the official release of his book on Extensibility
• Constructor Chaining - C# 411 shows a nice way of making all your constructors share code.
• Fitting Linq To Sql into a real world datalayer - Justin Etheredge looks at using Linq to Sql in his data tier, highlighting some of the common pitfalls
• A Question of Programming Ethics - Coding Horror highlights a horrific abuse of user supplied information
• Inside Vista Sidebar - A nice overview of the functionality provided in the Vista Sidebar for developers.
• Visitors and Multiple Dispatch - K. Scott Allen looks at implementing multiple dispatch with Expression<T>, but doesn’t get a particularly great outcome.
• Thoughts on ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 and Beyond - Phil Haack reviews the latest MVC beta, and looks towards future enhancements

Community

• Liverpool .Net Usergroup - 1st Meeting - Tonight marks the first meeting of the newly founded Liverpool .NET usergroup

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