The Morning Brew #290

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