The Morning Brew

Software

• ColorCode 1.0 Released! – Drew Miller announces the release of ColorCode a library to colour source code in a number of lanuages (V1 supports HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML, C#, VB.NET, C++, and ASP.NET). This library as well as being hosted on CodePlex is also used within the CodePlex platform to do code colourization
• Protecting your precious code – Naming inside our obfuscater – Paul Mason talks about the implementation of NCloak and its first public release. NCloak is a Mono.Cecil powered code obfuscation tool, and this post talks about the basic implementation of it.
• NH Prof: Feature Freeze – Ayende announces the NH Prof, the NHibernate Query Profiler is heading towards a V1 release, meaning that the beta period discount will run out on Friday 11th September, so you might want to get in quick while the 30% off offer still stands.

Information

• FeatureBranch – Martin Fowler talks about the changing strategies for branching and merging features due to the rise of Distributed Version Control tools like GIT. Martin also looks at how these behaviours fit in with the Continuous Integration model, and looks at the idea of Promiscuous Integration
• Image Processing in F#: From Image File to Array – Rick Minerich takes a look at F#’s array handling capabilities and how these can be applied to working with images
• Coding: Reduce fields, delay calculations – Mark Needham talks about avoiding doing calculations in constructors and storing the values in fields, instead opting for a more lazy loaded approach
• Maybe Monad… my C# version – Zack Owens shares an implementation of a Maybe Monad, a monad which acts as a container for a value (or a lack of value) and provides an interface facade to the value. His Full implementation is available via a link at the end of the post
• Simple Auditing using an NHibernate IInterceptor (part 1) – Scott Kirkland starts a series looking at creating auditing functionality by using the NHibernate IInterceptor functionality to hook into the events within the NHibernate framework
• Flexible Web UI Workflow application through ASP.NET MVC & Windows Workflow Foundation. Free source code and programming help – V.Gnanasekaran talks about the implementation of a web based user interface that follows a workflow using ASP.NET MVC in this CodeProject article
• Tell, Don’t Ask – Part 1 – Ketan starts a series of posts on the Tell, Don’t Ask style of programming which aims to make code more readable. This first part introduces the concept via a simple example, and follows up with
• Part 2 – looking at having objects which expose behaviour rather than exposing their state
• Changing Code In A Running Application – Joel Ross talks about swapping the code that is running in an application without taking the application down via the use of AppDomains, illustrating it with some code samples
• Answer: The lazy loaded inheritance many to one association OR/M conundrum – Ayende shares the answer to yesterdays puzzle about the types that you would get after loading from an ORM, and uses Davy Brion’s simple DAL to illustrate why this happens
• What’s the Difference, Part Five: certificate signing vs strong naming – Eric Lippert talks about the differences between strong naming assemblies and signing with a certificate and how the two techniques are designed to solve to different problems
• ASP.NET MVC Transaction Attribute (using NHibernate) – Scott Kirkland shares some useful code that allows you to decorate an ASP.NET MVC controller action with an attribute to have it run the whole controller action using an NHibernate transaction

Community

• Alt.NET Bristol Beers #2 – Guy Smith-Ferrier announces the second Birstol Alt.Net Beers event to be held on Wednesday 16th September at the Portcullis in Bristol from around 6pm.
• How to get a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate! – Microsoft are getting people to host launch parties for Windows 7 during the week 22-29 October. The incentive being a free signature copy of Windows 7 Ultimate for the host and a Windows7 Party pack to help the party go smoothly

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Software

• ASTreeView 1.0 Released – JIN Weijie announces the release of ASTreeView 1.0, an ASP.NET treeview control which contains rich functionality allowing for drag-drop, AJAX loading, support for context menus, import export and entry editing via AJAX. Demo project is included, and all for the great price of Free!

Information

• Scott Hanselman’s 2009 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows – Scott Hanselman has refreshed his famous ‘Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows’ for the year of 2009. Once again, this monster list contains a wonderful range of goodies, but the bit I’m most excited about is the inclusion of The Morning Brew in the Websites section – thanks Scott!
• Code Optimized Web Development Profile (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series) – ScottGu continues his series of posts on the new bits if Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 with a look a the ‘Web Development (Code Optimized)’ view which allows you to optionally hide away the WYSIWYG designer which irritates so many developers
• Don’t Delete – Just Don’t – Udi Dahan continues the discussion about soft deletes looking at why deletes often shouldn’t be a part of our design, despite users often giving requirements in CRUD terms when there is actually a more correct business process/term involved in these operations (such as discontinued in the example of ecommerce)
• Thoughts on C# 4.0 optional parameters – Krzysztof Kozmic takes a look a the new C#4 feature of optional parameters, discovering a few limitations in their use due to the under the hood implementation using attributes, and starts to explore a work arround.
• Quick Tip – Using the ShouldSerializeXXX methods – Gil Fink shares an interesting tip which allows you to conditionally control the inclusion of certain elements when the class gets serialized by adding a method starting with ShouldSerialize and the property name.
• Booting from a VHD – Charlie Calvert aggregates resources from all over and runs through the process of buliding a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) image that you can boot directly from in Windows7 allowing you to gain that bit more performance from your virtual machines.
• DDD: Repository Implementation Patterns – Jimmy Bogard takes a look a the common methods of implementing a Repository, working from the book definition of the repository pattern to two styles of implementation.
• Challenge: The lazy loaded inheritance many to one association OR/M conundrum – Ayende sets a puzzle in this post asking what the results of a seemingly simple test would be when an object graph including some inheritance is loaded using an ORM. Expect the answer tomorrow
• New Features in CTP2 ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 Explained – Nuno Filipe Godinho takes a look at the new projections and feed customisation features of the ADO.NET Data Services V1.5 CTP2 release
• F# First Class Events – Async Workflows + Events Part II – Matthew Podwysocki continues his series on F# First Class Events, in this part looking at how Events combined with Async Workflows can be used to draw output on a WPF window.
• Project Metadata Generation using T4 – Daniel Vaughan explores the powerful T4 templating and Visual Studio automation object model functionality of Visual Studio to generate strongly typed metadata for use in XAML, touching on lots of the key T4 and VS automation features
• Coderush vs Resharper – Jason Erwin gives a detailed side by side review of the two leaders in the refactoring / VS plugin arena. If you don’t use a product of this nature and are considering doing so, check this out to help you makea decision.
• UI without code or XAML: PropertyGrid, DataForm, etc. – Kirill explores some of the options available in WPF and Silverlight to allow you to create user interfaces without writing any code, just using features of the platform to generate automatic UI and looks at how you can control this automatic UI
• ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 Web Development Overview – This detailed document recently appeared on the Microsoft ASP.NET Site detailing the features that are/will be in the beta 2 release. I’ve heard that some of these features have already differed a little from this document, but this probably give a good view on what we can expect.

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I’m glad to see that we all survived last night’s GMail outage unscathed – I got the feeling that it was touch and go for a while for some folks 🙂

Software

• Rhino Mocks 3.6 – Ayende announces the release of Rhino Mocks 3.6, which collects together all the bugfixes and minor changes made on top of Rhino Mocks 3.5 which is now almost a year old.
• WSCF.blue Beta-2 – Santosh Benjamin announces the second beta release of WSCF.blue the Web Services Contract First extension for WCF services, which now features a standalone Data Contact Generator.
• Windows Embedded Standard 2011 CTP now available! – John Coyne announces the availability of a first CTP release of Windows Embedded Standard 2011, the new embedded systems operating system from Microsoft, based on te Windows 7 core.

Information

• Introduction to Data Binding in CTP2 – Shayne Burgess of the ADO.NET Data Services Team gives a tour of the databinding support in the latest ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria) 1.5 CTP2 release, walking through building a WPF application backed onto a data services service
• Dynamic Loading of .Net Assemblies – Ryan Svihla shows how you can control the loading of assemblies within your application providing an alternative means of deciding where to look by hooking some AppDomain events
• Debugging XML Transforms (XSLT) with Visual Studio – Steve Wellens highlights the debugging support for XSLT transforms in Visual Studio 2008
• Reducing ViewState Size – Davy Brion shows how you can replace the StateFormatter implementation with your own implementation to give you control over the output of the viewstate of an ASP.NET page, allowing you to do things like compression to reduce size
• PostSharp – 5th Anniversary of PostSharp – History and Prospects – Congratulations to the PostSharp project on its 5th Anniversary. This post talks a little about the history of PostSharp and also about the plans for the project for the future, including commercial releases in the Version 2 time frame.
• 7 Stages of new language keyword grief – Phil Haack looks at the different stages of reaction people have when they hear about a change to their favourite programming language, leading to final acceptance of the feature.
• Canvas gets a Spark – Karl Seguin talks about an update to the CodeBetter.Canvas project which aims to be a starting point for developers looking at ASP.NET MVC projects. This update includes upgrades to the latest versions of core libraries (NHibernate, Fluent NHibernate, etc) along with the introduction of the Spark View Engine
• GitSharp making progress – Miguel de Icaza highlights the work being done by Meinrad Recheis on a port of GIT to C#.
• Your very first NHibernate application – Part 3 – Gabriel Schenker continues his DotNetSlackers article series on building an NHibernate powered application, looking in this part at the AutoMapping feature of Fluent NHibernate.
• Up to 25% off many Microsoft Exams – We’re talking 74 exams that are 15%, 20% or 25% percent off (worldwide, but limited time offer) – Greg Duncan highlights a special offer on 74 different Microsoft Certification Exams, with discounts available until 31st December 2009 (or until supplies run out)
• TDD: Test the behaviour rather than implementation – Mark Needham reminds of the importance of testing the behaviour of our code and not the actual implementation to make our tests more refactoring friendly amongst other benefits
• .NET Best Practice No: 3:- Using performance counters to gather performance data – Shivprasad koirala explores the use of Performance Counters in your application to enable you to see what is going on inside the application when the application is in production.
• Acceptance testing in plain English with Concordion .NET – Gojko Adzic shares the video of his talk from the third Open Source .NET Exchange event from July, looking at acceptance testing using Concordian.NET to write acceptance tests in free from HTML.

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