The Morning Brew

Software

• Updates: Process Explorer v12, VMMap v2.62, DiskView v2.4 – Microsoft announce updates to three of the Sysinternals tools. Process Explorer gets an update to v12 bringing a number of improvements to areas including process identification, the .NET assembly view along with the usual bugfixes. VMMap also gets a bugfix update, and DiskView adds the new feature to map alternate streams to owning files.

Information

• Red/Green/Refactor, For The Right Reasons – Derick Bailey, prompted by a brief discussion on Google Buzz discusses some of the right reasons to be in each of the TDD Red Green Refactor states
• Knights, Knaves, Protected and Internal – Eric Lippert discusses the accessibility of virtual method implementations using examples of Knights and Knaves, and another about access to resources of a family in ‘inheritance’ situations.
• "Demystifying The Cloud " An Introduction to Cloud Computing – free ebook which includes the three popular services, Amazon, Google and Azure – Greg Duncan highlights two free ebooks, this one is a complete volume looking at the three most common Cloud Computing solutions, and the second is a Draft/Preview/Excerpt of "Moving to Visual Studio 2010" – which includes 100+ pages of advice on upgrading to the latest Visual Studio from version 2003, 2005 and 2008
• .TOOLBOX – Free Silverlight and Expression Blend training program for Designers and Developers – John McClelland highlights a new multi-media structured curriculum-based training program for both Developers and Designers to learn more about Silverlight and Expression Blend
• March Newsletter – Architecture Modeling and Processes (Issue 23) – The Architecture Team at Microsoft announce the 23rd Edition of the Architecture Journal, focusing on Modelling and Processes, with articles this edition on Evaluating Architectures, comparing UML and DSLs, Architecture for Agile, along with a number of short companion videos.
• RIA Services and Validation – Nikhil Kothari follows on from his Silverlight TV interview on this subject with a deeper dive into the topic using the MIX10 Book Club example to take a look at the various forms of validation provided for in Silverlight applications running on RIA services.
• 5 Steps to getting started with IronRuby – Eric Nelson shares 5 steps and a number of great resources for each to help you get up and running and learning about Iron Ruby
• Ladies and Gentlemen, Please Welcome… the IE Mobile User Agent String! – Hot on the heels of the Internet Explorer Team announceing their User Agend string, the IE for Windows Phone Team show the format of their UA string explaining the parts and the reasons for inclusion.
• Incrementing the Assembly Version for Each Build – Jeremy Jameson looks at the technique for ensuring that when your solution is built the AssemblyVersion attribute for the components being built gets incremented correctly.
• Just how lazy are you? – Jon Skeet reviews the various definitions of what ‘Lazy’ means in terms of collection evaluation, sharing his own definition too, and talking about why it is important to know what is meant by a method being lazy as it can have significant effects on how your code works.
• Coding4Fun – Silverlight Real Time Face Detection – René Schulte highlights the publication of his article for the Coding4Fun site which looks at performing facial recognition in Silverlight 4 using the new WebCam API
• Unit Test the Behavior, Not the Implementation – Karl Seguin talks about why it is important to be careful about what you are testing, and that you should focus on testing the behaviour of your code, not testing things that relate to the implementation of your code, to ensure you get good effective tests which aren’t too brittle
• Law Of Demeter: Extension Methods Don’t Count – Derick Bailey talks about how the use of Extension Methods can look like violations of the Law of Demeter, and suggests that perhaps due to the way they are just providing helpers to writing avoid longer code you may want to consider them not to be violations.

Community

• London .NET User Group:Mixing Functional and Object Oriented Approaches to Programming in C# – Skills Matter host the London .NET Usergroup event on the evening of 31st March, where Michael Wagg and Mark Needham of ThoughtWorks will be looking at how you can integrate Functional Programming concepts into your C# programming.
• NxtGenUG – Silverlight 4 RC – The Hereford branch of the NxtGenUG are hosting two talks on the evening of Monday 12 April, featuring Richard Costall talking on Silverlight 4 RC and Ryan O’Neill looking at Parallel Programming and Debugging in .NET 4.

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