The Morning Brew

Software

• IronRuby 1.1 Released! – Jimmy Schementi announces the latest update to IronRuby the Ruby implementation for .NET. This release provides bugfixes for a number of reported issues, along with some new alpha level feature implementations. Also of significance is the removal of support for .NET 2, you must now use .NET 3.5 or 4.0.
• IronPython – Release: 2.7 Alpha 1 – IronPython also gets an updated release this weekend, with IronPython 2.7 Alpha 1 introducing some of the features of CPython 2.7, along with a license change to the Apache License.
• Sterling OODB v0.1 Alpha Released! – Jeremy Likness announces the first Alpha release of his Sterling Object-Oriented Database for Silverlight 4.0 and Windows Phone 7.0. Jeremy also puts out a request for help with the project, both by simply using it, and also by getting involved if you are interested.
• New Features in FiddlerCore 2.2.9.9 – Eric Lawrence announces the release of an updated Fiddler Core Library including a number of new features such as Server Certificate Validation, the new Import / Export functionality and improved support for monitoring streams of data.
• New Version of the Productivity Power Tools is Available! – Sean Laberee announces an updated version of the Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools. This release includes the ability to choose which features of the Power Tools are enabled, along with three other new extensions (Solution Navigator, Quick Access and auto brace Completion) along with some bugfixes and enhancements to the existing features.

Information

• Code-First Development with Entity Framework 4 – Scott Guthrie takes the Entity Framework 4 Code First functionality (released last week as a CTP4 release) out for a spin in the Nerd Dinner sample application going step by step through the process of building data access through EF using code first and focusing on the productivity enhancements in the latest release.
• How to use the MSBuild debugger in Visual Studio 2010 – Buck Hodges highlights the work done by Dan Moseley, Dev Lead for MSBuild, on a Debugger for MS Build scripts which he created in his spare time, and managed to get included in Visual Studio in an off state.
• Unit Test using test doubles, aka Mock, Stub, Fake, Dummy – Laurent Kempé discusses the concepts behind Mocks, stubs and other test doubles along with looking at their role in Test Driven Development.
• How To – Gems And .NET – Rob Reynolds continues looking at gem packages for use in .NET, looking at how you go about building a gem package for a .NET package, and looks at the complex issue of Dependencies (References)
• Uploading a File (Or Files) With ASP.NET MVC – Phil Haack looks at simplifying the process of uploading files in ASP.NET MVC taking advantage of some of the new features of ASP.NET MVC2
• Using F# to Automate Reading – The Morning Brew – Naveen takes a look at consuming the RSS feed for The Morning Brew in F# and having it filter out some of the topics he is less interested in opening the remaining links in browser tabs – a nice example of the power of scripting in a language like F#
• Caliburn.Micro Soup to Nuts Pt. 3 – All About Actions – Rob Eisenberg continues his tour of the Calibrun.Micro MVVM framework for WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone. This part explores the implementation of Actions.
• Why I Like Ruby, Part 2: Blocks – Rob Connery continues his discussions of why he likes the Ruby language, with a look at the implementation of Code Blocks in Ruby
• Finding files you’re sure you wrote – Kate Gregory takes a look at why you might not be able to find files you know should exist in the places you think they are due to the powers of UAC and the protected areas of the system disk such as Program Files.
• Delegated Model Binding – K Scott Allen continues his exploration of Model Binding in ASP.NET MVC with a look at delegating the binding of one part of a model class to another model binder
• WinForm Extended – Fabio Franco shares a WinForms base class which provides some extra functionality such as full screen mode, ability to draw on the title bar, attaching to the desktop, etc in this CodeProject article.

Community

• Converting from webforms to MVC presentation? – Eric Hexter provides the video capture from last week’s Community 4 MVC virtual event featuring Matt Hawley talking about the process of converting CodePlex from WebForms to ASP.NET MVC.

Comments Off on The Morning Brew #645

Information

• Reactive Extensions for JavaScript (and .NET) Hands on Labs Now Available – Matthew Podwysocki announces the release of a Hands On Labs for the Reactive Extensions in both JavaScript and .NET, which Matthew has produced in conjunction with the Reactive Extensions Team.
• Gems – Package Management For .NET – Rob Reynolds talks about the art of package management using the Ruby Gem package manager, and discusses the adding of support for creating Gems to the UpperCut automated build framework for .NET
• Graph Colouring With Simple Backtracking, Part Two – Eric Lippert continues his exploration of colouring object graphs, and in this part looks at the representation of colours, and presenting them as an immutable collection
• TDD: I hate deleting unit tests – Mark Needham shares a part of a twitter discussion on the removal of TDD unit tests after acceptance tests have been created and passed
• A Different Frame of Reference – Greg Young discusses how moving to a Command Query Responsibility Segregation and Event Sourcing architecture changes the way you need to think about the problem space
• Model-View-Presenter: Looking at Passive View – Eli Weinstock-Herman takes a look at the Passive View pattern, a subset of the Model View Presenter patterns explaining the background to this architecture and sharing a simple implementation.
• MSBuild Known Issues – The Visual Studio Blog shares some information on problems people have been encountering with Crashes due to MSBuild in certain circumstances, and share the details of solutions / workarounds where available.
• How to Debug and Diagnose MEF Failures – Daniel Plaisted takes a look at the additional types of failure the use of MEF can introduce into your applications, sharing some help on identifying and debugging these problems
• Python scripting in MEF-based applications – Ryan Tremblay explores the use of MEF to allow your applications to support scripting in Python providing access the various components of the application for the use within the scripts.
• ASP.NET Membership – Handling Authenticated Users that are Not Authorized. – Joe Stagner discusses allowing access to parts of your web application to users who are un-authenticated, and also looks at disallowing access to other sections based on authorisation using Roles.
• Authenticating Against Multiple Domains with C# & StructureMap – Deran Schilling takes a look at providing authentication against multiple domains (in the active directory sense) sharing an implementation of an IAuthenticationService which handles multiple domain environments.
• Working with WCF Part Seven – What’s the deal with REST? – James Bender, as a part of his series on WCF, explores the concepts behind Representational State Transfer (REST) looking at URIs, Plain Old XML (POX) and JSON
• Was Dave a Genius? – Martin Rue takes a look at rendering your web pages on the client side, exploring how doing this can result in a change of the performance profile of your appliation, and may make the user experience better under certain circumstances.
• Hard Working Model Binder – K Scott Allen discusses the role of the Model Binder in ASP.NET MVC applcations, and in his follow on post
• Recursive Model Binding – poses a question on how the model binder would work in a certain scenario, explaining the answer in detail.
• The Reasons I Like Ruby – Rob Conery discusses the Web Matrix / Razor release, and outlines what the key resons he likes Ruby so much are. Interesting discussion on this topic will no doubt follow in the comments and other blog posts.

Community

• Better Coding Through Community – Dane Morgridge talks about his experiences of the Developer Community and Developer events, and how they really can help make you a much better and well educated programmer.

Comments Off on The Morning Brew #644

Software

• EF CTP4 Released! – The ADO.NET team announce the release of the latest Entity Framework Feature CTP, the 4th CTP release of this productivity and feature library which includes the Code First features. This release includes a significant number of new conventions and annotations for the Code first feature along with productivity improvements to make writing the code quicker and simpler
• Albacore v0.2.0 Preview 1 Is Available – Derick Bailey announces the release of Albacore v0.2.0 Preview 1, an early preview of the new 0.2 release of this collection of Rake tasks specifically for building .NET systems using Rake. This release includes .NET 4 support, new configurations systems, and has also removed some of the tasks from earlier releases to provide a better focus for the project.
• "Fake – F# Make" 1.40.5.0 released – Bugfixes for CruiseControl.NET – Steffen Forkmann releases a new version of his F# Make tool. This version includes some improvements and bugfixes for integrations with CruiseControl.NET along with some improvements to the MSBuild task to increase the performance of multi project builds.
• Veracity: The next step in DVCS – Eric Sink gives a pre-announcement of SourceGear’s new Distributed Version Control System, Veracity. This product implements the core DVCS features, along with a few new ones, and the core of the product will be licensed as Open Source via the Apache License, with the code being released next week (along with the formal announcement). SourceGear will also produce commercial add-on products.
• Windows Phone Developer Training Kit – Beta Refresh – Yochay Kiriaty highlights the Updated Windows Phone 7 Developer Training Kit, updated for the new beta release

Information

• Simple Code First with Entity Framework 4 – Magic Unicorn Feature CTP 4 – Scott Hanselman takes a look at the new Entity Framework Feature CTP Release, running through some of the standard CRUD (Create Read Update Delete) operations when using the Code First approach.
• EF CTP4 Walkthrough: Code First – Rowan Miller of the Entity Framework team has a more detailed run through of the Code First functionality, and also gives the low down on the Productivity Improvements – looking at a number of the tasks which are now significantly easier than before.
• New Mono Runtime Features – Miguel de Icaza talks about the changes in Mono 2.8 to make it much easier to use the LLVM Mono engine and the new Garbage collector to give improved application performance with a slight JIT performance penalty
• Solution Folders – Deborah Kurata looks at the often overlooked Visual Studio IDE feature of Solution Folders which allow you to organise your projects (or files) into folders within the solution
• ASP.NET MVC: Do You Know Where Your TempData Is? – Greg Shackles explores the ASP.NET MVC TempData feature looking at its implementation, and also showing how you can, via an extensibility point, implement your own TempData Provider to allow you to store TempData where ever you want.
• jQuery JavaScript Templates Tutorial: Inline Expressions and Code Blocks – Rey Bango continues his series looking at templating in JavaScript and jQuery with a look at the inline expressions and code blocks features provided in the Microsoft jQuery Template plugin.
• DevCheatSheet.com, The Developer focused cheat sheet aggregator (just about all languages, all areas, all the time…) – Greg Duncan highlights DevCheatSheet.com, a one stop shop for developer cheat sheets on a huge array of developer topics
• JavaScript vs Silverlight: An answer – Laurent Bugnion posts a reaction to an article on JupiterJS.com which argued that JavaScript was better than Silverlight, where Laurent believes the two are not direct competitors and in fact complement each other. Good discussion breaking out in the comments on this one.
• UTC gotchas in .NET and SQL Server – Derek Fowler (friend of The Brew, and creator of the Brew Badge concept) looks into some of the confusion that is Time zones in DateTime Calculations, and looks at the use of DateTimeKind to specify exactly what you mean.
• Caching Improvements in Internet Explorer 9 – Eric Lawrence (with his Internet Explorer hat on) looks at the changes and improvements to Caching in Internet Explorer 9, along the way providing a great overview of the concepts of caching generally.
• C# 4 broke my code! The Pitfalls of COM Interop and Extension methods – Samuel Jack discovers that the upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 may cause you some problems if your code relies on extension methods on COM Objects, something which is especially true if you use the Microsoft VSTO Power Tools to program against the Microsoft Office Object Model.

Community

• FubuMVC for ASP.Net MVC Devs at MVCConf – Jeremy D. Miller gives a taste of what will be in his mvcConf virtual conference session on FubuMVC. mvcConf is looking like it will be a great event, which now is ‘sold out’, however recordings of the sessions will be available for those who didn’t get to ‘attend’

Comments Off on The Morning Brew #643