The Morning Brew

Post number 666 today, and instead of the obvious set of jokes about ‘The Number of the beast’, I prefer to think of some of the mathematical beauty like the fact that 666 = 1 +2 +3 … + 35 + 36 (666 (number))

• Visual Studio 2010 runs faster when the Windows Automation API 3.0 is installed – David Berg posts a useful tip on the Developer Division Performance Engineering blog about how to make Visual Studio 2010 run quicker on Windows XP machines by installing version 3 of the Windows Automation API (replacing the earlier version that is there) which speeds up the display and processing of the Intellisense drop downs.
• Problem Resolution: Installing Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Beta – John Papa shares some problems he had installing the latest version of the Windows Phone 7 Developer tools beta, showing how he worked around the problem with the installer (and along the way showing some useful install debugging processes)
• NSubstituteAutoMocker for StructureMap – Christiaan creates a NSubstitute automocking functionality for the StructureMap IOC container, showing tests and implementation of this support and discussing its creation
• Hydrating Objects With Expression Trees – Part II – Paulo Morgado continues exploring the use of Expression Trees to populate objects with data, taking a look in this post at building the complete object combining construction of the object and data population into a single expression.
• Clay: malleable C# dynamic objects – part 1: why we need it – Bertrand Le Roy begins a series of posts looking at the Clay library for C# whihc allows you to easily construct complex dynamic types in C# as you do in other languages. In this first part Bertrand sets the scene by discussing his needs for a dynamic view model.
• I don’t want your stinkin’ code comments – Robert Greyling follows on from Jesse Liberty’s post on not using code comments, with the suggestion that Tests (unit or BDD specifications) can stand in for code comments, however if you don’t have these then comments are a good idea, especially where there are lots of levels of abstraction in the code.
• HTML5Rocks Gets Awesomer – Ajaxian highlights the latest updates to the HTML5Rocks site from Google, a site which explores all the features of HTML5, looking at browser compatibility, guides for implementing HTML 5 concepts such as video, off-line data, etc
• Getting Started with WCF 4”, the Refcard… – Greg Duncan highlights the latest RefCard from the folks over at DZone. This card covers version 4 of the Windows Communication Foundation looking at key areas of configuration, contracts, binding, etc
• Restraining Order Granted for Microsoft’s C-Sharp Compiler – Rob Conery takes a light hearted look at ‘Compiler Driven Development’
• A variation on Matt Moloney’s Undo/Redo "Memento" pattern – Don Syme builds on an implementation of Undo / Redo by Matt Moloney to give a nice example of using F# to implement a common code pattern in an elegant way

Community

• "Unplugged" online chat with me this Wednesday – Scott Guthrie returns to the LIDNUG virtual meeting room for another of his ‘Unplugged’ chats where he takes questions from developers and answers them to the best of his ability. I’ve listened to a number of these ‘talks’ in the past and have always found them very interesting.
• My Windows Phone 7 Slides from the London DDD Guathon Event – Mike Ormond shares his slides on Windows Phone 7 Development from last week’s Guathon event held in London

1 Comment »

Software

• Announcing IE9 Beta Launch, coming SEPT 2010 – Jon Box highlights the announcement of the Internet Explorer 9 Beta release, planned fro September 2010
• Patch released for growing Find and Replace window – Gill Cleeren highlights the availability of a patch for an annoying issue in Visual Studio 2010 where the find box increases in width by 16 pixels each time it is opened
• jQuery Mobile Announced; Touch-Optimized Web Framework for Smartphones & Tablets – Dion Almaer over at Ajaxian highlights the announcement of jQuery Mobile, an effort to improve jQuery support across mobile browsers, along with a specialise UI library for use on phones.
• Visual Studio Add-in for Windows 7 Taskbar extras – Kate Gregory highlights the improved Visual Studio 2010 and Windows 7 integration offered by the Win7 Taskbar Extension created by Dmitry Sitnikov which brings a number of Windows 7 Features to life within Visual Studio 2010.
• Extended WPF Toolkit – New ColorPicker Control – Brian Lagunas announces another new control added to the ever growing Extended WPF Toolkit CodePlex project. The Colo(u)r Picker provides a friendly UI for users to select colours, allowing hue, alpha and colour selection.
• Caliburn.Micro Project templates – Rudi Grobler shares some project templates for working with the Caliburn.Micro framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7. These templates are distributed via the Extensions functionality in Visual Studio.

Information

• NHibernating a WCF Data Service – Pablo M. Cibraro takes a look at wiring WCF Data services up to an NHibernate data storage back end, looking at the implementation of IUpdatable for storing data back into NHibernate entities.
• Back to school : Getting to know F# – Mehfuz’s WebLog – Mehfuz takes a quick look at F#, showing how it can be used to create types with methods, and explores simple unit testing of these methods in F# using Telerik JustMock
• Really, Really, Big Numbers with BigInteger in .NET 4.0 – Paul Kimmel explores the .NET Framework’s support for large numbers via the BigInteger class, illustrating its use in performing calculations to find square roots of large numbers.
• Coding Without A Net – Coding without comments – Jesse Liberty discusses a constraint he recently introduced to his coding where he avoids all forms of comment in his code, aiming to make his code as self explanatory as possible.
• Two different ways to create bad logic in unit tests – Roy Osherove discusses a ‘test smell’ where logic which is likely in the system under test is repeated inside the test case, illustrating with a simple example of string concatenation.
• ASP.NET MVC 3: Using HttpNotFoundResult in controller tests – Gunnar Peipman shows how the new HttpNotFoundResult in ASP.NET MVC 3 really helps with the testability of your controllers by removing the need to test against the HttpContext and Response objects.
• An alternative repository – Michel Grootjans takes a look at an improved implementation of a repository pattern for NHibernate which provides a nice way of encapsulating querying. Full code is available for download.
• ASP.NET MVC meets HTML5 – Gunnar Peipman also explores the support for HTML5 in ASP.NET MVC provided by Dean Hume’s ASP.NET MVC HTML5 Helpers Toolkit which provides HtmlHelper methods for rendering HTML5 controls.
• Validating Data in Silverlight 4 Applications – IDataErrorInfo – Dan Wahlin takes a look at the improvements to validation provided in Silverlight 4, and ho the IDataErrorInfo provides an alternative to the traditional Exception based validation provided in earlier versions.
• Git, TortoiseGit, Github and the rest – Christiaan takes a look at getting up and running with Git and related tools from the point of view of wanting to gain access to the source code to an open source project hosted on GitHub.
• Hydrating Objects With Expression Trees – Part I – Paulo Morgado explores using expression trees to populate arbitrary entities with data, looking at building compiled expressions using reflection and then applying them to newly created objects to fill them with data.
• MSDEV Offers Free Developer Training for Windows Phone 7 in Seven Minutes Each – Bruce Kyle highlights a series of 7 minute videos providing some very focused training on specific areas of the Windows Phone 7 development story from the MSDEV site, along with providing a number of other links to related SDKs and other training content
• Windows Phone Design Day Recordings – Jaime Rodriguez shares the videos from a recent Windows Phone 7 Design Day, an invite only event for partners and agencies which looked at design best practices for the new Windows Phone devices

Community

• Announcing NHDay final Agenda – Simone Chiaretta announces the finalisation of the agenda for the first NHibernate Day, to be held on 9th October in Bologna, Italy. The Agenda looks to be really good, and there are still a few places available.
• Code Challenge – Win a Gyroball – Thycotic Solutions are running a coding contest, offering a GyroBall toy as the prize for the randomly picked correct solution. Entries are allowed from across the world, but only those in the US can win the Gyroball.

Comments Off on The Morning Brew #665

Update: Fixed broken link to NSubstitute post below – thanks to David Pendray for the heads up

Software

• MockingBird v2 RTM – Santosh Benjamin announces the second major version of MockingBird, a set of tools for mocking web services, providing means of implementing web service clients with just the WSDL (no service implementation). This new version has a vast number of improvements and new features as outlined in this post.
• SQL Server Migration Assistant for MySQL Released – Microsoft add a Migration Assistant for migrating MySQL wor SQL Server / SQL Azure to its line-up, joining those for Oracle, Sybase, Access and PowerBuilder
• New version of the Windows Azure AppFabric SDK available for download – Windows Azure AppFabric – Announcements – Site Home – MSDN Blogs – The Windows Azure AppFabric Team announce an updated version of the Windows Azure AppFabric SDK which addresses a bug in the Service Bus
• Extended WPF Toolkit – New RichTextBox Control – Brian Lagunas highlights a new WPF Rich Text Box Control which has bee added to the Extended WPF Toolkit project hosted on CodePlex. Brian also gives an overview of this control in use

Information

• More Versioning Fun With Optional Arguments – Phil Haack looks at some further confusions and subtle bugs that Optional Parameters can introduce into your API when you come to change the API in the future, looking at how overloads with required parameters and signatures with optional parameter can collide.
• Dojo Deferred and the Reactive Extensions for JavaScript – Matthew Podwysocki looks at the integration between the Reactive Extensions for JavaScript and the Dojo Toolkits dojo.Deferred, showing how you can take Deferred and turn it into Observable to consume the rich functionality of the Reactive Extensions
• The Weekly Source Code 56 – Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit – Code Contracts, Parallel Framework and COM Interop – Scott Hanselman takes a look at the less well publicised features of .NET4 via the Code provided in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 Training Kit, highlighting the usage of Code Contracts, improvements to COM Interop, and the Parallel Extensions.
• Check out NSubstitute – (Corrected URL) Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo highlights the NSubstitute project started by some of the Alumni from his Develop With Passion training course. NSubstitute is a Mocking Framework which aims provide a nice succinct natural language syntax for common mocking operations, with the more complex features of mocking frameworks also available
• I’m Taking a Break — StoryTeller and StructureMap users please read – Jeremy D. Miller outlines the future for a number of his Open Source projects while he takes a break from out of hours coding, including a request for volunteers to help out with StructureMap documentation and examples for a variety of technologies
• How can I find all objects of a particular type? – Raymond Chen takes a look at a world where you could easily get access to all the objects of a specific type that are currently instantiated in the runtime, including some of the more disruptive things that this would allow.
• VC++, C#, VB.NET Coding Guideline of All-In-One Code Framework – The All-In-One Code Framework team share their coding standards documentation for the All-In-One Code Framework project. Due to the nature of the project his 80+ page document outlines coding standards across a wide range of technologies, and should provide a good basis for your own coding standards.
• Getting Started with MonoTouch – Marcus Bratton takes a look at what is required to get up and running with the MonoTouch library for developing iPhone and iPad applications, working from the required tools through to deploying your application on a device.
• LightSwitch Architectural Overviews – Jason Zander gives a high level overview of the architecture that LightSwitch is built upon, and the LightSwitch Team take a more detailed look at the architecture in The Anatomy of a LightSwitch Application Series Part 1 – Architecture Overview & Part 2 – The Presentation Tier –
• Do Developers Have Enough Time to Keep Their Skills Up-To-Date? – Mitchell Pronschinske shares results from a survey of (Java I think) developers showing the breakdown of what they spend their time doing, and what they wished they could spend their time doing.
• Some detail behind the CodePlex move to TFS 2010 – Brian Harry talks in more detail about the recent CodePlex upgrade to TFS 2010, sharing the structure of their implementation, along with some of the reductions in hardware they were able to make.
• ASP.NET Hosting Guide – ASP.NET 101 shares a useful guide to some of the things to consider when choosing hosting for your ASP.NET applications, discussing the typical offerings hosting companies have, along with some of the things to watch out for.

Community

• Want to hear us talking about security and our roadmap? – Ray Fleming highlights an events tour around the UK over the next few months in a variety of cities in the UK, where Microsoft Experts will be running sessions on the Microsoft Roadmap, Software Assurance, Trustworthy computing and security, Software Asset Management and licensing.
• GeekGive to Team Up with Northwest Harvest at MVP Summit 2011 – Lonnie Webb blogs about the MVP Summit / GeekGive collaboration on the The Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog. On the weekend of the MVP Summit, Geek Give will be doing community outreach work in the Seattle area and are encouraging visiting MVPs to get involved.

2 Comments »