The Morning Brew

Software

• Announcing the F# Compiler + Library Source Code Drop – Don Syme highlights the source code release of the F# 2.0 Compiler and core library which are available as a part of the F# PowerPack. The Code is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
• BizSpark Graduation Offer for Startups – Somasegar announces the details of the Graduation stage of the BizSpark programme with news of them waiving the $100 exit fee, along with discounts on future software updates under Software Assurance and MSDN Subscription. Additionally, software acquired under the BizSpark programme can continue to be used once the programme has been exited
• JavaScript Can’t Do Math – SilverlightCalculator A New Silverlight OSS Project – Rod Paddock releases a Silvelight Calculator application which provides methods for simple mathematical operators (add, subtract, divide, and multiply) which can be called from JavaScript and give consistent results (Helping avoid some of the problems inherent in JavaScript maths.)

Information

• Asynchrony in C# 5.0 part Four: It’s not magic – Eric Lippert continues his exploration series on the Async C#5 CTP, exploring Asynchrony without multi-threading, and discussing and comparing it to multi-threading when there is only one actual processor.
• Using the Task Parallel Library with ASP.NET MVC for scalable web applications – Mike Hadlow explores the use of the Task Parallel Library within ASP.NET MVC to create async controllers which help avoid certain threadpool exhaustion conditions at the expense of making your code more complex.
• Writing a Compiler in C#: Parsing, Part 2 – Sasha Goldshtein continues his series on building a simple compiler, looking at techniques for parsing expressions, examining mathematical expressions and the order of precedence.
• C#/.NET Fundamentals: Returning an Immutable Collection – James Michael Hare compares and contrasts the various ways of returning collections in a readonly form to help prevent consumers of your class from modifying the contents of the collection, looking at the techniques and comparing their performance.
• The Big View Engine Comparison – Razor vs. Spark vs. NHaml vs. Web Forms View Engine – Shay Friedman shares a short simple comparison of the 4 main view engines available for ASP.NET MVC, showing each performing some of the common patterns used in views such as loops, conditionals, writing out values of variables, and displaying forms.
• A Sordid Little Tale Of Unexpected Security Exceptions – Phil Haack highlights a how some of the complexities of making applications work in medium trust can work in certain deployment situations and not in others, with a look at getting assembly path and how when GAC’d this results in security exceptions in Medium Trust.
• Deep Dive on Closure Pitfalls – Peter Ritchie looks at one of the most common pitfalls (And sources of confusion) when working with closure statements (in this case in C#, although similar things exist in other languages), explaining why this happens and how you can easily solve it by copying values to local scoped variables.
• How to create a quick installer to deploy your apps using Null Soft Scriptable Installer System (NSIS) – It is Small, Free and flexible – Anoop Madhusudanan explores the NullSoft Scriptable Installer as an alternative for building installers for your applications
• Software Development Methodologies – Andrew Phillips discusses Ad-hoc, Waterfall, Prototyping, 4GL, Iterative, and Totalitarian approaches to software development, introducing each with a summary and discussing some fo the problems that each methodology can have.

Community

• Building Software: Ayende’s way – Ayende returns to SkillsMatter on the evening of Thursday 18th November to do an open session discussing how he goes about creating software, looking at architectural decisions and the process of releasing software.
• Friday fun – win a #windowsphone7 on the UK MSDN blog – Rachel Collier is running another 1 day caption contest which gives you the opportunity to win a Windows Phone 7 Device. Entries must be in by 10pm GMT Today (5th November).

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