The Morning Brew #845

Information

• Anders Hejlsberg – Questions and Answers – Channel 9 have an interesting question and answer video interview with Anders Hejlsberg answering questions from the public covering a wide range of topic from C#, Async, CaaS, Delphi, JavaScript, and much much more.
• Back to basics: Usage of static members – Patrick Smacchia discusses the uses and abuses of static fields in your Object Oriented code, looking at appropriate uses of static and discussing some common anti-patterns in its use
• Something "sort" of handy… [IListExtensions adds easy sorting to .NET list types – enabling faster search and removal, too!] – David Anson takes a look at the Observable Collection, the best way of doing collections in Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone applications, looking at how sorting the values in these collections can be achieved and sharing some extension methods which help with sorting data.
• Spatial Types in the Entity Framework – Pedro Ardila discusses the plans for support of Spatial Data types in the next version of the Entity Framework, looking at the usage of these data types and asking questions to get feedback on the design plans.
• How to design a unit testable domain model with Entity Framework Code First & How extension methods ruined unit testing and OOP, and a way forward – Daniel Cazzulino takes a look at building a domain model using Entity Framework Code First in a test friendly way, and also takes a look at a technique for managing extension method implementations, looking at splitting the contact of the method and the implementation.
• DataContract Serialization with Generics & Read-only Properties – Darryl Russi takes a look at some of the solutions to issues encountered when attempting to serialise classes which make use of Generics and read only properties
• Should I use HTML5 or Silverlight? One man’s opinion – Scott Hanselman discusses a common dilemma, which direction to take for rich internet application, Silverlight (or other plugin technologies) or HTML5, sharing his view on the matter. Be sure to check out the comments for continuing discussions.
• CSS3 Gradients in IE10 PP1 & CSS3 Gradients in IE10 Platform Preview 1 – John Bristowe and Jennifer Yu discuss the Internet Explorer 10 Preview 1 support for CSS 3 gradients
• Using Microsoft Ajax Minifier Tool to Minify JavaScript Files – Bipin Joshi takes a look at using the Microsoft Ajax Minifier tool to shrink your JavaScript scripts, discussing the background to minification, how to use the MS Ajax Minifier, how the minification process works, and looking at some of the things to consider in your JavaScript to ensure better minification results.
• "Climbing Mt PowerShell" comic now available – Greg Duncan highlights the "Climbing Mt PowerShell" comic book which provides PowerShell learning content in the form of a comic book story.
• DLR in C# using Scripting Language – Abhishek Sur takes a look at consuming the DLR from C# allowing you to run IronPython scripts within your C# application
• May PragPub Magazine – The Pragmatic Bookshelf announce the May edition of PragPub, their online magazine looking at a variety of developer topics. This Month the focus is on the theme of the power of a good metaphor, with articles looking at CoffeeScript, agile practices and much more.

Community

• F# London Meetup Tomorrow, May 5: Simon Cousins on Real-time(ish) Market Analysis in F# – Don Syme highlights tonight’s (Thursday 5th May) F#unctional Londoners event being held at Skills Matter in London. This event sees Simon Cousins talking about distributed market analysis using F#. Registration is required to attend.
• Europe Virtual ALT.NET: Recording of Hadi Hariri on CouchDB for .NET Developers @ E-VAN 03 May 2011 – Jan Van Ryswyck shares the recording of Hadi Hariri’s session on CouchDB delivered to the European Virtual Alt.NET Usergroup, where he introduced the concepts of CouchDB and looked at consuming the REST API from .NET, and discusses the potential problems you may encounter when developing an application on top of CouchDB.
• Developer Lunch and Learn Webinar: Windows Azure – Jonathan Rozenblit announces a three part weekly lunchtime (North America time zones) training event series beginning on Thursday 19th May which will look at application development on the Windows Azure Platform. These events will be hands-on with you following along in your own environment.
• SQL South West – The South West of England moves one step closer to having its own active SQL Server Usergroup with Jonathan Allen having found a suitable venue for the May event. Contact Jonathan for more details.
• Tellago announces the monthly webinar series : Tellago Technology Updates – Vishal Mody highlights a new series of Webinar events from Tellago. Tuesday 24th May sees a session looking at ‘NoSQL databases for the .NET developer: What’s the fuss all about?’ running at 2pm EST, with their June Event looking at developing Android applications using .NET.