This morning I fired up a random number generator and generated 2 random numbers to pick the winners of my Skills Matter / London .NET Usergroup Progressive .NET Tutorials ticket give away. The lucky people are @dfjones and SarahBailey. Please can you both drop me an email so I can put you in touch with Skills Matter to organise your ticket.

Software

  • SQL Server Denali: CTP 3 Product Guide Released – Asim Khan highlights the release of the SQL Server Denali CTP3 Product Guide, 450+MB of SQL Server goodness, discussing, demonstrating and documenting the latest preview of the next version of SQL Server.
  • Javascript Unit Test Environment (JUTE) Now Open – Mark Trostler announces the availability of JUTE as an open source project. This project combines YUI 3 Testing Framework, automated dynamic code coverage, web based and command line UI, server and client side testing support and three testing backends in one package. The package runs through Node.js, npm and Java – and looks like it is well worth checking out as it answers a number of the pain points in JavaScript testing.

Information

  • Free Printed Copies of "Version Control by Example" – Eric Sink announces a free (including Shipping) offer of printed copies of his book ‘Version Control By Example’, also available in electronic form. Eric is willing to ship to non-US addresses too so this is a truly worldwide offer.
  • Lambdas for Junior Developers – Chris Eargle gives a nice introduction to Lambda Expressions, aimed at Junior Developers who have not get to grips with their uses yet, exploring the most common use by way of an example, and also setting 6 exercises to further enhance your understanding.
  • Dynamic in C# is Broken – Jan Van Ryswyck discusses an interesting issue surrounding the use of dyanmic types as a parameter of an interface method on an implementation of an interface which derives from the interface containing the method. This one is one to read slowly, and be sure to check out the comments for explanations from the community – especially the link to a Stack Overflow question on the same topic – fascinating stuff.
  • FlickR Searching with Silverlight & Rx – Mike Taulty walks through the use of the Reactive Extensions in Silverlight, sharing the creation of a simple Flickr search application which illustrates some of the nice features of Rx in a real-world sample.
  • The Backbone.js Todo List Sample, Refactored – Part 1 – Rob Conery continues his exploration of the Backbone.js library, sharing his learning by taking a look at refactoring the backbone.js Todo list sample. In this first part Rob looks at some of the initially confusing code in the sample, the model, collection, FormView, and router.
  • Meet Spine.js – My framework of choice for client side MVC (Part 1) – Kazi Manzur Rashid joins the discussion about Client Side MVC frameworks sharing the first part of a discussion about Spine.js, his choice of library for client side MVC, also introducing Jasmine for BDD, some jQuery, along with writing the code in CoffeeScript.
  • Use MVC Scaffolding in Database First Scenarios – Paul Litwin shares the steps required to make MVC Scaffold work nicely with Entity Framework models created using Database First rather than Code First.
  • Ever Wonder How We Build Software at Microsoft? Now You Can Read All About It! – AngelaB discusses the use of TFS and the software development practices at Microsoft, highlighting some other posts and resources discussing different aspects of how Microsoft use their own technology to develop software.
  • ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Universal Map of Resources – Rick Anderson highlights the release of the ASP.NET MVC Content map on MSDN providing a useful directed signpost page to the various different resources on MSDN and further afield organised by content area. Rick is actively keeping this page up to date, so it should be a good starting point to learn more about MVC.
  • Real-World F# Articles on MSDN – Tomáลก Pet?í?ek highlights his latest work with Microsoft on the MSDN documentation for F#, contributing a number of articles on Real World F# programming, spread over 6 chapters this series looks at all aspects of programming and how F# can be used for them.