The Morning Brew

Software

• Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 Beta 2 now available (MSRDS4B24U) – Greg Duncan highlights the second beta release of the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4. This latest beta includes support for the Kinect for Windows SDK beta 2 along with more bugfixes, improved documentation.

Information

• Daytona – Iterative MapReduce on Windows Azure – Josh Reuben gives a nice overview of the Microsoft Research Daytona project, a map reduce implementation which runs across multiple nodes on the Windows Azure Platform, discussing how it works, the API and looking at a sample of using it.
• QUnit layout for JavaScript testing in ASP.net MVC3 – Jonathan Creamer discusses the structuring of QUnit tests for JavaScript in your ASP.NET MVC applications, providing a simple framework to get you up and running.
• Runtime code generation for types – Ivan Towlson continues his exploration of runtime code generation looking this time at creating whole new types at runtime using reflection emit to build the IL representations.
• PragPub – Issue 30, December 2011 – The Pragmatic Bookshelf folks announce the December edition of PragPub magazine, available in HTML, PDF, epub and mobi formats, and covering Graphics Hardware, Just-In-Time logging, extending Java, and all the usual columns.
• Is ThreadStatic a leaky abstraction? – Jimmy Bogard the use of ThreadStatic to control object lifecycle, suggesting that its use may result in a leaky abstraction, and suggesting alternatives for controlling lifecycle.
• jQuery 1.7 Cheat Sheet – This nicely formatted jQuery 1.7 cheat sheet (well sheets really, its 8 pages long) gives a nice overview of the functionality of jQuery, and also highlights the areas which are new or updated in the 1.7 release.

Community

• Learn Windows Azure Next Tuesday (Dec 13th) – On December 13th Scott Guthrie is headlining a free day of developer training on Windows Azure which is running as both an in person event at Microsoft in Redmond and is also being streamed live. Both options are free and this is a great opportunity to learn more about the Windows Azure platform.
• ALM SUMMIT 2011 Videos are Available NOW – Hosam Kamel highlights the availability of the session recordings from the recent ALM Summit 2011 on the Channel 9 site.
• NxtGenUG – Event – Continuous Integration – Paul Stack will be visiting the Hereford NxtGenUG on Monday 13th February 2012 where he will be delivering a session on Continuous Integration.
• NxtGenUG – Event – Being a Simple Nancy in WebDev – Mark Rendle takes a trip down to Southampton’s NxtGenUG on Thursday 16th February where he will be giving a session on the use of Simple.Data and the Nancy framework to bring Light weight web development to the .NET platform.

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Slightly shorter edition today due to limited time caused by bad traffic.

Information

• New NuGet.org Deployed! – Phil Haack discusses his last actions as a Microsoft Employee, to push out the latest and greatest NuGet.Org site. This new site is a complete re-write with a whole host of new features, with more to come when NuGet 1.6 goes live.
• NuGet And Orchard? – Rob Conery discusses the NuGet.org new site implementation and its move away from the Orchard CMS. Plenty of good discussion in the comments of this one.
• What’s the deal with Orchard and NuGet? Does Orchard suck? – Bertrand Le Roy also picks up the thread discussing some of the things the Orchard team have learned along their development.
• 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 9 of 10) – Michael Crump nears the completion of his 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 series with a look at some of the new Silverlight 5 controls and features of controls, including the double and triple click, PiviotViewer and ComboxBox Type-Ahead.
• 31 Days of Testing – Day 6: Types of Automated Testing – Jim Holmes 31 days of testing series is progressing nicely with him discussing Automated Testing in the most recent post. Be sure to read back through his previous posts to get discussion of what to test, collaboration in testing and sustainable pace of development.
• SOLID – Things Every Senior .NET Developer Should Know, Part 2 – Matt Honeycutt continues his series of things Senior Developers should know about with a discussion of the SOLID principles.
• That "JavaScript not available"case – Christian Heilmann discusses the importance of understanding your reliance on JavaScript for web application functionality to work, looking at the scenarios in which JavaScript may be disabled for users and discussing progressive enhancement to ensure your applications continue to work.

Community

• NxtGenUG – Event – CQRS Bringing Elegance – NxtGenUG Hereford welcome Ashic Mahtab for a session on Command Query Responsibility Segregation on Monday 9th January 2012
• NxtGenUG – Event – Command and Conquer – Ashic is also visitin the Southampton NextGenUG on Thursday 19th January for a similar session looking at CQRS
• NxtGenUG – Event – This Android’s Life – The Cambridge NxtGenUG welcome Ross Scott for a session looking at the development of Android applications using PhoneGap, native development and Mono for Android on Tuesday 17th January

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Information

• What’s the difference? Remainder vs Modulus – Eric Lippert takes a look at remainder and modulus, discussing the C# % operator and discussing the concept of an equivalence Relation
• Introduction to the Roslyn Scripting API – Brian Rasmussen explores the Roslyn Scripting API which provides an easy way of implementing scripting of your applications, illustrating with an example implementation
• Implementing RavenDB Indexes – Ayende shares a look under the hood of the RavenDB indexing and discusses how LINQ Expressions are converted into classes which represent the indexing operation being performed.
• Asynchronous Programming with the Reactive Extensions (while waiting for async/await) | Programmation Asynchrone avec les Reactive Extensions (en attendant async/await) – The MVP Awards Program shares an article from Jerome Laban (available in both French and English) looking at how you can use the Reactive Extensions to give you some of the benefit of the C#5 Async / Await functionality before that is officially released.
• Paper :: Guide to Implementing Custom TPL Dataflow Blocks – Danny Shih highlights a paper from Zlatko Michailov which explores the creation of your own Task Parallel Library Data Flow Blocks looking at the encapsulation of existing blocks and the creation of full custom implementations.
• IIS 7.x Classic and Integrated Pipeline Modes-Week 43 – Scott Forsyth’s weekly series on all aspects of IIS continues with a look at the Classic and Integrated Pipelines in IIS 7, discussing the use and configuration of each in a 14 minute video.
• 5 reasons not to use a micro ORM – The team over at MindScape discuss why you might not want to use a Micro-ORM, and choose a traditional full blown ORM like their own LightSpeed ORM. Interesting discussion on this subject in the comments of this one.
• Client-side Messaging in JavaScript – Part 1 (Postal.js) – Jim Cowart kicks off a series of posts looking at the implementation of Pub/Sub architecture for making scalable and maintainable JavaScript Application Architectures. This first post discusses the background and reasons to choose Pub/Sub.
• xUnit Cheat Sheet – Daniel Marbach shares his first cut (a 0.1 version) of an xUnit.NET Cheat Sheet exploring the key syntax of the different attributes, interfaces and conventions.
• If I can build a phone app anyone can: Part 3 What the heck is tombstoning? – Susan Ibach continues her Windows Phone Development series discussing development for this platform from basics. This post explores the concept of Tombstoning, looking at a simple application implementation to illustrate the behaviours.
• Yet Another Approach to NHibernate Session-Per-Method-Call Using StructureMap – Matt Honeycutt discusses an implementation of Session Per Method Call with NHibernate and StructureMap, exploring an implementation using nested containers.
• Like a Boss! Understanding the Difference between Panorama and Pivot in Windows Phone – Paul Laberge compares and contrasts the Panorama and Pivot controls in Windows Phone 7, looking at examples of each and discussing what scenarios they are each particularly suited to.

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