After watching the first screencast that Aaron presented on Vim, I thought I would check it out. The first day was a little uncomfortable, 2 weeks later I am happy to report that I concur with Aaron's statement, which is also what I say to people who were not using ReSharper:

"I could not use studio without it"

ReSharper + Viemu is the ultimate killer combo for increasing your keyboarding productivity. The fact that you can keep your hands on home row to do the majority of your navigation is a huge plus. The core command set does not take a lot of time to learn, you just have to stick with it so that it becomes second nature. Once it does you will be "yanking", "pasting", "changing" ..... up your code in ways that now make studio seem extremely cumbersome.

As with picking up any new tool/technique there is a period of ramp up that you have to go through. It was a 2 week road trip where I could not use my mouse, that forced me to learn all of the keyboard shortcuts that I needed to get around windows, studio etc with efficiency. After that 2 week period I realized that there were very few things that I actually needed to reach for the mouse for (game playing aside).

To dive in full force, I also purchased the Vim integration that works in Outlook and Word. That way I can completely immerse myself in the Vim experience.

I encourage you to check it out and give it an honest and open attempt. You might surprise yourself with the results.

Ever since the nightly builds for ReSharper 4.0 went live, being the REA (Resharper early adopter) that I am, I downloaded it and have been using it on my C# 3.5 projects. I am happy to report that even though it is in the pre EAP phase, it is extremely solid and a joy to work with.

The support for the new language features such as extension methods, automatic properties ... is great. So far I have had only one exception dialog pop up. For those of you who have braved prior EAP's for ReSharper (remember ReSharper 2.0 EAP!!!) you have probably already developed a thick skin for the exception dialogs that typically pop up during EAP. So far this is not the case.

In all honesty, those of us who love ReSharper would be more than willing to put up with multiple exception dialogs as, let's face it, studio without ReSharper == "I won't use it".

So what are you waiting for, head over and download the latest nightly build. Keep in mind that results may vary between use as well as different nightly builds!!

Develop with Passion!!

The following snippet of code (C# 3.5) is allowable, and gives you the benefit of unnecessary extra verbosity with the benefits of encapsulation. Of course, if you need to implement logic in your property, then you don't want to think about automatic properties:

public T Item { get; private set; }

After lots of months of planning discussions and idea tennis; I am pleased and proud to announce my good friend Jonathan Rasmusson has come on board the Nothin But * Training banner. He comes armed with his own Agile Project Management training course that I am positive is going to take the market by storm.

People who know me are aware of the fact that I am very picky about the people that I choose to work and collaborate with. I need to ensure that the training delivered to people who engage jpboodhoo.com and the Nothin But * brand is of the highest quality, taught by active practitioners in the field. Having worked with Jonathan on projects in the past, I can personally attest to his level of excellence in the arena of Agile Project Management.

If there was ever a time that you though you needed to get an idea for what it truly means to run an agile project, March will be a good time to check out the beauty of Calgary whilst immersing yourself in what will definitely be an amazing week of agile deep diving!!

The course registration link can be found here. The description of the course is as follows:

Overview

As more companies introduce elements of agile delivery practices into their organizations, it is imperative that leaders be knowledgeable and informed on their effective application.

Whether you are new to agile, or just looking to improve, this intensive 4 day course is specifically designed to give you the hands on training required to successfully manage and deliver agile projects within your organization.

Core Concepts Overview

Agile Intro

• Agile in a nutshell
• Agile’s roots and history
  • Where did agile come from?
  • What makes agile different?
  • How does agile compare with traditional forms of delivery?
• Principles behind the practices
  • What are the principles that underpin the practices?

Agile Project Inception

• How to setup your project for success
  • How to start your first agile project.
  • 10 things to do before starting any project.
  • How to make sure everyone is on the bus.

Agile Project Execution

• Fundamentals on agile project execution
  • Role and responsibilities
  • Team practices
  • Iteration/Release Planning
• Building the first plan
  • Story gathering
  • Estimation/Prioritization
• Iteration mechanics
  • Analysis/Development/Test
  • Communication & Collaboration
• Tracking
  • How and what to track?
  • Big visible charts
  • Effective status reports
  • Continuous improvements through retrospectives

Agile Project Wrap-up

• Transitioning to support
• Documentation
• Agile myths

Course Pre-Requisites

• A positive attitude
• A willingness to share, learn and grow
• Ability to play games and have fun

About the teacher : Jonathan Rasmusson

As an active participant in the Agile community since 2000, Jonathan has extensive experience as a developer, architect, and project manager on the application and execution of Agile projects.

With experience introducing agile practices at Fortune 500’s (British Petroleum and Microsoft), to startups (Cambrian House), Jonathan is uniquely qualified to help those interested in learning how to successfully setup and execute agile projects.  As a former agile evangelist at ThoughtWorks, Jonathan travelled extensively helping companies introduce and apply agile delivery techniques to their unique situations.

Cost

$2000 USD

This includes:

• all printed media
• lunches / coffee
• and 4 days of intense learning and growth

Course Registration

• The course registration link can be found here

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me at jp@jpboodhoo.com.

Unfortunately due to low numbers the WPF class is going to be cancelled. I apologize to anyone who was planning on registering.

Thanks.

Had a question recently with regards to presenter first development in a smart client application.

“How do you tell the presenter to run?”

In presenter first style, the presenter will be the first point of contact from the ApplicationController. It will be the presenters responsibility to tell its associated view to render, etc. In my current smart client application I am making heavy use of commands that can be attached to arbitrary elements : buttons, linkbutton, menu items, to initiate the running of a command. Here is a small piece of code that should give away how I am hooking up commands to presenters in the application:

    public class RunPresenterCommand<Presenter> : ICommand where Presenter : IPresenter
    {
        private IApplicationController controller;

        public RunPresenterCommand(IApplicationController controller)
        {
            this.controller = controller;
        }

        public void Execute()
        {
            controller.Run<Presenter>();
        }
    }

Notice that all this command does when told to execute is to dispatch a call to the application controller, telling it to run the associated presenter. This keeps the responsibility of starting up the presenter in the place that it should be, the ApplicationController.

Hope that answers the question.

I might be a little late on this one, but I just learned a new shortcut that will definitely save me time when I am working in my VM on my mac. I love to use the keyboard. And when I use my natural keyboard it is fairly easy to access context menus (right click) by using the context menu key on the keyboard. My MacBook does not have such a key. This meant that up until yesterday (when I learned the shortcut) I had to have a mouse plugged in any time I wanted to access the context menu.

Shift-F10 is actually a keyboard shortcut that accomplishes the exact same thing as the context menu key / right click.

Thanks to Jay Smith for pointing this out for me.