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The Dream Giver
Gettin' Jiggy With VIM
Presentation Style - Food For Thought?
Austin - Nothin But .Net - 6 Spots Left
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

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Total Posts: 397
This Year: 122
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Comments: 1033

 Thursday, March 20, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:39:17 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00) ( General )

Having recommended this book to a couple of friends I thought I would take the time to write my 2 cents on what could potentially be a life changing book for many people. While reading this book it continually reminded me of the wonders that God has in store when you step out of your comfort zone to follow "Your Big Dream".

For the people reading this blog who do not care much for the Christian influence in the book, don't let that discourage you from what could be an amazing read and inspiration. I am positive that you will still be able to read the book and empathize with a lot with the trials and tribulations of the main character as he pursues his big dream.

Read the following blurb that will hopefully get the engines cranked for you to go out and read the book:

_________________________________________________________________

Are you living your dream— or just living your life?

Welcome to a little story about a very big idea. This compelling modern-day parable tells the story of Ordinary, who dares to leave the Land of Familiar to pursue his Big Dream.

You, too, have been given a Big Dream. One that can change your life. One that the Dream Giver wants you to achieve. Does your Big Dream seem hopelessly out of reach? Are you waiting for something or someone to make your dream happen?

Then you’re ready for The Dream Giver.

Let Bruce Wilkinson show you how to rise above the ordinary, conquer your fears, and overcome the obstacles that keep you from living your Big Dream.

You were made for this. Now it’s time to begin your journey.

________________________________________________________________

The first 3 people to email me with interest in this book will receive an amazon gift certificate in the amount required to purchase the book.

Are you ready to begin you journey?

Comments [4] | | # 
 Thursday, March 13, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008 5:37:10 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00) ( Tools )

Well you can officially call me a Vim junkie now!! Having spent the last couple of weeks working with it I can definitely say that I would not work at a machine that did not have it. That's right, that is the same claim I made, and still make, about ReSharper. I still trip myself up in ReSharper with VIM a couple of times, but nothing worth writing home about. To ensure a complete immersion, I have purchased a copy of Vimemu that integrates with:

  • Visual Studio 2008/2005
  • Microsoft Word
  • Microsoft Outlook

As well as now using gvim as my primary text editor (notepad++ is still in the picture) I just recently installed Vimperator which plugs into firefox to give me a whole world of Vim goodness.

There is only one problem with getting used to this tool - You will start wishing you had Vim integration into all of your applications!!!!!

For those of you who are curious, you might get a kick out of the following article:

Why, oh WHY, do those #?@! nutheads use vi?

As soon as I have time I am going to give a screencast on using all of these tools.

Comments [8] | | # 
 Thursday, March 06, 2008
Thursday, March 06, 2008 11:10:48 PM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00) ( Presentations )

I was just reviewing some of the feedback that I got from my presentation last week and the following comment was particularly important:

"I think that creating the code on the fly during the presentations (even if you can type really fast) distracts from the central message being communicated. I think that 50% code, 50% powerpoint, with more fully pre-built examples could better achieve educational objectives"

I have always struggled with this issue and if anyone has ever seen one of my presentation as of late they are familiar with what the equation is:

Powerpoint - 0%

On the fly coding with commentary - 85%

Talking - 15%

I am still on the fence with the above formula as it is a definite 50/50 split. You either love it or hate it.

How do you learn best when you attend a presentation?

Comments [20] | | # 
 Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008 6:49:38 PM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00) ( Agile | C# | Training )

This is just a message to those people who are interested in attending next months Nothin But .Net session in Austin, TX. There are only 6 spots left. Tell your friends, tell your co-workers. This session promises to be an absolute blast. The attendance roster is varied and will provide for lots of interesting conversation and pair programming opportunities.

You can register for the course here:

http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaID=150826

Develop With Passion!!

Comments [1] | | # 
 Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Tuesday, March 04, 2008 1:44:58 PM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00) ( Training )

Unfortunately the class in Edmonton scheduled for the end of the month has to be canceled due to low registration.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Comments [2] | | # 
Tuesday, March 04, 2008 3:52:33 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00) ( )

With only a handful of seats left for the class in Austin, it is time to start registration for another iteration of Nothin But .Net to be held in Toronto. You can register for the course here. Like the course in Austin, this course will also be held in the conference room of a hotel, so travelers will be able to stay in the hotel the course is being hosted in. This statement is also known as : prepare for long days!!!

Overview

Nothin But .Net is a five day (intense) boot camp style course that will focus on applying .Net development best practices in the context of developing a working N-Tiered application. Registrants will learn about how to practically apply.Net as they apply it to the task of building a complete application from the UI layer all the way down to the mapping layer.

 

WARNING!!!!

If you are expecting to come to this course to learn about how to have VS.Net automatically generate an “application” for you, then this course is NOT for you.

This course is all about taking control of the .Net framework and having it work the way you want. This course will place a heavy emphasis on getting back to the basics and making .Net do things the way you want it to, in a predictable and testable way.

During the course of the week, there will be absolutely no code that gets compiled from within Visual Studio. Studio itself will be relegated to a glorified code editor. I will teach you development techniques and tools that will dramatically increase your day to day productivity as a software developer.

This course will focus on a code centric view of application development vs. the typical databinding/designer magic covered by many typical .Net courses. You will walk away with a deep understanding of fundamental aspects of .Net and how these pieces can be used to develop and deliver enterprise scale applications.

Core Concepts Overview

*        Expand the capabilities of developing with VS.Net - Enter ReSharper (a productivity add-in for Visual Studio .Net)

*        There’s more to development than code generators

*        Automated Builds       

*        Generics ( they’re not just for collections )

*        Object Relational Mapping in .Net

*        Creating layered architectures

*        Driving out functionality and design through testing

*        Taking Control Of Databinding

*        Test Driven Development & Mock Objects

*        Core Design Patterns Applied

 

Detailed Topic Coverage Breakdown

·          Language Enhancements

o    Generics

o    Anonymous Delegates

o    Iterators

o    Linq

·          Collections

o    Taking advantage of the collection interfaces

o    Making use of the IDictionary<T> and IList<T> interfaces.

o    Overcoming the limitations of the IList<T> interface

o    Sorting, searching, and manipulating collections using generic delegates

o    Overcoming limitations of searching with generic delegates

o    Creating custom comparers

·          Events

o    Delegates in depth

o    Creating classes that expose events

o    Safely publishing events

o    Multithreading with delegates

·          ADO .Net

o    Creating a Custom Object Relational mapping layer

o    Effective uses of TransactionScope to test the mapping layer

o    Eliminating the need for stored procedures

o    Effective techniques for querying data

·          ASP.Net

o    Master Pages

o    Passing Data Between Pages

o    Taking Control Of Databinding

o    Validation Techniques

o    Leveraging Front Controller Architecture styles for cleaner separation of concerns.

o    Saying goodbye to WebForms

o    MVC vs MVP vs SC

·          OO Practices & Principles

o    Dependency Inversion

o    Single Responsibility

o    Open Closed

o    Hollywood

o    Tell Don’t Ask

o    Encapsulation

o    Polymorphism

·          Patterns

o    Layered Architecture

o    Data Transfer Object

o    Supervising Controller

o    Passive View

o    Notification

o    Static Gateway

o    Unit Of Work

o    Mapper

o    Gateway

o    Domain Model

o    Null Object

o    Proxy

o    Adapter

o    Abstract Factory

o    Event Aggreagor

o    Service Layer

o    Façade

o    Visitor

o    Decorator

o    Composite

o    Front Controller

o    Notification

·          Testing

o    Using Automated Testing Frameworks

o    Dependency Based/Interaction Based

o    TDD as a design tool

o    Applied Test Driven Development

o    Avoiding over specification problems with Interaction Based Testing

o    Test Partitioning

o    Different types of testing (Integration,Acceptance,Unit)


Recommended Prerequisites

This is an intermediate to expert level course. In order to walk away with the most benefit from the course the following list outlines key prerequisites and the level of knowledge that people would be best served entering the course with:

 

*        Knowledge of the C# syntax (Strong)

*        Knowledge of the .Net event/delegate architecture (Moderate/Strong)

*        OO programming concepts (Moderate/Strong)

*        Domain Driven Design (Cursory)

*        Refactoring (Cursory)

*        Design Patterns (Cursory)

*        Automated Testing Frameworks (Cursory/Moderate)

*        Test Driven Development (Cursory)

*        Utilizing Events and Delegates in .Net (Moderate/Strong)

*        Manipulation of core ADO.Net objects (Moderate/Strong)

*        Build Automation (Cursory)

 

**********Please be aware that the length of course days (based on prior iterations of the course) can fluctuate dramatically based on the level of student interaction. It is best to come ready expecting the course days to be no less than 10 hours.************

 

Intended Outcomes

Upon completion of this course students should be equipped with a practical, applied understanding of the following concepts:

 

*        Interface Based Programming

*        Design By Contract

*        Test Driven Development

*        Layered architecture

*        Object Oriented Programming

*        Design Patterns

*        Unit Testing

*        Interaction vs. State Based Testing

*        Dependency Injection

*        Object Relational Mapping

*        Domain Driven Design

*        Build Automation

People are required to bring their own laptops capable of running:

  • Windows XP w/SP2 & IIS 5.0
  • SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
  • Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
  • TortoiseSVN
  • ReSharper 3.x / 4.0

WARNING……………This is a very intense week. Your mind will not have very much in the way of downtime. Days in past courses have gone anywhere from 10