Perth ALT.NET

July Session - Does the world end if you stop using Visual Studio

2010-07-12T10:33:00.003+08:00

I have a mate who is a hardcore C programmer. For years he has been writing his code in Turbo C++ 3.0 for DOS which was a state of the art IDE made by Borland in 1991. Recently I convinced him to download and try XNA development with Visual Studio and he was amazed by some of the things that I now take for granted. "This IntelliSense thing means I don't have to remember all those methods names. It's totally awesome," he tells me. And he's right. I can basically no longer code without it.

Or is that true? Are my abilities so tied to a particular tool that I am totally ineffectual without it? What does an IDE (any IDE) really do for me and does it make me a better programmer? Or is it a crutch that limits my abilities and encourages me to do things I would otherwise avoid like the plague? In short, will the universe end if I no longer have Visual Studio?

These questions and more are the basis of a recent experiment by Garry Stewart involving switching to Vim for development. He's going to come and tell us about his experiences.

What: Does the world end if you stop using Visual Studio?

When: Wednesday 14th July, 6pm - ?

Where: 43 Below Bar & Bistro, Corner of Barrack Street and Hay Street (undergound across from MacDonalds)

Cost: Free!

Hope to see you there.

Late June Session - Rhys Campbell on RavenDB

2010-06-16T10:42:00.002+08:00

We are having a later session this month. Wednesday the 23rd Rhys Campbell is going to talk about RavenDB the new Document Database from Hibernating Rhinos.

What: Rhys "Developer, Brother, Lover" Campbell on RavenDB

When: Wednesday 23rd June, 6pm - ?

Where: 43 Below Bar & Bistro, Corner of Barrack Street and Hay Street (underground across from MacDonalds)

Cost: Free

Incentive: I'm going to give away some 30 day access codes to TekPub thanks to our sponsor...TekPub!

Hope to see you there!

P.S. If there's anything you'd like to present on (or see presented or just want to discuss) drop me a line at michael.minutillo@gmail.com. I'd be keen to hear about the Reactive Extensions Framework (Rx) as well as the new releases of Workflow and Entity Framework.

We have very powerful friends

2010-04-12T19:46:00.001+08:00

Huzzah! We have a sponsor in the form of TekPub. TekPub is a great resource for technical training videos that are relevant across a range of technologies. I should be able to give away some video vouchers and maybe even some series ones! That won’t be until after the pack arrives though. In the meantime, spread the word and sign up for stuff. These guys are awesome.

We also have the ability to have some giveaways courtesy of JetBrains. Doing that means we need to get 30 people in a session so tell your friends! What should you tell them? Well, don’t forget that the April session is this Wednesday (the 14th) and we’re hosting Myles (@madpilot) Eftos who’s going to demonstrate IronRuby on Rails talking to an Active Directory. See you there.

If there’s another session that you’d be interested in attending or even presenting, let me know.

P.S. Who immediately responded to the title with “Yes. I bet” in Huttese?

April Session – The Rails Way

2010-03-26T12:36:00.001+08:00

For this April’s session (14th April) Myles Eftos is coming along to demonstrate Rails development. Rails (and Ruby) have been very popular in the last decade and a lot of new language features (and new languages) will be influenced by “The Rails Way”(TM) of doing things. Also, I’m pretty sure that Myles is running Rails in IronRuby and has it talking to an Active Directory instance :o.

From Myles’ bio:

Myles started his freelance business MadPilot Productions in 2000 which has kept him fed and clothed. In between client work, Myles works on his pet time tracking system 88 Miles and is the events co-ordinator for The Australian Web Industry Association.

Although he makes no claims to being a designer, he oft dons a black skivvy, buys a mocha-latte and opens photoshop in a megre attempt to look cool. Thankfully his skills in Rails, PHP and JavaScript are much better, otherwise he may make the starving artist stereotype a reality

What: A demonstration of web development with rails
When: Wednesday 14th April. 6pm –> ?
Where: 43 Below Bar & Bistro, 43 Barrack Street Perth
Cost: Nothing**

Hope to see you there.

** For every person who does not come I shall drag a database table onto a form that gets used in a production app. One day you’ll have to maintain that. Muwahaha.

March Session – Maybe

2010-03-10T14:37:00.001+08:00

Heaps of people are not able to make tonights session and I haven’t been able to secure a projector (trying to organize on the day is a bad idea). I’ll still be at 43 below with beer and laptop if you want to drop by after work.

The good news is that I’m already working on getting a presenter in for next month. If you want to present (in May or as a backup for April) then drop me a line. michael.minutillo@gmail.com

Perth Coffee

2010-03-08T11:33:00.001+08:00

For those who haven’t been attending for whatever reason, a bunch of folks meet up every Tuesday at 1:30pm for coffee and a chat. This month we are meeting at Expresso77 in Allendale Square. Mitch maintains a notice at the top of the Perth .NET site (on the right) and I tend to tweet about it on the day. I also put a regular appointment in the Perth ALT.NET calendar. Hope to see you there.

March Session

2010-03-08T11:26:00.001+08:00

The next meeting is Wednesday 10th March. I’d like to present on MEF but if anyone has any better ideas then I’m keen to hear them. One suggestion that I’ve had is that we build an IoC container with MSpec. If that sounds like the thing for you then come along and be vocal.

What: Drink Beer. Discuss .NET
When: Wednesday 10th March, 6pm –> ?
Where: 43 below, corner of Barrack and Hay
Cost: Free!

Feb Session

2010-02-10T11:46:00.001+08:00

Somehow it has got to be today without me realizing it. The Feb Session of the Perth ALT.NET group is tonight. We are dissecting AutoMapper with the intent of:

Understanding AutoMapper better
Learning how we all approach a new code base
Discussing AutoMapper coding/architectural style

We are starting at 5:45ish and are at 43 below (someone tell that they can’t have VB as beer of the month for a whole year please).

If you have a laptop please bring it because we are not sure we will have one. If you don’t want to discuss AutoMapper then come anyway. If you can’t steer the discussion where you want to go then at least there is beer.

Finally, due to family commitments I won’t be able to attend and I haven’t been able to organize this session. Thankfully Rhys has stepped in at the last minute to help out. If the session is cool then lavish praise on him as he’s put it together in literally 2 days. If the session sucks blame me for only giving him 2 days notice.

Have fun and I’ll see you next month.

A Chat with Rowan Bunning

2010-01-22T11:10:00.001+08:00

Welcome back to a new year!

Sorry for the late notice but next week Rowan Bunning is going to be in Perth to do some training. Mitch Wheat of the Perth .NET Community of Practice has organized for an informal session with Rowan next Wednesday evening at 43 below (our usual venue).

Rowan is a pioneer of Scrum in Australasia. Here is his bio from the event page:

With a background in web design, object-oriented development, eXtreme Programming and Scrum, Rowan became Australia's first Certified ScrumMaster and first Certified Scrum Practitioner before becoming the first Australian Certified Scrum Trainer. He has built extensive experience leading, coaching, and training organisations in Scrum across Australasia and Europe, including European Scrum leader EMC Consulting (formerly Conchango).

Rowan is highly active in the Agile community internationally and has spoken at several conferences in Europe and North America including Scrum Gatherings in 2007 (London) and 2009 (Munich). In Australia, Rowan founded a successful Agile special interest group supported by the Australian Computer Society and helped to initiate Scrum User Groups in Sydney and Brisbane. Rowan holds a Bachelors degree in Information Technology, is a PRINCE2 Practitioner and is Cognitive Edge accredited.

If you are going to come then I ask that you please RSVP at the event page so that we can keep track of numbers and upgrade to a bigger room if needed.

December Session – Coding Dojo

2009-11-25T13:44:00.001+08:00

Thanks to everyone for their presentations in the previous session. Since then I’ve had a good chance to have a play with PowerShell and Psake (which are both cool). I still haven’t had a chance to install AutoMapper but it seems more and more likely every day on my current project. There were some interesting side discussion around Event Driven Architectures and Do vs. Done that I’d love to see expanded upon in a later session. Finally, I continue to be blown away by the power and flexibility of WPF. I look forward to being able to build an MVVM project in WPF sometime in the future.

The next session is Wednesday 9th December and it will be another Coding Dojo session. If you haven’t come to one before it basically consists of us, as a group, solving some well defined problem using Test Driven Development. Here are some rules:

One pair is "driving" at any given time
One of the pair has the keyboard, the Driver, the other is the Navigator
When the tests are all passing then the audience may suggest refactorings/tests
When the tests are failing the audience may only suggest fixes.
The Driver or Navigator may request silence while the tests are failing.
Driver/Navigator should swap frequently (like every 5 minutes) with someone in the audience. Be prepared to jump in.
Have fun, be nice **

Everyone is welcome, attendance is free.

What: December Coding Dojo
When: Wednesday 9th December, 6pm - ?
Where: 43 Below, 43 Barrack Street, Perth
Cost: Free

** Not necessarily in that order.

All In

2009-11-10T14:42:00.001+08:00

The November session is tomorrow night. It looks like we will have 5 presenters each giving 15-20 minutes on their chosen topics. These are:

Adrian McGrath – AutoMapper
Rhys Campbell – MassTransit
Adam Bell – Powershell
Jake Ginnivan – Dynamic UIs in WPF
Ying Low – Caliburn

For those interested Adam Bell has recently started the Perth chapter of the Powershell User Group Australia.

What: All In (short sessions from a bunch of people)
When: Wednesday 11th November from 6pm
Where: 43 Below (43 Barrack Street)
Cost: Free

Hope to see you there.

November Session – Someone presents something

2009-11-02T13:10:00.001+08:00

Thanks to Rhys for presenting last month on Castle ActiveRecord. It was very interesting. Additionally I apologise to everyone who missed the session for accidentally running the session on the first Wednesday instead of the second. There is now a Google Calendar for the ALT.NET user group to make it easier to stay informed about when stuff is going to happen. If you’re on the site then its just over there to the right.

Anyway, the November session is Wednesday next week (the 11th). The room is booked and I’m organizing a projector but I don’t have a presentation as of yet. If you’d like to step up (even for just 15-20 minutes) this could be a great opportunity. Here are some topics that I’d (personally) like to see:

AutoMapper
Fluent NHibernate
SubSonic
Caliburn / MVVM
ASP.NET MVC 2
Distributed Version Control with GIT or Mercurial
Messaging Architecture with MassTransit or NServiceBus
Powershell
Refactoring – From Procedural to OO
The Horn Project
F# (Anyone actually using it?)

If you’d be interested in talking about any of those (or anything else) send me an email or leave a comment. Don’t forget the Perth .NET CoP is having a DevJam event in December so this could be an opportunity to try out ideas.

P.S. I’m interested in trying to get some sponsors to provide incentives for speakers. What sort of products/licenses would make you keen to present?

P.P.S. I’m thinking that for December we might have another CodingDojo. This one will be based around the more traditional Code Kata approach of trying to solve a really well defined problem in a set timeframe (traditionally using TDD). If anyone has a kata they’d particularly like to try then let me know.

OzVAN Presents me

2009-10-12T12:33:00.002+08:00

Just a quick note to let you know that I'll be presenting at tonights Oz Virtual ALT.NET (OzVAN) event. It should be 7:30pm Perth time which makes it 10:30pm on the other coast**. You'll need a LiveMeeting client and then you can just head over to http://tinyurl.com/virtualozaltnet

I'll be presenting on Connascence and .NET which is an interesting way of looking at software connectedness.

If you are generally interested in OzVAN events then check out the global VAN website which has recordings of previous sessions as well as a calendar of ongoing events. OzVAN happens fortnightly on a Monday night and just like the Perth ALT.NET group there is a google calendar so you never miss any.

** It is normally 9:30pm Eastern Time but they have daylight savings so I'm not sure if I'll be home at 6:30 local. We might need to compromise on 7pm local which is 10pm EDST. Curse you Daylight Savings!

October Session – Castle Active record

2009-09-23T15:53:00.002+08:00

Update: Next Wednesday is the 7th of October not the 8th. Thanks to Anne and Jake for pointing this out.

The next session of the Perth ALT.NET group will be Wednesday ~~8th~~ 7th Oct. Instead of throwing us in the deep end with NHibernate Rhys Campbell is going to show us Castle Active Record.

Castle AR is a great tool kit built on top of NHibernate for mapping a simple domain model onto a highly similar data schema. The AR pattern is great for getting started on projects (or dealing with simple projects) and Castle AR is a good implementation with a nice migration story into full NHibernate when you outgrow it’s capabilities.

Rhys has written a post containing a bunch of resources about Castle AR here.

Finally, I’m switching employers between now and then which means that a) I won’t have a laptop and b) I’m not certain that I’ll have access to a projector. If anyone thinks they’ll be able to provide either of these items please flick me an email.

No September Session

2009-09-04T19:13:00.001+08:00

Hi all.

First off, thanks to Adrian for showing us LLBLGen Pro last month. At the end of the session Adrian threw down the gauntlet to other ORM evangelists in the room. We should have a LinqToSql guy, a few NHibernate guys and I’d like to show SubSonic in action.

According to our schedule the September session should be next Wednesday. As there will be a bunch of folks at TechEd AU next week and I haven’t had a chance to organise a session yet I think it’s best if we skip the session. We’ll reconvene for the next session on Wednesday 7th October.

If you have a topic you’d like to present (or that you’d like to hear) or if you want to defend your favourite ORM then leave a comment or send me an email at michael.minutillo@gmail.com.

P.S. The Perth .NET CoP is having two sessions next month and I believe there will be a Nerd Dinner. Keep an eye on their site as we get closer to October.

DDD Resources and August Session – LLBLGEN Pro

2009-08-10T12:03:00.001+08:00

Last months session went reasonably well. We had a bit of a play with a very simplistic sample of what Domain Driven Design was all about. If you want to learn more about DDD then I highly recommend Eric Evans book:

InfoQ produce a free introductory text that summarizes much of the Evans Book called Domain Driven Design Quickly. This is a good start but if you are serious about DDD then I’d recommend the full book.

Otherwise you can download the code that we wrote and have a play with that:

This month, Adrian McGrath is going to show us the LLBLGEN Pro framework. The session will start at 6pm on Wednesday 12th August at 43 below. See you there.

P.S. Sorry for the late notice. This is THIS Wednesday

July Session - DDDD

2009-07-07T12:45:00.001+08:00

Domain Driven Design. The extra D is for Dojo. You can decide which end it belongs.

The July session is on for Thursday night (the 9th), 6pm at 43 below. Adrian has been kind enough to provide a small sample of a drag-drop application that we can either rebuild or refactor into using more Domain Driven approach.

Participation is encouraged but if you just want to sit in the back and heckle feel free.

Beer of the month is still VB (gross) but there is usually a beer and pizza combo deal on Thursday nights for $13 so maybe that balances out.

See you there.

Preparing July Session

2009-06-17T21:09:00.001+08:00

At our last meeting we had a long discussion about the general architecture of a Domain-Driven application. While I think most of us have a pretty good understanding of the parts and how they interact it was suggested that we should have another Coding Dojo to build something together and really explore this space.

We’ll build a small part of an application around the AdventureWorks database (hey, it’s there right?). This should consist of a small domain model (2 or 3 classes) and a couple of screens. A lot to get through in one session but we might continue this offline afterwards.

We won’t have internet access as usual so I’d like to stock up on the required tools before we go in. I already have VSTS 2008 Developer Edition, Gallio, MbUnit, NHibernate, Linq to NHibernate, FlunetNHibernate, ASP.NET MVC and Unity on my laptop. What else do we need / would like?

Also, if we stick to the normal meeting date it will by Wednesday, July 8th. As this is my wife’s birthday I’d best move it to one of the other days that week (or buy a very comfy couch). If anyone has a preference let me know otherwise I’m leaning towards Thursday 9th (they have $13 beer and pizza on Thursdays).

Session tonight

2009-06-10T08:42:00.002+08:00

Tongihts session is still on folks so come on down to 43 below on Barrack Street for 6pm start if you are keen.

The topics proposed were BDD, DDD and SOLID. Recently I've been reading the DDD book [Evans] and started to question the industry adoption of Object Modelling (Fundamental to DDD and SOLID principles). If people are willing I'd like to step back from the proposed topics and explore the value of Object Oriented thinking. Why is it important and why is it so frequently ignored? For me, this represents one of the fundamental pillars of the ALT.NET ideal.

Next Session

2009-05-24T12:56:00.001+08:00

In order that we can all prepare for the next session (Wednesday 10th June) we need a topic for discussion. I have 3 idea at the moment.

1) Domain Driven Design (DDD): I get this request a bit and I’m reading the Big Blue Book at the moment.

2) Behaviour Driven Design (DDD): As I’ve been working on a BDD tool recently I’d be keen to discuss people’s opinions and ideas about BDD.

3) S.O.L.I.D. Principles: a set of 5 principles that you can use to guide your OO design toward some desirable properties (high-cohesion, low coupling, etc.).

If you want one of these then say so. If you want something else then propose it.

I’ll see you all on the 10th.

P.S. Don’t forget the OzVAN session is happening tomorrow evening (around 7:30pm local time). I probably won’t make it as I’ll be celebrating my 30th!

Tools and resources

2009-05-08T12:16:00.003+08:00

There is a session next week, I've just been very slack about blogging about it. A few people have expressed sorrow over the fact that the idea for the original Perth ALT.NET session (sharing the tools that make us happy) never came to pass. With that in mind (and considering Hanselmans list hasn't been updated for a year or more):

What: Open Toolbox Show and Tell

When: Wednesday 13th May, 5:30pm - ???

Where: 43 Below, Cnr Barrack & Hay St, Perth

Bring a laptop (or a thumbstick) with your favorite tools on them and be prepared to show them off.

Also, I keep forgetting that the official Virtual ALT.NET group is now live. They have a schedule of sessions and a repository of previous sessions for you to check out. Remember that the OzVAN sessions run every 2nd Monday and the next one is this Monday (the 11th). This one is about Powershell. Go and check it out!

TestDriven Dojo a-go-go

2009-04-01T20:48:00.003+08:00

Well the bad news is that I forgot to book the 43below function room for the dojo until tonight and the room is taken by the Young Engineers. The good news it that they're going to put us in the restaurant and there is plenty of room (and beer) for both of us.

The event is Wednesday, 8th April starting at 6ish. Beer of the Month is still listed as Fat Yak on the website but as it's April 1st you never know.

Thus far it looks to be shaping up as a good event with:

Jeremy Thake - SharePoint and TypeMock

Rhys Campbell - WinForms

Stephen Price - Silverlight

Tiang Cheng - ASP.NET with WatiN

I don't have a link for Tiang but he sent me this:

Tiang Cheng is a Software Developer at Westnet. He works primarily in .NET 2.0 and 3.5, coding in both Visual Basic and C#. In his free time he codes Ruby on Rails web applications and Device Communcations technology (RFID and Rally Timing). He has a strong interest in Continuous integration, Testing techniques, and Software Quality and Measurement.

Don't forget to bring your Coding Ninja outfit (I refuse to call it a Gi) and be prepared to jump in at a moments notice. Also, just two last things. 1) If you are coming please register at http://perthaltnet0904.eventbrite.com/ 2) Tell your friends (or if you think TDD is stupid tell your enemies). That is all. See you there.

TestDriven Dojo

2009-03-25T12:29:00.001+09:00

Now that I’m back from Las Vegas it is time to organize next months Perth ALT.NET meeting. Last time we had some great discussion about running a Coding Dojo to follow on from the most recent Perth .NET CoP meeting.

A Coding Dojo is a meeting where a bunch of coders get together to work on a programming challenge. It is a great way to learn from your peers and to improve your skills. This dojo will focus on Test Driven Design.

The basic idea is this: You will show up and at some time during the night you will have contributed some tests and production code to a project in some .NET technology. I need to confirm some of the people who said they’d be willing to help facilitate this but thus far it looks like we have WinForms and SharePoint covered.

Rhys Campbell covered WinForms in his most recent Perth .NET CoP presentation and if you want a preview of what to expect from the SharePoint session you might like to check out the new Evening Developer-Only SharePoint sessions. The first one is tonight and it’s Jeremy Thake on SharePoint Developer Testing!

If you are interesting in facilitating a Dojo along the lines of TDD (I’m thinking WPF, Silverlight, ASP.NET are all not covered yet) then please let me know ASAP. All you need to do is provide a basic application and guide some people through adding some functionality Test-First.

The session will be at 5:30pm on Wednesday 8th April. To help us with venue we ask that you register your intent to come at this eventbrite page http://perthaltnet0904.eventbrite.com/

Any comments or feedback please drop me an email.

Perth ALT.NET Meeting #2

2009-03-08T22:14:00.001+09:00

Wow that happened fast. The 2nd meeting of the Perth ALT.NET group is this Wednesday from 5:30pm until we are done (about 8ish as people have homes to get back to). As with last time we'll be meeting in the function room at 43below. Beer of the month is Fat Yak and is apparently quite nice :)

We'll be voting on a topic (or two) on the night so if there's something you really want to talk about then get there on time and throw your vote in. Before the vote we'll have a quick discussion of some news items so if you've seen anything cool this month or have something cool to show off then flick me an email michael.minutillo@gmail.com and we'll get it in.

One other thing I'd like to get from the night is a quick list of topics that people would like to talk about in the future so I'll probably pass a piece of paper around for people to add their vote to. I'll use this as a guideline going forward.

Entry to the event is free and we welcome anyone with an opinion on the state of .NET Development (or anyone who just wants to hear other peoples opinions).

Hope to see you there.

Virtual ALT.NET Oz Meeting tonight!

2009-03-02T17:36:00.001+09:00

The international ALT.NET community have Virtual ALT.NET meetings (VANs). They basically come together on LiveMeeting for a discussion about whatever is on their minds at the time. Unfortunately for us in Australia these are usually not at a good time.

Well, a while back it was suggested on the OzALT.NET mailing list that we should host our own VANs. The first one is tonight at 9:30pm Eastern (which makes it 7:30pm local). If you are interested in attending head over to http://tinyurl.com/virtualozaltnet in a couple of hours.