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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!