December Session – Coding Dojo

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:

1. One pair is "driving" at any given time
2. One of the pair has the keyboard, the Driver, the other is the Navigator
3. When the tests are all passing then the audience may suggest refactorings/tests
4. When the tests are failing the audience may only suggest fixes.
5. The Driver or Navigator may request silence while the tests are failing.
6. Driver/Navigator should swap frequently (like every 5 minutes) with someone in the audience. Be prepared to jump in.
7. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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