Next week I will be giving a presentation to the ctdotnet group on creating a .net build system using open source (or free) tools. I have an hour to talk, so expect things to go pretty quickly. I hope to walk through making a simple app with unit tests, adding it to subversion, building it with nant, and add it to ccnet, leaving breadcrumbs along the way of other things you may want to look at. I will also touch a bit on what is coming in Whidbey that may replace some of the tools I'll be demoing.

For those that don't know, this will be my first presentation. I mean sure, I've talked in front of people many times, but never outside of a business context. Also, the content has never been my responsibility either. This should be interesting :) So if you're in the area, feel free to stop by and watch me ramble. At least if the presentation bombs, the members has a neat career night beforehand ;)

Rick Strahl has written an excellent post on the internal workings of asp.net and iis. Obviously not new information, but put together very well, in a very technical manner. Any asp.net developer should read this, twice.

wincv.exe.. who knew?!..

[18:01] <NothingMn> really dig into System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounterCategory
[18:02] <NothingMn> wincv.exe
[18:03] <tranqy> wtf
[18:03] <tranqy> where did this wincv.exe shit come from, and how did I not know about it earlier
[18:03] <tranqy> this is awesome
[18:03] <NothingMn> haha
[18:03] <NothingMn> it is it is
[18:03] <MuteThis> yeah, but its public only
[18:03] <NothingMn> i shipped in like v1.0
[18:03] * NothingMn smacks tranqy [18:04] &lttranqy&gt lol
[18:04] <Rivan> lol
[18:04] <Rivan> damn you tranqy.... its a MUST know.. :p
[18:04] <tranqy> no shit
[18:05] <tranqy> thats gonna cut my google traffic in half I think :)

Years of coding .net, and it took 15 seconds of dropping in the chatroom to find a huge timesaver.. thanks guys..
[edit] check the comments for a more complete description of wincv, as well as a link to a followup conversation.

Sorry for the silence latley. I'll be back soon..

Walking by a co-workers desk I heard him say un-refactor. Then we started the discussion.. is it...

• un-refactor
• defactor
• de-refactor
• unfactor

Now one may ask why the whole subject even came up. ;)

Rails has fascinated me since I first read about it. A simple MVC system that makes creating sites almost too easy, all based on Ruby. I haven't had the time to investigate it as much as I would have liked, but some people have, hell, others have based businesses on rails.

The windows folks have taken notice too. Although I don't have an post on it, I get alot of search traffic with people looking for IIS Rails. Some have even taken matters into their own hands, and created a rails like framework for .net, enter Castle Monorail. I'm yet to even download this puppy yet, but already have pretty high hopes. To top it off, it is open source, and appears to be under a nice apache license. I can't wait to sink my teeth into this.

Via The Server Side .net

Come Dec 28th we will have our first new addition to our family. It's been quite a ride so far, and I know we haven't even begun to scratch the surface. Later this week I'll try to update the post with a picture of the best little "future developer" shirt I got at teched. MS knows how to get them young :)

Joel Pobar has written an interesting post with some thoughts on targeting the CLR with a dynamic language, a la IronPython. Then Corey mentions IronRuby. I was joking about the same thing with a co-worker Friday.

Via Corey's Ramblings

Sept 24th and 25th in Waltham. Be there.

Don't let a long day of BBQ and beer make you miss Richard Hale Shaw speaking on new language features in c# 2.0. This special presentation brought to you by the CT .net developers group is happening next Tuesday, July 5th from 6:00 - 8:00. Richard Hale Shaw is a phenomenally energetic speaker, who really knows his stuff. If you are at all interested in 2.0, and really, who isn't, make sure not to miss this one!

Well that didn't take long. Strolling through the comments here, I noticed Philippe Gouillou has released a simple site to take googlemaps urls and convert them to kml, and vice versa. Very cool.. Time to stroll through all of the google site seeing sites again with google earth open.

Scott Hanselman posts on what looks like a great solution for web testing. Using ruby, the magical dynamic language that reads like you think, and watir, an open source web testing framework, Scott has created a pretty simple way to test your web sites from nunit. Anything that makes testing simpler get an A in my book, and using Ruby only gives it bonus points.

Why is it everytime I hear someone talk about Continuous Integration, the word agile is usually right before or after it. I understand that the concept of CI came out of the agile methodologies, but in my opinion the two are definitely not tightly coupled as some may assert.

I see CI as a means of closing the feedback loop between the coders and the code (hmm that sounds agile). We as developers get immediate feedback on our commit, long before we forget what we just did. Powerful. For example, I add new code that depends on this shiny new open source dll, but forget to commit the dll. Within minutes the other developers are laughing and pointing at me singing Aaron broke the build. After putting my quarter in the swear jar, I can quickly fix the issue while it's still fresh. Sound agile? Sure. But in the end that commit could be part of a huge waterfall project just destined to fail, but still the feedback loop between the coders and the code is tight. There's value in that no matter your methodology, or absence there of.

Is it that everyone wants to be agile? I know I would like to work in an agile environment, and to some degree we are, but in the end we are closer to a traditional hunt, gather, and analyze shop. Yet there is still value both in our reliable builds, and the continuous integration that tests them.

/rant.. CI, although important to agile shops, can have a ton of value no matter how you develop. So don't just pass by it if you don't think your "agile", or have a nice set of unit tests to get feedback on.. (although unit tests aren't really tightly coupled to agile either ;)

Jon Skeet has written a short, excellent paper describing value and reference types, as well as how they relate to the stack and the heap. Not that this isn't covered in many places, but this article is probably one of the clearest I have read, as well as providing real world examples. A good refresher for any .net developer..

via Rob Chartier

Pretty much like keyhole. Pretty much free. Pretty much kicks ass. Go get it.

Seems it supports a couple of file formats for location saving. Google has published these "tours" which seem to be a binary format, then you can also save xml formatted files directly out of the app. I'm sure sites like these will start distributing kmz (binary) and kml (markup) files soon. Oh I can't wait for the hacks to begin.

via Jeremey Wright

Looks like the Patterns and Practices group has released a complete WS-I basic sample application. This app uses Enterprise Lib, as well as WSE to demonstrate how to build a complete end to end application. I'm really anxious to dive into the architecture, and see how the prescribed architecture looks. Hopefully it's close to how we are designing our web services ;)

Via The .net Guy

In case you don't get the emails, tonight the CT .net Developers Group will be welcoming Mario Cardinal to speak on Enterprise Application Architecture with Microsoft Enterprise Library. Hope to see you there!

I really like that little free bag. It's larger then my old laptop bag, and lighter. It doesn't offer as much protection as my port bag did, but its certainly ample. I hate the advertising on the strap, but can live with the teched badge. Am I the only one geeky enough to carry around the teched bag as a perm laptop bag?

Couple things going on.. I'm sure everyone has seen Monad beta 1 has been released. Those that don't know, Monad is this way cool shell that MS has been working on that could replace cmd.exe. Monad was slated for the longhorn timeframe. Now it seems it's going to be part of winfx, which might have a different delivery schedule, but might not, but I digress. Either way, beta1 is now available, and I've installed it. I haven't done a whole lot with it yet, but hopefully will. I sat through a (very packed) demo at teched, and was of course blown away. Even the slashdotters are throwing Monad praise.

Scott Hanselman has updated his list of ultimate tools, and it's quite an update. 2005 brings lots of new products and categories to the list, but one stuck out more then others to me. del.icio.us. I'm a big fan of del.icio.us, and it's great to see an industry icon like Hanselman use, and promote it. I've definitely added a livebookmark to his del.icio.us feed, as well as a few others I like to catch up on every so often.

If you have an xbox, and haven't gotten san andreas yet, go now. Now. Just walk out of work, and go. You may get fired, but thats ok, once you get San Andreas, you really won't need anything else. It's like crack. I spent way to much time this weekend trying to break into one of the next cities. So much, that I didn't even type word one in my teched recap ;) Soon.. soon....