Spring 2009 - Sessions

A Survey of Future Operating Systems

This presentation will compare three operating systems built around a managed (.NET) kernel: Microsoft Singularity, SharpOS, and Cosmos. Singularity is an effort from the Microsoft Research Group; Cosmos and SharpOS are open source kernels. All three kernels are under development but already provide an insight into the future of computer systems and design. This presentation will discuss the approaches behind each kernel and then demonstrate how to compile and create applications for each.

Speaker

David Pinch

Concurrent Programming in .NET

With the advent of multiple cores, developers must learn to write concurrent programs to take advantage of the hardware architecture. In this session, we'll cover the myriad of ways to run code in parallel in .NET along with some best practices and traps to avoid. We'll also cover the new features in .NET 4.0.

Speaker

Jason Bock is a Principal Consultant for Magenic, and is also a Microsoft MVP. He has worked on a number of business applications using a diverse set of substrates and languages such as C#, .NET, and Java. He is the author of "Applied .NET Attributes", "CIL Programming: Under the Hood of .NET", ".NET Security", and "Visual Basic 6 Win32 API Tutorial". He has written numerous articles on software development issues and has presented at a number of conferences and user groups. Jason holds a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University.

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Self-Writing Programs - Using Expressions in C# to Write Code that Writes Code

While most of us were looking at new features like Linq when C# 3.0 and VB9 came out, behind the scenes, a much more interesting and powerful feature snuck in - the ability to write programs that literally write themselves! In this session, we explore how to write programs that write themselves using the classes in the System.Linq.Expressions namespace. These classes allow you to evaluate code at runtime and even write new code at runtime - without having to resort to IL generation (why should Lisp hackers get all the fun?). You will learn how to use the classes in the namespace, how they work together, as well as some examples of how such things can be useful in ordinary line of business applications.

Speaker

Aaron Erickson is the Technical Solution Specialist for the Magenic Chicago office. Named a Microsoft MVP in 2007, he has written and spoken extensivley about LINQ to Objects, Agile Software Development, and CSLA.net.

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Silverlight Development: Lessons from the Trenches

So what’s it like creating a line of business application using Silverlight? What are the differences in developing a Silverlight application compared to a Winform or ASP.NET based application? In this session I’ll share with you my experiences in creating a real-world Silverlight based application and what you should expect/look out for when developing with this exciting new technology.

Speaker

D'Arcy Lussier is an information specialist with EDS based out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He’s spent the bulk of the last seven years in ASP.NET development, but has switched gears recently to focus on BizTalk and Silverlight. D’Arcy is on the board of the Winnipeg .NET User Group and is an INETA (International .NET Association) Membership Mentor for the Canadian prairies. He also holds a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer designation and has been awarded a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in ASP.NET for 2008.

Rails and Legacy Databases

Have you been to Ruby on Rails talks and found the framework interesting? Do you want to use Ruby on Rails for your next project but have to connect to a legacy database and don't know if Rails will work? Rails' object relational mapping allows to connect to legacy databases easily and use rails conventions to build your web application, without disrupting the database. During this talk we will look at a very hideous database (something that I hope no one will ever see) and build a simple rails application on top of it. This demo will revolve around using SQL Server 2005.

Speaker

Chris Johnson is a consultant with Inacom Information Systems in Madison, WI. Chris specializes in building Rails web applications. He has used many different technologies over the past 5+ years as a professional web developer. In his spare time Chris likes to hack on code with his friends, play hockey and indulge in his photography hobby.

Links

How To Quit Your Job & Get Rich Making XBOX 360 Games with XNA: Best Practices for Submitting Your XNA Game To XBOX Live

In this talk I'll cover the game submission and peer review process, along with best practices for developers who want to submit their XNA games for sale on XBOX Live via the XNA Community Games program. We'll talk about user experience and common features your game should have if you want it to sell.

Speaker

Firefox Extensions: Making Your Web Application More Accessible

What web application could be complete without a convenient interface? We'll walk through an example of how to write a Firefox extension for your latest project, using the already-familiar Javascript, CSS, and XML.

Speaker

Increasing your Productivity with Visual Studio

Visual Studio is one of the greatest development environments out there. It includes many shortcuts and features to make your life easier as a developer. Some of those features are not always user friendly to get set up. The main focus will be on using snippets to improve your development experience with common patterns in LINQ and data objects. We will also cover various shortcuts and windows. No one is an expert, you will be encouraged to share your own tips and tricks.

Speaker

Jeff Klawiter is a Senior .NET Developer at Sierra Bravo Corporation. His ambitions in life are to learn all there is to know about programming before he dies and to one day make his own dragon with Biological Programming.

Automating Deployment of Web and Click-Once Applications Using Team Foundation Server 2008 and Windows Powershell 1.0

Automated deployment of applications is a best practice for any organization, but implementing it can often be very complicated. Making configuration changes for multiple environments across Test, QA, Stage, and possibly even multiple Production Environments can be difficult. While some users need advanced tooling to complete this task, others prefer not to have to pay for third-party tooling, and just want an automated equivalent of "Xcopy" Deployment with whatever additional automation is necessary to complete the task. Windows Powershell provides all that is needed to deploy applications, whether they are Web Form Applications, Web Services, Windows Client, or even WPF (both of those using "Click-Once"). This presentation will show a simple and easy-to-implement approach that will meet those needs.

Speaker

Dan Sniderman is a Senior Consultant for Magenic, one of the nation's premiere Microsoft Gold Certified Partners. Dan has twenty-five years of experience in software development. Since 1993, Dan has specialized on developing business applications on the Microsoft platform. Most recently, Dan has worked with C#, VB.NET, Windows Forms, ASP.NET and ASP.NET Ajax. For the past year Dan has focused on using and customizing Team Foundation Server. In addition to a BA from the University of Illinois, Dan has a MCSD.NET and MCTS in Team Foundation Server. Dan recently published an article on TFS in the .Net Developers Journal. Dan also is a professional trombonist.

Building a Dynamic Game Engine in XNA: Giving Power Back to the Creators

In this talk, different methods for implementing a dynamic game engine are introduced. Such examples include loading game menus through XML, generating 2D levels with simple text files, and using other file formats to generate game levels, menus, etc... The primary focus of this talk is to show implementations of code that pull data from other sources to build simple games. Note, the specifics of XNA won't be detailed in this discussion unless absolutely necessary.

Speaker

Matthew Christian is a student studying Applied Mathematics and Applied Science with a concentration in Software Development at the University of Wisconsin - Stout. He holds an Associate's Degree in Computer Programming from Northcentral Technical College.

Taking Control of the ASP.NET Pipeline

We often forget that there is more to ASP.NET than simply dragging and dropping controls onto a page. Some may consider what goes on underneath to be magic, but if you’re interested in digging into the internals of ASP.NET this is definitely the session for you. Join me as I show you how the ASP.NET pipeline works and what happens from the moment a request enters the pipeline to when a response is returned. We’ll then take a look at how we can use HttpHandlers and HttpModules to bend the pipeline to our will and take control of it for our own purposes. You’ll leave with some real-world examples and techniques you can take home to use in your own applications.

Speaker

Kevin Babcock is a developer evangelist for Telerik and active .NET community member. He has developed on the .NET platform for about 3 years now, having transitioned from a past career as a U.S. Air Force communications specialist. A recent graduate from Texas A&M University with a degree in Computer Science, Kevin joined Telerik in the Summer of 2008 and has been speaking at conferences and user groups ever since.

Real World ASP.NET MVC

With the addition of the new ASP.NET MVC framework there will be a lot of questions surrounding how this technology can be used instead of the Web Forms that we all have been used to since .NET 1.0. With the addition of the MVC Framework we now have the best of the old world ASP Classic, with a compiled and easier to debug workspace. This session will cover a quick overview of the MVC framework, and continue with building a 'Real World' application. The message that will be carried from within the session will be how the MVC Framework can be harnessed in future projects within the attendee's future projects. This will be a "Must See" session for any web developer looking to the future.

Speaker

Gus Emery is a Senior Consultant with Magenic, one of the nation's premier Microsoft Gold Certified Partners. Gus has over fourteen years experience architecting and implementing highly-scalable ASP.NET applications and distributed n-tiered applications across a broad array of industries within the Twin Cities area. Gus has been working with .NET since Beta #1, and loves to seek out new and exciting technologies to serve his customers technological needs!

Testing with Mocks

Test this, test that, no problem. But what about when we need to start building full object graphs into our test in order to test an interaction or state? Yeah, Houston, we have a problem. With mocks we can streamline development by mocking out dependencies. Mocks will allow us to not only mock our dependencies but to also test our interactions and state very easily. In this session learn how to use mocks in your day to day testing.

Speaker

Donn Felker is a Senior Consultant with Magenic. He has over 8 years of professional experience in various markets that include – entertainment, health, retail, insurance, financial, and real estate. He is a MCTS in Web Client Development for .NET 2.0 and 3.5 and is also a certified ScrumMaster. He is the founder and coordinator of the Twin Cities Give Camp, the founder of Twin Cities Pragmatic Beer, a writer, presenter and consultant on various topics ranging from architecture, development in general, agile practices and patterns & practices.

Build a Game with Silverlight and the Farseer Physics Engine

In this code-heavy session, you will see a game built from scratch (as much as practical) using Silverlight and the Farseer Physics engine. We'll develop a UI, game logic, and hook up the UI to the Farseer engine. End to end, we'll touch everything from Silverlight/WPF basics to how to code against the Farseer engine.

Speaker

Mike Hodnick is a Lead Consultant with Inetium, based in Bloomington, MN. Mike has worked as a developer in the Twin Cities area for ten years. In his spare time he enjoys songwriting, home recording, hiking, camping, hockey, and performing highly controversial experiments with WPF.

Links