WCF Webcasts, Java and CodeMash

First off, I thought I was going to be able to jump right into my WCF webcasts that I promised, but it appears that I am going to have to put a little more thought into this. First off, I want to design my webcasts to be as short and focused as possible - hopefully five minutes or less. Why the limitation? I was listening to Mark Miller on an old episode of dotnetrocks (do yourself a favor and listen) talk about the great features we develop that are only ignored by the customer. Why do they ignore, you ask? Because customers don't know it's there and/or they don't know how to use it. One of his ideas to combat the problem was to was to include brief training videos no more than 5 minutes long in the help "infrastructure". I heard this and said, "hmmmmmmmmmmm....I know! I'm going to steal Miller's idea and tell everyone I came up with it"! Inject the evil scientist laugh here. All kidding aside, I think he brings up a great point for a couple of reasons. One, if you are new to a particular application, you will hit the help files and the internet a lot looking for very easy answers. I do not often find easy answers in help files. I do, however, seem to get a lot out of watching someone explain what they are doing while they are coding. As proof of this, I just recently listened to Miguel Castro talk about web controls on dotnetrocks AND watch similar content on dnrTV. The difference was amazing. I got so much more out of the dnrTV episodes (btw, this is no knock against dotnetrocks. I condider myself a loyal fan). Unfortunately, I can't watch dnrTV for an hour everytime I have a problem. Therefore, I feel very short, well-defined segments are far more helpful than hundreds of lines in a help file. I could be wrong here (or I suppose Mark Miller could be wrong), but I doubt it. Therefore, I'm looking I'm looking at the entirety of what I'm trying to develop before I begin. I'll keep you posted.

Last post, I was talking about Java. If you're one of the two people who read my blog, you'll know that I'm reading Thining in Java. I'm getting ready for CodeMash and want to be able to intelligently discuss platform differences - something I consider a shortcoming of mine. Well, I've read a couple hundred pages and I can tell you there is little difference at the superficial leve between Java and .NET. Makes sense, since Java was a bit of a model for .NET. One interesting point is that I feel I'm learning a lot about .NET by doing the examples in the book. Who would have thunk?


Have you registerd for CodeMash yet? If not, WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!? Here is a conference that has Scott Guthrie, Neal Ford and Bruce Eckel lined up as keynote speakers, something few of us have thought could ever happen. Register now at www.codemash.org. You want to be part of this one.

More CodeMash Stuff

There is just way too much stuff to know. In my view of things, SOA (service based architecture) is just a natural extension of n-Tier based architecture. I still start looking at apps in terms of defining layers. Sometimes, I just need one of those layers to go get something over the internet/intranet. No big deal. Then, as I am checking the links from my previous post, I click on CodeMash and find a post entitled, "Tier-Based Architecture is Dead! " which is talking about Grid Architecture. Naturally, now I'm dying to know what Grid Architecture is. Just a bit more reading that I have to do before I get to CodeMash.

Btw, I'm reading Thinking in Java (the free versions are found here). I know what you are thinking. Why in the world would .NET programmer cross the dmz? One word - perspective. On the rare occasion that I am around Java programmers all I hear about is how great Java is . Since I've never written an app in Java, I really don't feel comfortable taking part in these discussions. I want to talk about it, but intellectually, I know I'm better off listening, asking questions, and deflecting .NET myths. So, what do I know about Java? First off, there is some really good software written using Java. Secondly, it appears Microsoft carefully studied Java when designing .NET. Lastly, there are a lot of Java developers out there (if you're looking for a particularly good one, check out Dianne Marsh, one of the organizers of CodeMash). That seems to be the extent of my Java knowledge.

Where is this going? Very simply, how can you expect to be a truly professional developer if you have no perspective? I don't feel I have that. Therefore, my remedy is to read a Java classic. Will I install Java compiler on my machine? I will once I get around to getting a new hard drive.

A Harsh Lesson On Commenting

I ran into one of my psuedo-bosses, Bill Wagner, at P.F.Changs (I like my Change Sauce spicey unlike my partner-in-crime, John Hopkins) where he was having lunch with Tim Landgrave. After a friendly introduction, we somehow got on the topic of commenting. That's when Bill made the comment, "Darrell, comments start with 2 '/'"! I was so insulted! I said I commented my code, but in my head I was thinking "I kind of comment my code". Well, it turns out the next project Bill had me do was to do a code review of all of the code that has been written for this project over the past 2+ years. This is when I learned that I had no idea what commenting meant. Allow me to share with you what I've learned...

• I can confuse myself with my own code
• Even simple functions can be confusing without a stated purpose
• Speaking of purpose, every class has one. Put it in an xml comment.
• Ditto for functions
• It's not good code, unless it's commented code (THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON OF ALL).

Now that I am done confessing my sins, let's talk about the future, shall we? I'm going to be starting a new series of blog posts on WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). Unlike my WSE series, I'm not going to have pre-stated goal. I simply want to share what I've learned. As part of this series, I will be including short webcasts to highlight the important stuff. I hope to start sometime in the next week, but I have some items to get done first.

And don't forget CodeMash

Registered for CodeMash

I'm not entirely sure, but I may be the first person registerd for CodeMash. Josh Holmes pinged me this morning and asked me to register, just to check and see that all was good in the world. Everything seemed to work so now it's just a matter of waiting.

For those of you not familiar with the CodeMash event, it's a "language agnostic" conference meant to get developers of all backgrounds together in one place. I, for one, do not know nearly enough about java and am intent on learning as much as I can not only at the event, but prior as well. It's hard to tell what exactly the topics are going to be since the call for abstracts just went out recently, but I will be watching. Hope to see you there.

My Talk Last Night at AADND

I did a presentation on WSE last night at Ann Arbor .NET Developers Group. I had gotten an IM from a desperate Josh Holmes asking me to throw something together. Josh had 3 speakers cancel on him for the meeting and wanted to know what I could do. I am proud to say that I went from nothing to fairly organized presentation rather quickly. Unfortunately, I had some troubles with my demos despite the fact that I had run through them multiple times. I got through them and the few who were able to make the presentation seemed to be engaged. I think this will be the end of WSE for me, though. WCF was released as part of the .NET 3.0 Framework, ironically, on the very day that I gave my presentation. Who would have thunk? My slide deck and demos can be downloaded here.