We are very proud to announce that AgiliTrain and Rachel Appel are partnering to present a series of public classes on the next generation of web development. Rachel will be teaching two new courses for AgiliTrain on web development:
- The MVC Tour: A 3-day training session that features an in depth look at MVC – the Model/View/Controller pattern as implemented in ASP.NET.
- The jQuery Tour: A 3-day jQuery workshop that enables developers new to jQuery development to increase their knowledge and gain familiarity with the jQuery libraries, plug-ins and ecosystem.
For those not in the know, Rachel has been working as a mentor, instructor, software developer, architect and DBA for nearly 20 years. During her career, Rachel has worked with a variety of languages, technologies and systems and has contributed to projects of all sizes including large scale enterprise applications at some of the world’s leading companies. Rachel’s expertise lies within developing solutions that align business and technology using the Microsoft .NET family of products, particularly ASP.NET & SQL Server. She is also an ASP.NET MVP, ASPInsider and holds the Microsoft Certified Trainer, MCAD & MCSD certifications.
The workshops will be held in several cities including:
The MVC Tour (http://mvctour.com):
- Sep 14-16, 2009 in Seattle, WA
- Nov 2-4, 2009 in Philadelphia, PA
- Jan 11-13, 2010 in Dallas, TX
The jQuery Tour (http://jquerytour.com):
- Aug 24-26, 2009 in Philadelphia, PA
- Oct 5-7, 2009 in Dallas, TX
- Dec 7-9, 2009 in Seattle, WA
Get your seats while they last. Only sixteen students per date will be accepted.
Erik Mork, Silverlight MVP, host of the SparkingClient Podcast and an instructor for The Silverlight Tour, has compiled a new set of Prism for Silverlight Resources. He recently completed a number of podcasts and videos on how to use Prism in Silverlight. This blog post enumerates the ten things every developer should know about Prism and links over to resources that explain each point. If you're new to Silverlight and have heard a lot about Prism and/or MVVM, this list is worth reading and following.
UPDATE: Now only 3 Seats Left!
With nearly three weeks left, we are starting to run out of seats for the Silverlight Tour in Atlanta. This stop of the Tour will be the first using all Silverlight 3 materials. The seats are going quickly, get yours while they last. You can sign up on the AgiliTrain website here:
https://agilitrain.com/Workshop/Info/Silverlight_Tour_Workshop
If you miss out on Atlanta, the Tour next stops in Dallas on August 17-19th.
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The new MSDN Magazine is out and my article on creating composite Silverlight applications using Prism is finally available. If you're building large scale Silverlight applications and need to learn how to compose pieces of your application together, go read the article!
I have a chance to sit down with Keith and Woody of the Deep Fried Bytes podcast to give them my long elevator pitch for Oslo and Domain Specific Languages. If you haven't heard me tell the Oslo story, grab some headphones...
About Deep Fried Bytes
Deep Fried Bytes is an audio talk show with a Southern flavor hosted by technologists and developers Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff. The show discusses a wide range of topics including application development, operating systems and technology in general. Anything is fair game if it plugs into the wall or takes a battery.
In cooperation with Accentient, AgiliTrain is now bringing Richard Hundhausen's Agile Database Techniques workshop to a city near you. This three-day course will give students a deep dive into managing SQL Server database development in an agile environment. From understanding how VSTS supports an agile database development lifecycle, to creating and configuring database projects, as well as automating the building and deploying of SQL Server databases, you’ll walk away knowing how to do it all.
The dates for the workshop are coming up soon. The workshop will take place:
- July 20-22nd, 2009 - Seattle WA
- August 3-5th, 2009 - Atlanta, GA
- September 7-9th, 2009 - Chicago, IL
The workshop is limited to the first sixteen students so register before the seats are gone!
UPDATE: Due to lots of conflicts I am cancelling this event. Sorry everyone who planned on coming.
I had the pleasure recently to sit down with Keith and Woody on their Deep Fried Bytes Podcast and talk about Oslo and DSLs in general. If you have a chance, go listen to it and let me know what you think!
I am here at DevTeach and having a great time. I got in a discussion with several of the speakers about the common complaint of some Silverlight/WPF folks that they want Blend to be in Visual Studio; or why Cider has always been disabled by most dev's.
I hear the complaint a lot that developers want the functionality of Blend hosted in Visual Studio. While I understand the desire, I've never been bothered by the dual programs. In fact, I think its better. Blend needs to be separate because its primarily for a Designer/UX role that isn't comfortable with the breadth of Visual Studio.
We have plenty of other solutions that have two overlapping tools: I can insert an Excel spreadsheet in Word but when I need to do an if/then analysis I use excel. A single Office App would be silly. Finally (I think the most compelling example) is SQL Server. When I am in Visual Studio, I can open a database connection and run queries, create stored proces and more. But if I want to manage users, create backup plans or other DBA-like tasks, I go to SQL Server Management Studio. I can do many of the same tasks in both, but developers never ask for Microsoft to remove SQL Server Management Studio and fold it all into Visual Studio. Different roles mean different tools (roles != people btw).
What do you think?
Fun first day here at DevTeach. I a talk showing creating a MVVM application from scratch (using ADO.NET Data Services 1.5 CTP). Kathleen Dollard had introduced the concept earlier that day, but we teach it a lot differently so it was fun to show off building a full MVVM application in the span of 75 minutes.
The project we built in the talk is now available here at:
I the demo is a little big because I included the database (that includes some additional information). You will need Silverlight 3, ADO.NET Data Services 1.5 CTP and to attach the database (as XBoxStore) to SQL Server Express to get the demo to work. I introduced the topic of separation and isolation of contract with interfaces. Hope it helps!
