1. Practical Patterns

Scott's Top 10 is a MUST read!

Bill Jones Jr. — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 00:24:00 GMT

You really need to check out Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2005UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolList.aspx

I'm not saying you will use everything Scott suggests, but I've already done several installs and I'm not done yet. I knew about FireFox and BgInfo, but forgot to bring them along to my latest machine. NotePad2 was new to me, but immediately became my default text editor. As I get through more of the FireFox extensions, I'll sing out if anything grabs me by the lapels.

Bill J

Charlotte Code Camp – Saturday, April 30, 2005

Bill Jones Jr. — Mon, 02 May 2005 13:32:00 GMT

What’s a Code Camp? It all started with Thom Robbins, Microsoft techie up north – Vermont, I think. Anyway, it’s someplace where they have cold winters and get lots of time to think, because he sure came up with a good idea with Code Camp. You can read the manifesto in Thom’s blog archive. There’s a Code Camp Wiki for more info. Since I just noticed that Wiki is hosted by the Boston .NET UG, maybe Thom is a Massachusetts guy? That’s close to Vermont, right?

Anyway, we worked closely with Doug Turnure, one of the Guild’s primary Microsoft tech contacts, to pull off an outstanding Code Camp. 19 Speakers, over 20 volunteers and while our attendance numbers are not yet official, I think we had over 170.

A couple of attendees compared Code Camp favorably with VS Live, so I guess we hit the mark! Our chairman, Eric Notheisen, has managed over 180 events in his stellar career. He reports this one went as smoothly as anything he has ever seen.

Here’s the schedule to give you an idea of what we covered:

	MPR (Here)	Everest	Kilimanjaro	Matterhorn
Time	Patterns	ASP.NET	Code Generation	Mobile
8:00 AM to	Registration
8:30 AM
8:30 AM to	Keynote and Introduction
9:00 AM	Bill Jones, Eric Notheisen and Doug Turnure
9:00 AM	"Gang of Four" Patterns 101	Inspired by Indigo, Implemented Today - SOA with 1.1	RAD meets OOP - Using Visual Studio tools to create n-tiered Apps	Introduction to Avalon and XAML – Microsoft's new Presentation Technology for Windows Longhorn
to	(Level: 100)	(Level: 300)	(Level: 100)	(Level: 200)
10:15 AM	Bill Jones Jr.	Brady Gaster	David Catherman	Todd Fine
10:30 AM	The Duk.Net Application Framework	Unit Testing With NUnit	Applied Reflection to Deliver Adaptive Business Solutions	Speech Server - On Your Desktop or on the Go
to	(Level: 200)	(Level: 100)	(Level: 200)	(Level: 100)
11:45 AM	Charlie Ward and Steve Rodgers	Jack Blanton	Nick Harrison	William Ryan
12:00 PM to	Lunch
12:45 PM
12:45 PM	Patterns and Practices	Test Driving ASP.NET development for Web and Mobile Applications	Business Intelligence & Microsoft SQL Server 2005	Using GDI+
to	(Level: 200)	(Level: 200)	(Level: 200)	(Level: 100)
2:00 PM	Marley Gray	Cory Foy	Will Sweeny	Chris Williams
2:15 PM	Developing Application Frameworks with Design Patterns	Code Access Security	Introduction to Indigo	Speech Goes Mobile
to	(Level: 300)	(Level: 200)	(Level: 200)	(Level: 300)
3:30 PM	Maxim Karpov	Tobin Titus	Doug Turnure	William Ryan
3:45 PM	Astronomical Computing and .NET Applications at the ASU Dark Sky Observatory	Introducing Web Services with WSE 2.0	Developing Custom DotNetNuke 3.0 Modules	Put Secure Web Services In Your Pocket
to	(Level: 100)	(Level: 200)	(Level: 200)	(Level: 200)
5:00 PM	Dan Caton and Chris Elsworth	Chris Dix	Jim Duffy	Marty Turner
5:00 PM to	Closing
5:30 PM	Bill Jones, Eric Notheisen and Doug Turnure
	Patterns	ASP.NET	Code Generation	Mobile
	MPR (Here)	Everest	Kilimanjaro	Matterhorn

You can find out more at our Code Camp site. I’m not ready to do it again next Saturday, but by next spring I’m sure a Code Camp will seem like a superb idea.

Bill J

Charlotte NC

Trying to Learn Patterns from the “Gang of Four” reference book?

Bill Jones Jr. — Mon, 02 May 2005 00:59:00 GMT

This is distilled from my Charlotte Code Camp presentation yesterday.

The “Gang of Four” AKA “GoF”: Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides are authors of the code patterns reference book. The title is “Design Patterns - Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software”. This book is so standard, other books refer to pattern names with the page numbers from this book in parentheses like Singleton (127).

For legacy coders (Java, C#, C++, etc.), look at this one too:

C# Design Patterns – A Tutorial
James W. Cooper
Addison-Wesley ISBN 0-201-84453-2

If you’re using a more modern language like VB.Net, try this one. (For you legacy guys, this is VB humor. You laugh here. You do not flame):

Design Patterns in VB.Net – Building Adaptable Applications
Fischer, Slater, Stromquist and Wu
A!Press (was Wrox) ISBN 1-59059-274-3

If you want to see where it all started, read the book written about building architecture:

Timeless Way Of Building

Charles Alexander

You can learn from the GoF book, thanks to the most excellent work by Dr. Michael Mahemoff. The secret is to read “Design Patterns” in the right sequence:

Easy GoF Patterns			Intermediate GoF Patterns
	Façade(185)			Proxy(207)
	Singleton(127)			Decorator(175)
	Mediator(273)				like Proxy
	Iterator(257)			Adaptor(139)
	Strategy(315)			Bridge(151)
	Command(233)				like Adaptor
		like Strategy		Observer(293)
	Builder(97)
		like Strategy	Advanced GoF Patterns
	State(305)			Composite(163)
		like Strategy		Interpreter(243)
	Template Method(325)				like Composite
		alternative to Strategy		Chain Of Responsibility(223)
	Factory Method(107)				like Strategy
		like Template Method		Abstract Factory(87)
	Memento(283)			Flyweight(195)
		like Command		Visitor(331)
	Prototype(117)

If you’re reading to get a handle on patterns, it also helps to stay out of the weeds on your first pass. First read the “Intent” section. It will present a concise description of the problem and the solution. Take a quick look at the “Structure” session. It’s presented in OMT not UML. After all, this book was published in 1994. If the notation throws you, there’s an appendix in the book to explain it. You can also go to the outstanding Data & Object Factory site to see the 23 Gang of Four patterns in UML and C#. Finally flip back and study the “Motivation” topic. It explains what lead to the solution and how it helps. I find myself looking over the “Applicability” section too, since it discusses when to use the pattern.

Taking this approach to “Design Patterns” gets any competent professional up to speed by reading about 50 pages. When you’re in the trenches and recognize a need to apply a pattern, you can get down in the weeds and figure out how a particular pattern can help you.

In the meantime, your lunch time conversation gets a decided boost, assuming your lunch companion like code as much as you do.

Bill J

Charlotte NC

Why blog? Or how to get Virtual Server out to the web

Bill Jones Jr. — Sun, 01 May 2005 21:36:00 GMT

Why blog? Lack of ego is not a serious problem for me, but who wants to hear what I have to say? My family, friends and User Group cohorts assure me they do. Maybe that's one of the good things about the web, a small audience is still an audience.

A little research confirmed things like “rules“ and “structure“ are not paramount in the blog community. Since there’s no way I would ever do a daily post, it was nice to see that nobody cares. In fact with syndication, anyone who really wants to keep up with your musings can do so quite conveniently.

Then I found a reason. To help those who follow avoid the pain I've just gone through figuring out how to set up a Virtual Network that will let my Virtual Server Machine get out to the web. Since I suffer other pain points in my development career almost weekly, maybe sharing “is a good thing”.

Virtual Machine/Virtual Server Web Access: I was doing fine with what my son the UNIX bigot refers to as “the pointy-clicky approach to installations”, until I tried to get the VM out to the web so Win2K3 Server could activate and update. (Activations are a whole ‘nother issue!)

Two secrets, one is to get the NIC card connected to VM Network Services. The other is to let the Win2K3 wizard on the VM find the network, the web and set up an Application Server.

Right click on Network Connections and bring up properties. Right click on the Local Area Connection and bring up properties there also. Click the Install button. Select "Service" from the component list and then click the Add button. That should get you to a list where you can select and add "Virtual Machine Network Services". (Ain't these pointy-clicky installs just great when you finally figure out what to click?)

Now, create a virtual network using the device associated with the connection you just updated and link it to the desired VM. These steps are all well documented, but I had to go spelunking into the newsgroup to stumble across a vague reference to the "Virtual Machine Network Services".

Hope this saves someone the hours I burned getting here. Go forth and prosper, even if it's virtual.

Bill J

Charlotte NC