Summary of 19th September .NET Geeks Lunch

Szymon Kobalczyk — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:56:04 GMT

Yesterday we met for again on .NET Geeks Lunch in Kraków. I'm happy to report that this time we had doubled the number of participants (9 people showed up) and welcomed some new faces. So in order to break the ice we had prepared a super-short presentation (just enough to fit the time between ordering the meal and bringing it to the table). The topic was on methods and tools to support our learning process.

Bartek demonstrated how he uses some cool features of Microsoft OneNote for taking notes.
Marcin showed us how he used the TiddlyWiki before, and currently switched to building mind maps using FreeMind (which is a free alternative to MindManager).
Tadek pointed out that he uses both of these tools regularly as they are complementary to each other.

After this the usual conversation started. Here are some subjects I managed to pick up, and the links I promised:

Tomek told us about working at Microsoft. He was an intern in Redmond, and starts to work there in few days. Good Luck!
Bartek is evaluating ReSharper (again!) and asks for advice (what do you think of Refactor!)
Online backup services like Mozy Online Backup (also recommended by Rob) and others
Tools to search for .NET code snippets like Koders (which also provides a VS plugin and API) and Google Code Search
I've talked about Windows Home Server (search this blog for pics of some upcoming devices) ...
... and Media Center Extenders (with recently added support for DivX)
Guys took some interest in my new Lenovo x61 Tablet PC which is also great for taking notes
In my opinion the best book to start learning WPF is Adam Nathan's "WPF Unleashed" Adam Nathan. Then you can also read "Essential WPF" by Chris Anderson and "Programming WPF" by Chris Sells and Ian Griffiths. And is still intend to read Charles Petzold's "3D Programing for Windows"
For WCF Marcin recommends "Programming WCF Services" by Juval Lowy, but we also look forward to read "Learning WCF" by Michele Bustamante
You can read most of these books (if not all) online on O'Reily's Safari Books Online (take a look at the list of publishers on the front page)
Piotr W. asked for recommendations on the client-server vs. offline smart client architecture (and we need to discuss this further)
On the way back to work we also talked briefly about the RSS Readers we use (FeedDemon, RssBandit, JetBrains Omea Reader, and myPodder), workspace synchronization (also NewsGatoreDesktop Beta) and favorite blogs and podcasts

I would like to thank everyone who participated in this meeting, and I can't wait to meet with you again next month. Cheers!

Our first .NET geek dinner was great!

Szymon Kobalczyk — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:11:40 GMT

Since February I work as independent contractor, and so far I like it a lot but the only thing I miss about working from home is face-to-face contact with other developers. So after listening to Scott Hanselman's podcast on how to become a better developer I decided to take one of his advices and organize a geek dinner. I invited few friends from my past jobs and our Kraków .NET User Group. We met in nice indian restaurant near Kraków's market square and had great time discussing all maters mostly related to .NET (but the food was good too).

Here are some things we talked about (some links are in Polish):

Second Life and how people are making money out of it (Kraków is one of the first cities in Europe introduced to SL).
What we like and don't like in TFS and some workarounds (also hosted TFS, Subversion and Exchange).
Community Server and using other application frameworks (Share Point, DotNetNuke) to quickly create applications instead of building them from scratch.
How we like Acropolis, and why we need application services on the client.
New stuff in Orcas and .NET 3.5 (including AppDomain isolated add-ins)
Of course we had to talk about Silverlight vs. Flash, but this also led us to Dynamic CLR (also here and here).
How BizTalk Services can simplify WCF service deployment on internet (and don't get confused by BizTalk in the name - it is good for any WCF app)
We also shared some trick on sharing large files over internet
And finally, check out the NASA Photosynth

I would like to thank Bartek, Marcin, and Michał for taking their time to talk. I think that from now on we would organize this regularly every month. Next time I'll post info in advance here, so if you live anywhere near Kraków and would like to join us feel free to drop by.

Geek Lunch

Summary of 19th September .NET Geeks Lunch

Our first .NET geek dinner was great!