2009
12.16

After years of hearing about just how cool the ruby on rails framework is and being typically cynical about the whole thing I decided to check it out. The image I had of rails was that of a framework adopted by tree hugging, corduroy trouser wearing and long haired hippies. Learning ruby was fun but not entirely dissimilar from C# 3.5 and it is obvious to see the influence that ruby has had on C# 3.5.

It is hard to describe how game changing discovering rails has been for me. The ethos and methodology is expressed in a frictionless development environment that is articulated in each rails project. Convention over configuration is a culture I thought I was practicing in .NET.How wrong I was….

I would like to share my findings and report back to the .NET community of what can be learned from rails and possibly to a lesser extent ruby.

Speaker

Paul was born in bred in Belfast before leaving for the mainland in 2004.  He now runs his own business in Glasgow where he hopes to create a developer centric environment that creates great software. He previously spent 4 years working for twentysixlondon, working as a technical architect where he worked mainly on public facing websites such as the Volvo Ocean Race, Waitrose, Closer and Abercrombie And Kent

The Volvo Ocean Race website tracked a round the world yacht race through ten months of race time. During race time, the website was updated with live race and telemetry boat information in as real time as possible.

Before twentysixlondon Paul spent his career working for Fujitsu in Belfast where he worked on numerous government projects.

Paul’s hobbies include Boxing.

Location

Scottish Developers have been kind enough to help organise a venue for use and have arranged for Equator to let us use their board room. Due to size of the room, we have to limit the available spots to 12. The presentation will take place on the 4th February at 7:30pm.

Equator,
Ground Floor,
Moda, 144 Elliot Street
Glasgow, G3 8EX

Google Maps


2009
12.04
There are many advantages a robust unit test suite gives to software development but there is an equally wide variety of unit testing technologies. In this talk, we will look at an approach to extending the ‘traditional’ form of unit testing with parameterization as well as specification tests in a functional context. Two testing tools will be used to provide a practical context. Pex is a framework produced by Microsoft Research that enables the creation of parameterized unit tests. These tests allow developers to perform a systematic analysis of the SUT and flush out boundary conditions and exceptional cases that may have otherwise been missed. QuickCheck is a unit testing library originally developed in Haskell that performs random tests within a specification the SUT should satisfy. Test failures are then ‘shrunk’ to provide a minimal example of failure in an effort to minimize debugging.
Speaker
James Lynch is currently working for Storm ID in Edinburgh and has a working background in .Net web development. He has an avid interest in new technologies and finding out what different programming languages have to offer.
Location
Thanks to Microsoft for providing the location for this event
7.30pm on Thursday 7th January 2010
Microsoft Edinburgh
Waverley Gate
2-4 Waterloo Place
Edinburgh EH1 3EG

2009
11.25

Geek Dinner (Glasgow)

Scottish Developers are organsing to put on a Geek Dinner.  Please register your interest if you want to come along.  It’s shaping up to be an interesting evening!

2009
11.23

It’s that time of year again and the chaps over at Scottish Developers have started taking session proposals for next years Developer Day Scotland. Make sure you have a look at what has already been submitted, and if there is anything you want to see then let the guys know.

2009
11.11

ASP.NET MVC 1 changed the landscape of developing websites on the .NET platform and ASP.NET MVC 2 is bringing even more to the table. Currently preview 2 features productivity increasing additions like an integrated validation framework, richer model meta data and better object view templating support. In this talk we will look at these and the other additions to ASP.NET MVC 2. The presentation will take place on the 3rd December at 7:30pm.

Speaker
Currently working for Edinburgh based Storm Id, Chris Canal has over 7 years of development experience.  A great believer is continual–improvement, Chris is constantly looking for new technologies, tools and methodologies that will help in creating robust and maintainable software applications and has become an active member of the Scottish Alt.Net Community to share his findings and ideas with like-minded developers.

Location
Scottish Developers have been kind enough to help organise a venue for use and have arranged for Equator to let us use their board room. Due to size of the room, we have to limit the available spots to 12. The presentation will take place on the 3rd December at 7:30pm.

Equator,
Ground Floor,
Moda, 144 Elliot Street
Glasgow, G3 8EX

Google Maps

2009
11.10

When

Glasgow: Tuesday, 8th December, 2009 @ 18:30

The Talk

There is more to doing TDD well than just Red-Green-Refactor, and creating a maintainable test suite as well as maintainable production software is vital. In this presentation we will look at common testing patterns, techniques and tools that can help make maintaining the test suite easier. From Shared Fixtures to Stubs and Mocks, we will take a look at common patterns that have been proven to work and the tools that help you take advantage of them. We will also take brief look at what Behaviour Driven Development is and the problem it tries to solve.

The Speaker

Chris Canal has worked at a Web Developer for the past 7 years. Starting with procedural languages like ASP and PHP, he quickly moved onto the .NET Platform when first released. A great believer is continual–improvement, Chris is constantly looking for new technologies, tools and methodologies that will help in creating robust and maintainable software applications and has become an active member of the Scottish Alt.Net Community to share his findings and ideas with like-minded developers.

The Venue

We are meeting in Room M402 on the 4th Floor of the George Moore Building at Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow, G4 0BA

You can find more information and book your spot here.

2009
10.23

We’re pleased to announce that ScottLogic has made it possible for 10 more spots for the BDD presentation.  Book your spot now using the button below and we look forward to seeing you on the night.

2009
10.06

Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) is an approach that aims to bridge the language gap between user stories and programmer tests. In this presentation we will look at some BDD tools for .NET, including NBehave and Cucumber (with IronRuby). We will also discuss some popular techniques that can implemented without any additional tools.

Speaker

Robert Lewis is a software engineer at Spacelabs Healthcare. He has been writing commercial software since 1998, and programming in C# since 2002. Robert is a proponent of good process for software teams, aided by the right tools.

Location

ScottLogic, a leading financial software and consultancy company based in Edinburgh, have been kind enough to offer the use of their premises for an evening of BDD knowledge sharing and discussion.  The event will take place on 4th of November at 7.30pm at ScottLogic, 17 Gayfield Square Edinburgh EH1 3NX.

2009
10.02

Last Thursday (1st of October 2009) Joe Wright was kind enough to take one of his coding dojo on Converting Numeral Systems.

I have now uploaded the code to the scot alt.net svn repository. You can check out the code at the link below

http://scotaltdotnet.googlecode.com/svn/session_code/ConvertingNumeralSystems

Cheers again to Joe for taking the event and for everyone who came along and joined in the kata

2009
09.24

Coding Dojo – 1st Oct

Joe Wright has kindly offered to run a Coding Dojo for us on the 1st of October at the Dell Corp. building starting at 7pm.  Due to the nature of the evening, there are only 10 spots available.

A Coding Dojo is a coding session centred around a programming challenge. The challenge is small in scope and allow programmers of varying skill levels to meet as equals. To learn, to teach, to repeat, to understand, to laugh and to grow as software developers.

Do you want to become a better software developer?
Then you’d better come and practice!

Do you think you are you good at some programming technique?
Find out how much better you’ll become by having to explain your code to others!

Do you want your code to do more than barely work?
Together we’ll make code that is:

  • extensively tested (to ensure quality and confidence)
  • readable (so that others can continue your work)
  • refactored (the only means to fight code-rot)
  • communicating your design well (to ensure extendibility)

What will the challenge be?
http://code.joejag.com/coding-dojo-converting-between-different-numeral-systems/

Location
Dell Corporation Limited,
City Park,
368 Alexandra Parade,
Glasgow,
G31 3AU

View On Google Maps

After the Dojo we will retire to Beer Cafe, Merchant City Square – View On Google Maps