Scot Alt.Net Blogs

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

On the 25th of September Scot Alt.Net group will be running an AltNet Beers night with Sebastien Lambla. The event will be held in top bar of Uisge Beatha on woodlands road starting at about 7pm.

Sebastian has been running these events successfully in London for the past year and is now taking it on the road with his Alternative Network.

AltNet Beers is an hour-long time boxed open conference style session where the subjects being discussed will be chosen by the attendants. And of course all this in a pub environment, fuelled with just enough beer to make everybody participate.

Registration is optional, feel free to just come along on the night.

Google Maps

When/Where

Glasgow on 10th November at 18:30

The Talk

Testing is a fundamental part of the development process regardless of how you approach it however GUI’s have always been trickier to test and web based UI’s are some of the hardest. JavaScript, AJAX and browser compatibility are all things that make web UI functionality quite difficult and time consuming to test. Enter Selenium, a web application testing framework which makes the creation and automation of complex web user interface tests a joy.

This session will introduce you to Selenium and explain the core features of the framework before showing you, through live ASP.NET MVC demonstrations, how it can be harnessed in your own web development.

The Speaker

Andy Gibson is an Information Systems Developer for Rockstar North with a background in web application development including ASP.NET MVC, PHP and jQuery. He is always on the lookout for new technologies to play with and loves to learn what he can about things especially in the web development arena.

Keen to give back to the community, Andy has spoken at a number of community events including Developer! Developer! Developer! Scotland and is currently the Tayside Events Coordinator for Scottish Developers.

In his spare time (not that he has much), Andy enjoys table top wargamming, keeping up with the computer gaming industry and drinking malt scotch.

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.