Dime Casts - Great Ten Minute Development Tutorials

Derik Whittaker has started a great video tutorial site called Dime Casts.  The tutorials are just the right length to fit into a busy day. 

There are videos on LINQ2SQL, Extension Methods and Visual Studio just to name a few and more are being added often.   The videos are also downloadable in two resolutions or you can just watch them online.

Dime Casts are a great way to learn new technology ten minutes at a time.

If you use Twitter, don’t forget to follow DimeCastsDotNet.

Enthusiasm & Passion for Programming

I am currently working in a large company as a Developer/Analyst.  I work primarily with Visual FoxPro (Mid-Senior Level), but am striving to learn .NET (Beginner).  

We are migrating our legacy software which is written in DOS FoxPro 2.5, VFP 3.0 and VFP 7.0 to .NET.  The new Windows application includes a WPF/C# front end and SQL Server back end.  We have a team that maintains the legacy applications (which is the one that I am on) and a team that is building the new application.  Sometimes, the lines cross and I do get to work on the new software. Because the lines do not cross as much as I would like, I find myself having to find ways to keep my enthusiasm at a decent level.

Every now and then I run across blogs and podcasts that help me with my enthusiasm and passion for development.  Last week’s Hanselminutes on the subject of Finding Passion for Software is a great example of the kind of content that really turns my thinking around - "maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel".

Below are some things that I do to keep myself enthusiastic:

• Attend User Group meetings and Code Camps/Tech Fests - I cannot afford to go to big conventions like TechEd and VSLive, so free local area events are the next best thing.
• Read development books and publications - There is so much content online, but I still feel that a hard copy every now and then is needed.  I subscribe to CoDe Magazine, MSDN Magazine and SQL Server Magazine as well as try to keep a book with me at all times.  That way even if I don’t have access to the internet, I can keep my learning in motion.
• Listen to Podcasts on Development and general technology - there is a plethora of podcasts out there and new ones starting up constantly.
• Watch online videos - Again, there is a ton of online tutorials. (Dime Casts, How Do I Videos, ASP.NET Tutorials, GridView Guy Video Tutorials)
• Subscribe to blogs (XML)
• Social Networking - There are a lot of Developers on Twitter and FriendFeed.  You really pick up a lot of information following other people in the Development Community.

In closing, my current work situation sometimes makes it difficult to stay interested in my chosen profession, but thanks to the abundant amount of resources, I seem to stay interested and enthused.

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Related Content

• Finding Passion for Software
• Be a Better Developer in Six Months
• Develop with Passion like Jean Paul Boodhoo
• John Bristowe on Advancing Your Career
• Creating Passionate Developers

HDNUG Meeting - 06/12/08 - Recap

I attended the June Houston .NET User Group meeting tonight. There were about 55 people in attendance which is a pretty good turnout. Still enough people to keep me from winning any door prizes.

The sponsor was Pariveda Solutions, an information services technology company.

Michael Steinberg , the HDNUG President, gave a high-level talk on the new features SQL Sever 2008. His talk was followed by an overview of Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7, given by John Hellman, the HDNUG Vice President.

Other information provided

• In July, Marcus Egger will be speaking on the subject of Silverlight
• The 2008 Houston TechFest will be held September 13th at University of Houston

All in all, it was an evening of great information.

Some Good Development Article Series

The Internet is flooded with resources for application development. Below are some recent article series that I have found informative.

The 4 Guys from Rolla always have great articles. One of their latest series of articles deal with Using ASP.NET 3.5’s ListView and DataPager Controls.

I have not had a chance to really sit down with it, but F# is definitely getting some exposure on the Internet. Dustin Campbell has a great F# /Functional Programming category. It contains some great information to enable someone to start learning this new language.

Another aspect of application development that I have not had a chance to work with, but am interested in is Test Driven Development. Buddy Lindsey has a great article series titled TDD For Beginners. It starts from the basics of what TDD is and how it works and gets more advanced from there.

I am always looking to better my C# skills. Since I am a beginner C# developer, I love articles and series of articles on C# in general. Joel Cochran has a great series of articles titled Upgrade Your C# Skills. Below are the articles included in the series.

• Upgrade your C# Skills part 1 - Extension Methods
• Upgrade your C# Skills part 2 - Compiler Inference, Object Initializers, and Anonymous Types
• Upgrade your C# Skills part 3 - Lambda Expressions
• Upgrade your C# Skills part 4 - LINQ to Objects

For beginners tutorials/article series, the BlackWasp web site is always providing some kind of series. The latest series is titled C# Object-Oriented Programming. It is a very good place to get started with C# or refresh your memory of the basics.

Eric Lippert has a good series on Immutability in C#. There is some great information provided in this series.

Happy learning and Happy programming!!!

"How Do I?" Videos

I was perusing around MSDN and found a ton of “How Do I” videos. I knew MSDN had webcasts, but I have never seen these little gems. They look to be an average of 7-15 minutes long and come in several video and audio formats.

• “How Do I?” Videos for Devices
• “How Do I?” Videos for ASP.NET
• “How Do I?” Videos for Visual Basic
• “How Do I?” Videos for Native Coding
• “How Do I?” Videos for Visual C#
• “How Do I?” Videos for Security
• “How Do I?” Videos for Silverlight
• “How Do I?” Videos for Visual Studio
• “How Do I?” Videos for Visual Studio Tools for Office
• “How Do I?” Videos for Team Suite
• “How Do I?” Videos for Windows Forms
• “How Do I?” Videos for ASP.NET AJAX

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Happy Learning!!!

New .NET Podcast

Mohammad Azam  has a new podcast on KoffeeKoder titled Introduction to FIT.  It has good sound quality and I have already learned what FIT is.  I highly recommend it and hope the series continues as I feel I can learn a lot from it.

Mohammed has also composed a plethora of content for for ASP Alliance, GridViewGuy and other sites as well as maintaining a great blog.  I really don’t know how he does it.

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Using Regular Expressions

Regular expressions are a systematic way of searching, replacing, and parsing text with elaborate patterns of characters. The System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace provides an avenue to the .NET Framework’s regular expression engine. The Regex class is used to compile regular expressions.

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Common Methods (Full List)

• IsMatch - Indicates whether the regular expression finds a match in the input string.
• Match - Searches an input string for an occurrence of a regular expression and returns the precise result.
• Matches - Searches an input string for all occurrences of a regular expression and returns all the successful matches.
• Replace - Within a specified input string, replaces strings that match a regular expression pattern with a specified replacement string.
• Split - Splits an input string into an array of substrings at the positions defined by a regular expression match.

–

C# Code Sample 

   1: using System;

   2: using System.Text;

   3: using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

   4:  

   5:  

   6: namespace RegExStuff

   7: {

   8:     public class RegExSample

   9:     {

  10:         public static void Main()

  11:         {

  12:             //– Take input value and if it is in lastname, firstname format echoes firstname lastname to the console

  13:             string userName = Console.ReadLine();

  14:  

  15:             Regex re = new Regex(“(\\w+),\\s(\\w+)”);

  16:             userName = re.Replace(userName, “$2 $1″);

  17:  

  18:             Console.WriteLine(userName);

  19:  

  20:             //– Take input value and if it is in mm/dd/yyyy format echoes yyyy/mm/dd to the console

  21:             string curDate = Console.ReadLine();

  22:  

  23:             Regex reDate = new Regex(“(\\d{2})/(\\d{2})/(\\d{4})”);

  24:             curDate = reDate.Replace(curDate, “$3/$1/$2″);

  25:             

  26:             Console.WriteLine(curDate);

  27:         }

  28:     }

  29: }

–

Result

–

Regular Expressions can be very complex and there may be several ways to “skin a cat” so to speak. After spending just a couple of minutes surfing the net I found three different patterns for phone numbers.   

^[2-9]\d{2}-\d{3}-\d{4}$ –> 800-555-5555
^(\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4})*$ –> 555-555-1212
^(\([2-9]|[2-9])(\d{2}|\d{2}\))(-|.|\s)?\d{3}(-|.|\s)?\d{4}$ –> 213-123-1234, 2131231234, (213) 123-1234

There are websites and tools dedicated to the creation of Regular Expressions.  For instance, Roy Osherove is the creator of a tool called Regulazy.  Regulazy is a visual Regex creation tool for beginners.  There are so many different expression patterns, it is easy to see why there is a need for tools such as this.

–

Related Links
Regular Expressions Library
Regular Expressions Information
Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet

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XmlTextWriter Class

The XMLTextWriter class is part of the System.Xml namespace. This class contains several methods to aid in the creation of XML files from start to finish.

There are four steps to create a properly formed XML file

• Instantiate an XmlTextWriter object
• Write the XML declaration node
• Write the data
• Close the file and perform clean-up

–

Common Methods (Full List)

–

C# Code Sample

   1: using System;

   2: using System.IO;

   3: using System.Xml;

   4:  

   5: namespace xmlSample

   6: {

   7:     public class Sample

   8:     {

   9:         public static void Main()

  10:         {

  11:             // — Intantiate the XmlTextWriter object

  12:             XmlTextWriter xmlWrite = new XmlTextWriter(@”c:\temp\MusicGroups.xml”, null);

  13:  

  14:             // — Write the version line

  15:             xmlWrite.WriteStartDocument();

  16:  

  17:             // — Write a description comment

  18:             xmlWrite.WriteComment(“Some of my favorite groups”);

  19:  

  20:             // — Start the root element

  21:             xmlWrite.WriteStartElement(“CoolGroups”);

  22:  

  23:             // — Write list elements

  24:             xmlWrite.WriteElementString(“group”, “Breaking Benjamin”);

  25:             xmlWrite.WriteElementString(“group”, “Incubus”);

  26:             xmlWrite.WriteElementString(“group”, “311″);

  27:             xmlWrite.WriteElementString(“group”, “Staind”);

  28:             xmlWrite.WriteElementString(“group”, “Lifehouse”);

  29:  

  30:             // — End the root element

  31:             xmlWrite.WriteEndElement();

  32:  

  33:             // — Write to the XML file and close the writer

  34:             xmlWrite.Close();

  35:         }

  36:     }

  37: }

–

Result

–

The XmlTextWriter class does much more than what I have written about here.  There is a great article by Scott Mitchell that goes into much more detail on this very useful and powerful class.

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Great .NET Search Engine

I was listening to a very informative episode of .NET Rocks the other day.  It was an episode with guest Dan Appleman and the subject was Discoverability.  He outlined several internet resources for .NET developers.  The one I found most interesting is SearchDotNet, an awesome search engine to find .NET content.

Happy Surfing.

Good Podcasts on Productivity and Development

I have been listening to a lot of podcasts in December. There are three that I found extremely interesting.

Hanselminutes - Show #55
Discussion of Life Hacks with Gina Trapani, web developer and author of the book “Life Hacker - 88 tricks to turbocharge your day”

.NET Rocks - Show #205
Discussion with with Venkat Subramaniam and Andrew Hunt about Agile Development

.NET Rocks - Show #206
Discussion with Ted Neward about .NET and Java compatabiliy

After listening to the .NET Rocks with Venkat Subramaniam, I can’t wait until his presentation at the Houston .NET User Group meeting this month.

I was extremely impressed and inspired by the HanselMinutes interview with Gina Trapani. I love her view on the difference between women and men in technology — “Men live to geek and women geek to live”