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Carl Camera

CodeMash: Day 2

This is my belated Day Two report from CodeMash held last week in beautiful Sandusky, Ohio.

Some great sessions again today, Starting off strong with

LINQ - Bridging the Object \ Relational Divide

Speaker: Scott Guthrie (keynote)

LINQ introduces new and powerful data manipulation features to the .NET framework. Extremely SQL-like in its syntax LINQ will allow developers to easily access...

DataTable dt = from customer 
               in ProductionDB.custdb 
               where customer.state == "OH" 
               select customer;

...and update...

NorthwindDataContext db = new NorthwindDataContext();

Supplier supplier = new Supplier();
supplier.CompanyName = "Scott Guthrie";
supplier.HomePage = "http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu";

db.Suppliers.Add(supplier);
db.SubmitChanges();

...data sources.

And not just databases but Objects and XML stores. One of the coolest features is bringing the ability to perform joins with this syntax without regard to the datasource. Meaning one object may be stored as XML the other as an Oracle database table. Scott mentioned that Oracle is working closely with his group to provide dataconnectors to Oracle databases.

The Productive Programmer

Speaker: Neal Ford

Highly informative and highly entertaining. Neal started the session by saying "This is the session your computer doesn't want you to attend" because it's going to do more work for you. He categorized the types of efficiencies into:

  • Acceleration (Doing stuff faster)
  • Focus (Making the problem smaller)
  • Canonicality (Don’t Repeat Yourself)
  • Automation (Make you computer do stuff for you)
  • Indirection (Make things appear in convenient places)

Geared mainly toward Windows users, Neal, presenting from his Mac, gave several examples of programs and techniques to make your computer do more of the work for you. One suggestion was to start using your mouse with your least favored hand. It will do two things -- make you appreciate how mouse-intensive your apps are and make you want to learn keyboard shortcuts.

Developing Data-Driven Web Applications with LINQ

Speaker: Scott Guthrie

A smaller more detailed and more conversational follow-up to his keynote, Scott fired up his VisualStudio and provided live demonstration of LINQ at work. One selling point for LINQ is that by providing programmers a language to describe what they want rather than how they want it, the compiler, framework, and operating system can work together to take advantage of future multi-core chips on the horizon. I would think the SQL Server folks are already hard at work doing this for our legacy systems already, but perhaps additional benefits may be acheived at compile time.

Overall

Overall, for ninety-nine bucks, CodeMash set a new standard of excellence and value for the conferencegoer. My thanks to Milan for his recommendation to attend. And my sincere gratitude to the CodeMash volunteer organizers. Well Done Indeed.

Comments

Has Milan ever made a bad suggestion?

Shane Shepherd 29 Jan 2007