A new post has been added to Learning in Public:
ASP.NET MVC – Lesson 2 – Viewless Controllers
A new post has been added to Learning in Public:
ASP.NET MVC – Lesson 1 – Controllers and Views
A new post has been added to Learning in Public:
Free Training CDs from AppDev
AppDev is apparently giving away free training CDs. I have not personally seen the training, but free is not typically a trait in a product that I hate, so AppDev already “has me at hello” with this offer!
http://www.appdev.com/promo.asp?page=SN00009
Free Book: Microsoft VB.NET 2005 for Developers
Microsoft has a free book available for download for anyone who wants it. Download the whole book, or download it chapter-by-chapter (8 in all). Check it out at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/learning/introtovb2005/
Debugging Resources
It is my opinion that the difference between good developers and outstanding ones are the way that they debug applications. As such, I wanted to point you to some great debugging resources to get you well on your way to standing with the outstanding developers.
First off, there is the issue of understanding Windows to begin with that get a lot of people in trouble. Many issues can be traced down to something that is “working as designed”. As such, I highly recommend the Microsoft Windows Internals book from MS Press. This book will give you a great understanding of how Windows works. Next, I would brush up on .NET debugging skills. To do so, I recommend a .NET 2003 book, but most of the debugging skills still apply to 2005, so don’t be dismayed by the title: Debugging Applications for Microsoft .NET and Windows. Once again, John Robbins from Wintellect writes one awesome book.
Well, books are great, but what about free resources? I have some of those too!
First, you can check out the windows debugging website at:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx
Then there are a new series of webcasts that have just been released in the past week or so dealing with the very issue of debugging:
TechNet Webcast: Microsoft.com Operations Introduces Real World Debugging: Debugging CLR Internals
OK. So maybe I did not have a TON of debugging resources, but this is a great start for anyone who wants to make himself or herself into an outstanding SDE or SDET. So go work yourself into a “debugging guru”. By the time you are done, hopefully John Robbins’ new book on debugging will be out.
202 VB.NET Samples
I just wanted to bring some attention to a resource that I think is extremely valuable for VB developers (and really, any .NET developer using any other language for that matter). MSDN has a website with 101 Code Samples for VB.NET 2005. There is also another website for those of you that haven’t upgraded to 2005 yet: 101 Code Samples for VB.NET 2003. Both of these sites have very valuable sample code for doing things such as network programming, using regular expressions, executing transactions, handling/changing ACL’s on files, accessing data, performing bulk data transactions, executing asynchronous operations (one of my favorite topics), using ClickOnce, creating ASP.NET pages and more! It is a great resource for those of you that just want to get it done and don’t want to waste a lot of time reading specifications on each class in System.Net or System.Data. The samples are robust and provide some great starting points for anyone interested in the many topics available in these samples. Check them out and let me know what you think!
Michael Howard Points to Excellent Series of Papers
Mike Howard has pointed out on his blog that there is an excellent compilation of security white papers in PDF form (image-based PDFs, not Text-based) available for download. Despite their age, these provide the very foundation for some of the most sophisticated security pillars today. Well worth the read.
