It's been six months since my previous article "10 Podcasts Every Developer Should Listen To" so I thought I would do a follow up article outlining some of the new quality podcasts available to developers.

	Alt.Net Podcast	Good quality weekly podcast covering topics like adopting Agile, Dependency Injection and Continuous Integration
	The Java Pose	Helps to keep me informed of the innovations happening in the Java world and you get a catchy intro tune for free.
	The Thirsty Developer	A weekly podcast covering a wide variety of .NET topics like SCRUM, Continuous Integration, Cyclomatic Complexity and Silverlight 2.
	Parlays	Good architecture podcast with a wide variety of topics that focus on Java, Google and Apple.
	Radio TFS	Excellent podcast on all things Team Foundation Server.  Highly recommended if you use or plan to use TFS
	ThoughtWorks - IT Matters	Discusses the business and technology issues facing the IT Industry with occasional appearances from people like Martin Fowler.
	Deep Fired Bytes	Despite the unhealthy name of this podcast it covers a healthy variety of IT Topics.

If I've missed any developer related podcasts that you find helpful please let me know.

Dependency Injection using the Microsoft Unity Application Block

The Microsoft Unity Application Block is a lightweight Dependency Injection Container that is currently being incorporated into the latest releases of Enterprise Library and the Composite Application Library (Prism). This session will give an introduction to Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control concepts and a brief overview of how to use the Unity Application Block to build loosely coupled applications.

My goal is to finish by leading a discussion on the pros and cons of Dependency Injection, Loosely coupled and Tightly coupled components. When we leave I hope everyone will have a deeper understanding of these principles and how and when to apply them.

When & Where:
Thursday, June 26, 2008 from 06:30 PM - 08:30 PM (ET)
Microsoft Corporation
3000 Bayport Drive
Suite 480
Tampa, FL 33607
View a map
View 1-Click Directions

Please be aware that the outside doors lock and the elevators need a security key after 7:00 PM.

Please Register for the event:

Update:

Here are my slides from the presentation:

For additional information I recommend the following 2 part PodCast on Dependency Injection:

 Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control

  More Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control

Finally, the following book is highly recommended:

Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# (Robert C. Martin Series) by Robert C. Martin, Micah Martin Read more about this book...

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The goal of the Alt.NET podcast is to release a new episode every week or two. The first episode is a talk with Mike More, David Laribee, Jeremy D. Miller, and Chad Myers about continuously improving yourself, your code, and your team.  Great episode, give it a try!

Add this to my previous post of developer podcasts you should listen to.

The Orlando Convention Center was not being used between TechEd Developer week and TechEd ITPro week.  Microsoft has graciously donated the convention center to be used by the Florida Developer Community!  There are 9 large conference rooms that will be filled for 2 days with presentations from Local,  Microsoft and TechEd Speakers.  In addition to the full day tracks listed below there will also be discounts on MS Certification Exam Tests, an MCSA/MCSE: weekend upgrade bootcamp, a Developers Weekend Exam Cram and Train the Trainer sessions.  ALL FOR FREE!!!

Saturday, June 7th Activities - 830a to 530p

*Schedule subject to change so check the official web site often (http://www.devfish.net/articles/inbetween/)

Party and Social! Saturday, June 7th 6:00PM

Sunday, June 8th Activities - 830a to 530p

*Schedule subject to change so check the official web site often (http://www.devfish.net/articles/inbetween/)

This is an incredible opportunity for learning with enough variety for everyone.   A special thanks goes out to our local Microsoft Developer Evangelist, Joe Healy for organizing the event and creating the effective but very ugly web site.

The Unity Application BlockIoC Container comes with a little know extension for creating loosely coupled events called the Simple Event Broker.  The Unity Event Broker supports multiple publishers and multiple subscribers to the same event name.  The decoupled model prevents subscribers from knowing about publishers and publishers from knowing about subscribers.

The Event Broker source code can be found under the Unity Quick Starts normally located here

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Unity Application Block 1.0\UnityQuickStarts.zip\UnityQuickStarts\CS\EventBroker.sln". 

In order to use the Extension make sure you have your project reference the EventBrokerExtension.dll and the SimpleEventBroker.dll.

Next, you need to configure Unity by adding the Event Broker Extension to the Container.

        private static void Main()
        {
            Application.EnableVisualStyles();
            Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);

            UnityContainer rootContainer = new UnityContainer();

            rootContainer.AddNewExtension<SimpleEventBrokerExtension>();
            
            Application.Run(rootContainer.Resolve<DefaultForm>());
        }

This gives you two new Attributes recognized by Unity, [Publishes(eventName)] and [SubscribesTo(eventName)] where eventName is a string that uniquely identifies the loosely coupled event.

The attribute [Publishes] is applied to an event and lets the event broker know that when this event is raised, any methods that are subscribed to eventName are called. 

For Example:

        [Publishes("event://Transaction/Complete")]
        public event EventHandler TransactionComplete;

The event broker will create a loosely coupled event named "event://Transaction/Completed" [1] and link the .NET event TransactionComplete [2] to it. The following subscriber code

        [SubscribesTo("event://Transaction/Complete")]
        public void TransactionCompleteHandler(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //Do Something.....
        }

informs the Event Broker that method TransactionCompleteHandler [3] needs to be called whenever the loosely coupled event named "event://Transaction/Completed" is published. Notice that neither the publisher nor the subscriber is aware of the other.

Conclusion

The ability for your application to communicate between controls without resorting to directly linking one class to another increases the reusability of your code.  The Unity Event Broker is, as it's name implies, a rather simple implementation of loosely coupled events but it is a good start none the less.  for example,  I would like to see a way for subscribers to indicate that methods should be called on a background thread instead of always on the Publisher's thread. In future posts I will show how to register events for publication when you cannot add the [Publishes] attribute directly to an event declaration (useful for Button and Menu Click events or third part controls)

1. I use the URL style string to name the decoupled events purely out of habit.  Obviously, any string will do but I find the URL format to be clean and easy to read.
2. Events must be scoped public in order for the Event Broker to detect the Publishes attribute
3. The subscription method must be scoped public in order for the Event Broker to detect the SubscribesTo attribute

Configuring the Unity Application Block for just-in-time Instantiation. 

Out of the box, Unity does not provide a way to configure your dependencies so that they are resolved only if needed.  Lazy Instantiation would be desirable if your dependency is and required only under certain circumstances or you would like to delay object creation of a resource intensive dependency until needed.

For Lazy Instantiation, the first obstacle to overcome when using IoC Containers like Unity, is to have your components get a reference to the container so the dependency creation can be delegated to it when the need arises.  My first inclination was to wrap Unity in a Singleton and have the component reference this in order to resolve the dependency. 

Container.Instance.Resolve<IProductService>();

Singleton's are, however, notoriously difficult to test and very rigid in design.  Used in this manner,  a Singleton is nothing more than a global variable wrapped in a buzzword.  so I wanted a different approach.  Since we are using a Dependency Injection Framework, why not have the container inject a reference to itself into our components.

1.  First, configure the Unity container so that it can return a reference to itself.

2.  Next, create a property on your class to get a reference to the Unity container that created it.

3.  Finally, have the container resolve the dependency the first time it's referenced. 

Unit Testing

Testing is straight forward as well.   You could have your unit test use reflection to reach in and set the private field (_productService) to your mock object.  However,  giving your Unit Tests access to private members violates the "Use the Front Door First" Test Automation Principle and should be avoided if possible.  Alternatively, you could create a mock object for IUnityContainer and have it return a mock object for IProductService when the Resolve method is called.

Using RhinoMocks, the Unit Test would look something like this:

Nice article posted by MSDN Magazine on Dependency Injection written by James Kovacs.  Coincides nicely with my Presentation on Unity Application Block at the Orlando Code Camp

The Orlando Code Camp was a huge success.  Lots of great sessions and talented speakers. A special thanks goes out to Shawn Weisfeld of the Orlando .NET Users Group and Roy Lawson of the Lakeland Users Group, as well as the many other volunteers and speakers.

Below, I've posted my Power Point slides and code samples for both my sessions at the Code Camp.

The Unity Application Block

Beginning Test Driven Development

Orlando Code Camp 2008 - Saturday March 22, 2008

The FREE Orlando Code Camp will be on Saturday, March 22, 2008. Last year's Orlando Code Camp had 481 registered attendees, 52 sessions, and 38 speakers. If you are looking for free .NET developer training by hardcore .net developers in the Florida community, mark your calendar for this year's Orlando Code Camp.

Signup now, its filling up fast!

I am giving 2 presentations this year:

Beginning Test Driven Development
In this session I will discuss Unit Testing Goals, Principles and Philosophies such as Test First, Test Last and the dreaded, Test After. Learn what creating good unit tests mean and how it will help improve the quality of your applications.

The Unity Application Block
The Unity Application block is a lightweight, extensible dependency injection container with support for constructor, property, and method call injection. Microsoft has finally developed an Inversion of Control (IoC) container that will appear in the Enterprise Application Block. In this session I will introduce the basic concepts of Dependency Injection and review how the Unity Application Block is used.

Lots of good content you can watch online or download for later viewing.

Mix08 Sessions

This Month's Meeting

Register for this meeting.

I'm giving a presentation at the Lakeland Users Group this Tuesday, January 15, 2008 from 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM  entitled "Unit Testing Principles and Goals". 

I will discuss Unit Testing Goals, Principles and Philosophies such as Test First, Test Last and the dreaded, Test After.   Learn what creating good unit tests mean and how it will help improve the quality of your applications.  Learn to leverage to power of Test Drive Development and, when necessary, how to write Unit Tests for existing code.

Location:
2525 Drane Field Road, Suite 10
Lakeland, FL 33811

Updated:

ThoughtWorks has a new IT Matters Podcast that discusses the business and technology issues facing the IT Industry. The First topic is on Domain Specific Languages Part 1 of 2.  A panel of ThoughtWorks employees including, Martin Fowler, Dr. Rebecca Parsons, Neal Ford and Jay Fields; all participate in a discussion around domain-specific languages (DSLs).

Topics include: 

1. How to build effective DSLs

2. When to use a DSL

3. What pitfalls to avoid

4. Some real-world examples of DSL best practices.

With the release of Visual Studio 2008 SDK that includes tools for Developing Domain Specific languages in Visual Studio 2008, the timing could not be better.  I am looking forward to listening to Part 2.

One of the best ways that I've discovered to keep up to date with the constant change of technology is to listen to podcasts.  I find this a great way to learn during my daily commute and exercise regiment (refilling my coffee AND getting the mail). 

One thing I would encourage is to attempt to listen while coding.  If you can listen to music while you code you can probably listen to podcasts with little effort.  Everyone is different but here is what I've discovered about myself.

• If both ears are listening to a podcast I get too distracted and cannot concentrate enough on coding.
• If I listen using my right ear, I grok almost nothing of the podcast content.
• If I listen with my left ear, it seems to be a good balance between listening and doing.

I've heard of some who code while listening to a podcast in double speed to save time.  I can't do that but, apparently, some can. 

Here are the podcasts I find invaluable as a developer

	Polymorphic Podcast	Craig Shoemaker brings insight into software development in the .NET platform along with interviews with industry luminaries. Good content, good quality but an inconsistent schedule.
	ARCast with Ron Jacobs	Ron Jacobs is a Microsoft employee and delivers a weekly podcast on Channel 9 that dives into some tough .NET architecture topics.
	Software Engineering Radio	Not specifically .NET related but contains a wide spectrum of Software topics from Dynamic Languages to Transactional Memory to Fault Tolerance.
	Software Quality Engineering Conferences Podcast	Interviews with speakers from the Agile Development Practices 2007 Conference
	OnSoftware	Weekly interviews with some of the software industry's leading developers about a wide range of programming and development issues
	WebDevRadio Podcast	Web Development Discussion
	Agile Toolkit Podcast	Topics covering all things Agile.
	.NET Rocks!	.NET Rocks! is a weekly talk show for anyone interested in programming on the Microsoft .NET platform. The shows range from introductory information to hardcore geekiness
	Hanselminutes	Scott Hanselman discusses utilities and tools, gives practical how-to advice, and discusses ASP.NET or Windows issues and workarounds.
	ASP.NET PodCast	The ASP.NET Podcast brings a technology focus to the area of podcasts.  This podcast is geared towards developers with applications that scale to a large amount of data and users.

I would like to hear what others are listening to and what software you use to manage your podcasts.  I have a love/hate relationship with ITunes.

UPDATE:

Top Developer Podcasts Part II

Right now Techsmith is offering Camtasia and Snag-It for free.  You download the demo then register for a free license key.  These are previous versions of the software but they are still feature packed and will solve most of your screen capture needs.