I'll be in Boston, MA on March 22 to teach an open enrollment course for DevelopMentor. If you want to learn about WCF, WPF, Silverlight, LINQ, Entity Framework, and more there is still time to sign up (note the date may no longer appear on the public calendar).

   http://www.develop.com/course/new-net3-net35-linq

Mention this blog post and you'll receive a discount as well.

I'm working on a fantastic website that I hope will have significant impact when it's ready. I'm planning on launching in roughly one month.

I came across what I think is an awesome technique for seeing how your web page will look as you edit it. This is WAY beyond WYSIWIG:

1. Load the page you're working on in ALL the browser you care about. I'm using Chrome 4, FireFox 3.6, and IE 8.
2. If you have the monitor space, cascade these browsers side-by-side.
3. Add a meta-refresh tag to the header of that HTML file you're working on (or which consumes the CSS you're building)
   
      <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5" />
   
   
4. Now here's the sweet part:
   
   Edit the page in Visual Studio, notepad, whatever. When you press save all browsers reload their view in a few seconds!
   
   
5. Now you get real WYSIWIG on real browsers.

That's it. The technique is totally low tech and would have worked for years. But I found it really helpful. Hope you do too.

Be sure to keep watching here. I promise a cool site will be announced soon!

Cheers!
Michael
@mkennedy

In this article I'm going to give you a simple, step-by-step overview of how to create a Windows 2008 server image in Amazon's Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) infrastructure. Now I must admit I'd rather have found a good tutorial on The Internets or even in a book. Feel free to send me any I missed. My experience is they are either dated or about Linux and so on...

First, briefly why does one care about EC2? Well maybe you are buying into the whole cloud computing story which lets you cheaply out-source your computer hardware for amazingly cheap prices (staring around $0.20 / hour for a dedicated machine). That's a great reason and Microsoft and Google have interesting plays there too.

Personally I just want a simpler way to create virtual machines. We'll have full admin access over remote desktop to our system to install whatever we want. I'm putting Visual Studio 2010 Beta on mine to play around with that software without 'polluting' my real system.

Here we go. If you don't delay I suspect this would take you about 20 minutes from start to login! Subsequent virtual machines are much faster to create and launch because the can be based on pre-configured images.

1. Create an Account

Register for an Amazon Web Services account at http://aws.amazon.com/.

2. Enable EC2 Features

Enable Elastic Compute Cloud for your AWS account at http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

3. Launch a New Instance

Use the AWS Management Console to launch and manage your virtual images: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/home. As the console says, choose "Launch Instance" under the "Getting Started" section. You will be presented with a list of pre-configured images. We'll start with a stock Amazon Windows 2008 server image.

4. Choose a Base Image

Now you'll be presented with a list of pre-configured virtual disk images. This time we'll setup a 64-bit Windows 2008 Server (Data Center Edition). Just choose "select" out of the list below:

5. Use the Request Instances Wizard

Use the Request Instances Wizard to configure the newly created instance which includes configuring the security, choosing an encryption key, opening ports in the firewall, and kicking off the new instance. Below you'll see the encryption key step - be sure to download the key pair as you'll need it for retrieving the administrator password.

6. Launch!

Here's what you can expect for the review screen of the Request Instances Wizard. Press launch and you're almost there.

7. Launching... (AKA Wait 5 Minutes)

After you launch you're instance you'll get a confirmation screen to show you it's being prepared and allow you to configure durable storage and IP addresses (both entirely optional).

8. Back to the Management Console

Now if you choose "View your instances..." you'll see that your instance is being prepared - it has a yellow pending status. This screen doesn't always refresh on its own so use the refresh button in the upper right of the console (rather than your browser's refresh button).

9. Running!

After a few minutes your instance with the yellow icon will turn green and be in the running state. Note that at first this really means booting up so you can't get to it right away. Give it another minute or two...

10. Login Part 1: Getting the Credentials

Now you'll want to login. Of course, the system was created with an administrator account which has a strong password. You'll need to retrieve that password using the "Instance Actions -> Get Windows Admin Password" option.

11. Login Part 2: A Little Hasty

You're probably excited to get this thing running and if you try right away you'll get another message telling you to be patient and try again in a few minutes. Just keep trying.

12. Login Part 3: Using Private Key

Eventual the new system is up and running and you can get the password. The first step here is to pass in your encryption key from the wizard step before.

13. Login Part 4: Administrator Account and Password

Pass in the encryption keys and you'll see the username and password (don't get excited, I already changed the password!).

14. Login Part 5: Finding the Machine Address

When your instance starts, it'll be given an Internet visible DNS name that you can use to connect via Remote Desktop. You'll find it in several places. One of them is highlighted below. Note that this address changes as you start and stop your instance.

15. Connected!

Now just fire up Remote Desktop, use the Administrator account and password from step 13 to log in. Now you have full access to your Windows 2008 machine. You can do with it what you will, install software, start serving web pages, etc.

16. A Word of Caution

If your intent is to run a web server, then let it run. But if you are just using this for your own purposes and don't need it when you're not logged in to the machine, be sure to return to the Management Console and stop the instance. You can alternatively do that by choosing "Shutdown" instead of logging out of your Remote Desktop instance.

I hope you found this walk-through helpful. I just learned most of this myself so I figured I'd blog it and everyone can learn from it.

Cheers!
Michael

Rob Barry and Jack Vaughan interviewed me for their article on SearchCloudComputing.com entitled

   Azure cloud on horizon: The devil is in the data architecture details

Here's a small excerpt. If you're interested in Windows Azure and Cloud Computing, read on...

Microsoft did a good job when they designed Azure, according to Kennedy. "The company encourages you to build scalable reliable systems by basically making it really hard to do the stuff that makes systems unreliable," he said.

There are many developers curious about cloud computing, but most are being rather cautious. Directions on Microsoft's Sanfilippo said he's talked to more developers that are concerned about building on top of their existing work than re-coding everything to work in the cloud.

"There's still an education bit that has to happen about what kind of applications are appropriate for Azure. But I think there's a lot of curiosity about Azure," Kennedy said.

Still, he continued, "I don't know many projects that are betting the bank on Azure yet."

Note: This is a little dated as it was publish in July 2009 - some how I missed the original publication - but it's still an interesting read.

Thanks Rob and Jack for the article and conversation.

I recently wrote another article for DevelopMentor's Developments newsletter (not subscribed yet? see top-right of this page). This one is entitled

   10 Features in .NET 4.0 that made Me Smile

Read it on the DevelopMentor website: http://www.develop.com/tenfeaturesdotnet4

I am republishing it below for you all to enjoy on your RSS readers.

Cheers,
Michael

---

10 Features in .NET 4.0 that made Me Smile

I have been reviewing some of our upcoming classes at DevelopMentor this week. One of those classes, What’s New in .NET 4.0, left me excited for things to come. There are a bunch of small but wonderful features discussed in that class. I thought I’d take this opportunity to write a few of them up and share the joy. I bet some of them make you smile too.

1. The Parallel Extensions for The .NET Framework will be built into mscorlib.dll.
   
   The fact that PFx will be part of the core .NET library says a lot about how much faith and support it’s getting within Microsoft. BTW, here are some really great demos for PFx in .NET 4.0.
   
   
2. PFx introduces a new threading construct: Barrier<T>.
   
   Barrier lets you define rendezvous points in your code where multiple concurrent operations can automatically sync-up. Here’s an example.
   
   
3. Code contracts.
   
   Code contracts allow you to assert truths about your code as if you are writing a unit test. But these assertions live within your production code and are both verified by the compiler as well as the runtime. Here’s the original research project that lead to this feature on Microsoft Research.
   
   
4. The WPF and Silverlight designers mostly work.
   
   Now this shouldn’t be a point to make me smile or get excited about, but it is. The pain and suffering around the Visual Studio support for WPF and Silverlight designers has been so bad that a mostly-working, and sometimes truly innovative design-time experience within Visual Studio gives me real hope for these technologies. I’m actually excited about them now.
   
   
5. Support for the MVVM pattern across both WPF and Silverlight.
   
   Speaking of that XAML stuff, if you write WPF or Silverlight code and don’t know MVVM, stop reading this article and learn about it here. I’ll wait. Ok, now you too should be excited to hear that there is improved support for MVVM across Silverlight and WPF in a unified way. Smiles baby!
   
   
6. WF (Windows Workflow Foundation) has an AsyncCodeActivity class.
   
   If you have looked at long-running workflows in .NET 3.5 you know they were hard. I even wrote about them. WF 4 has a class which has a BeginExecute / EndExecute pair of methods which much more closely models the regular .NET async design patterns.
   
   
7. WF has a rehostable designer (really, they mean it this time).
   
   There are some great uses for giving regular users a WF designer experience with the right granularity of activities. Now it’s much easier. Here’s an app that rehosts the designer:
   
   
   
   
8.  Configuration-free WCF Hosting.
   
   Hosting WCF services is now like hosting ASMX web services if you like the defaults. Just throw out a service + contract + address and it’s up and running. That’ll save a bunch of <system.serviceModel> configuration goo. Smiles!
   
   
9. No more *.svc in our RESTful urls in IIS.
   
   With the ASP.NET routing framework and WCF REST introduced in .NET 3.5, we can create beautiful, expressive Uri’s for our websites. For example:
   
      http://lookatthiswith.me/watch/intro
   
   But this falls apart with WCF REST when we host it in IIS. Our service Uri’s look like this:
   
      http://lookatthiswith.me/services/lookieservice.svc/lookup/json/cf7
   
   And now we have this ugly .svc part-way through our Uri! Ick. Well, in .NET 4 that Uri is much more customizable and the .svc is gone. Smiles!
   
   
10. ASP.NET MVC has wicked JavaScript support.
    
    JQuery is there by default. That’s awesome. But there is also a class similar to the Html class (for HTML helpers) called Ajax. This static class has functions like Ajax.ActionLink and effectively brings the functionality of UpdatePanel to MVC!

Well there you have it. 10 awesome things in .NET 4 that made me smile this week. I hope you find some to be welcome additions yourself! If you want to learn more about .NET 4.0, check out our recorded webcasts here: http://www.develop.com/dotnet4webcasts. Also have a look at my article from last month Six Things That’ll Surprise You About .NET 4.0. Finally, if you have some training funds laying around, I’d love to spend a week talking about these ideas with you in our What’s New in .NET 4.0 What’s New in .NET 4.0 class.

Michael Kennedy is an instructor for DevelopMentor where he specializes in core .NET technologies as well as agile and TDD development methodologies. Keep up with Michael via his Web site and blog at http://www.michaelckennedy.net or on Twitter: @mkennedy.

I recently did a webcast for DevelopMentor on using the routing framework introduced in ASP.NET MVC within ASP.NET WebForms based applications to build more modern websites without a major rewrite of existing web applications. The talk was called "Building Modern Websites with ASP.NET WebForms".

Here's all the related downloads. We had some microphone troubles so I want to apologize in advance for the sub-optimal sound quality.

   

     

You can also download the slides and peepleocity.com sample website built during the presentation.

I recently wrote an article for DevelopMentor’s Developments entitled

   “Six Things That’ll Surprise You About .NET 4.0”

You can read the entire article (republished just below this introduction) or if you’d rather see it as a quick set of 6 sides, you can see those here:

     

---

Six Things That’ll Surprise You About .NET 4.0

At DevelopMentor we have been running a bunch of free webcasts. Last month it was TDD and Agile. This month we are running 4 webcasts celebrating the announcements around .NET 4.0, Visual Studio 2010, and PDC 2009.

Join me Monday, November 23rd and register here:

     http://bit.ly/aspwebforms

We’ll talk about integrating ASP.NET’s routing infrastructure into existing an ASP.NET WebForms application. This allows you to build SEO websites with URLs like

      http://dotnet.ubbuzz.com/tag/.NET+4.0

while still taking advantage of all the productivity features of WebForms such as post-backs, controls, UpdatePanel, and so on.

We have room for a couple hundred more attendees so please register and be part of the fun. I promise lots of demos and somedisdainful comments about PowerPoint!

Share it with your friends (social, virtual, real, and other types) using the widgets below!

ASP.NET MVC: What’s that, you’d rather hear about ASP.NET MVC, not this creaky old WebForms stuff? That’s Brock Allen’s talk: http://bit.ly/intromvc

WF 4: Is WF 4 and visual programming your thing? Check out Maurice de Beijer’s WF 4 talk: http://bit.ly/meetwf4

New Parallel Extensions your thing: Check out Andy Clymer’s PFX talk. (link to follow soon).

Cheers,
Michael

Recently Llewellyn Falco and I did a webcast for DevelopMentor where we demonstrated some TDD techniques and introduced Approval Tests. We let the audience choose our project and they chose Space Invaders. It was all great fun. Now the videos and MP3 streams are online and available for download.

  

Be sure to check out the write-up we did afterward where we talked about the tools and gave you a chance to try it for yourself:

   TDD Space Invaders Write-up

You can also watch two other, higher level agile webcasts by Bill Nazzaro here:

   Agile Webcasts at DevelopMentor

Cheers!
Michael

A joint post by Llewellyn Falco and Michael Kennedy

[Update: Get the videos and additional downloads for this webcast.]

As a follow-up to our "Avoiding 5 Common Pitfalls in Unit Testing" article we did a webcast where we took a problem from the audience and solved it live and unrehearsed on stage. These kinds of performances are always a risk but that's part of what makes them fun.

Of course, the question is could we have done it better? Here's your chance to try it for yourself (details below).

The Problem:

Our viewers chose to have us build the game Space Invaders. The first thing we had to do to sketch out a basic scenario we could implement. We started with a picture to remind what Space Invaders even was:



This was too big of a scenario for us to tackle in the allotted 40 minutes for programming. So then we started by creating a simpler scenario which we sketched out on the "whiteboard":


               Click for full size image.


Flushing Out the Scenario:

In doing this, a couple of things were revealed about the game.

First, we wanted to make the tank and aliens all be the same size so we could put them on a grid. But then we saw that our bullet wouldn't fit that story, so we introduced the idea of relative sizes. We also realized that even though we drew the block, it was too complex for the first scenario and it would have to wait.

Notice that as we started writing the scenario in English, there are mistakes, irrelevancies, and problems with the order. This is OK. The thing to remember is that all of this was done for the sole purpose of creating a recipe for a scenario we could test. That scenario is the following:

[TestMethod]
public void TestSimpleKill()
{
   // 1. Create a 15x10 board.
   // 2. Place a 3x2 tank at 1x8.
   // 3. Place a 2x2 alien at 7x3 heading west.
   // 4. tank shoots
   // 5. advance 4 turns
   // 6. not won
   // 7. advance
   // 8. win
}

Now that we had the recipe, we could go about writing the code.

Here's your chance to play at home!

1. Set your timer to 40 minutes.
2. Create a new test project.
3. Paste that method above.
4. Translate the comments into code.

If you believe there's a better process, we invite you to try that as well.

We made it to step 4 during our presentation (download code below) and estimate another 15 minutes would have had the whole scenario done, tested, and well-factored.

Stories vs. Requirements (stories win):

We'd like to point out a couple of things about the story. First, it was quick to write the story. We did it in 5 minutes. Second, it translates well to code because it has behavior and objects working together. Let's compare that to the requirements that this story flushed-out.

Need a board Boards should have width & height Boards contain game objects Game objects have a witdth, height Game objects have the ability to move each turn Aliens move either left or right each turn Bullets move either up or down each turn Bullets are 1x1 Tanks are 3x2 Aliens are 2x2 The game is not won until all the aliens are killed The game is won if alll the aliens are killed An Alien is killed if it is hit by a bullet Tanks can fire Firing with a tank creates a bullet going up from the space directly above the tank

Now we want to point out that this requirements doc is much hard to understand than our story. For example, if you were to add more requirements (e.g. an alien also shoots) is that easy to determine whether we have complete requirements? It also takes much more effort to create and especially to tell if it is complete. People aren't made to handle requirement documents well but we are story-telling machines. We embrace this in our coding techniques.

We'd also like to mention some of the tools discussed at the end.

For remote collaboration we use:

Skype (audio / video)
VNC for screen keyboard sharing
RDP (windows remote desktop) -- requires Windows 2003/2008 server for pairing.

Source Control:
TortoiseSVN
TortoiseGit

Developer Tools:
Resharper
CodeRush

Testing Tools:
MsTest (in Visual Studio Professional and up)
NUnit
NCover
TortioseDiff
Approvals Tests
Approvals Tests CodeRush add-in
Rhino Mock
TypeMock

If you try this scenario yourself, please leave a comment about your experience.

Download the code and slides from the webcast here:

   Code: TddWithLlewellynAndMichael.zip
   Slides dmtdd.pdf

Cheers -- Michael and Llewellyn