Rachel Hawley's DevExpress Community Blog

Tomorrow another sell-out developer community event will be kicking off.

HDC10 will be rocking up in Omaha, NE for a 3-day event. 500 developers will descend on the Embassy Suites LaVista to get to grips with topics ranging from Android development, through the Microsoft stack, to user interface design and VB 2010. 

You’ll be able to find Mehul on the DevExpress sponsor table with a bunch of swag and a prize draw competition. Make sure you drop by to participate and to pick up your free DevExpress T-shirt from our Fall line ;-)

Mehul will be joined by Paul Kimmel, who will be speaking at HDC10. His session, Visual Basic 2010 – The Top 10 Features, will be held in room 400 on Thursday September 9th at 10.15am.

Paul is a Microsoft MVP in Visual Basic, and during his session he will give all his attendees the chance to win the Ultimate Developer Power Pack:

• A copy of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN Subscription
• A license and 12 month subscription to DXperience Enterprise

Paul has kindly donated his own VS2010 license and subscription from his MVP award. Thanks to Microsoft and Paul for their generosity!

To be in with a chance of winning this huge prize, join Paul in his session: Room 400 at 10.15am on Thursday.

See you in Omaha!

“Can you help me with my idea …?”

Auke Teeninga recently posted a request on Julian’s CTO Video Message, Sunk Costs, asking for a skin that projected a “prototype” look-and-feel to applications. Auke is not the only one who has suggested this. Patrick Wolf and Jesse Lay have also brought up the idea of a “blueprint” design in the past.

After our designer played around with the idea, we got to thinking … this could be fun. Hows about a bit of community involvement.

So what’s the skinny … ? (pun completely intended!)

Give me some skin!

We are throwing down the gauntlet to you guys. 

The challenge is this: come up with a design or concept for a brand new DevExpress skin. 

We’re looking for something totally new and fresh. We’ll select our favourite then add the best design to our skinning library and we’ll extend an invitation to its creator to join DevExpress at either DevConnections or TechEd Europe in November 2010.

Imagine that – your design being shipped to thousands of DevExpress customers AND you get to hang out with the team at a first-class conference! Where do I sign up?!

The submission process is wide open. You can do any of the following:

• Reply to this blog with links and ideas
• Post something on your own blog and send us a link
• Send me an email with your screenshot(s) and notes (rachelh@devexpress.com) 
• Post something to the DevExpress Facebook page 
• Tweet your design (remembering to include the #devexpress tag) 

We’ll collect all of the submissions and review them to see if we can find a top-class candidate.

We've set a deadline of 5pm Pacific Time on Friday September 17th 2010 for all skin/theme submissions.

Remember: Let us see what you see

Not all of us are blessed with design skills. I should know, I am one of them. But whatever means of submission you decide to use, bear in mind that a mock-up or a link to an existing image, along with your design ideas will position you very favourably. We want to be able to see what you see. The more images and rough outlines that you can point us to to help explain your idea, the better.

Don’t forget, forward your ideas by 5pm Pacific Time on Friday September 17th 2010.

If you don’t have any plans to submit a design, you can still join in the fun. Post your support for your favourite skin/theme here or on the DevExpress Facebook page.

And with that, I officially declare it design time :-)

It has been a troubled and uncertain few months since the problems with our economy started to fracture the careers of our families, friends and co-workers.

Recently, a truly inspirational project was launched by Microsoft MVP and community leader, Arnie Rowland - Project Phoenix.

In the past 18 months, I think all of us have experienced, or have known someone close to us that has experienced, the unfortunate loss of jobs or earnings as a result of cut backs and the need to “slimline the team structure”.

Arnie launched his project as a way to help and motivate unemployed and underemployed developers in the technology community. By providing free software and services, he is encouraging developers to take on projects for not-for-profit organisations in need of technical assistance. Be it a new website or a payment portal for donations. 

Once a week for the next 4 months, deserving projects and developers will be handed a slew of software tools, packages and tutorial material in order to help them create solutions for their not-for-profit organisation. This is generosity multi-fold – supporters help Arnie, Arnie helps developers and the developers help worthy causes!

DevExpress, among other providers, have donated licenses to this great project. Even more graciously, MVPs from all over the USA (and even one from Europe!) have handed over their MVP subscriptions to MSDN and the wealth of Microsoft products that this gives them access to. All this for a great cause.

If you are a developer who could benefit from this program, why not check out the information on Arnie’s blog. You’ll also find the first four winners and their project details for inspiration.

I hope you’ll take some time to drop your thoughts and feedback on this extended “Give Camp” concept in the comments below.

Arnie, you are a person who is to be commended for the great work that you do and the innovative methods that you employ to support your community. You are one of a kind.

Heartland Developers’ Conference 2010

Software development could be the industry with the most vibrant conference community ever!

After Codestock in Tennessee and devLink in Nashville, the DevExpress team are moving towards Nebraska for the Heartland Developers’ Conference in Omaha.

Yet another affordable, multi-day event for developers and designers looking for sessions, hands-on labs, workshops and extensive networking and social opportunities. HDC10 will cover a broad spectrum of topics and development platforms from ASP.NET MVC, through jQuery and ORMs, to User Experience Design – it’s a real mixed bag of delights.

You can still register for HDC10, and with a keynote by Joe Stagner, I think it could be well worth it!

Omaha DevExpress Dinner

As if this great event wasn’t good enough, Mehul and Paul will be hosting a DevExpress Dinner in Omaha for DevExpress customers and enthusiasts.

If you are in or around Omaha, NE on the evening of Tuesday September 7th, please email me (rachelh@devexpress.com) and come along and join us for a relaxed evening of good discussions and great food.

See you in Omaha!

Addicted to CodeRush?

Sure you are!

If you’re looking for some bumper bling for your laptop/car/cubicle, look no further than our new CodeRush bumper stickers.

Fancy one?

Shoot us an email with your snail mail details (address) and your favourite CodeRush feature, and we’ll mail you your very own free bumper sticker. Simple!

• Name
• Mailing address
• Favourite feature
• Email it all to clientservices@devexpress.com  

Get some CodeRush bump for your trunk :-)

Hot on the heels of CodeStock comes another Tennessee-based technical conference – devLink.

What is devLink?

In its fifth year and based in Nashville, TN, this conference is organised by John Kellar. A Microsoft MVP and former leader of the Nashville .NET User Group, John saw a place in his community for a quality technical event that could be run at a low cost for attendees. With the help of an impressive list of sponsors, including DevExpress, John is bringing the likes of Ted Neward and Tim Huckaby to Nashville for a ticket price of $100 – cheap at twice the price!

Fancy winning great prizes?

DevExpress’ Paul Kimmel will be travelling to devLink to speak on LINQ to XML and DynamicObects for XML in VB10. During his session he’ll be giving all attendees present the chance to win the ultimate developer toolkit - a Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate license with MSDN subscription and a copy of DXperience Enterprise.

Awesome!

To be in with a chance of winning all you need to do is attend Paul’s session on Saturday 7th August at 10.30am where you’ll be given more details.

Paul has donated the MSDN subscription and VS2010 license from his Microsoft MVP award … because that’s the kind of guy he is.

Stop and say hi!

Come and join the team at devLink. Drop by the DevExpress table near the registration area for a chat with our staff, and don’t forget to attend Paul’s session for your chance to win a huge prize.

See you in Nashville!

Community Megaphone is a one-stop-shop for community events in the USA. A valuable resource set up by Microsoft Developer Evangelist, Andrew Duthie, it has been added to by the recent inclusion of the Community Megaphone Podcast – pretty neat.

The podcasts aim to highlight community talent that you might not find at the likes of TechEd or PDC, but who are active in the developer community. The hosts hope that by introducing developers to their local community speakers it will encourage more techies to participate in their local user groups and code camps. Recent guests on the Community Megaphone Podcast have included Stephen Bohlen, who many of you will know from the DevExpress forums, and Kevin Griffin, who runs the Hampton Roads .NET User Group.

Check out how Dane’s embryonic idea for a podcast ended up on one of the developer community’s most powerful resources, and don’t forget make time to listen to the shows on www.communitymegaphone.com.

Last month Gary and I were excited to get the opportunity to travel to CodeStock in Knoxville, TN. We experienced some serious Southern hospitality en route and even made time for some trekking in the Smoky Mountains. I wish I could spend some time telling you about the fantastic Jamaican brunch I had one afternoon, but this post instead is about a topic that cropped up a couple of times at the event – the role of women in the technology field.

The notion of women in tech was subtly demonstrated throughout the conference thanks to the official CodeStock t-shirt. Inspired by Rosie the Riveter, it prompted Rachel Appel to make reference in her keynote to her aunt, who was a real-life Rosie. Rachel’s aunt was an example of the strong, self-motivated women who paved the way for their daughter’s and granddaughter’s to excel in all fields – including science and technology.

I know that this is a contentious topic, and many people have the opinion that if you’re good at your job it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. However, not everyone is as advanced in their way of thinking as those people are. I urge you all to listen to Jennifer Marsman and Rachel Appel’s tales from the field. And for those of you who can stomach a bit of heated discussion, check out this blog post from Nicole Sullivan. If you pay particular attention to the comments you’ll see some eye-opening responses from female and male developers alike.

Jennifer is one of the Heartland’s busiest Microsoft Developer Evangelists. After working as a developer in Redmond, WA she moved back home to Michigan and is now committed to her local community. Everyone I speak to holds both her and her technical skills in very high regard. I have long admired Rachel Appel as a vibrant, independent and vastly intelligent community spokesperson. We’ve known each other for over 4 years and I was grateful to finally get a chance to meet her at CodeStock.

You can find out more about Jennifer and Rachel on their blogs:

• Jennifer Marsman: http://blogs.msdn.com/jennifer/
• Rachel Appel: http://rachelappel.com/

Take a look at the video we recorded and remember to leave your comments on the Women in Technology debate. We talked about:

• What it means to be a woman in technology in 2010
• Experiences in the field
• What skills women bring to the technology sector
• Why the idea of women in technology causes such volatile debates

Enjoy!

CodeStock is a conference that successfully mixes great content, open spaces discussions and top speakers with an intangible, yet obvious, sense of hospitality and genuine friendliness. You arrive knowing only a few people, and you leave having met a bunch of great people that you know you’ll stay in touch with.

At an early bird cost of $55 a ticket, CodeStock is great value for money, giving you access to some fantastic speakers like Seth Juarez who gave a mind-bending session on machine learning.  For those of you who follow me on Twitter you’ll know that I had a great time with Seth and touted him as “The Next Big Thing” after I returned from Tennessee. It appears that Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell agree. Seth recorded a show for DotNetRocks on the same topic.

Mike Neel did a great job of putting together this year’s CodeStock, and major kudos to him for doing all of this while both planning and having his wedding to the beautiful Cicelie.

I sat down with Mike to chat about the event and how it feels to be at the helm of this community event for a third year. Take a look and see what Mike thinks gives CodeStock its unique flavour, and get information on how to find out about CodeStock 2011.

Back in May 2009, I was given the task of putting together DX Press, our DevExpress Newsletter. The idea behind our newsletter was to deliver tips, tricks, tutorials and news directly to you, so that you could be kept up-to-date with what’s happening with the controls that you use.

Today, issue 29 will unveil the new-look DX Press. I wanted to give you a sneak preview so that you can make the most of the content and ask for your feedback on what content you’d like to see in the newsletter.

We’ve divided the newsletter into useful sections so that you can dive straight into the items that you are looking for.

For those of you who enjoy Julian’s video messages, you’ll be pleased to know that they’ll still be taking pride of place. If you’ve missed any of the Messages from the CTO you can find them on the DevExpress Channel under CTO Message.

To make the materials more clear, we’ve split the remainder of the newsletter into three sections:

• news headlines
• materials to help you make the most of your products
• tutorial videos

The tips from DevExpress Support, Community News items, and opinion pieces that Julian and the team like to ponder over are still there but are taking a back seat. There are a few little gems in there though, like links to other news items that the developer community are writing about, for example.

I hope you like the new newsletter and that it is bringing value to your inbox.

If you have suggestions for content or material that you’d like to see, please let me know so that I can try and do something about it for you. 

DevExpress are coming to Tennessee and we want to take the time to see you.

I recently posted about the Codestock event in Knoxville, TN later this month. While we are in and around Tennessee, Gary and I will be making time for our customers and supporters through some networking opportunities and we’d really like for you to come along and join us.

Firstly, we’ll be holding 3 DevExpress Dinners throughout the state in Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville. Spaces are limited but if you’d like to join us please drop me a note via one of the links below:

• DevExpress Dinner in Knoxville: Tuesday June 15^th (express interest via email)
• DevExpress Dinner in Chattanooga: Wednesday June 16^th (express interest via email)
• DevExpress Dinner in Nashville: Friday June 18^th (express interest via email)

In addition to our meet and greet dinners, Gary will be presenting a tandem session with another UK speaker at four local user groups. Gary’s session on identifying and combating technical debt will be put into practise by Phil Winstanley’s session, which embodies the problems that technical debt arises from – really, *really* bad code.

We’ll be at the following user groups: 

Thursday June 17th - Nashville .NET 
Monday June 21st – Chattanooga .NET 
Tuesday June 22nd – Tri Cities .NET 
Wednesday June 23rd - WNC .NET Developers' Guild

Please do sign up if you’d like to come and see the sessions, they are a great double-header and both Phil and Gary are great presenters.

We’d also love to see you at one of our DevExpress Dinners. If you’re in the area, do drop me a note and let me know if you’d like to join us.

See you in Tennessee!

I am huge fan of community events, and there are many that make it onto my wish list every year. It is very rare, though, that I get to attend more than one of these great events in one year.

I had a fantastic time at CodeMash back in January, and I am genuinely excited to be lucky enough to also get to attend Codestock 2010 on the 25th & 26th June. Gary, Paul and I will be taking the trip to Knoxville, TN to spend some time with Alan Stevens and Mike Neel who have organised the event, and we would really like to see you there too.

Paul will be presenting a session titled “Unleash the Power of LINQ and Lambda Expressions” and Gary will be talking about his Favorite Design Patterns. Even I will be making my foray into “presenting” as I play Gary’s sidekick in our DevExpress session: Paired Programming: Doing it with DevExpress. During the session we’ll be living on the edge with some live coding and we’ll also be giving away a free license of DXperience Universal. Check out the agenda and try to make some time to come and see us for a few of our sessions.

There are still a few spots remaining for the event. You can register to attend for the extraordinarily low fee of $79. If you are concerned about the cost, why not check with your employer to see if a small training budget exists to help you get you there. Here are a few good selling points to pass onto him:

• Only one day out of the office
• A fraction of the cost of a national conference
• Excellent hands-on and interactive training opportunities
• Ability to talk to vendors (like DevExpress!)
• And most of all, fantastic speakers

Mike and Alan have pulled together a really impressive list of Microsoft Developer Evangelists, independent consultants and community speakers. Personally, I am excited to hear Rachel Appel’s keynote session and participate in the Women in Technology panel discussion with Developer Evangelist Jennifer Marsman.

Will we see you at Codestock on June 25th & 26th? Let us know if you’re going to be around.

I recently read an article on the popular technical news site, The Register. It stated that a UK exam board was withdrawing C, C# and PHP from its syllabus in favour of “approved languages” - Java, Pascal/Delphi, Python 2.6, Python 3.1, Visual Basic 6 and VB.Net 2008. In addition, teachers planning to use Java were warned that many universities were dropping it from their first year computer science courses in a move that echoed a similar shift in the United States.

Just by looking at the number comments on the post, you can see the ruckus that the article caused.

I read the article and some of the comments, and then I reposted the link to Twitter to share with some of my developer followers. I was offered mixed reactions to the news.

As many of you know, I am not a developer, so I am presenting this opinion piece to you as a completely objective bystander. So what did I hear?

Argument 1 - Teach relevant languages for today’s employment opportunities.

Naturally, many developers bought up the issue of relevance to today’s opportunities for developers looking for employment after university. Comments like “Who uses Delphi?”, “Why are we not preparing students for real life?” and “Using Delphi would put me right off a programming job!” were common, not only in the responses I received, but also in the comments to the article. Furthermore, questions were raised about the choice to use VB but not C#. “If one .NET language is suitable for teaching then both should be” said one commenter. “VB is such a terrible choice that it would be right off my list. It's terrible for exception handling, object orientation and it's dead”, said another.

Of course there were always going to be objections to each developer’s language of choice, but I wondered if C# developers really were more highly sought after than VB or Delphi developers.

With this being a decision taken by a British education authority, I did a quick search on a UK nationwide job site for “developer” jobs. I got 2033 results. I narrowed it down to C developers. I hit 282 possible results. I then looked for VB developers. I found 220 possible options. Finally, I searched for jobs for Delphi developers. I got only 17 results back.

Does this mean that Delphi is no longer a sought after programming language for UK developers? Perhaps. Does it mean that the job market in the UK is satisfied in terms of its roles for Delphi developers? Maybe. Does it mean that Delphi is a bad choice for students to study if they want to progress with their career? Judging by the other side of the debate, I doubt it very much.

Argument 2 – Studying programming is about problem solving and solution implementation.

“The danger of teaching what the industry demands is that what the industry uses changes so frequently.” This pretty much sums up the other school of thought. Moreover, computer programming is not just about learning a programming language, it’s about being able to look a problem and find a solution. Coding that solution is arguably the last part of the puzzle – that’s just putting the theory into practise. 

Although Delphi, unlike its predecessor Pascal, was not designed for teaching, it is still held to be a stable language that teaches problem solving as well as programming. As one commenter on the article says of Pascal, “it was very useful for learning algorithms and structured programming. I have used my Pascal knowledge to adapt to other languages like Java and C. I also used the knowledge that I learnt from algorithms in Pascal to other disciplines.” The poster also goes on to point out that Pascal instils “good programming habits”. Surely in an economic age where technology is almost the backbone of our day-to-day lives, we should be relying on employers to recruit programmers who have a solid foundation in programming, one that will offer them a strong set of transferrable skills that they can implement and apply to a problem. I’m not sure we necessarily need a group of developers proficient in languages that could soon be regarded as “outdated”.

What do you think?

Were the exam board making a positive move towards better foundations for our future developers, or do you think that they have set back the next wave of computer programmers?

Leave your comments below and let us know what you think of the Delphi Debate.

May 10th sees the return of the annual Day of .NET with Scott Guthrie, hosted by Arizona .NET User Group.

This is the 7th instalment of an ever-increasing 1-day event that brings Scott Guthrie to the South-West to share his seemingly unbounded knowledge with over 700 developers. This is a community event of vast proportions.

In addition to the star of the show, attendees will also be delighted by both Scott Hanselman and Jeffrey Palermo. There’s no two ways about it folks, this is going to be a great event.

If all that didn’t amount to a good enough reason for you to make time for this event, then maybe this final tasty morsel will. Our very own Mark Miller will be showcasing another superb CodeRush demonstration complete with licenses to be won. We’re hoping that his presentation will be as equally astounding as his previous showcases, but he’s keeping it under wraps for now. The only way you’ll find out what he has up his ample sleeves is by heading along to Scottsdale Resort and Conference Center for yourself.

At the time of writing, I can see that all of the free seating has been snapped up. Only 34 VIP tickets remain for this event. The VIP tickets has a small cost attached, $35.00, but that will get you premium seating for the duration of the event as well as wi-fi access, speedy lunch queue and valet parking.

Not sure you want to stump up $35.00? Why not approach your boss and ask if you can treat this as a training or educational day? It’s a fantastic opportunity to get access to some of the most active Microsoft employees and well-respected professional developers and consultants, and all for less than 2% of the cost of a pass for a national event.

If you are keen to attend I urge you to sign up on the event page now. Don’t leave it too late or the tickets will be gone.

May signifies the starting point of the busiest time of the DevExpress community calendar – code camp season really kicks off.

This weekend Chicago, Iowa City and Ann Arbor are all hosting events to open the season. All are set to be hugely popular with some great sessions lined up.

Chicago Code Camp is hosting four Microsoft evangelists from a variety of different products and platforms, as well as highly-regarded independent software professionals including Rockford Lhotka and Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin. Not only that, but the DotNetMobile will be rolling into town, bringing with it Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell on another DevExpress sponsored event: the .NET Rocks Visual Studio 2010 Road Trip.

Iowa Code Camp has invited a whole host of regional consultants and community speakers to its event, including a bunch of the guys from independent consultancy ThoughtWorks. Ola Bini describes himself as a language geek for ThoughtWorks, and I am also wondering if he has been running a sneaky side project in teleportation – he will be speaking at both Chicago Code Camp and Iowa Code Camp on the same day!

Ann Arbor Day of .NET reads like a list of all that is good and great about the Michigan (and beyond!) developer community. Microsoft Developer Evangelist Jennifer Marsman, Jim Holmes, Jeff McWherter, David Giard, Jay Harris and the insanely intelligent Jay Wren will be sharing their experiences and knowledge this weekend. You’d better bring a big notepad and a stash of pens!

If you have not yet signed up to attend these events (you don’t have to follow Ola’s lead and go to multiple ones … unless you want to of course) I recommend you visit their registration pages and plan to take a trip over the May Day weekend:

• Registration for Chicago Code Camp can be found here.
• If you would like to attend Iowa Code Camp, you can find their registration pages here.
• Hang out with the Ann Arbor guys by registering on their site.

Wherever you end up this weekend I hope you have a great time. Don’t forget to seek out the event organisers - Scott Seely in Chicago, Chris Sutton in Iowa and David Giard in Ann Arbor – and thank them for their Herculean efforts in putting together these fantastic developer events for the community.

And with that, let the code camp season commence!