Chicago ALT.NET

June 2013 Meeting: F# Meetup

Sergio Pereira — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:00:00 GMT

Better description soon.

May 2013 Meeting: Cross Platform Push with Azure

Sergio Pereira — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:00:00 GMT

The way users use smartphones is changing. Where before we had a limited number of social services (mostly Facebook) we could rely on the user to check their feeds and see if there were important changes. But now, especially with the proliferation of social services this is no longer practical.

Enter Push Notifications, a way to send the data the user deems important to them. While the idea of Push is not new, it is coming to the forefront after Microsoft built their entire platform around it. Its importance cannot be understated and has made other platforms look at how they can better utilize it.

This talk will focus on the user experience aspects of Push and why its important. We will then dive into a full example utilizing iOS, Android, .NET and Azure as we explore how Push is/can be handled on these various platforms.

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Jason Farrell works for the Centare Group in Chicago. Formally from Michigan, Jason moved to Chicago in April of 2012 to help build the Centare office in Chicago.

Jason focuses primarily on client facing solution involving mobile, web, and client side across many verticals. In his spare time Jason enjoys learning cutting edge technologies (currently SignalR and AngularJS) as well as video games and running.

Outside of technology Jason is an avid traveler having lived in Japan and summited Mt. Fuji. Jason also enjoys biking and cooking

April 2013 Meeting: Erlang for C# Developers

Sergio Pereira — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:00:00 GMT

A team of C# and Erlang developers is a force to be reckoned with because Erlang and .NET are pure complements — each excels at what the other sucks at. Many C# developers write both JavaScript and SQL; adding Erlang to the mix can (and should) be just as natural.

But wait, what is Erlang? Erlang is an industry-proven, open-source, cross-platform, functional programming language and runtime. Facebook's chat, CouchDB, RabbitMQ, GitHub's pages, Opscode Chef, Riak, and Amazon's SimpleDB are all written in Erlang for good reason — Erlang simplifies writing highly-reliable, concurrent, distributed systems.

How does a C# developer even get started? What are the development tools? Can it all be done on Windows? What is similar, and what is truly foreign? What baggage does a good C# developer bring to Erlang? How do you begin to lose your C# accent? When is Erlang the right tool for the job? How should a .NET shop pilot Erlang? Come learn the "what", "why" and "how" of Erlang and get started!

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Bryan Hunter is a geek, a partner at Firefly Logic, founder of Nashville Functional Programmers, and a Microsoft MVP in C#. Bryan is obsessed with Lean, Erlang, and CQRS. He speaks on each of these subjects tirelessly at conferences, user groups and bars.

You can say hi to Bryan on Twitter (@bryan_hunter), and see what Firefly Logic is all about here: www.fireflylogic.com.

March 2013 Meeting: Get Real-time with SignalR and ASP.NET

Sergio Pereira — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:00:00 GMT

Still trying to keep a persistent web connection with forced techniques that leave you with an uneasy feeling? It's time to alleviate those feelings — there is a library for that and it's called SignalR.

SignalR is a client and server side library for .NET that provides the framework to build real-time, asynchronous ASP.NET applications. Figuring out implementation details for functionality such as real time notifications is a thing of the past!

In this session, you'll learn all about SignalR and see how you can build an ASP.NET application using it.

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Jeremiah Billmann is a Senior Software Engineer with Skyline Technologies. Jeremiah has been in software consulting for much of the past decade taking on roles ranging from developer to software development manager.

He has a tremendous amount of passion for software design patterns, best practices and web applications. He feels most at home in the world of ASP.NET MVC or just plain HTML and JavaScript.

When he isn't coding, he has a conflict of interests as he holds a personal trainer certification and appreciates well-crafted beer.

February 2013 Meeting: Code-First NoSQL with .NET and Couchbase

Sergio Pereira — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:00:00 GMT

Couchbase Server 2.0 is anopensource, distributed NoSQL database. It is a document-oriented data store with a key/value API. Couchbase features a map/reduce engine that allows for complex document indexing and querying.

This talk will introduce development with Couchbase Server using the .NET Client Library. After a brief overview of server deployment and architecture, a detailed look at the key/value and document APIs will be covered. The discussion will conclude with a demonstration of using the code-first approach to building an ASP.NET MVC application with Couchbase.

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John Zablocki is a Developer Advocate at Couchbase, where he is responsible for developing the Couchbase .NET Client Library. He is the organizer of Beantown ALT.NET, a former adjunct at Fairfield University, and an author for O�Reilly.

John holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Hartford. He has worked at startups throughout his career and is interested in the intersection of .NET and open source.

Online, John can be found at http://johnzablocki.com. Offline, he can be found too infrequently around Boston, with his dog, daughter, and his Fender Telecaster.

January 2013 Meeting: HTML5 Web Workers

Sergio Pereira — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:00:00 GMT

Web Workers are described in Wikipedia like:

The W3C and WHATWG envision web workers as long-running scripts that are not interrupted by user-interface scripts (scripts that respond to clicks or other user interactions). Keeping such workers from being interrupted by user activities should allow Web pages to remain responsive at the same time as they are running long tasks in the background.

Multithreading in JavaScript is finally here.

Web Workers is one of the most exciting new technologies to be released with HTML5. Developers now have the ability to delegate long running tasks to background threads. This opens up a whole new world of opportunities for developing the next generation of web applications.

Before putting Web Workers to use it's important to understand some key concepts. We'll cover Web Worker fundamentals and how to debug them.

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Sample code

You can also download slides and examples used in this presentation.

Ahmed Ijaz is a Senior Software Engineer at Thomson Reuters where he develops an e-billing application for law firms using ASP.NET.

He's been developing software for over 10 years mainly using the .NET platform and is currently learning to develop for the Mac. His personal blog can be found at ahmedijaz.com.

He moved to Chicago from Canada. When he's not building software, he's busy trying to keep up with his kids.

December 2012 Meeting: Year-end Meetup

Sergio Pereira — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 14:00:00 GMT

In what has became a tradition, instead of a regular meeting this month we will have an informal gathering.

We will be at Rock Bottom (State and Grand) at 5:30pm on the 12th. This is not a sponsored meeting, meaning each of us will be taking care of our own food and drinks. Come join us.

November 2012 Meeting: GUI Architecture - Using Design Patterns in Your Client JS

Sergio Pereira — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:00:00 GMT

jQuery plugins are great for standalone features, but when your client-side code base starts to grow and your Javascript moves beyond one-off actions, you need ways to organize your code.

Don't reinvent the wheel! Instead, come learn about common GUI design patterns like Data Bindings, Observers, Event Aggregators, as well as what MVC really is.

We'll talk about how the theory behind these patterns, how to use them in practice, and how they are used in popular frameworks like Backbone.js and Ember.js.

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Mike Jansen spent 5 years in Madison, WI working at a medical software company before discovering test driven development and craftsmanship at 8th Light in 2011.

He's spent the past year writing (and rewriting) Backbone.js code for clients and for himself. He has several open source client JS projects available on Github.

October 2012 Meeting: Introduction to the Windows Installer XML Toolset

Sergio Pereira — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:00:00 GMT

While the new Web Deployment Features have made deployments of .NET Web Applications easier, for other application types (such as WPF, Windows Services, and Windows Forms) Windows Installers (MSI files) are often the best alternative.

Since Visual Studio 2012 no longer provides the Setup Project Type to easily create MSI's .NET developers will need to consider other options. While there are some powerful (and expensive!) commercial products to do this — one free alternative is the Open Source Windows Installer XML Toolset (WiX Toolset).

While WIX has a steep learning curve (as the MSI's themselves are quite complex) WIX is a viable alternative given its strong features set and high level of support. Dan Sniderman will give an introduction to WIX and show how to create an install (and configuration) for a Windows Service, an install for Windows Client (and its shortcut) with considerations for handling configuration files and automated build.

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Daniel Sniderman is a Senior Consultant for Magenic, one of the nation's premiere Microsoft Gold Certified Partners. Dan first learned to program FORTRAN in in the late 70's using a keypunch machine and has twenty-eight years of experience in software development. Since 1993, Dan has specialized on developing business applications on the Microsoft platform.

Dan has worked at Magenic since 2004 specializing in customer software development and ALM consulting. In addition to a BA from the University of Illinois, Dan has a MCSD.NET and MCTS in Team Foundation Server 2010.

Dan also is a professional trombonist performing regularly with the B.S. Brass Band and The Prohibition Orchestra of Chicago. Dan has two children: Joella age 6 and Elijah age 2.

September 2012 Meeting: Cryptography (and Security) For Coders

Sergio Pereira — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

This interactive presentation will cover many of the building blocks of modern security, with an emphasis on cryptography. Topics include encryption, hashing, passwords, injection, session management, and developer security. Dev-ops topics (such as server security, cloud hosting, application stacks, etc.) and higher-level concepts (OAuth, cross-site scripting, architectures) will be also be touched on if requested.

Ideally, each topic will be a relatively dense 5 minute overview hitting the core theory along with code samples. Topics will be chosen by audience participation (bring your voices.)

Details for the talk will be taken from my experience, academia, OWASP, Security Now, and an assortment of security-focused presentations and papers. The talk will assume little to no prior security knowledge, though we won�t spend much time on anything you already know.

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C.M. Lubinski.

In the academic world, I completed my undergraduate degree at Grinnell College in Iowa and am currently working towards a master�s degree from DePaul University. I am pretty keen on education, so in addition, I tend to take random online courses and read technical papers.

Professionally, I have several years of experience in web development and enjoy working with various technology stacks. Presently, I am thrilled to be developing in Scala, and would recommend you use it, too. This combination of academics and experience helps me stay in tune with current buzzwords without being carried away by the hype.

I tend to specialize in programming languages and web services, focusing on stability, scale-ability, and security. Presently, I am the chief developer at Toodalu, writing all of the back-end logic and a majority of the web application.