Jim Zimmerman - ASP.NET, MVC, Ajax and ORM

I guess there has been a double booking of the Microsoft room for the 20th, so we had to move it to the 21st.  I hope you all can still make it.  we will all be speaking at Tampa Code Camp also on July 14th, so try to catch us there if you can also.  I will be showing some Silverlight and Ajax stuff at Tampa Code Camp.

I am speaking on Tuesday, February 20, at the Sarasota .NET Developers Group on Code Generation with ASP.NET.  I am excited to meet the group down in Sarasota and visit another users group.  If you are going to be around the area, stop down and check out my session.  It will be at 6 p.m. at the Sarasota Community Foundation, located at 2635 Fruitville Rd., Sarasota, FL 34237 (just west of Tuttle on the north side of Fruitville).

Here is the session description:

Code Generation with ASP.NET

Learn why there is no need to ever write 1000’s of lines of code again for your Data Access Layer. I will examine the different open source and commercial choices out there for code generation including SubSonic, .NET Tiers using Codesmith, and the new BLINQ stuff coming out with Orcas. I will show practical uses for code generation and also how to best set up your team and / or yourself to become successful when using code generation with your projects.

Look forward to seeing you there!

For all you who would like to learn more about Atlas here in Tampa, Joe Healy and I are speaking on Wednesday, June 14, 2006 here in Tampa. Joe is going to talk about how to start with Atlas along with an overview and how to start with the Atlas Toolkit. I am going to get advanced and talk about how to best debug the atlas applications along with writing your own custom atlas control. I will also touch on script# from Nikil as well as talk about some advanced javascript features. You can check out the event details and signup here. I also have written a atlas control that you all will be able to download a beta of after the talk. I have been so busy writing the control and working that I haven't posted in a while. Hard to keep up sometimes. Hope to see you all there!

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Atlas SDR (Strategic Design Review) last week in Redmond. For those of you who do not know what that is, what they do is invite 30 or so people for 3 days to help teach, discuss and learn what developers want to see in the product. Not knowing exactly what I can or can't say about the next version of Visual Studio, I will say that I want the next version of Visual Studio now!

My head is still spinning on the amazing things they are doing in Atlas. I must say that Nikhil Kothari is a genius. Being the architect of Atlas, he was easilty able to help me understand some very in-depth concepts on how Atlas works. I am very lucky to have met him and had some great instruction from. This javascript framework they have come up with goes so deep, that it is hard to grasp all at once. I am going to put up some demos soon on how to use some of this stuff in the real world. There are some very compelling scenarios that are not as hard as one might think.

If you haven't already be sure to download the April CTP from atlas.asp.net and download the docs. There are some pretty cool demos to get you started and the new control toolkit gives you a good on idea on how you can extend the framework yourself.

Well better late than never. I have been wanting to tell about this great event, but as soon as I got back from vegas, my kids got me very sick. So here it is:

So, it was the coolest convention I have ever been too. This is no joke. Microsoft really outdid themselves this time. Not like a normal Microsoft event. It didn't even feel like one sometimes. The branding was different, not the bold Microsoft signs but MIX 06 signs everywhere with Microsoft on the top left corner. There were also media center lunges with bean bags to sit and play xbox 360 games and the new vista media center. What was also wierd was the number of apple laptops I saw. There were tons of flash and mac developers and graphic designers there. It truly was a mix of different people. It was bringing together the designer and the developer. It was really cool the kind of conversations I had. Here I am talking to someone from Adobe about how WPF/E will compete with flash. For those of you that don't know what I am talking about, WPF/E is Microsoft's version of Flash. Except better I think. Finally will have a way to wire up cool design to code-behind pages. You can get more information about Microsoft's new design tool called Expression here.

I played with the xaml stuff and wpf/e in the hands-on labs, but have yet to get it installed on my pc. I am very excited about where Microsoft is headed. It was definitely the early adopter crowd. I don't think WPF/E even comes out until Mid-2007.

So anyway, Vegas was lots of fun and I met alot of cool and fun people. Microsoft had a reception Monday night which was one of the best parties I have ever been too. I saw O'Reilly dancing, Gates wasn't there though. It felt like one of those parties you used to hear about in 2000 at the height of the dotcom boom. Lots of key companies there and everyone drinking and having fun.

For those who missed it, it is definitely worth going next year. It will be hard to top this year, but I am sure it will be somewhere fun.

I am so excited, I am going to MIX 06 in a couple of days. It is going to be a very cool conversation. You can check it out at www.mix06.com. Lots of cool AJAX, ATLAS and web 2.0 stuff. I am very excited to talk to others and what apps they are working on. I will try to take as many notes as I can. I will be speaking in Orlando Code Camp on the Saturday following MIX 06 so I will have the new data fresh in my head to talk about. Here is a link to my session 7 Ways to AJAX. I will actually have more than that to talk about after Vegas, so we will see how much i can cover in that one session. If there is time, we can have a open discussion in another room I am sure. I'll see you in Orlando!

Here are some of the links to the several libraries I discussed at the meeting tonight about the different AJAX style libraries for ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 1.1:


http://jason.diamond.name/weblog/2005/10/29/my-ajax-dot-net-release-12
http://anthem-dot-net.sourceforge.net/
http://atlas.asp.net

It was fun to hang out tonight and always love the pubs. Check out CarCentral.com and build your car, get a free price quote or find a used car. See you again, hopefully in fort lauderdale in February!