Codemash 2.0.1.3 precompilers.

We are half way through Codemash 2.0.1.3 since this year we got two days of precompilers.

I think I choose fairly well but as usual I had to leave out some sessions that looked really good. Nothing I can do about that.

Choose your own application

I wasn’t very sure to attend or not the “Choose your own application” session. It looked very interesting in paper, but I was worry since I had been using those frameworks for a while.

I’m glad I did it anyway, the session was really good and the amount of work both Dennis Burton and Brian Genisio put behind it is impressive.

I will recommend you visit their site http://chooseyourownapplication.com sign up and follow the instructions.

You will be making some decisions along the way, choosing the language to use, the different technologies and libraries and even deployment platform, getting new badges with each complete “level”.

It should take you a few hours to complete it, but once you are done, you will have a single page application with a basic back end.

The exercise finish leaving a list of things you could do to make the application a bit more “real world” and robust.

Even when the application you will work on is very simple, it deals with several common scenarios that apply to more complex apps of this nature.

I thinks is a very good resource for understanding single page apps, and even more, since you can go back and start again and make different decisions, it’s also a good way to evaluate and compare the different technologies.

Atomic Scala

Dianne Marsh and Bruce Eckel put together a condensed version of their seminar specially for Codemash, all based on their upcoming book of the same title.

The idea is to teach Scala step by step, introducing each feature in order.

From their website:

We present each Atom (chapter) in the book as a very short lecture, followed by an exercise period. Atomic concepts make learning Scala easy and fun.

It’s a nice approach to learn a new language and is a gentle introduction to Scala, that can be a bit scary if you come from traditional OO languages.

I had a good time pairing and doing the exercises, sadly I had to leave after lunch but I plan to complete the book later tonight.

I recommend keeping an eye once the book is finally released and get yourself a copy if you want to get into Scala.

Behind the scenes of building Roslyn

I wasn’t planning to attend this session, I poke my head into the room and I got hook. It’s not a secret that I like languages, compilers and also “processes”, so been able to learn how Roslyn was build was very interesting and educational.

Roslyn is an impressive project, a compiler for very well established languages like C# and VB, integrated deep inside a non trivial products like VS (and WebMatrix).

The process, testing (both unit and functional) and performance considerations and how the team addressed each of those problems was very revealing.

Both Kevin Pilch-Bisson and Brian Rasmussen made what can sound like a boring and arid subject into a very good and engaging presentation.

I gain a better appreciation of the complexities involved while working on a project of these level of complexity and visibility.

Building Mobile Applications with PhoneGap

Ray Camden gave a good presentation/workshop.

I particularly enjoyed the first part of the session where he introduced PhoneGap and the different ways to use it, some of the common pitfalls and the different work-flows recommended to get your application out the door in good shape.

He was very entertaining and well prepared and I took a few tips from it that will certainly save me some time in the future.