Bob Nims' Blog

Andy West

F# is succinct, expressive and well-suited to parallel, algorithmic, and data-oriented programming. Functional programming has been around for decades, but its uses have mainly been limited to academic environments. F# aims to change that by combining the functional programming paradigm with imperative and OOP styles, as well as giving developers access to the vast functionality present in the .NET BCL. This presentation is a gentle introduction to the functional aspects of F#, and is primarily intended for VB.NET and C# developers. F# is a first-class language in Visual Studio 2010, and is therefore readily available to .NET programmers who want to explore functional programming in a familiar environment. We will look at several fundamental FP concepts in F# such as:

• Binding and scope
• Immutability
• Recursion
• Function application (including curried functions)
• Pattern matching
• List comprehensions
• Type inference
• …and more

Andy West is a Software Engineering Lead at Niagara Technology Group, Inc., and a Software Engineer at Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, Inc. He got his start professionally 10 years ago doing VB6 and classic ASP, and has since graduated to C# and ASP.NET. In that time he has also dabbled in C, C++, Perl, Python, JavaScript, VB.NET, Java, and recently, F#.

 VDUNY currently meets at New Horizons Computer Learning Center 50 Methodist Hill Drive, Henrietta, NY 14623.  Meetings are held from 6:00 to approximately 8:30 p.m.  Pizza arrives at 6 PM and the meeting gets underway at about 6:30.  This month’s food is sponsored by Microsoft.  Please RSVP to bobnims@vduny.org if you plan to attend.

 This session will show how we can use Visual Studio 2010 to develop applications for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 devices using Silverlight. We’ll look at using multi-targeting to create both a Web and Phone solution using a single code base. We’ll also talk about the Windows Phone device capabilities and Microsoft’s Marketplace. 

Andy Beaulieu is a professional software developer and trainer with over 15 years of experience building applications for Windows and the Web. Located in Syracuse, New York, he is well versed in many Microsoft technologies including Silverlight, ASP.NET, ADO.NET and WindowsForms. Andy has been awarded a Microsoft MVP Award for Silverlight, and is a member of the WPF and Silverlight Insiders group.

This meeting is sponsored by Microsoft. They are covering the Pizza, Soda, and swag!

Generics in .Net allow developers to define type-safe classes and data structures that will work with a broad range of types. Building generic objects results in significant performance boost and higher quality code through the reuse of processing algorithms without needing type-specific code. Functional programming in .Net also provides the potential for code reuse, reduced bugs, and increase robustness. In this session we will combine the two technologies to demonstrate how we as developers can expand our solution engineering tool set.
 
Rik Bardrof is a senior software developer for Xclaim Software, located in Central New York. He has a widely varied background in computer science with experience ranging from systems maintenance through application development (lot’s of stuff in between). Currently he’s practicing agile development in a .Net shop which focuses heavily on Domain Driven Design, Test Driven Design, and integration of Open Source tools.

 Please RSVP to bobnims@vduny.org to attend this meeting.

Steve Maier, Principal Software Engineer at InfiMed, will present:
Real World and Advanced WPF 

Many people do not use WPF in their day-to-day jobs.  Many companies cannot spend the time to rewrite their projects in WPF just because it is a new and cool technology.  There are many advantages that WPF has over MFC or even over WinForms, but there are also issues that need to be overcome when WPF is chosen.  

•  Quick WPF Basics
  Learning Curve
  Tools
• External Resources
  Theming
  Localizing Strings
• Combining WPF, WinForms, and even MFC
  Airspace issues
  DirectX and WPF
• Real World examples of WPF apps

  Steve Maier  is a Principal Software Engineer with InfiMed developing digital medical imaging systems. Steve is also the Database team lead and software lead for the next generation of products. His website is http://strugglingthru.net/ where there are posts on certification and .NET .

On Tuesday, February 23rd,  Microsoft Developer Evangelist Jim O’Neil will present “Discovering Dallas”.  At PDC 2009, Microsoft announced “Dallas”, a Data-as-a-Service offering that leverages the Windows Azure cloud computing platform. “Dallas” makes well-known and vetted public and commercial data sets from entities such as the Associated Press and Data.gov available to the development and data analysis communities.  This session explores getting started with “Dallas” and accessing its data sets programmatically and via Excel 2010′s PowerPivot feature.

Jim O’Neil is a Microsoft Developer Evangelist for the Northeast District, including New England and Upstate New York. He joined Microsoft in April 2008 after nearly twelve years at Sybase as a support engineer, sales consultant, and evangelist for developer tools including PowerBuilder, DataWindow .NET, and EAServer (a J2EE application server). Jim is an MCPD and co-authored two books and multiple articles on application development using PowerBuilder. Prior to Sybase, he worked as a software engineer for MITRE and BDM International, Inc., developing prototypes and simulations for various DoD organizations.

We’ll look at the great new features coming to Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010 for Line of Business Application Development. We’ll see how RIA Services and Cider Designer support make Silverlight 4 a first class application platform in VS2010.

Tuesday, December 15th, Steve Maier will give the technical presentation at the VDUNY meeting which will be held at the New Horizons Training Center, 50 Methodist Hill Drive, Rochester, NY 14623. 

Here’s a brief summary describing the presentation:

iPhone development is on the rise.  It is a popular and powerful platform that can provide applications in the palm of your hand.  It also can be financially rewarding as well.  Until recently you had to use Objective-C to develop iPhone apps, but Novell has changed that with MonoTouch.  Since this has been released there is also an implementation of XNATouch to provide an interface for XNA programmers to also have access to these little handheld devices.

• Getting started with iPhone development
• Introduction to MonoTouch
• Databinding
• Interop with native libs
• XNATouch
• Finalizing apps for the app store
• Other options for iPhone app development
• The downside of .NET on the iPhone

Steve Maier is a Principal Software Engineer at Infimed and leading the team for their next generation product.  He holds multiple .NET and SQL Server certifications and co-authored a SQL Server book.  He has also used DirectX and Direct3D for multiple medical applications as well as game engines.