After three years away from all but the most trivial of noodling with the Ruby programming language, I have become a Ruby Foo (as in Mr. T’s catchphrase, “I pity the foo’!”). I am severely out of practice with Ruby, and with two versions having appeared since I last made a living with Rails, even the act of creating a new project is completely different. Since Ruby is the preferred back-end programming language at Shopify and I am the Platform Evangelist, it’s time for me to “sharpen the saw”.

Luckily for me, I ran into Obie Fernandez at the South by Southwest Interactive conference back in March. We sat down for a coffee and he told me about what was happening with Hashrocket and I told him that I was a hair’s breadth away from joining Shopify.

“I’ve been away from Ruby long enough that I’m probably back at newbie level again,” I told Obie between sips of latte made with overcooked beans. “I did it for a bit at the beginning using IronRuby, but between doing all the C# and PHP and the open source ‘Iron’ languages dying of neglect at Microsoft, I’m severely out of practice. I thinking of joining Shopify, and let’s face it: I don’t want to look like an ignoramus in the presence of rock stars like Tobi, Cody and Edward.”

“Give me your email,” said Obie, “and I can do something to help.” Of course he could – he’s the series editor of Addison-Wesley’s Professional Ruby series of books.

Shortly after South by Southwest, a couple of links to PDF editions appeared in my inbox. Thanks, Obie!

The first link was to Eloquent Ruby, Russ Olsen’s guide to speaking idiomatic Ruby and getting the most out of the Ruby programming language. It’s a breezy read, written in the same conversational tone that Olsen used in Design Patterns in Ruby, and the book is broken down into 31 bite-size chapters about a dozen pages in length. Each chapter’s title is some principle for programming eloquent Ruby – the first few are “Write Code That Looks Like Ruby”, “Choose the Right Control Structure” and “Take Advantage of Ruby’s Smart Collections” – and each explains that principle, provides code, shows you where you can find the principles used in actual, working projects. The book straddles the line between tutorial and reference; it’s written in tutorial style, but it’s organized so well that it might as well be a reference for those parts of Ruby that you might not use often (but should) as well as for those parts you keep forgetting (in my case, I always end up having to look up metaprogramming). I’ve been going through it at about a chapter an evening, and I’ve been getting smarter each time. Whether you’re coming back to Ruby after a hiatus like I am or if you just simply want to get better at Ruby, you should have this book in your library.

If you’d like to know more about Eloquent Ruby and its author, Russ Olsen, check out this interview with him at InfoQ.

I have yet to properly sink my teeth into Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial but a quick scan of the book has shown that it’s quite promising, and the Amazon reviews are bolstering my belief.

I’ll be writing from time to time about my return to Ruby and Rails in this “Ruby Foo” series of posts, and I hope that whether you’re new to the language, returning after a break like me or aiming for “guru” status, that you’ll check out this blog regularly for notes on my explorations and what I’ve learned.

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology blog.

Free Ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7

Charles Petzold literally wrote the book on Windows development, and he’s now doing it for Windows Phone 7. Programming Windows Phone 7 is published by Microsoft Press and covers Windows Phone 7 development from many angles: building apps with Silverlight, making games with XNA and making your programs even better by accessing online services.

Windows Phone is a lot of ground to cover, so the book is sized to match. Petzold’s been working on it since at least the start of the year and it shows – it’s over 1,000 pages on our favourite mobile operating system! Luckily, this book is free-as-in-beer: that’s right, you can download it in ebook form, along with the sample code, for no money at all. If you’re looking to seriously get into Windows Phone 7 development, you should have this book.

Downloads for Programming Windows Phone 7

• Download the book
• Download the sample code

XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example

Survey after survey shows that games are the most popular mobile phone apps, and Windows Phone is really good at games, and not just from the user’s point of view. The XNA framework, available to Windows Phone developers, takes Windows Phone 7 beyond mere informational apps – it’s like having an Xbox in your pocket!

XNA is also more than just about Windows Phone – it’s also for developing games for Windows and the Xbox 360. Better still, it lets you target three platforms – desktop, console and phone – with a single codebase and tweaks specifically for each platform. If you want to write games and reach a wide audience, XNA is your ticket.

Packt Publishing’s XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example is a great way to get started with XNA programming. It walks you through the development of four games, each from a different genre:

• Flood Control, a timed puzzle game where you have to quickly assemble pipes before time runs out and water flows through them
• Asteroid Belt Assault, a 2-D shooter that classic 80’s arcade gamers will find familiar
• Robot Rampage, a tank game featuring multi-axis controls, a scrolling world, particle effects and enemy AI
• Gemstone Hunter, which takes the Platformer Starter Kit to new levels

I just got the book, and have only done the most cursory of scans, but I’ve already picked up a few ideas for how to implement features in my games. If you’re looking to do game development for Windows Phone and beyond, this is a great starter book!

Get XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example

• Packt Publishing’s page for XNA Game Development by Example
• Amazon.ca’s page for XNA Game Development by Example
• Amazon.com’s page for XNA Game Development by Example

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

MEAP is short for “Manning Early Access Program”, a way for you to get an advance look at in-progress books by Manning Publications. Today only (Friday, October 1st), Manning’s .NET ebooks are going for half price! And yes, once the book is complete, you also get the final version of the book in ebook form.

Manning’s MEAP ebooks on .NET topics are:

• ASP.NET 4.0 in Practice
• Azure in Action
• C# in Depth, Second Edition
• Continuous Integration in .NET
• Dependency Injection in .NET
• Hello! Silverlight
• IronRuby in Action
• Microsoft Entity Framework in Action
• Multitouch on Windows
• SharePoint 2010 Site Owner’s Manual
• SharePoint 2010 Web Parts in Action
• SharePoint 2010 Workflows in Action
• SQL Server DMVs in Action
• Windows PowerShell in Action, Second Edition

All you have to do to get the discount is enter dotd1001 in the Promotion Code box when you check out. Now go get up to speed on some .NET topic and save money!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

For today only (September 26, 2010): Manning is selling the ebook version of Azure in Action for a mere US$15, which converts to CAD$15.36 as of this writing. The ebook is a MEAP book – that’s Manning Early Access Program – which means that it’s an in-progress book. Purchasers of MEAP books get updates and the final version as part of the deal.

To get the deal on Azure in Action, use the discount code dotd0926 in the Promotional Code box when checking out.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Today (Wednesday, September 22) Manning’s offering their SharePoint books, in both electronic and dead-tree form, at half price:

• SharePoint 2007 Developer’s Guide to Business Data Catalog
• SharePoint 2010 Site Owner’s Manual
• SharePoint 2010 Web Parts in Action
• SharePoint 2010 Workflows in Action

Just enter the promo code dotd0922 in the Promotional Code box when you check out at manning.com.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Today only (Friday, September 10, 2010), you can get either a PDF or dead-tree edition of Silverlight 4 in Action for half price! Just enter the discount code dotd0910 in the promotional code box when you check out at Manning Publications’ online store.

Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:

Silverlight gives you entirely new ways to create rich internet applications, and now Silverlight 4 adds many powerful enhancements to the mix.

Silverlight 4 in Action is a comprehensive guide to application building using C#. It goes into action immediately in a thorough introduction. It then follows up with numerous nifty examples to explore flexible layout, control extensibility, the communication and binding models, rich media, animation, and much more.

This book explores practical questions in patterns, testing, and performance optimization throughout. No previous experience with Silverlight is required.

Remember, it’s half price just for today! With the discount, the ebook edition becomes USD$14.99 and the paper book version (which also gives you the ebook edition) drops to USD$24.99.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Want to get started developing sites and web applications that run on all modern browsers, including the upcoming Internet Explorer 9? You’ll need HTML 5 (along with CSS 3 and JavaScript) and a handy guide like Mark Pilgrim’s new book, HTML5 Up and Running.

If Mark’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s written all sorts of great guides, from Dive Into Python to Dive Into Accessibility to Dive into Greasemonkey to Greasemonkey Hacks, and much of his work is available as both for-pay books and free books off his website.

Today and today only (Friday, August 20, 2010), you can get the ebook version (PDF, ePub and mobi) of HTML5 Up and Running for just USD$9.99 (it normally goes for USD$23.99). Just go to the HTML5 Up and Running page in the O’Reilly site, order the ebook and  use the discount code DDHUR when you check out!

(And while you’re at it, take the latest platform preview of the HTML5-ready Internet Explorer 9!)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

For today only (that’s Sunday, August 15th), Manning is offering the pair of their books, C# in Depth, Second Edition and Azure in Action for the price of one! Just use the discount code dotd0815 in the Promotional Code box when you check out. You can order the final book in either dead-tree or PDF format.

Both these books are MEAP books – that’s short for Manning Early Access Program, a chance for you to get in-progress and final editions of books currently being written.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Want to learn C# or brush up on it? From Wednesday, August 18th through Tuesday, August 24th, you can join Head First C# co-author Andrew Stellman and other techies in a week-long exchange about C# in an O’Reilly “Inner Circle” discussion, where he’ll talk about C#, .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010.

(If you’re a new programmer just getting started, Head First C# is a great book that will keep you engaged, even in those parts where the going gets a little tricky. If you’re an experienced programmer who’s new to C# – or like me, hadn’t used it in ages – it’s still a great read; just skip the basic parts and enjoy the “Head First” style in which it’s written. And yes, if you want to developer for Windows Phone 7, you’re going to need to know C#. Want to get Head First C# at a discounted price? See below for details.)

The discussion will span a wide range of topics, including:

• Why use C# instead of any other language?
• C# best practices
• Becoming a better C# developer
• Dealing with objects
• Productivity hints
• The best of C#

If you want to join in (I’ll be participating), register for the Andrew Stellman on C# discussion at O’Reilly. See you there!

Save Big Bucks on Head First C#!

O’Reilly have a deal on Head First C#, Second Edition (published this May, and it covers C# 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010): use the discount code BKCBD when ordering online from O’Reilly and save 40% off the dead-tree edition and 50% off the ebook!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Manning Publications’ deal of the day for today, Wednesday, August 11th, is 50% off the electronic and dead-tree versions of their Silverlight books:

• Silverlight 4 in Action
• Hello! Silverlight
• Silverlight 2 in Action

Silverlight 4 in Action and Hello! Silverlight are “MEAP” books: that’s “Manning Early Access Program”, which gives you early access to preliminary versions of a book as it’s being written (and yes, the final version as well).

To get the discount, enter the discount code dotd0811 in the “Promotional Code” field when you check out.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Today (Thursday, August 5) and today only, Manning’s offering their SharePoint books, in both electronic and dead-tree form, at half price:

• SharePoint 2007 Developer’s Guide to Business Data Catalog
• SharePoint 2010 Site Owner’s Manual
• SharePoint 2010 Web Parts in Action
• SharePoint 2010 Workflows in Action

Just enter the promo code in the Promotional Code box when you check out at manning.com. I got an email saying the promo code is dotd0805ccb; Bil Simser reports that the site says the promo code is dotd0805. Try them both!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The Life of the Party

Last night, I attended my friend Alexa Clark’s photo exhibit, which took place at Camaraderie, a downtown Toronto coworking space for indies and entrepreneurs. This sort of event at this sort of location tends to bring out techies with an interest in design and designers with a technical bent, and they all came up to me with the same question: So, do you have one of those Windows phones?

I pulled out my Samsung “Taylor” phone, let people take try it out, and here were the responses:

• “I like the main screen. Less cluttered than my iPhone’s.”
• (Flipping through the People hub) “That’s a great way to organize pages!”
• (Seeing my wife’s tile on the Start screen, pinned to the top) “So people can have their own icon right on the home page? That’s great!”
• (Seeing the way pages animate as you navigate) “That’s a nice touch.”
• (On the overall design) “This is a Microsoft phone?”
• “Love the clean look.”

Here’s what Wayne Lee, one of the people behind Camaraderie, tweeted about the phone:

Programming Windows Phone 7 Updated

Charles Petzold – the guy who literally wrote the book on Windows programming – is working away on Programming Windows Phone 7 and has released another free preview version of the book. The first preview had 6 chapters; this latest version weighs in at 11 chapters and 265 pages.

Here’s the current table of contents:

• Part I: The Basics
  • Chapter 1   Hello, Windows Phone 7
  • Chapter 2   Getting Oriented
  • Chapter 3   An Introduction to Touch
  • Chapter 4   Bitmaps, Also Known as Textures
  • Chapter 5   Sensors and Services
  • Chapter 6   Issues in Application Architecture
• Part II: Silverlight
  • Chapter 7   XAML Power and Limitations
  • Chapter 8   Elements and Properties
• Part III: XNA
  • Chapter 20   Principles of Movement
  • Chapter 21   Textures and Sprites
  • Chapter 22   Touch and Play

This preview is free-as-in-beer, and the final ebook, which comes out October 28th, will also be free-as-in-beer!

Get your hands on the book and associated downloads:

• Programming Windows Phone 7 in PDF format [4MB]
• Programming Windows Phone 7 in XPS format [8.2 MB]
• Sample code for the book (works with WP7 July beta)

Windows Phone 7 Game: Glow Air Hockey

Glow Air Hockey is a game Social Indulgence that lets you play air hockey game against the phone or a friend. There’s a little more information about the game at Glow Air Hockey’s page.

(In the video above, the red dots are the players’ finger positions as shown in the emulator; you won’t see them when you’re actually playing the game on the phone.)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Update: I added links to official Windows Phone 7 documentation.

And now, a quick wrap-up of what’s happening with Windows Phone 7. (What you see above is my phone in my hand, as seen from my point of view at Café Novo, one of my “remote offices” in Toronto.)

In this article, I cover:

• General in-person reactions by people trying out Windows Phone 7
• The developer tools
• The upcoming Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp by DevTeach and DreamDigital
• Resources, including the most complete list of upcoming Windows Phone 7 books that I know of
• A little bit about Marketplace and how we plan to help you market your apps.

Read on for more!

Windows Phone 7 Makes a Splash at Tweetgasm

On Monday night, I attended a monthly event called Tweetgasm, which took place in Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel. As the name of the event implies, it’s a gathering of Twitter users, and as expected, a good chunk of the people who came work in tech, internet marketing and that emerging business called “social media”.

Then came the inevitable question: “So is it true that you’ve got a Windows Phone?”

I pulled it out from my pocket, unlocked it, and said “Want to take it for a spin?”

I spent the better part of an hour letting people put my phone through its paces. From this experience, it became quite clear that seeing photos of WP7’s minimalistic interface and actually experiencing it “up close and personal” are two very different creatures.

“It’s really responsive,” was a common refrain as they tried out the touch screen. The touch response of the phone feels right. People got a kick out of flicking their way around the various hubs and pinch-zooming in both the browser and my photo collection.

“It’s easy to read!” was another common response. “Nice and clean, and what’s that font?”

(It’s “Segoe WP”, a variant of “Segoe UI”, which comes with Windows Vista and 7. You get Segoe WP when you download the WP7 developer tools. Hardcore typography nerds might want to check out Wikipedia’s entry on Segoe.)

“All right, Joey,” said a couple of developers who built apps for other platforms, “how do we get in on building for this phone?” I have their contact info, and I’ll be talking with them very soon.

And how do you get in on building for WP7 if you didn’t get my business card at Tweetgasm? Step one is simple: drop me a line.

Get the Windows Phone 7 Beta Developer Tools

If you want to get started building apps for WP7, your first step is to download the tools. The tools recently made the leap from CTP (“Community Technology Preview”) to beta. The developer tools are free-as-in-beer and based on the excellent Visual Studio IDE.

Here’s what you get with the tools:

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone (beta). The development environment, debugger and compiler – it’s where you’ll be coding.
• Windows Phone Emulator (beta). So you can take your apps for a test run. It works with touch screens, too – I use it with my touch screen-equipped laptop (a Dell Latitude XT2) all the time.
• Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone (beta). An interface designer that makes it easier to build the UIs for Silverlight-based phone apps. Used in tandem with Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, it makes building gorgeous apps a much quicker process.
• Silverlight for Windows Phone (beta). One of the programming frameworks for WP7, this one is better suited for building event-driven “application”-style apps.
• XNA Game Studio for Windows Phone (beta). The other programming framework for WP7, this game loop-driven framework is better suited for game development. It’s based on XNA Game Studio, which lets you build games for Xbox 360 and Windows.

Two Days of Intensive Hands-On Training at the Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp

Our friends at DevTeach and DreamDigital have teamed up to offer an intensive two-day “bootcamp” covering WP7 development in four Canadian cities later this summer:

• Montreal: Monday, August 23 and Tuesday, August 24 at the Microsoft office
• Vancouver: Monday, August 30 and Tuesday, August 31 at the Sutton Place Hotel
• Ottawa: Thursday, September 2 and Friday, September 3 at the Microsoft office
• Toronto: Tuesday, September 7 and Wednesday, September 8 at Microsoft’s downtown office

The bootcamp course will be taught by Colin Melia, who’s who’s presented at TechDays, wrote the Silverlight demo app that we used for the EnergizeIT tour and is one of our go-to guys for Windows Azure – simply put, the guy knows his stuff. If you’re looking to kick-start your WP7 development, there isn’t a course more hardcore than this one.

The registration fee is CDN$999 for the full-day training session, and you can save $100 by using the discount code WP7BOOTCAMP when you register. I repeat:

For the full details on the Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp, see the Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp page.

Where Can I Find Out More About Windows Phone 7?

Yours Truly and This Blog

For starters, there’s me (that’s me on the right, with the accordion with the “I love Windows Phone” stickers on it). I’m one of the designated “Windows Phone Champs”, and it’s my job to make it easier for you to write Windows Phone 7 apps. With my fellow champs Paul Laberge and Jamie Wakeam, I’ll be writing articles, organizing workshops, getting you the latest technical, user experience and marketing info you need, provisioning developer phones and doing whatever it takes to help you become a successful WP7 developer. Our success is going to be measured by your success.

Want to keep track of me and all the stuff I’m doing for Windows Phone developers? Check out the following:

• I’ll be posting about WP7 quite regularly on this blog, so keep it bookmarked and come back often!
• Follow me on Twitter: I’m @AccordionGuy.
• Have you been working on a WP7 app using the development tools and emulator and are wondering what the next step is? You probably want to email me. Let’s talk!

Official Windows Phone 7 Documentation

The official docs are always a good starting point. Make sure you check out all these links!

• Windows Phone Development
• Windows Phone code samples
• “Getting Started” Guide
• Design Resources for Windows Phone
• Windows Phone UI Design and Interaction Guide
• Design Templates for Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone Developer Blog

In addition to this blog, be sure to check out these blogs that cover WP7 development:

• The Windows Phone Developer Blog: The official blog of the WP7 team, with the latest announcements and development tips.
• Mark Arteaga’s Blog: He’s a Windows Mobile MVP and one Microsoft Canada’s go-to guys for Windows Phone development.
• Colinizer: Colin Melia’s blog – he’s another of our go-to guys for Windows Phone development, he’s running the WP7 bootcamp, and a Silverlight expert as well.
• On Windows Phone 7: Clarity Consulting’s blog featuring “musings on design and development for Windows Phone 7”.
• Ozymandias: WP7 Team member Andre Vrignaud’s blog.
• Shawn Hargreaves’ Blog: He blogs on game programming with XNA.
• Artificial Ignorance: Anand Iyer’s blog. He’s also on the WP7 team.
• Michael Klucher’s Blog: He writes about games design and XNA.
• Many Niches: WP7 team member Brandon Watson’s blog.

Books

There are a number of WP7 books in the works, including the ones listed below:

Windows Phone 7 Unleashed by Daniel Vaughan and published by Sams. He posted a quick blog entry about it earlier today.

Beginning Windows Phone 7 Development by Henry Lee and published by Apress.

Pro Windows Phone 7 Development by Rob Cameron and published by Apress.

Windows Phone 7 Game Development by Adam Dawes and published by Apress. Here’s his blog entry on the book.

Learning Windows Phone Programming by Yochay Kiriaty and Jaime Rodriguez and published by O’Reilly. You can download a free 50-page PDF “sampler” of the book.

Programming Windows Phone 7 by Charles Petzold and published by Microsoft Press. You can download a sampler of the book in PDF or XPS format, along with source code.

Windows Phone 7 Application Development Using Silverlight by Corey Schuman and published by Addison-Wesley Professional.

XNA Game Studio 4.0 Programming: Developing for Windows Phone and Xbox Live by Tom Miller and Dean Johnson and published by Addison-Wesley Professional.

There are also a couple of books coming out from Wrox that don’t have cover designs yet:

• Beginning Windows Phone 7 Application Development: Building Windows Phone Applications Using Silverlight and XNA by Nick Lecrenski, Karli Watson and Robert Fonseca-Ensor.
• Professional Windows Phone 7 Game Development: Creating Games using XNA Game Studio 4 by Chris G. Williams and George W. Clingerman.

Promoting Your Apps in Marketplace

 
Building WP7 apps is half the job; the other half is selling them in the Marketplace. We’re working on ways to help you market your applications, from articles explaining what works and what doesn’t (based on research and studying what works and what doesn’t for other mobile platforms), putting the spotlight on Canadian WP7 developers and their apps and sessions like Anthony Bartolo’s upcoming “Turbo Talk” at TechDays, where he’ll talk about Windows Phone Marketplace and how to get the most out of it.

Are you working on apps for Windows Phone 7? Make sure I (and through me, the rest of Microsoft Canada’s WP7 team) know about it – drop me a line!

Movin’ on Up

 
As a complete reboot and from-the-ground-up rethinking of Microsoft’s approach to mobile, Windows Phone 7 gives you a unique opportunity to get in on the ground floor, make a splash and be a rock star. Albert Shum’s new UI design makes it stand apart from other mobile OSs, and whenever I show my phone to people, they’re impressed by it. The new programming models – Silverlight and XNA offer a lot of power and flexibility, and I personally find programming with them and in C# far more pleasant that the options offered by The Esteemed Competition. As you’ll see in the coming weeks and months, The Empire is putting all sorts of resources behind WP7, and a lot of developers are coming along for the ride.

We’re movin’ on up – join us!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

If you’ve decided to learn HTML 5 and are looking for a good introduction, I can’t think of a better starting point than Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML 5. If Mark’s name rings a bell, it’s probably because you’ve heard of his books Dive Into Python and Dive Into Accessibility. As you can see, he’s taken a theme and he’s running with it.

Dive Into HTML 5 covers a number of topics, including:

• A quite biased history of HTML 5. Not necessary for HTML 5 development, but if you’re the sort of person that likes to know the “back story”, Mark covers it quite nicely.
• Detecting HTML 5 features. Your web apps will need to know if the browser they’re running in supports specific HTML 5 features, and this chapter covers that.
• What the various tags (especially the new ones) mean.
• Drawing on the <canvas>. Now supported in IE9!
• The <video> element. Also supported in IE9!
• Geolocation.
• Local storage. Native client apps have had this as an advantage over web apps, but not anymore!
• Forms.
• Microdata.
• and coming soon: chapters on threads and web sockets.

Mark has a knack for explaining things, so I’m always happy to point people to his books. I consider Dive Into HTML 5 to be pretty comprehensive; you could create a course based solely on the material in this book, and thanks to the licensing, you can!

Dive Into HTML 5 is available for free online and is a work in progress. It seems to be largely complete with only a couple of missing chapters, and when it’s done, it’ll be available in a couple of forms:

• For free, online
• For money, in the form of an O’Reilly book

As with Dive Into Python and Dive Into Accessibility, Dive Into HTML 5 is published under a Creative Commons “By” 3.0 license. You can freely share the contents of the book and even take it and adapt it any way you please: into your presentations, into a lecture or blog article series, or even your own book on HTML 5 – as long as you give Mark credit for creating the original work.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Once again, my friend and former co-worker (I worked at his startup, OpenCola, during “The Bubble”) Cory Doctorow is holding the Canadian launch of his latest novel, For the Win.

Here’s the publisher’s blurb about the book:

In the virtual future, you must organize to survive

At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual “gold,” jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.

Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.

The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.

Imbued with the same lively, subversive spirit and thrilling storytelling that made LITTLE BROTHER an international sensation, FOR THE WIN is a prophetic and inspiring call-to-arms for a new generation.

The event takes place tonight at 6:30 p.m. in the Merril Collection of the Lillian H. Smith building (a.k.a. “The Library”) at 239 College Street, just east of Spadina. Perhaps a post-launch visit to Caplansky’s is in order.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Pictured above is Reza Alirezaei giving a presentation on SharePoint at last year’s TechDays conference in Toronto. Reza’s one of our go-to guys for SharePoint, and I’m pleased to announce that a book he co-authored has just been published by Wrox: Professional SharePoint 2010 Development.

I don’t have the book just yet, but here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Learn to leverage the features of the newest version of SharePoint, in this update to the bestseller

More than simply a portal, SharePoint is Microsoft’s popular content management solution for building intranets and Web sites or hosting wikis and blogs. Offering broad coverage on all aspects of development for the SharePoint platform, this comprehensive book shows you exactly what SharePoint does, how to build solutions, and what features are accessible within SharePoint.

Written by one of the most recognized names in SharePoint development, Professional SharePoint 2010 Development offers an extensive selection of field-tested best practices that shows you how to leverage the vast power of this multi-faceted tool to build custom workflow and content management applications. Plus, you’ll discover how to take advantage of the new features to roll out new SharePoint sites or upgrade existing sites.

• SharePoint guru Tom Rizzo offers broad coverage of the newest version of SharePoint, Microsoft’s popular content management solution
• Addresses how the new version adds enhanced developer support for ASP.NET, Ajax, LINQ, and Silverlight
• Demonstrates how to take advantage of new features, including improvements to offline and mobile client capabilities, social networking additions, and more
• Covers user experience development, platform services, social media features, event handling, the business data catalog, forms and workflow, business intelligence, and more

With this book, you’ll get exhaustive coverage on the many possibilities that exist with SharePoint.

Congratulations, Reza, on the release of the book!

In addition to a professional-level book on SharePoint, Wrox have a beginners’ book due out in June: Beginning SharePoint 2010 Development, which is probably more suited to SharePoint newbies like Yours Truly. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Discover how to take advantage of the many new features in SharePoint 2010

SharePoint provides content management (enterprise content management, Web content management, records management, and more), workflow, and social media features, and the new version boasts enhanced capabilities. This introductory-level book walks you through the process of learning, developing, and deploying SharePoint 2010 solutions.

You’ll leverage your existing skills and tools to grasp the fundamental programming concepts and practices of SharePoint 2010. The author clearly explains how to develop your first application for SharePoint 2010 and guides you through the many aspects of a SharePoint 2010 development project.

• Explains how SharePoint is more than simply a portal and is capable of providing content management, workflow, social media features, and more
• Details the new features and functions of SharePoint 2010 and provides a thorough look at the fundamental programming concepts and practices of SharePoint 2010
• Walks you through how to perform common developer tasks in SharePoint and the tools required to do so
• Reviews building and deploying Web parts, integrating Office applications with SharePoint, interacting with data in SharePoint 2010, developing Web Services for SharePoint, and creating enhanced user experiences for SharePoint

Covering everything from developing applications for SharePoint 2010 to securing those applications, Beginning SharePoint 2010 Development is an ideal introductory resource.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

I’m reading a couple of tech books right now, and I plan to publish more in-depth reviews of them in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I thought I’d give you some quick reviews to give you a taste.

Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework by Steve Sanderson (Apress)

The first book is Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework, published by Apress and written by Steven Sanderson. It’s been available in “beta” form as a PDF for the past couple of months, and as of this afternoon, the final PDF version has been released. I expect that the dead-tree edition should be hitting the shelves of your favourite bookstore, real or virtual, in a week or so.

This book covers the new  way of developing ASP.NET applications, the MVC way. If you’ve read the “Gang of Four” book or any other book on design patterns (or any of Rocky Lhotka’s books on business objects), you know that MVC is short for “Model-View-Controller” and a pattern for separating an application into its business logic, presentation and interface. Perhaps you’ve looked longingly as the “cool kids” have used frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Django to build applications with greater speed and fun, and fewer errors and less futzing around with tedious development minutiae. You might have heard Scott Hanselman and Phil Haack talk about their work on ASP.NET MVC, or maybe you’d heard that Jeff Atwood’s Stack Overflow is implemented in ASP.NET MVC.

I myself come from the world of Rails and have noodled with Django. As such, find that I’d rather use an MVC-style framework in most cases. That’s why I’m happy that ASP.NET MVC has hit the official “1.0” stage – it’s available for download right now and will be included in Visual Studio 2010 as an official alternative to old-school ASP.NET.

The book is a great introduction to the concepts of MVC web frameworks in the context of ASP.NET. It starts by showing you how to get the ASP.NET MVC tools and templates onto your system and then walks you through the development of a sports store ecommerce site. The middle part goes into the features of ASP.NET MVC in greater detail, covering REST and routing, controllers and views, testing and adding Ajax to your MVC applications. The last section covers the goodies that ASP.NET gives you – authentication, members/roles/profiles, caching/compression and WebForms – and how to use them in the context of ASP.NET MVC.

It looks like a pretty promising read on a topic that I’m very interested in. Watch this blog for a review, and eventually, some code examples based on what I learn from the book.

The Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler (Pragmatic Bookshelf)

Regular readers of this blog will know that my favourite developer book of 2008 was Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware. They also know that there really wasn’t much about software development in particular, but developing the most important tool for software development: your mind.

The publishers of Pragmatic Thinking and Learning have just put out a “new-ish” book, The Passionate Programmer, written by Chad Fowler. I say it’s “new-ish” because it could be considered a second edition of his book My Job Went to India (and All I Got was this Lousy Book).

The problem with My Job Went to India was that the title implied that it was largely about saving your job from outsourcing. In a recent podcast about the book, Chad said that the book’s title influenced the way he wrote it, and it ended up not being quite the book he wanted to write.

The Passionate Programmer is different; you could consider it a “refactoring” of My Job Went to India, and a good one, too. Rather than focusing on saving your job, it’s more about two very important things:

• Finding fulfillment and happiness in your career
• Cultivating the desire to live a remarkable life

Those are two pretty tall orders for a book, but I’ve met Chad at a couple of conferences, and I know he likes to think big. I’ve just started into The Passionate Programmer and so far, I’ve thought “damn right!” at every bit of advice he’s given. As with Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework, watch this blog for the full review of this book.

These days, I try to get the PDF version of a computer book when it makes sense. When it comes to more timeless books — say Code Complete (the book from which Jeff Atwood gets the name for his blog, Coding Horror) and The Pragmatic Programmer – I think I’d still prefer a dead-tree edition. For books on a specific version of a language, platform or tool, which have a limited lifespan, I would argue that the PDF version is the better choice. I used to hate reading PDFs onscreen, but in these days of LCD screens with resolutions at least 1200 pixels wide, and especially with a dual-monitor setup, I find them pretty readable.

One book series that I wished was available in PDF form is O’Reilly’s Head First series. A co-creation of Kathy Sierra, who knows how to communicate knowledge and passion at the same time, this series features lively prose, story-telling and pictures aplenty to create some of the most comprehensible and enjoyable tech books out there. Consider the original “Gang of Four” book on design patterns and Head First Design Patterns: while the former is considerably meatier and more rigorous, I consult it rarely, and only as a reference work. The Head First book? I pick it up every now and again and re-read it just for kicks, and it’s the book I send people to when they ask about design patterns. It’s that way with all their books; when I was taking a project management course, Head First PMP was the only book that didn’t anaesthetize me.

O’Reilly has just announced that the entire Head First series is now available in PDF form – even the books that aren’t available in dead-tree format yet, namely:

• Head First Web Design
• Head First Algebra
• Head First Rails
• Head First PHP & MySQL

The PDFs are all priced around US$30, which is about $10 cheaper than the print editions. These prices seem a bit steep compared to the PDF editions of Pragmatic Programmers books, which hover around US$20, but then again, the Pragmatics’ print books are also $10 cheaper than O’Reilly’s. Still it’s nice to have the Head First series available as PDFs. If you’re doing some last-minute Christmas shopping for a geek friend, you could always give one of these PDFs (especially for one of the not-yet-in-print books). If you’re feeling especially generous, you could give it on a USB key.

As a new Microsoftie and programmer returning to C# after a six-year absence, I have a lot of learning and re-learning ahead of me. In preparation for this, I spent the better part of an afternoon in the “Computers” section of my neighbourhood bookstore going through the C# programming books, sorting the gems from the junk. I took the “beginner’s mind” approach and looked at all the books on the shelves, regardless of the skill level they were written for, even the books that devoted whole chapters to basic concepts like looping and branching. At the very least, it would give me an idea of the current state of programming literature was like in the .NET world.

A couple of weeks later, I stumbled across the C# “Yellow Book”. It’s the standard book for first year computer science students at the University of Hull (I know of it thanks to a Black Adder episode) and written by Rob Miles, a Microsoft MVP and lecturer at that university. Each computer science student there is given a free-as-in-beer printed copy of the book, and now anyone can get a free-as-in-beer PDF copy online.

The C# Yellow Book is quite good, and can easily hold its own against some of the commercial C# books I’ve seen, which typically sell for about $35. It’s written in a clear and breezy style, explains it concepts well, has examples that actually work (I tried some out just for kicks) and often goes beyond typical beginners’ books with many asides called “Programmers’ Points” that explain good programming technique. Its 185 pages cover most of the basic C# language — and most of the example code is run in console mode except for the section near the end that covers basic Windows Forms. After finishing this book, you should have enough background material to tackle an intermediate book on C# or introductory books on .NET topics like GUI programming, ASP.NET or even game development for the PC, Xbox 360 and Zune (yeah, really, the Zune) with XNA.

I’d say that Rob has a strong incentive to make the book as good as possible because it’s the basis of a course at his university and because he can get some rather immediate feedback from its readership. If only that was true for a professor of mine back at Crazy Go Nuts University, whose Pascal programming book (it was the eighties) had terrible examples, an incomprehensible presentation and writing style and annual revisions to foil used-book sales and to force each new class to buy the latest edition. Kudos to Rob and the computer science department at Hull for giving away the course textbook for free!

If you’re a starving student looking to learn Windows programming, I’d recommend getting your hands on a copy of Rob Miles’ free-as-in-beer C# “Yellow Book” and pair it with Microsoft’s free-as-in-beer Visual C# 2008 Express Edition. Alas, I can’t point you to any free-as-in-beer computers.

Links

• Rob Miles’ C# “Yellow Book”
• Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
• WindowsClient.NET: The official site for GUI development in Windows, covering both Windows Forms and the new GUI framework, WPF.
• ASP.NET: The official site for ASP.NET, Microsoft’s framework for web application development.
• XNA Developer Center: The official site for XNA, Microsoft’s game development framework.
• XNA Creators Club: The online community for XNA game developers.

Interview with Chris Slemp, MSDN

Here’s another video interview featuring Yours Truly at the PDC: it’s with Chris Slemp, Program Manager for the Server and Tools Online group at Microsoft. In the interview, we talk about MSDN and its new social bookmarking feature.

Click here to watch the video.

“Grim Fandango’s” Puzzle Document

If you’re looking to get into the mind of a game designer and the design of one of the most highly-regarded computer adventures games, be sure to check out the Grim Fandango Puzzle Document. Tim Schafer, in “a temporary fit of Cake-induced Grim nostalgia,” decided to put the game’s puzzle design document online in PDF form (it’s 2.3MB in size).

Here’s a great summary of the Grim Fandango Puzzle Document, written by Andy Geers:

I use that word "crafted" because that’s exactly what this newly released document shows: true craftsmanship. We see the incredible attention to detail, the pacing of the narrative as it builds and as the puzzles get increasingly sophisticated, always coaxing the player along with them. As somebody whose spent the last few years trying to write my own adventure game, what struck me most about this document is the sheer simplicity of it – it’s well established that it takes a great deal of clarity and hard work to boil down something so vast as Grim Fandango into such a simple representation that conveys so much information in such a succinct way.

It’s a considerably more interesting read than most specs.

My Job-Related Reading List

Nothing gives you that frozen-caveman-thawed-in-modern-times feeling like returning to a software platform after not developing in it in seven years. Getting back into the swing of Microsoft’s development tools has been fun so far, but it is, as a lot of people have told me, like drinking from the firehose.

To quickly get acclimated with C#, ASP.NET and XNA, I’m expensing the following books I bought today:

• Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform by Andrew Troelsen
• Professional ASP.NET 3.5 in C# and VB by Bill Evjen, Scott Hanselman and Devin Rader
• Beginning XNA 2.0 Game Programming by Alexandre Santos Lobao, Bruno Pereira Evangelista, and Jose Antonio Leal de Farias

I’ll let you know what I think of these books as I read them.

“Zero Punctuation” Reviews

And finally, a couple of reviews from my all-time favourite game reviewer, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. The first one’s for Saints Row 2, which includes a great argument for why it might actually be a better game than Grand Theft Auto IV as well as a brilliant concept for a new game:

and here’s the latest review, for Dead Space, which he summarizes as “competent but bland”. Luckily, his review is anything but…