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“C# in Depth” and “Azure in Action” for the Price of One Book–Today Only (August 15th)!

csharp in depth azure in action

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.

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David Crow Answers 5 Questions and Visits Vancouver

Who is David Crow?

David Crow

David Crow is probably the most recognizable face in the Toronto startup tech scene, and rightfully so. Without the effort he’s put into events like DemoCamp and other gatherings where techies, entrepreneurs, social media types and anyone else who wants to build “World 2.0”, we wouldn’t have anywhere near as active or as interesting a tech scene as we do (and not just in Toronto, but across Canada as well).

Collage of DemoCamp photos: "Without David, none of this would've happened."

My current job at Microsoft, as well as the previous two, grew out of opportunities created by David’s hard work, either directly or indirectly. I suppose I owe him a couple of drinks!

5 Questions

TechVibes logoDavid is my coworker at Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team and also one of the Windows Phone 7 Champs. Karim Kanji caught up with him and did a quick “5 Questions” interview, featuring these questions:

  1. What motivates you to do what you do on a daily basis?
  2. Do you have any success start-up tips for people wanting to create a name for themselves in your industry?
  3. In your opinion why is Toronto a hotbed for cool tech start-ups?
  4. What’s your favourite tech toy and social media site and why?
  5. Who would you say are Toronto’s social media/tech stars and why?

Check out the article at TechVibes!

David’s in Vancouver This Coming Week

Vancouver: Downtown Vancouver as seen from the Granville Street Bridge

grow2010-logoDavid’s going to be in Vancouver from Monday, August 16th, through Friday, August 20th to attend the Grow Conference on Thursday and Friday, which is aimed at startup techies, entrepreneurs, idea people and investors. “If you’re a startup, an investor or a service provider in Canada,” wrote David, “you should be at this event.”

bootup labsHe’s going to be in the downtown area and available to meet up in the earlier part of the week. If you want to find out more about BizSpark, pick his brain about startups and product/market fit, you can catch up with him at Bootup Labs (where he’ll be working from). To find out more his trip to Vancouver and how to catch up with him, check out this blog entry.

Vancouver photo taken by JamesZ_Flickr and licenced under Creative Commons.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows Phone Coffee and Code

Logo: Windows Phone Coffee and CodeAs I write this, my Toronto Windows Phone “Coffee and Code” event is drawing to a close. Held at the big communal table in the back corner of the Starbucks at Toronto’s busy Yonge/King intersection, I announced it a mere two days prior, first on Twitter, and then on the Canadian Developer Connection and Global Nerdy blogs, so I was prepared for only a handful of people to show up. I was pleased by the outcome: in the end, we got about three dozen people to show, with twenty people crowding around our table at peak, and not counting the half-dozen people who wandered over saying “Did I hear you had a new Windows Phone?”

coffee and code 1

What is Coffee and Code?

As a mobile worker, I’m not tied down to an office. As a product of late 1980s/early 1990s computer labs, I’m actually quite comfortable working in a noisy, busy environment like a café, and in the late ‘90s, when I ran my own consulting shop, I cranked out VB applications for a mid-sized company in Chicago out of a hip little café on Toronto’s Queen Street West. During that time, I met a number of interesting people, including folks from the local tech scene, which I enjoyed. So when I landed the job with Microsoft and returned to the mobile life, I thought, why not bring a little of that back?

So I started a little event I called “Coffee and Code” back in early 2009. The idea was simple: work out of a café, announce that I’ll be there and will be happy to take visitors, see who shows up. It worked out pretty well, and I hold them whenever my schedule allows. The attendance usually ranges from 6 to two dozen or so, and we talk about all sorts of things, from programming (.NET, open source and everything in between), the local tech scene, the industry in general and just about every other topic – the conversations aren’t always technical. It’s a great way for people to meet up with me, and a great way for me to know what’s on developers’ minds.

The idea has spread beyond Toronto; my coworkers and I have held Coffee and Code events in cities across Canada, Denny Cherry has held a couple in southern California and Cory Fowler holds them regularly in Guelph.

coffee and code 2

Who Was There?

Luckily, I didn’t run this alone. I was backed up by a couple of great people:

  • Developer Mark Arteaga, a Microsoft MVP who’s forgotten more about mobile development with Microsoft tech than I will ever learn. You should catch his Windows Phone 7 sessions at TechDays.
  • Mobile telco expert Anthony Bartolo, who works with me a Microsoft as the phone infrastruicture expert guy with over a decade’s worth of experience in the mobile industry. He’ll also be speaking at TechDays about Windows Phone Marketplace.

coffee and code 3

Among the people in attendance were:

  • Mobile tech bloggers: The guys from Mobile Syrup and The Cellular Guru, there to see a real-life Windows Phone 7 phone. As Anthony noted, they were impressed with the smoothness of the phone (yet more people saying that they love its touch responsiveness) and loved the features. Not bad for a beta OS running on prototype devices!
  • Kate Gregory: She’s one of Canada’s Microsoft Regional Directors, a select group of developers and architects who volunteer their time to share information about Microsoft tools and tech with their communities and give us feedback. She’s my C++ go-to person; I’m glad I have one! In addition to talking about Windows Phone, she told me some very enlightening stories about the industry and where C++ gets used as well as some hilarious tales from tech conferences. She’s creating the content for the TechDays session on the Windows API Code Pack and delivering that session at TechDays Toronto.
  • Developers, developers, developers! Guys from the Ryerson Digital Media zone (including Alexey Adamsky and Alex Yakobovich, who are working on a great 3-D version of Sudoku), local development shops, indie coders, SharePoint guys looking to build business apps, iPhone and Android developers wondering what Windows Phone 7 was like…and they all seemed pretty impressed. They chatted, ate, did some test deployments onto actual hardware and even did some coding. (By the way, if I didn’t mention your company or name and you want it mentioned here, let me know and I’ll update this article!)

coffee and code 5

How About Cross-Country Coffee and Codes?

coffee and code 7

In response to my quick announcements about this Coffee and Code, I got a number of questions via email, Twitter and Facebook asking me if I’m holding Coffee and Codes elsewhere in Canada (particularly from people in Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa). The answer is, I’d love to, and I’m working on ways to make that happen.

Firstly, I’m taking advantage of the fact that I’m already flying across the country to help run TechDays. I’ll be in six of the eight cities:

  • Vancouver
  • Edmonton
  • Toronto
  • Halifax
  • Ottawa
  • Montreal

…and I plan to be in those cities not just for TechDays, but a couple of days before and after the event as well. I’ll hold Coffee and Codes in those cities when I’m there, with a chance for you to see Windows Phone 7 devices up close and personal, try deploying an app to them, and ask questions.

Secondly, I’d like to see if Windows Phone Coffee and Code events can take place all over Canada, whether or not I’m there. I know it’s possible; Cory Fowler has held way more Coffee and Codes than I have in Guelph, and I’m sure that more of you would be interested in holding get-togethers would like to hold similar events in your area. If we made some kind of Coffee and Code “starter kit” to help you start a Coffee and Code in your town, would you do it? Let me know – email me if you’d be up for it!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Discuss C# with the “Head First C#” Author, Save Big Bucks on “Head First C#” Too!

Cover of "Head First C#, Second Edition"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.

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Today Only: 50% off Manning’s Silverlight Books

manning silverlight books

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 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.

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Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code: Downtown Toronto, Thursday, August 12th

Icons: Coffee plus Windows PhoneInterested in finding out more about Windows Phone 7 development and the opportunities that come with it? Want to see both the Samsung and LG Windows Phone 7 prototypes up close and personal? Want to take a break and have coffee with us?

Samsung "Taylor" Windows Phone 7 Prototype I’m holding a Coffee and Code with mobile developer Mark Arteaga and mobile expert Anthony Bartolo in downtown Toronto at the Starbucks at King and Yonge this Thursday from noon to 7 p.m. (4 King Street West, right on top of the subway station). We’ll be at or near the big conference table they’ve got in the back. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, “Coffee and Code” is an event where I take advantage of my status as a mobile worker and work out of a work-friendly cafe, where I’m reachable, findable and approachable. If you’ve got any questions about Microsoft, software development, the industry, the tech scene or just about anything else, this is a perfect chance to ask me!

This is a Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code, and I’m bringing a couple of Windows Phone 7 people along with me. If you were at last year’s TechDays conferences, you may have seen them: Mark Arteaga, who’s written many apps for the old-school Windows Mobile and now writing apps for Windows Phone, and Anthony Bartolo, who’s been working in the mobile industry longer than a lot of my peers have been working. Come join us for a coffee (or tea, or lemonade) and some tech talk!

Catch Mark’s blog entry about this upcoming Coffee and Code here.

Anthony has also written a blog entry about Coffee and Code here.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Perspectives on Clojure and F#

Get Microsoft Silverlight

Don’t have Silverlight? You can download it here or download the video in MP4, MP3, WMA, WMV, WMV (High) and Zune formats.

Here’s a Channel 9 video shot at Emerging Languages Camp 2010, the first conference on up-and-coming programming languages held in Portland on July 21 – 22. It’s a casual conversation with:

  • Rich Hickey, creator of the Clojure (pronounced “closure”) programming language. It’s a dialect of Lisp intended general-purpose functional programming language with a lot of support for concurrent programming. If you caught our Ignite Your Coding webcast with Robert C. “Uncle Bob” Martin earlier this year, you heard his high praise for the language. Clojure targets both the JVM and CLR.
  • Joe Pamer, compiler developer for the F# programming language. F# is a “hybrid” programming language, built with functional programming in mind, but also programmable in a more imperative object-oriented way. Much of it is compatible with the OCaml programming language, there are some C# ideas in there as well, and it’s one of the languages baked right into Visual Studio 2010.

In this conversation, Rich and Joe talk about their ideas on programming language design and evolution, functional programming, concurrency, how F# fits into Visual Studio and the granddaddy of them all, Lisp.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.