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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#

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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.

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New Internet Explorer 9 Videos

Download IE9 Platform Preview 4 now!

If you haven’t tried the latest Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9, get your hands on it now! This one’s got new goodies like a new SVG engine, the “Chakra” JavaScript engine now integrated into the browser instead of a separate object called via COM, better Acid3 (95/100) and WebKit SunSpider scores.

Channel 9 has posted some videos on this newest version of IE9, and I thought I’d share them here:

A Look at the New IE Test Drive Samples

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This video (2 minutes, 43 seconds in length) shows off some of the new demo apps on the IE Test Drive page that show off the benefits of IE9’s hardware acceleration. Rob Mauceri, Group Program Manager for Internet Explorer, narrates.

Can’t see the video? Download Silverlight or grab the video in MP4, MP3, WMA, WMV, WMV (High) or Zune formats.

A Look at SVG in IE9

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SVG is short for "Scalable Vector Graphics", whose specification is an open standard and supported by all major modern web browsers, including IE9. This video (4 minutes, 36 seconds in length) shows how you can take advantage of SVG and the fact that it’s hardware-accelerated in IE9. Patrick Dengler, Senior Program Manager for Internet Explorer, does the presentation.

Can’t see the video? Download Silverlight or grab the video in MP4, MP3, WMA, WMV, WMV (High) or Zune formats.

IE9 Rocks HTML5 Audio Support

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IE Beatz is a drum machine app written JavaScript, SVG and HTML 5 audio to demonstrate the combined power of HTML 5 and IE9. This video (6 minutes, 4 seconds) features IE Beatz’ creator, Josh Rose of the IE9 team, explaining his creation and showing some of the underlying code.

Can’t see the video? Download Silverlight or grab the video in MP4, MP3, WMA, WMV, WMV (High) or Zune formats.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows Phone 7 App: Deluxe Moon

If you’re interested in the knowing what phase the moon will be in on a given day – whether you’re into astronomy, astrology or just trying to figure out if more fights and arrests happen during a full moon – the upcoming Windows Phone 7 app Deluxe Moon by Lifeware Solutions looks like a gorgeous way to find out.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows Phone 7 App: Ave Comics

They sure do love their comics in France, where they’re called BD (bandes dessinees, meaning “drawn strips”). I grew up reading translated versions of Asterix and Tintin, and later enjoyed Jean “Moebius” Giraud’s works, which took comics to wild new places (which as you might have guessed, included Metal Hurlant, which came to North America as Heavy Metal).

Hence it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a team in France built the Ave Comics app, shown in action above, which lets you preview, purchase and read digital versions of comics.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.