|
|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » Books (RSS)
-
I've been thinking a lot about the future of CSLA and of .NET, and I'd like thoughtful input. The .NET platform is, for lack of a better word, fragmenting. We have .NET, the .NET client-only framework, .NET Compact Framework, Silverlight and probably others. All of these are ".NET", but they are all different. CSLA will soon support .NET and Silverlight. It sort of supports the Client-Only Framework now, but it was just pointed out to me that while it works, there are compiler warnings in this scenario. For the past 6 or so years, I've been maintaining all my code twice, once in VB and once in C#. This has never been fun, and wouldn't have been possible at all without help from my colleague Brant Estes and from the Instant VB and Instant C# tools. Even with this, the reality is that I have to do everything twice, and test everything twice. (yes, I have a unified set of unit tests, but there's a ton of manual testing around data binding in Web Forms, Windows Forms, WPF and now Silverlight that can't be automated) But now I'm faced with a truly horrific future scenario. CSLA .NET, CSLA Light, possibly CSLA CF and CSLA Client-Only. Four versions of the framework. Two languages for each version. Fixing a single bug requiring changing and testing 8 implementations. Clearly that's not realistic. Not only would it eliminate any fun, but it just isn't practical. I doubt it would be practical even if I made CSLA a commercial product... Of course I can cut the complexity in half by maintaining the framework in only one programming language. This is a touchy thing of course. I was thinking Modula II, but I can't find a good compiler for .NET... :) Seriously though, the clear choice would be to maintain the framework in C#, at which point I run the risk of alienating the VB community. You might argue I should maintain the framework in VB, but (for better or worse) that would almost certainly alienate a much bigger constituency. The really important thing is that the framework would support both VB and C# . Regardless of what I do or don't do inside the framework, it can be used by either language (and other languages for that matter) equally well. After all, most of the .NET framework is written in just one language, yet it is used by everyone equally. Right now CSLA Light is only in C#, though I'm testing in both VB and C# to make sure it supports both equally. I haven't tried, but I imagine you can use it from Ruby or Python too, since both of those languages work in Read More...
|
-
I get a lot of questions about Expert 2008 Business Objects as to what it will and won't cover, so I thought I'd try and answer at least some of them in a blog post. The book will cover CSLA .NET 3.6. Version 3.6 is the same as 3.5, but with support for CSLA Light and some .NET 3.5 SP1 features (such as the Entity Framework). And along with CSLA Light comes some interesting support for things like an async data portal and async validation rules. But please note that this book will not cover CSLA Light - that's a book by itself, believe me! Here's the tentative table of contents for the book: 1. Architecture 2. Design 3. Object-oriented design 4. Supported stereotypes 5. Stereotype templates 6. Framework Implementation 7. Editable Objects and Collections 8. Data Binding 9. Business and Validation Rules 10. Authorization Rules 11. N-level Undo 12. LINQ to CSLA 13. Persistence and the Data Portal 14. Example Business Library 15. WPF Application 16. Web Forms Application 17. WCF Service Application > The items in green are complete - first draft anyway - and so you can get an idea where I am in the process. Due to space and time constraints, this book will have three UI chapters just like the previous books. So I had to choose which interface technologies to cover - out of the myriad options available: WPF WPF/XBAP Windows Forms asmx services WCF services WF workflows and activities ASP.NET Web Forms ASP.NET MVC Office/VSTO (Word, Excel, etc) Console I want to make sure to cover smart clients, web development and services. While WCF and Web Forms were easy choices (though I do like ASP.NET MVC a lot, it isn't mainstream yet), the choice between Windows Forms and WPF was difficult. But I have to give WPF the nod, because it is a really nice technology, and it really shows off the power of CSLA .NET business objects very nicely. My current plan is to release ebooks that specifically focus on each of the interface technologies not covered in Expert 2008 Business Objects , and some sort of book (ebook or traditional) covering CSLA Light. Read More...
|
-
A couple people have suggested that I might be abandoning VB. Not so! My first love was Pascal - VAX Pascal actually, which was more like Modula II in many ways. What an awesome language! My next love was VAX Basic. Now that VB has structured exception handling in .NET, it has finally caught up to where VAX Basic was in the early 90's. No kidding. Of course after VAX Basic came VB. And after VB came .NET. I love .NET. I love .NET with VB and C#. C# is just VB with semi-colons, but VB is just C# without semi-colons too. I gave up on the silly language war thing a couple years ago, and am happy to let either or both language live or die by the hand of its users. The language thing was distracting me from truly enjoying .NET. When it comes to writing books, it is really important to remember that they fund CSLA .NET. As much as I love what I do, I've got kids that will go to college in the (scarily near) future, so I can't work for free. So when I write a book, I can't ignore that C# books outsell VB books around 3:1 (it used to be 2:1, but the market has continued to shift). I still think it is worth writing a VB edition to get that 25% of the market, but you must admit that it makes a lot of sense to go for the 75% first! It takes several weeks to port a book from one language to the other. The current plan for Expert 2008 Business Objects in C# is October (though I fear that may slip), and with the conversion time and publication schedule constraints, that pushes the VB edition into early 2009. Apress just hasn't put the VB book on their public release list yet, but that doesn't mean I don't plan to do that edition. When it comes to CSLA Light, I'm doing it in C# because of the 3:1 split, and so again am focusing on C# first. Whether I do a VB version of the framework or not depends on whether I decide to write a book on the creation and design of CSLA Light. I may or may not. If I don't write a book on the design of the actual framework, I won't port (and then maintain) the framework into a second language. It is a ridiculous amount of work to maintain CSLA .NET twice, and I really don't like the idea of maintaining CSLA Light twice too. You have no idea how much writing, testing and debugging everything twice slows down progress (and eliminates fun). As wonderful as Instant C# and Instant VB are, the dual effort is a continually increasing barrier to progress. I might write an ebook on using CSLA Light, in which case I'd leave the framework in C#, but create Read More...
|
-
I must apologize to my very good friend Jim Shore who I was supposed to put a blog post up for quite a while ago and I spaced it in the frenzy of two projects I am in now. As you might remember, Jim came on my team and really built the team up into the super team they are now. He is a master of Extreme Programming, that's right I said XP, not "Agile," and I am thrilled that he is developing a must-read book on Extreme Programming . They are looking for reviewers so pitch in especially if you do NOT have a lot of experience with XP: " I'm very proud to announce that chromatic and I are writing a book called The Art of Agile Development . It will be published by O'Reilly in 2007. Our aim is to make an intensely practical book that shows mainstream development teams how to adopt, use, and ultimately master the art of agile software development. See the preface for more. We are currently writing the draft manuscript and we'd like you to be part of the review process. If you'd like to help out, great! Read the sections linked below and send your comments to the art-of-agile mailing list . We provide a list of questions with each section for you to focus on as you review. We eagerly read every review, although we usually don't respond unless we have questions ." Technorati Tags: Extreme Programming , Agile , Agile Development , Books Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More...
|
-
Yesterday I posted about Paul Sheriff’s new subscription-based online venture. It is an experiment on Paul’s part, and it is something he’s put a huge amount of time and effort into building. Interestingly, there’s been a bit of pushback – at least in the comments on my blog – to Paul charging for his site. Of course this is an experiment, and so only time will tell if Paul’s investment in time and money putting it together, and his ongoing investment in building content will actually pay off. But I hope it does work, and this is why. It has been clear for a while now that the world is undergoing some major changes. While the Internet didn't transform the world like all the dot-com nuts thought it would, it really is having a non-trivial (if ponderous) impact as time goes by. (for a thought-provoking view of a possible future, check out Epic 2014 ). A few of us, Paul and myself included, are trying to figure out how to adapt to this new world. With book sales radically down and magazine subscriptions failing and technical conferences struggling, it is becoming less and less practical for a professional author/speaker to make a living. Now it might be the case that free content will have the same quality as professionally created, reviewed and edited content. But I doubt it. Some people can generate quality content without reviewers and editors, but most can’t. And in any case there’s no substitute for experience. As with anything, experience has tremendous value. If you look at any professional author’s work you’ll see a progression as they get better and better at explaining their ideas over time. Not that there isn't some great free content out there, but wading through all the random content to find it is very expensive. There’s no doubt that some people invest their time and effort in improving their writing skills for free, but over time it is hard to commit to that level of focus without some level of compensation. I specifically avoided saying that some people do this as a hobby. Because I think that is very rare. People write to get compensation. In many cases it is financial – either directly, because they get paid to write, or indirectly, because they expect to get a raise, or to more easily job-hop into a raise. Coming back to that sifting through the web thing though… Time isn't free. In fact I'm of the opinion that time is far more valuable than money for most of the people in our profession. Wasting hours sifting through random outdated, or just Read More...
|
-
According to Bookscan (a service which tracks book sales for all sorts of books), Expert C# 2005 Business Objects is number 365 and Expert VB 2005 Business Objects is number 385 among all computer books out there. This includes consumer-oriented computer books too, so these numbers are incredibly good. Programming books have a hard time competing with consumer books for sales volume after all. What I find most interesting is that the VB sales are comparable to the C# sales. Obviously there really is a market for higher end VB programming books, which I think validates a view I've held for a long time, that the VB community was waiting for .NET to mature before moving forward. Clearly VS 2005 is triggering a non-trivial movement of VB developers into .NET, and these are hard-core professional developers who are looking for something beyond the reference-style and tutorial style books out there. Like I said a few months ago, in .NET 1.1 the C# book outsold the VB book rather substantially. These numbers appear to show that the dynamic is changing, and I find that quite exciting! For more information go to www.lhotka.net . Read More...
|
-
There's a new online CSLA .NET forum, hosted by Magenic Technologies , with the Community Server software provided by Telligent . http://forums.lhotka.net As always, the home site for CSLA .NET is www.lhotka.net/cslanet , where you can find news, answers to frequently asked questions and downloads of the framework and related resources. This forum is a replacement for http://groups.msn.com/CSLANET - which has served the community for a number of years. Unfortunately groups.msn.com turns out to be rather unreliable and slow, so the forum had to be moved. If you are looking for older discussions you may want to check there. Associated with that forum is www.searchcsla.com , which allows you to search the archive of that older forum. But now we've got this new forum, which will hopefully overcome some of the limitations and reliability issues of MSN - so please make good use of the forum and enjoy! For more information go to www.lhotka.net . Read More...
|
-
My author copies of Expert VB 2005 Business Objects arrived on my doorstep today, meaning that the book is in print and is being delivered to booksellers right now. This means it should be available on bookshelves and from online sellers very, very soon. For more information go to www.lhotka.net . Read More...
|
|
|
|