RDN: Readify Developer Network 2 Oct 2007

Readify Developer Network

Here’s a quick summary of the Readify RDN session I attended tonight.
Event details: Sydney, 2 October 2007, 6-8pm

Paul Stovell kicked off tonight’s session with an Introduction to Windows Presentation Framework.
Overall an excellent session, covering the tools (Visual Studio, Expression Blend and Expression Design) before diving into XAML.
Some examples to illustrate the ease with which WPF can be constructed.
Only an introduction, so we can’t expect to be covering code behind or complex data binding, but at the very least the power of WPF is well presented.
Paul ran through his top 10 likes about WPF, and then finished up with a hearty recommendation for Enterprise Library (which seems to be the Readify tool of choice for all application development these days, even really small ones :-)

Philip Beadle was up next with a reasonably detailed ‘introduction’ (as opposed to the usual basic introduction :-) to Silverlight. He’s using Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, along with the Futures pack installed and the latest Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh. [Aside: The Silverlight site has the general details on what you need.]

[Although you really need the 1.1 stuff installed to work with the code behind, it would have been nice to see one or two demos based on the released 1.0 version. But that’s just me nitpicking.]Phil’s session was a great eye opener to the ‘real’ possibilities with Silverlight, quickly dispensing with the usual video and rich media based demos we’ve been accustomed to expect whenever Silverlight is trotted out these days.
The main takeaway for me was the ease with which we can now code everything in code behind that used to require JavaScript. Phil harped on this a number of times, and I have to agree with him. Although I don’t quite have the same distaste for JavaScript that he perhaps did (I wasn’t really sure if he was more tongue in cheek) I certainly do appreciate the problems that JavaScript introduces to big enterprise development. Think of the debugging, the source control, the performance monitoring, etc. Being able to replace this with compiled in code is an exciting prospect.
I have to admit to getting slightly lost towards the end as Phil flipped around between windows, but then again it had been a long day (I was pretty tired) so I can’t really hold that against him.

Overall this was an excellent event. Readify have provided yet another wonderful community contribution. Whilst perhaps in competition with some User Groups, I for one (as a user group organiser) welcome them all. The event was free and well managed (we were kept on track time-wise and finished right on 8pm as advertised). I’m writing this on the train home, knowing that I’ll be home in time to eat dinner at a sensible time. Yay!

[Important UPDATE: I had dinner at a sensible time]

I strongly recommend attending the next event – they are on every two weeks. Details of upcoming sessions are on the Readify RDN site.