Technical Screening: This Is How We Do It

A Panel Discussion featuring Dale Brubaker, Dave Fancher, and Ed Herceg

Moderated by Mark Huebner

IndyNDA at Parkwood East, Building Nine, 96th & College Join us for the 132nd IndyNDA Monthly Meeting on Thursday, January 12 in Parkwood East, Buiilding Nine at 900 E. 96th Street on the second floor. We will meet here in January and February, and return to Wiley (Wrox).

Join us for a panel discussion on Technical Screening. with audience participation encouraged. Some say companies and recruiting firms are using tests based on incorrect assumptions on how developers do their work. C# and jQuery and JavaScript and VB and the .NET framework continue to offer new capabilities. The complexity has generally not been a problem for you because you make liberal use of Intellisense, online help, books online, reference books, Google searches, and technical online forums. You know how to quickly find information when you can’t remember specific syntax. So, can you pass that technical screening test? Should you need to be tested? Let's find out.

About the moderator

Mark Huebner has a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University and over 20 years of experience as a programmer/analyst designing and developing business, scientific, engineering, environmental, medical, defense, and real-time/embedded applications. He has done work for companies/government agencies such as Bostwick Laboratories, PSNC Energy (SCANA), U.S. Air Force, Science Applications International, EPA, General Dynamics, General Electric, and Cutler-Hammer. Mr. Huebner has focused his career on C# and related Microsoft .NET software technology since 2002 and has been a C# developer since 2006.

About the panelists

Dale Brubaker is a Software Engineer at Interactive Intelligence. He is an experienced software developer with broad and deep background using software to add efficiency and effectiveness to a wide range of business processes. Dale most enjoys developing software that enhances organizational productivity.

Ed Herceg a Senior Technical Recruiter with Robert Half Technology. He specializes in the recruiting and placing of .NET developers for RHT. If you have a solid development background in VB, ASP, C#, Java, Oracle or SQL, you should know each other.

Dave Fancher is a Principal Software Engineer at Aprimo in Indianapolis, Indiana. He has been building software with C# and the .NET Framework since version 1.1 and is active with both the IndyNDA and Indy TFS user groups. Most recently he has been focusing on getting the most out of Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation System. When not writing code Dave enjoys spending time with his family, photography, and gaming on on his Xbox 360.

Punch Up Your Web App With Knockout

Presented by Chad Campbell

Technological platforms are constantly changing. However, one thing continues to grow: customers want their apps to have a better experience. This session will show how you one way you can help meet those demands, while at the same time keeping your underlying data-model clean.

About Chad Campbell

Chad Campbell is a 5-time Microsoft MVP and founder of Ecofic. He has been developing enterprise-level web applications with a wide variety of technologies since 1999. He holds MCSD and MCTS certifications. In addition, Chad has a BS degree from Purdue University where he focused his studies on computer science and minored in psychology. In his spare time, he works on his pet project: www.divotdog.com.

Metro style: HTML5 or XAML? -At New Location!

Presented by Joel Dart and Aaron King

IndyNDA at Wiley Publishing's Wrox Press

Join us for the 130th IndyNDA Monthly Meeting on November 11 at 10475 Crosspoint Blvd, Indianapolis, IN 46256. Wrox and Wiley have been friends of IndyNDA for years, and have invited us to use their meeting space. This month, we explore Metro-style app development.

Windows 8 introduces a new development platform for creating Metro style apps. Joel Dart, JavaScript SIG Leader, will in rapid time build a great Metro app using HTML 5 and JavaScript. Aaron King will build that same app using XAML and C#. You'll learn by example how to take advantage of Windows 8 and Metro style applications. Code will be provided.

About Aaron

Aaron King is an application architect specializing in enterprise web applications and very large databases. He has helped several successful startups move to the software plus services model. Aaron is also a community leader and active in IndyNDA, and Indy PASS.

@trendoid

http://www.aaronstanleyking.com

About Joel

Joel Dart is a .Net developer in Indianapolis working at DyKnow and Remember.com. He works primarily on the front end of web-connected apps using WinForms, WPF, and now the web stack (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). Joel runs the JavaScript SIG at IndyNDA each month.

@joeldart

Indy GiveCamp Oct 14-16

Lets focus on Indy's non-profit community this month

Our next meeting of IndyNDA is Windows 8 with Jeff Brand on Thursday, November 10th.

Yes, November. With Indy GiveCamp happening on Friday at 4:00pm until Sunday at 3:00pm, we are going to focus on giving back to local charities and non-profits rather than hold our usual monthly meeting.

Not signed up yet for Indy GiveCamp? There is still time, and we need a dozen more developers, designers, and DBAs to join the forty of us that will be building apps and websites for seven non-profit organizations. Join us. Review the expectations at IndyGiveCamp, and then sign up. Dozens of GiveCamps have been held nationwide, and a common thread among participants is this: When can we do this again?

Web Application Performance Testing

Presented (via recording) by Steve Smith

The presentation features fundamentals of defining performance goals and measuring performance metrics. The examples make use of Visual Studio 2010 and its extensive support for Web Performance Tests and Load Tests.

About Steve Smith

Steve is a Senior Architect with The Code Project, a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP, and founder of NimblePros consulting.

What's New in Silverlight 5

Presented by Damon Payne

Silverlight is not dead! Contrary to what you might be hearing Microsoft is still making big investments across the XAML development stack and that includes Silverlight. Come check out a survey of what's new in Silverlight 5. Examples from real-world Silverlight 5 business applications will be included, going far beyond the usual demos. We will also discuss silverlight's place in the developer ecosystem.

About Damon Payne

Damon Payne is a life-long geek, Microsoft MVP, father, husband, audio/video nut, atheist, philosopher, wine drinker, and short order cook who lives in the unexplored swamps near Milwaukee. Damon works mostly in the areas of Smart Client software (including Silverlight, mobile devices, and WPF), visual tools, and Solution Architecture; he also does web programming and has professional interests in parallel programming, agile processes, and requirements gathering. Damon is currently the Principal Software Architect at Big Hammer Data. You can find steady updates and detailed articles at www.damonpayne.com.

Implementing M-V-VM (Model-View-View Model) for WPF

Presented by Phil Japikse

Now you are writing WPF applications, and wondering – what is all this code in the code behind? Shouldn’t we be doing something different? Our cousins working with ASP.NET MVC don’t even have a code behind! The answer is YES – you should indeed be doing it differently. The M-V-VM pattern is the WPF adaptation of the Presentation Model pattern (first documented by Martin Fowler). I will show how the M-V-VM pattern is utilized for building SOLID WPF applications that are also testable.

About Phil Japikse

An international speaker, Microsoft MVP, and a passionate member of the developer community, Phil Japikse has been working with .Net since the first betas, developing software for over 20 years, and heavily involved in the agile community since 2005. Phil works as the Patterns and Practices Evangelist for Telerik (www.telerik.com), serves as the Lead Director for the Cincinnati .Net User’s Group and the Cincinnati Software Architect Group, as well as founder and president of Agile Conferences, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to advancing agile in all aspects of software development. In his spare time, Phil works part-time as a Firefighter/Paramedic, serves as Cub Master for his son’s Cub Scout Pack, and volunteers for the National Ski Patrol. You can follow Phil on twitter via www.twitter.com/skimedic and read his blog at www.skimedic.com/blog.

Parallel Programming in .NET 4

Presented by Dave Fancher

Over the years software development has relied on increasing processor clock speeds to achieve better performance. For better or worse though the trend has changed to adding more processing cores. Generally speaking, software development hasn’t adjusted to account for this transition. As a result many applications aren’t taking full advantage of the underlying platform and therefore they’re not performing as well as they could. In order to take advantage of multi-core and multi-processor systems though we need to change the way we write code. We'll see how the Parallel Extensions in .NET 4 make it easier to include parallel processing in your software.

About Dave Fancher

Dave Fancher (http://davefancher.com) is a Principal Software Engineer for Aprimo, Inc. in Indianapolis, Indiana. He has been building software with C# and the .NET Framework since version 1.1 and is active with both the IndyNDA and Indy TFS user groups. Most recently he has been focusing on getting the most out of Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation System. When not writing code Dave enjoys spending time with his family, photography, and gaming on on his Xbox 360.

Problems/Solutions: How we solve coding problems

A fishbowl study in how we solve coding problems

We are immersed in software development. Sometimes, a piece of code just doesn't perform as expected. These are the fun parts of the day, as we determine which of many paths to take in solving the problem. Test driven development will help you avoid such circumstances, some say. But, what if the problem is in the TDD implementation? Or, more often, what if you are working with legacy code and a TDD framework is not in place? What will you do?

There are many sources we turn to for solutions and inspirations leading to solutions. At this month's IndyNDA meeting, let's explore the resources that have been useful ... and not ... for attendees at the meeting. To do so, we will have a fishbowl discussion on resources such as MSDN, Quora, StackOverflow, forums, blogs, pair programming, code-and-coffee, meet-ups, user groups, conferences, webinars, tutorials, and even co-workers.

While you are not required to participate, your comments might just be the insight that others need to find a solution or steer clear of time-wasting avenues.

Pivot and the Silverlight PivotViewer Control

Presented by Joe Wirtley

Pivot is a technology that makes it easy to explore massive amounts of data in a visually compelling way. In this session, we will discuss the Pivot technology and introduce the tools and techniques needed to build both static and dynamic Pivot collections. We will also look at using the Silverlight PivotViewer control to make your Pivot collections accessible on the web.

About Joe Wirtley

Joe Wirtley is an independent consultant with over twenty years software development experience. He currently works as a .NET architect and developer on both smart client (WPF, WCF) and web (ASP.NET, Silverlight) applications. He is an active member of the developer community in the Cincinnati-Dayton, OH area and is a member of the Dayton .NET Developer Group board. He has presented at user groups and many community events, including CodeMash, devLink, CodeStock and CodePaLOUsa. You can check out his site at http://WirtleyConsulting.com or follow him on Twitter: @JoeWirtley.

Game Development on Windows Phone 7

Presented by Dave Bost

With the release of Windows Phone, game developers will be able to create amazing content rapidly through the power of the Microsoft XNA Framework. This talk outlines the basic application model of Windows Phone, enumerates Windows Phone core device characteristics, and walks through highlights of the XNA Framework on the phone.

About Dave

Dave Bost is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft and co-host of the Thirsty Developer Podcast. Dave has been a Software Developer and Solution Architect for over 15-years. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dave cut his technical teeth working with many Fortune-500 companies as a technical mentor and consultant. Dave started his technical passion back in the days of the Commodore-64 when he wrote his first assembly-language program that produced a hot-air balloon which sailed across his Commodore 1701 Video Monitor. From there, he was hooked. This led to a Computer Science degree at Northern Illinois University, where he soon started his professional career in the Unix/C world and a short time later, starting his Microsoft developer career. For the past decade, Dave has spent most of his time building web-based applications for the Microsoft platform. As a technologist, Dave doesn’t spend all his time in the Microsoft world as he likes to spend his time dabbling with the latest technologies, tools and movements coming out of the software industry. Outside of his professional life, Dave enjoys discovering new music with his Zune Pass, defending the universe against 13-year olds on box Live, and playing golf (whenever his wife lets him). You can read Dave’s blog at http://davebost.com/blog or listen to the Thirsty Developer Podcast at http://thirstydeveloper.com.

http://davebost.com/blog

http://thirstydeveloper.com

Entity 4.0 Blitz: Going from Zero to ADO.Net Hero in 60 Minutes

Presented by Arie Jones

With the recent release of Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft has released their next iteration of the Entity Framework. For those of you whom have held off learning the new platform, now is the time to jump in. This version of the EF has tons of new features that developers have been clamoring for since the 1.0 release. We’ll cover things like: development approaches,T4 code generation, persistence ignorance, lazy loading, and much more! Plus, we’ll delve into how EF4 ties into your WCF applications as well as the new WCF Data Services(formerly ADO.NET Data Services). Come see what you have been missing out on and take your simplistic ORM mappings to the next level.

About Arie

Arie Jones 'AJ' is the Principal Technology Manager for Perpetual Technologies, Inc. in Indianapolis, IN. Arie leads PTI’s team of expert consultants in planning, design, development, deployment, and management of database environments and applications to achieve the best combination of tools and services for each client. Additionally, AJ is a community speaker, has written several books such as “Learn SQL in 24 Hours”, and blogs extensively at http://www.programmersedge.com and roams twitter under the handle of @programmersedge.

@programmersedge
http://www.programmersedge.com