Helpful NHibernate Mapping Resources and Free JavaScript E-books

       Recently a co-worker shared some very helpful online resources for understanding NHibernate Mapping concepts and best practices. At the end of these links there is a also links to free JavaScript e-books.

       NHibernate Resources:

1. Your first NHibernate based application
2. Some NHibernate Best-Practices
3. Docs & examples for NHibernate 3.2 mapping by code
4. Batch processing in NHibernate
5. NHibernate performance issues #3: slow inserts (stateless session)
6. Auditing with NHibernate Listeners
7. Solving Performance Problems with nHibernate (or any ORM) 
8. NHibernate and Inverse=True|False Attribute

        Free JavaScript E-Books:

1.  JS Books: The Best Free JavaScript Resources
2.  Learning JavaScript Design Patterns: A book by Addy Osmani

   


 

Using Exercism.io to Sharpen Coding Skills

Yesterday, I gave a short "lightening talk" at the TN Gov Nerds User Group meeting about my experience using the Exercism.io website to sharpen my coding skills. The Exercism.io was created by a Computer Software Instructor Katrina Owen to help give her students an opportunity to write code to solve specific problems and receive feedback or "nitpicks" from more experienced developers. Here is a podcast with Katrina Owen discussing Exercism.io: http://thechangelog.com/108/ I started using Exercism.io about four months ago when Andy Collins and Brian Cox suggested it to me as a good way to gain some programming experience and feedback. And now I am really glad that I did. I have made it about half way through the C# track of exercisms. Each exercism consist of a Readme file and a set of Unit Tests with all but the first one disabled either through code or being commented out. A good thing about this approach is that it introduces "newbies" like myself to Test Driven Development -TDD approach to software development. It has not always been easy. There have been some frustrating exercisms that I had to just stop working on for a while and come back to later and try a different approach. My goal is to attempt to write as few lines of code as I can that is hopefully readable and logical to anyone else reading it. There is also a quite of bit effort involved in setting up the exercises at the beginning. The help section on Exercism.io has gotten better, but I think there is room for improvement. Despite that, I really recommend Exercism.io to anyone seriously interested in improving their coding skills and gaining a level of experience to try it out. I have shared each of my exercisms on twitter as I completed them here: https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=joseph_tdot%20csharp%20just&src=typd Thanks for Reading My Blog! -Joseph https://twitter.com/Joseph_TDOT

Kaxaml Tips and Tricks

Become a Kaxaml Power User Part One: Snippets from Robby Ingebretsen on Vimeo.

Become a Kaxaml Power User Part Two: Color Picker from Robby Ingebretsen on Vimeo.

Become a Kaxaml Power User Part Three: Images from Robby Ingebretsen on Vimeo.

Interesting TED Videos

Astronomer Clifford Stoll helped to capture a notorious KGB hacker back in the infancy of the Internet (1980's). I had the opportunity to listen to his Audio Book -The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage in the early 1990's. The book was a real eye-opener for me, and I credit Clifford for increasing my interest in computers and the Internet. Below is a fascinating Video of Clifford speaking at a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Development) Conference.







Another fascinating video I came across this past week introducing a personalized projector and camera computerized device for faster and easier interaction with real-time information. The speaker in the video refers to it as having a "sixth sense." But it has nothing to do with Bruce Willis or "seeing dead people walking."

Infragistics - Awesome UX (User Experience) Patterns Resource

My First Blog Entry - So I'll Try To Make It A Good One

I first learned about Quince {(pronounced kwinse) a rich, interactive user experience (UX) design patterns library produced for the software community by Infragistics at no charge} at Devlink 2009. Quince includes a diverse collection of design patterns including ones from Amazon.com, MS Office , the IPhone, and the MAC OS. Each design pattern is accompanied with details on the problem it is designed to solve, it's specific solution to the problem, it's context, rationale, and finally implementation direction along with possible tools to use. Here is a screen shot below:


Here is more detailed information about the Quince site directly from Infragistics.
Infragistics also has a good blog explaining the "what" and "why" of design patterns and UX - User Experience patterns.


But, what really impresses me about Infragistics is another website resource called Sample Browser. This site contains working examples and side by side Source Code for the following and much more,

• ASP.Net controls
  
• AJAX enabled data grids
• Drag and drop Framework( including a really cool puzzle, and shopping cart)
  

( If you open the Devlink URL, Scroll all the way down to the last session).
http://www.devlink.net/Sessions.aspx

Understanding User Experience Design Patterns
Jason Beres
Patterns are constructs or objects that repeat in a predictable manner. For most developers, patterns are directly related to object oriented coding best practices, In this talk, you will be introduced to “design patterns” that will help you build better user experiences. We’ll explore UX patterns that can help you build great user experiences, and provide examples of how you can start using them in your development today. We’ll cover patterns that pertain to different kinds of user interface problems such as commands, data entry, information architecture, navigation, page layout, and data visualization through the exploration of the Quince User Experience Patterns Explorer..

Here is a picture of me at Devlink by the way: (bottom row, far right)