I’ve been working with some friends on a project for a while now, and it is finally time to talk about it more publicly as it is eventually coming to life : DotNetHub !
DotNetHub is a new community about the Microsoft .Net Platform as well as the Agile Methodologies.
DotNetHub will be a bit particular for 2 reasons:
- First, it will be dedicated mainly to french-speaking people, mostly living in Belgium, Luxembourg, France & Switzerland (but, if you are elsewhere, don’t hesitate to contribute !). Why only french-speaking people ? Simply because there are already tons of english-speaking communities, all very good, but my friends and I felt that there was a void to be filled, especially here in Belgium (French people have DotNetGuru & Tech Head Brothers !).
- Secondly, as mentioned, we will not only focus on technological aspects but also on the methodological ones, something that we find missing in other communities, but that is nonetheless as important. Bringing those two aspects together in the events & conferences we are going to organize will be a big challenge, but it’s worth it !
We’re hoping to have many people joining us in order to create a very dynamic community. We are also actively looking for sponsors … so if you’re interested, please contact us.
I’m already very happy to announce that our first event will take place on the 20th of January with Jonathan “Peli” de Halleux from Microsoft Research, who will talk about “Stubs, Moles & Pex“. Go register on the website, the number of places is limited !
If you have any questions, suggestions, comments, … please visit us ! 
Update : A more detailed presentation in french by Pierre-Emmanuel can be found here.
I've been quite busy lately which explain the very few & mostly news-aggregating posts I've written:
- Opportunity 1 : Late June, I had the pleasure to pass an interview at Microsoft, in Seattle, for a position of Program Manager on the MEF Team. I met very bright people and had very interesting conversations (and played with Microsoft Surface !!! ), and although I wasn't chosen (I simply wasn't good enough but I'm working on it
I'm a positive guy), I view it as a great experience in my professional career. I later was very happy to learn that Hammett was hired for the position … this guy is a genius. I was already enthusiastic about MEF before, but now I cannot wait to see the outcome.
- Holidays : difficult to concentrate on work when the sun is out and you got family & friends to got out with …
- Opportunity 2 : I quit my company where I was working as a .Net consultant to join a small team of very talented people working on a great project. Cherries on the cake, I'm going to work close from home and for the first time in my life, buy my own car.
- Beers : when it's sunny & warm in Belgium, Belgians drink a lot of beers (actually, they also do even when it's not sunny but that's another story … and you probably don't care about it lol … Except that the guys of the Dutch Alt.net group have invited Ayende to share some good belgian beers on Tuesday, the 5th August in Brussels.
I'll be there and I'm eager to see what kind of interesting conversations geeks can have after a few Leffe Blonde, Duvel, Kwak, Chimay … lol Couldn't make it, too busy.
All in all, a great period with lots of changes … I'll be back with (I hope) interesting posts, about Entity Framework most notably, around mid-August. See you then !
Yves Goeleven, a fellow Belgian .Net architect, has a series of very interesting posts on Distributed Domain-Driven Design (DDDD).
If you're researching about how to design your applications with DDD in mind while still being highly scalable, this paper from Pat Helland (Amazon) is a great source of inspiration (thanks Yves for the link). But don't expect to grasp the full potential of it if you don't have a good understanding of both DDD & Distributed Systems (Entities, Transactions, Workflows, Messaging & Scalability in a SOA world).
My house will look like a bookstore soon 
I've been reading & ordering too many books lately … lol
(Guess it's gonna slow down soon, our most awaited friend 'Sun' is finally coming back to Belgium, my lovely rainy home-country. No wonder why beers are so popular here.)
In case you missed them, here is a quick list of some highly recommended books:
- Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio DSL Tools: Good read to discover Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio.
- Programming WCF Services: another masterpiece from Juval Lowy. Cautious: This is a tough read, not an introductory book. But it will surely help you appreciate the design of WCF in all its glory (am I exaggerating ?). Also, if you have the opportunity to attend Juval's stellar presentation 'Beyond the endpoints', don't hesitate 1 second: it was an enlightening experience.
- Patterns of enterprise application architecture: Not new, but you'll find yourself often coming back to it as it provides so much insight about the design of so-called 'enterprise applications'. Don't call yourself senior .net developer or architect if you haven't read it yet
- Java persistence with Hibernate: Yeah, I said 'Java' & 'Hibernate' … why ? because if you wanna know (mostly) everything about persistence with an ORM tool, that's the book. You can then learn any other ORM in 5 minutes.
Other books as recommendable as the previous, that I have at home but haven't read yet (and will read asap lol):
- Release It!: Just received it today, and by looking at the back cover and table of contents, I wish I had read it several years ago. One advice: Read It! That's what I'm going to do …
- Visual Studio Extensibility: The perfect companion for Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio if you want to create DSL that are highly integrated into VS. I'd like to know more about that Visual Studio 2008 Shell also … looks promising.
- Essential Windows Workflow Foundation: Wanna gain more insight about the design of WF? Everything's in here.
- Framework Design Guidelines – Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries: Do I have to say that it's a must-read for any framework-developer ? Shamefully, I haven't read it yet. Gonna fix that.
Well … gotta go, I have 4 books to read
Yet another blog about software development best practices & methodologies, by a Belgian .Net developer.
Hope you'll enjoy your reading
