Dev Meme

This past week at the SarasotaDev.net group that I run, we held our Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch event. I must say, I think it went really well. Here was our agenda:

• VB 10 Language and IDE New Features - Yang Xiao, Visual Studio VB IDE Team
• C# 4 Language and IDE New Features - Kirill Osenkov, Visual Studio C# IDE Team
• Doing What You Know and Going Beyond with VS 2010 - Stan Schultes, Microsoft MVP
• Developing Windows Phone 7 and Silverlight 4 Apps with VS 2010 - Kevin Wolf, Microsoft MVP

I made a list of Visual Studio 2010 resource links that I thought I’d share – these cover a lot of territory! Thanks to Beth Massi for links and inspiration for this list.

MSDN Content

Visual Studio Developer Center (main MSDN links page): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/default.aspx

Visual Studio Express Dev Center (free VS downloads): http://www.microsoft.com/express/

VB Developer Center:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/default.aspx

C# Developer Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/default.aspx

C++ Developer Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualc/default.aspx

F# Develop Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/fsharp/default.aspx

VSTO Developer Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsto/default.aspx

SharePoint Developer Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/default.aspx

Code Downloads

CodePlex - Project Hosting for Open Source Software: http://www.codeplex.com/

MSDN Code Gallery - primarily Microsoft content: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/
- use VS 2010 Extension Manager to browse the Code Gallery directly

Visual Basic 2010 Samples: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vb2010samples

Visual C# 2010 Samples: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/cs2010samples

F# 2010 Samples: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/fsharpsamples

VS 2010 Languages and Technologies Samples: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dd238515.aspx

Parallel Programming Samples: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ParExtSamples

SharePoint Samples: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SharePointDev2010

Office Development Samples: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/OfficeDevFuture

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Samples: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wpfsamples

Databinding Samples (WPF and Silverlight): http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WPFDatabinding

Visual Studio Content

VS2010 product page: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/

Visual Studio 2010 & .NET Framework 4 Training Kit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=752CB725-969B-4732-A383-ED5740F02E93&displaylang=en

Visual Studio Topic Area on Channel 9 - online training courses: http://channel9.msdn.com/Learn/Courses/VS2010/

VS 2010 Walkthroughs on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd441784.aspx

VS 2010 Software Development Kit (SDK): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=47305CF4-2BEA-43C0-91CD-1B853602DCC5&displaylang=en

VS 2010 Resource Kit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5688c9ba-5071-4d9d-8794-c164f21a058c

VS 2010 Resources Page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd831853.aspx

VS 2010 RC - Virtual Machines and Hands On Labs: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/briankel/archive/2010/03/18/now-available-visual-studio-2010-release-candidate-virtual-machines-with-sample-data-and-hands-on-labs.aspx

VS 2010 Feature Packs (released at TechEd 2010): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ff655021.aspx?ppud=4

VS 2010 Pro Power Tools (released at TechEd 2010): http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/d0d33361-18e2-46c0-8ff2-4adea1e34fef

Visual Studio Tip of the Day (Zain Naboulsi): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/zainnab/archive/tags/vs2010/tips+and+tricks/default.aspx

Keyboard shortcut posters for VB, C#, F#, and C++: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=92CED922-D505-457A-8C9C-84036160639F&displaylang=en

.NET Framework 4.0 Poster (namespaces) PDF: http://tinyurl.com/PDC2008-NETFX4PDF and DeepZoom version: http://tinyurl.com/DotNetFramework4PosterDeepZoom

Visual Studio Color Theme Editor (Microsoft): http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/20cd93a2-c435-4d00-a797-499f16402378

Visual Studio Color Schemes (community site): http://studiostyles.info/

External Tools / Add-ins

DevXpress - CodeRush Xpress for VB and C# (free): http://devexpress.com/Products/Visual_Studio_Add-in/CodeRushX/

JetBrains - ReSharper (trial): http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/EA4AC039-1B5C-4D11-804E-9BEDE2E63ECF

Blogs

Visual Studio Team: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/

Visual Basic Team: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vbteam/

Office Dev with Visual Studio: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vsto/

Visual Studio Data Team: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vsdata/

SharePoint Team: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/

WPF & Silverlight Designer Team: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wpfsldesigner/

Somasegar: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/

Scott Guthrie: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/

Jason Zander: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasonz/

Beth Massi: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bethmassi/

BarCamp Sarasota’s inaugural "un-conference" will be Sat & Sun, April 17 & 18, 2010 at the Suncoast Polytechnical High School (SPHS). SPHS is at 4650 Beneva Road from 10am – 5pm both days, and it’s FREE!

BarCamp Sarasota is a newly formed group of entrepreneurial professionals with an interest in technology, new media, film, green tech, education, and economic development. The first BarCamp started in Palo Alto, CA in 2005 and has expanded to over 350 cities worldwide. The "un-conference"  implements the concept that some of the best learning at any conference takes place while networking with other professionals between scheduled sessions. More info on the BarCamp format can be found here: http://barcamp.org/ and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp.

SPHS is a place that you have to see to believe. It's a brand-new, state-of-the-art school on the campus of Sarasota County Technical Institute, and the kids go to classes in both places. Students take specialization programs such as GIS Systems, Game Art & Animation, Biomedical Sciences, and Hotel & Restaurant Management. BarCamp Sarasota is sponsoring student scholarships, and sending 12 students and 2 faculty members to the Florida TSA Spring Conference (Technology Student Association) for 3 days in Orlando (http://www.floridatsa.com/). In return, we'll have participation of as many as a hundred students - helping with the event, presenting, and attending sessions.

Visit our event website at: http://bcsrq.com where you can register for the event. You can also join the BarCamp Sarasota group here: http://barcampsarasota.ning.com/; get LinkedIn here: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2726179; follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/barcampsarasota; and find us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/barcampsarasota.

The It’s All About the Tools! live audience TV show focuses on developer tools and techniques that help make us better coders, and also highlights upcoming community events. These shows are a blast – there’s lots of audience participation with Russ as the ringleader, and special guests in every segment.

Season 1 of It’s AATT! was recorded during the spring and summer of 2009, while Russ was still with Microsoft. Production of Season 2 has already begun, those shows will be posted out to our new service in the next few weeks, we’re still getting organized :)

There were a total of five live-audience shows in Season 1. The full episodes are 60-75 minutes in length, including the intro with theme song, segues, and closing for the full effect. We’ve also broken each show into shorter segments as Toolshed Tooltips, which are about 10 minutes long each. Tooltips are very digestible at this length, and each focuses on a single tool. Here’s the complete set of links for the first 5 shows, all of Season 1:

Episode 1

Recorded at the South Florida CodeCamp, February 7, 2009. Special guest: MVP Jason Beres of Infragistics doing WPF styling.

• Episode 1 – full recording
• Tooltip #1: Expression Encoder Plug-in for Silverlight Live – encode videos for Silverlight
• Tooltip #2: Live Services, Virtual Earth, SQL 2008 Geospatial – mapping demos
• Tooltip #3: SysInternals – Windows system tools from Mark Russinovich
• Tooltip #4: Fiddler – HTTP proxy and debugger
• Tooltip #5: Windows Live SkyDrive – store and share your files in the cloud
• Tooltip #6: WPF Application Styling – free download from Infragistics
• Tooltip #7: VSTO – Visual Studio 2008 Tools for Office

Episode 2

Recorded at the Orlando CodeCamp, March 28, 2009. Special guest: MVP Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi creating an MSBuild status updater for Twitter.

• Episode 2 – full recording
• Tooltip #8: Developer Community Update – by Microsoft Developer Evangelist Brian Johnson
• Tooltip #9: VSTS DB Pro – Visual Studio “Data Dude” tools
• Tooltip #10: SQL Reporting Services – easily build flexible business reports 
• Tooltip #11: DotNetNuke and Web Installer – Popular open source ASP.NET portal with Microsoft Web Installer
• Tooltip #12: Virtual PC – a developer’s best friend
• Tooltip #13: MSBuild talks to Twitter

Episode 3

Recorded at the Pensacola, FL SQL Saturday, June 6, 2009. Special guests: MVP Jessica Moss showing SSIS Data Profiling tools in SQL 2008, and Don “DonXml” Demsak doing a community segment.

• Episode 3 – full recording
• Tooltip #14: Developer Community Update – by MVP Don Demsak 
• Tooltip #15: Intro segment – meet MVPs Stan Schultes, Don Demsak, and Jessica Moss
• Tooltip #16: Expression Blend 2 – video, animation, and Visual Studio integration
• Tooltip #17: Expression Blend 3 Sketchflow – the game has changed
• Tooltip #18: Windows Live LiveID – learn how and why to use LiveID in your applications
• Tooltip #19: IE8 Developer Tools – saves the day (and time) 
• Tooltip #20: SSIS Data Profiling – you’ll never look at your data the same again

Episode 4

Recorded at the Tampa, FL .NET User Group, July 22, 2009. Special guests: MVPs Nikita Polyakov on WinMo, and Bill Reiss on Expression Blend behaviors.

• Episode 4 – full recording
• Tooltip #21: Developer Community Update – by MVP Keith Kabza 
• Tooltip #22: Channel9 and the Toolshed – a treasure trove of resources 
• Tooltip #23: Expression Encoder 3 – (part 1 of 2) overview and screen capture
• Tooltip #24: Expression Encoder 3 – (part 2 of 2) editing, presets, and Silverlight 3 players
• Tooltip #25: LiveWriter – more than just a great blogging tool
• Tooltip #26: Windows Mobility – overview of the tools and the Mobility Marketplace 
• Tooltip #27: Expression Blend 3 – hey, behaviors are really powerful

Episode 5

Recorded at the Jacksonville, FL CodeCamp, August 29, 2009. Special guests: MVPs Jim Wooley on LINQ tools, Christopher Bennage on importing Photoshop assets to Expression Blend, and David Silverlight on his Silverlight group and community site architecture.

• Episode 5 – full recording
• Session segments: DeepZoom overview, Expression Web 3, VS Code Snippet Editor, Jim, Chris, and David.
• Tooltips have not yet been published for Episode 5, watch here for updates if this changes…

The live-audience AATT! shows have been a whole lot of fun to produce, and now we’re branching out a bit into developer resources with a new show called It’s All About the Resources!, in addition to the Tools! shows. Although we’re recording the Resources! shows in front of a live audience, they’re not as much about audience participation, so the shows have more technical focus.

As we move into Season 2, we’ve already gotten the first Tools! and Resources! sessions taped, and those are now in production. We’re planning the next Resources! shows at the South Florida (27-February-2010) and Orlando (27-March-2010) CodeCamps. The next Tools! show is currently scheduled in Woburn, MA (30-April-2010). We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

At the MVP Summit earlier this year, Beth Massi (the MS Visual Studio Community Evangelist) pegged a few dozen MVPs who are interested in VB to do videos and/or interviews. The results have been posted to the VB Developer Center on MSDN – and many of these are really interesting!

My video is out on Channel9 – you can hear me ramble on about how I use VB, and why I love coding with it. If nothing else, skip right to the last 15 seconds of the video for my golden moment :)  Doing the interview was a lot of fun, including a phone call during the interview that turned out to be a prank.

OK, it just keeps getting better! Russ Fustino and I have now recorded 3 episodes of It’s All About the Tools!, all in front of live audiences. The first two are are already available for your viewing pleasure, and Episode 3 will be up shortly. Plus, Russ is slicing the episodes up into “Tool Shed Tooltips”, and he’s unveiling 18 of them in 18 days. Wow.

Where the full episodes are 60-75 minutes in length, the Tooltips are only about 10 minutes long. They’re much more digestible at this length, and each one focuses on a single tool. We hope to eventually make them available for download in the Zune and iPod marketplaces, so you can just subscribe to them from your devices.

All episodes and Tooltips are posted on Channel9 at Microsoft. All downloads are available in a variety of formats, Zune/iPod included. Here are the full episode links (see the tool lists below):

• Episode 1 – recorded at the South Florida CodeCamp on 7-Feb-2009. Special guest: MVP Jason Beres of Infragistics doing WPF styling.
• Episode 2 – recorded at the Orlando CodeCamp on 28-Mar-2009. Special guest: MVP Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi creating an MSBuild status updater for Twitter.
• Episode 3 (expected June 24) – recorded at the Pensacola SQL Saturday on 6-Jun-2009. Special guest: MVP Jessica Moss showing SSIS Data Profiling tools in SQL 2008, and DonXml Demsak doing a community segment.
• All slide decks, code samples, and demo scripts are also posted for download.

Here are the first 7 Tool Shed Tooltip links (all from Episode 1):

• Tool Shed Tooltip #1: Expression Encoder Plug-in for Silverlight Live – encode videos for Silverlight
• Tool Shed Tooltip #2: Live Services, Virtual Earth, SQL 2008 Geospatial – mapping demos
• Tool Shed Tooltip #3: SysInternals – Windows system tools from Mark Russinovich
• Tool Shed Tooltip #4: Fiddler – HTTP proxy and debugger
• Tool Shed Tooltip #5: Windows Live SkyDrive – store and share your files in the cloud
• Tool Shed Tooltip #6: WPF Application Styling – free download from Infragistics
• Tool Shed Tooltip #7: VSTO – Visual Studio 2008 Tools for Office

Here are the upcoming Tool Shed Tooltips from Episodes 2 and 3 – keep an eye on Channel9 for another Tooltip each day this month:

• Episode 2: VSTS DB Pro, SQL Reporting Services, Virtual PC, DotNetNuke, MSBuild status updater for Twitter.
• Episode 3: Expression Blend 2 XAML Designer, Expression Blend 3 SketchFlow, Windows LiveID, IE8 Developer Tools, SQL 2008 SSIS Data Profiling.

We’ve scheduled It’s All About the Tools! - Episode 4 at the Tampa .NET Group on 23-July-2009 at 6pm in the Microsoft office. If you’re in the area – you don’t want to miss it! These sessions are a ton of fun live!

Finally, catch the DotNetRocks interview we did just after Episode 1 (and many thanks to Carl Franklin).