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The world of software development is dynamic. Change is a way of life. One of the recent changes in the last 10+ years is the widespread adoption of dynamic languages. This issue is dedicated to the exploration of the techniques and concepts used when building applications with dynamic languages.
The new release of SQL Server's Integration Services has many exciting new features
A lot of new things are going on at CODE Magazine, both online and offl ine, and both directly associated with the magazine as well as efforts even more directly related to your development efforts. You may have already seen some of the things we do with CODE Consulting (www.codemag.com/consulting) and CODE Training (www.codemag.com/training), but today I would like to draw your attention to other things.
SharePoint 2007, in many ways, was a v1 release. It was the first time .NET was properly applied to SharePoint, and from SharePoint 2007 onwards the product has done very well. Partly because of the rich built in functionality that comes with SharePoint and party because of its extensible nature - things developers can do.
Back in 2005, when Ruby on Rails started appearing on developers’ radars, there was an explosion of blogs and articles discussing how dangerous these loosey goosey languages were, with their hippy dynamic typing. And many predicted dire fates for companies foolish enough to take the plunge. Regular readers are certainly familiar with Ted Neward, who makes technology predictions each year on his blog. Here’s what Ted said on January 1, 2006:
In most business applications, you create a common look and feel, data entry pages, and a method for navigating through the application. As you begin to work with HTML5, you will want to build these features and take advantage of the features of HTML5 that can make your applications stand out from the crowd. In this article, you will be presented with several common business Web pages that give you an idea of the power of HTML5 and CSS 3.
Much hoopla has been generated across the community about dynamic languages; much of it is spoken in the same glowing terms normally reserved for unicorns and rainbows. Some of it is deserved, some of it isn’t. All of it seems to surround two languages—JavaScript and Ruby—but in fact, several other languages, three of which I’ll present here, offer some distinctly interesting and useful features.
Microsoft recently released the ASP.NET MVC 4.0 beta and along with it, the brand spanking new ASP.NET Web API. Web API is an exciting new addition to the ASP.NET stack that provides a new, well-designed HTTP framework for creating REST and AJAX APIs (API is Microsoft’s new jargon for a service, in case you’re wondering). Although Web API currently ships and installs with ASP.NET MVC 4, you can use Web API functionality in any ASP.NET project, including WebForms, WebPages and MVC or none of the above. You can also self-host Web API in your own applications.
Many .NET developers have heard of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) but they don’t quite know what to make of it. Developers working in languages like C# and Visual Basic sometimes shirk dynamic programming languages because they fear the scalability problems that have historically been associated with using them. Also of concern is the fact that languages like Python and Ruby don’t perform compile-time type checking, which can lead to runtime errors that are very costly to find and fix. These are valid concerns that may explain why the DLR hasn’t enjoyed more popularity among mainstream .NET developers in the two years since its official release. After all, any .NET Runtime that has the words Dynamic and Language in its title must be strictly for creating and supporting languages like Python, right?
In a prior installment of this series of articles about CODE Framework (“CODE Framework: Writing MVVM/MVC WPF Applications”, Jan/Feb 2012), I discussed how to use the WPF features of CODE Framework to create rich client applications in a highly productive and structured fashion reminiscent of creating ASP.NET MVC applications, although with WPF MVVM concepts applied. In this article, I will dive deeper into the subject and discuss the unique benefits of the CODE Framework WPF components which enable developers to create the part of the UI that is actually visible in a highly productive and reusable manner.
