Tomorrow is Edmonton Code Camp 2008, so with that in mind I thought I’d mention a few of the developer-focused technologies I’ve been messing around with lately. Nothing too in-depth, but enough to get a feel for things.
MSMQ – Microsoft Message Queuing
This technology has been around since Windows NT 4 and Windows 95, but I’ve never really used it before. I decided to check it out after hearing John Bristowe sing its praises at ALT.NET Calgary. So far I’m really impressed. I still can’t believe I never looked into it before! I was able to get a decent sample going for both reading and writing from the queue (transactional too) in about 40 lines of code.
Ninject
This is a dependency injection framework for .NET applications. Dependency Injection (DI) is a technique that helps you create loosely-coupled, flexible code. I’ve looked at other DI frameworks, but was always turned off by the XML configuration files. In that regard, Ninject is a lot like SubSonic – everything is done in code! It’s pretty easy to get started with Ninject. Reading the User Guide on the wiki definitely helped me.
Json.NET
I’ve been doing a lot of work with the Twitter Search API, which returns data in either ATOM or JSON format. I figured JSON would be better, as it’s a little more lightweight. The .NET Framework doesn’t understand JSON natively, so I looked for a library to help. I can’t say enough good things about Json.NET – it’s fantastic!
jQuery
Okay this doesn’t really belong on this list, because I’ve been using it for a while now. I keep learning new things about it though, such as the data() method that Marc Grabanski wrote about recently. Very cool. I’ve also been enjoying Intellisense support!
There you go, a few of the things I’ve been exploring lately. I’m looking forward to Code Camp tomorrow! If you’re tagging photos, tweets, blog posts, and other things, use the tag #ecc08. Be sure to keep an eye on the wiki. See you there!
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