Meetup

See our latest meeting details on Meetup:

http://www.meetup.com/Sydney-Alt-Net/

DDD Sydney is Back!

We won't have a chance to tell you in person before the next meeting, so we'll do it this way.

DDD Sydney is back after a multi-year break. DDD Sydney is a one-day, community run, developer conference and submissions are currently open.

Given we've got such a great bunch of people in our group and there's lots of knowledge we can share with others, we'd love you to submit a session.

Submissions close in a few weeks, so there's still time to put something in. All sessions will then be voted on by the community and the conference program drawn up from there.

Don't be shy - go submit a session today :-)

March 29 - C# GraphQL and Android Kotlin

Wow talks up already for March! Unbelievable :-)

Introduction to GraphQL for C# Developers - Gareth Stokes

This talk is aimed to give the audience a brief introduction into GraphQL, Specifically what problems it's trying to solve and a quick dive into how it came about. The talk will also go into detail about the experience we had at Karbon in implementing this using the current open source libraries available.

Gareth is the Technical Lead for the Sydney team at www.karbonhq.com which is a startup building collaboration software for accountants based out of SF and here in Sydney. We use a DotNet stack for our backend, EmberJS on the frontend and lots of REST in between.


Android development for C# developers with Kotlin - Mitchell Tilbrook

Getting into Android development has typically meant using Java6 when writing fully native applications. So, what else is there for native Android, Kotlin. Kotlin is an modern statically typed language that looks and feel a bit like C# but instead of targeting the CLR Kotlin compiles to JRE 6 byte-code. Kotlin is perfect for any C# developer looking to get into android development while keeping lot of features where come to expect in C# like lambdas, extension functions, partial objects, properties, and more.

Feb 23: Akka.Net and Azure RM for Devs

Back to usual everyone, the meet up is on Tues. We have two talks.

Akka.Net - Philip Laureano

With the advent of multiple core CPUs becoming ever more commonplace and infrastructure becoming increasingly cheaper to spin up in the cloud, one of the greatest challenges that we face as .NET developers is managing concurrency across multiple machines. The tales of immutable and incredible message-passing systems such as Erlang scaling to millions of users at a time have become the stuff of legend--but is there something similar for .NET?

Indeed, there is such a system for the CLR, and it's called Akka.NET. In this talk, I'll show you how you can write small, single-threaded classes (called "actors") and have Akka.NET seamlessly scale up those actors across not only multiple CPU cores--I'll also show you how you can scale and run thousands of jobs in parallel across multiple loosely-coupled machines in a cloud environment, such as Amazon Web Services. If you've ever wanted to experience the power of Erlang, but never wanted to leave the convenience of the C# language, then this is one talk you don't want to miss!

Azure Resource Manager for Devs - Raphael Haddad

Infrastructure, servers and hosting have come a long way. The last few years have seen advent of cloud technology and how this can make a developer’s life a lot easier. Recently, many people say they ‘do cloud’? But, what does actually this mean?

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates is a new offering that allows developers to do cloud properly by deploying a large collection of connected resources all at one time! Come along to see a short demonstration on how ARM templates are used and the power of ‘Infrastructure as code’

MeetUp has been working well. To RSVP please head over to meetup.com.

January 27th - HTTPS and VSCode

With Australia Day landing on the last Tuesday of the month, we've pushed the group back to the following night; Wednesday 27th.

We're also trying something a little different this month - we're going to try meetup.com for our RSVPs instead of EventBrite and see how that works for us.

As for what we're doing this month, here's the details...

The Evolution of HTTPS - Jason Stangroome

If you do any sort of web development, you'll want to be here for this. As the web evolves so has the adoption and usage of the https:// URL scheme. This isn't your father's HTTPS anymore but there is a lot of misunderstanding and new behaviour hidden in that modest extra "S". Jason aims to unveil the mysteries of this rapidly spreading protocol.

Building a VSCode plugin - Aaron Powell 

The new VS kid on the block has had some pretty quick and rapid adoption, and best of all it's extensible. The question is, how do you write an plugin for it? Great question! And Aaron has not only the answer, but also a working example to walk through with us. Booyah!


And remember, if you're planning on coming, you'll need to head over to meetup.com. Go ahead, do so, and we'll see you on Wednesday! (not Tuesday)

Slides from Nov 24 Meet-up

It was the last meet-up for the year and we rounded it off with practical and useful talks by Ken and Joss. They've kindly shared their material, linked below:

Testing Practices for Continuous Delivery - slides  (@kenmccormack)

A Whirlwind Tour of SEO - slides and transcript  (@joshuapaling)

Nov 24 - Continuous Delivery + SEO

So.. sorry for the late blog post, but I think you'll forgive us as we've managed to find 2 interesting and diverse topics for this month.

Testing Practices for Continuous Delivery - Ken McCormack (@kenmccormack)

Testing practices for Continuous Delivery pipelines - we discuss the start point of the Cohn Test Pyramid, and then discuss the additional types of automated testing used for CI/CD.  We look at ways in which your teams can start to run dojos up-skill their testing practices, as well as discuss the challenges presented by legacy architecture and testability quality factor.

Ken is a technical lead with ThoughtWorks, working on microservices and architecture for testability in Node.js and .NET ecosystems.  His background in banking and computational finance.

A Whirlwind Tour of SEO - Joss Paling (@joshuapaling)

We'll imagine how we might build a search engine if we were starting from scratch, way back in the 90s. In doing so, we'll learn the basics of how SEO works, and how to spot terrible SEO advice when you come across it.

Joss is a developer and partner at BBL Digital, a boutique agency in Sydney. He writes Ruby/Rails, Javascript, and when he can't avoid it, PHP.


RSVP via Eventbrite for pizza and beverage!

October 27 - A little robotics; a little ASP.Net vNext

Isn't that our most creative session title in ages? No? Hmm. Well, at least you know what's happening on the night.

Here's the low down for you.

On Bare Metal - An Intro to XBD. Evgeny Muryshkin

XBD is an online VHDL generator for FPGA-based robotics and automation. This session will give you a basic understanding of what XBD is, how it works, what it can do, as well as it's advantages and limitations. You'll even get to see it in action in a live hands-on lab!

If you're at all interested in IoT as a hobbyist or otherwise, then this is something you'll want to check out!

ASP.NET - What's with all the betas? Aaron Powell (@slace)

It's been a while since we've had a look at ASP,NET vNext in detail. Aaron is giving us an update on what's changed since we last looked at it, all the way up to the recent beta 8 release.


RSVP via Eventbrite, and we'll see you on Tuesday at 6pm!

September 29 - VS2015 Launch Party!

Yes, yes. Visual Studio 2015 has been available for a little while now but even so, Microsoft has decided that a party to celebrate it's release is needed. It's a case of better late than never. And who are we to disagree?! Exactly!

So, this month we've got something a little different and are going to be hosting a launch party, having a look at all the new and shiny bits of VS2015, or at least as many of them as time permits, having a few laughs and handing out some giveaways as well. Yes, that's right. Who doesn't like a chance to get some freebies!

Microsoft MVPs, Richard Banks, Filip Ekberg and Aaron Powell will be doing the "loosely formal" part of the evening, though we're more than likely going to drop the "formal" bit. If you've come to our group before, you'll know what we mean!

Remember, places are limited, so grab yourself a ticket and we'll see you on the night!

August 25 - Containers & Microservices

Windows Server 2016 TP3 was released very recently and this release has one of the more exciting features that Microsoft has been talking about - Windows Server Containers.

As such we're going to spend the night talking about Microservices, Windows Server Containers, DNX, Service Fabric, and what this all means for you in the way you develop applications.

Richard Banks will be hosting the evening and we'll start with Microservices and the pros, the cons, and the traps to watch for before moving on to the implementation aspects and the specifics of Windows Server Containers, DNX and Service Fabric.

We want the night to be really open and collaborative so that you can ask the questions you want answered and so that we can all learn from each other.

We're looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday so don't forget to grab a free ticket to let us know you're coming. See you there!

July 28 - Satisfaction, Mobile & Edgey Web

This month, we've got three pertinent and interesting short talks planned. Fun with constraints, maths, mobile and Microsoft! Don't forget to get your free tickets to RSVP!


Christmas in July - Constraint Satisfaction Problems
Pat Macpherson, developer at Ansarada

Christmas is a time for joy, good-will and over-engineering. For far
too long, yuletide present-givers have struggled with non-optimal
Secret Santa drawings.

I will show you how to use a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP)
solver to avoid that fate.


Xamarin CI / CD
Abdelmawla Mohamed, Readify Senior Developer

TeamCity, Fake, and HockeyApp, we will learn together how to connect those lego parts, to deliver continuous integration and continuous delivery for Xamarin apps


The Edge of the web
Aaron Powell (@slace), Readify Lead Consultant 

Windows 10 is upon us and with it comes MS Edge, the new flagship browser from Microsoft. What does this new browser bring to us as web developers? Are we seeing yet another browser to cross-test on? What makes Edge different to Internet Explorer? Why aren’t we just using Chrome?

June 30 - Open Source Night

It's one thing to use open source projects in your work, but it's another thing entirely to go from being a consumer to being a contributor.

From the outside it can be daunting to contribute to an open source project, but it can also be extremely rewarding seeing your work being used by others or  knowing you've helped, even in a small way, with the development of something you get great value from. Se we're going to help you with that.

Here's what we plan to chat about:

1. Starting your own vs. forking a (dead) project vs. joining an existing one.
2. Licencing considerations, contributions on work time and Microsoft's stance.
3. Getting a feel for the people behind a project.
4. What makes a good Pull Request.
5. Contributions aren't only about the code.
6. How much time do you actually need?
7. Finding a way to jump in to a project

We'll spend a short time on each topic and then, since the best way to learn is by doing, we're going to put it all into action! As a group, we'll break up into teams and try making some contributions to whatever open source project(s) you choose.

It should be a great night and aligns strongly to what we, as a developer community, are all about.

So regardless of whether you're an open source newbie or have been part of the open source community for decades, we want you to come along. You all have something valuable you can contribute and we wouldn't be who we are without you.

Grab yourself a free ticket so we know you're coming, bring your laptop if you have one (it's optional), and let's have some fun together! See you on the night!

May 26 - ANZ Coders Virtual Conference

Each night throughout the last week of May (25th - 29th) the ANZ Coders virtual conference will be on. Starting at 8pm each night, Sydney time, there'll be 3 half hour sessions of coding goodness!

As this conference is being organised by Richard, who also happens to co-run this group, there won't be a face-to-face meeting in May.

Instead, we'd ask you go virtual instead. Head home, have some food, crack open a drink, turn on the computing device of your choice and join as many of the sessions as you can. Especially on Tuesday the 26th :-)

See you online!

Apr 28 - How to not suck at code reviews

This month we had plans. Great plans. Plans that would impress you. Plans that would amaze you! Well, at least plans that would have been somewhat aligned with what we said we'd try and get to. But stuff happens and given how late this post is going out you can assume that things didn't quite work out as hoped.

So, instead, we're going to do something a little bit different. Something much more "hands on" than coming along to passively listen to a speaker. No matter how awesome they might be!

So, one of the great skills any developer should have is being able to look at someone else's code and do a code review in a constructive and helpful manner.

If you've ever been subjected to something like this, you'll know what I mean.

Via http://xkcd.com/1513/

So helpful. Oh, so helpful.

We're going to teach each other how to do a code review and how to do it well (or at least, how to suck less when you're doing one).

Richard Banks will be facilitating the evening and by using the various tools at our disposal, the grey matter between our ears and the beating muscle in our chests, we're going to have a look at some code, identify some good parts in it, and some less good parts and review it. We'll see what we can learn from the good, and provide thoughts on how the less good can be improved. Along the way, we'll come up with our own list of how to do a code review well, both as a reviewer and as a reviewee.

We're happy to do it using some code of your choice, and if you've got something of your own you want us to look at that's fantastic! We applaud your bravery! If not, don't worry we've got a target application in mind: http://emby.media/ (better than a boring CMS, right?)

This should be one of those practical nights where everyone who attends learns something. In fact, even if you think you've experienced all there is about code reviews, come along. We need to learn from you!

Laptops are optional, but encouraged, as we want you digging through the code as well. It'll help us find any really interesting code sooner!


Registrations are via Eventbrite as per usual, people. Spread the word and we'll see you on the night!

Mar 31 - Lovin' us Some More Web Dev

UPDATE: Aaron's recording from tonight's talk is now available. Enjoy!

They say that in the land of the completely disorganised, the only-slightly-inept man is king.  I'm no king, so sorry for the late notice. It's been one of those months.

Anyway, excuses aside, we're giving you two talks that'll you help keep your web development love flowing, metaphorically of course. Here they are:

Rapid API Prototyping - Bishoy Demian

We live in a fast moving industry, where software development projects are expected to be agile and fast-paced in order to receive our client’s feedback as early as possible.
I have discovered a way to decouple the contract from the implementation of the API layer, allowing you to define and document your API in simple and readable format, and later run a mock server off that documentation to have a faster UI/UX delivery, while that API layer is yet to be implemented.
I’m very excited to show you the new open-source tool I have written in C# to help solve the problem.

The future of JavaScript, Yesterday! - Aaron Powell

All the things you need to know about the future of JavaScript that you should have started using in your projects yesterday.

Grab yourself a free ticket so we know you're coming and invite someone else along to share in our usual relaxed fare of fun, learning and heckling that we put on for you each month.  Tickets are hiding behind this link. Go on. Click it already!

Feb 24 - Will Azure Become Skynet and the Oculus Rift

I know we promised a bit more server side and .NET goodness after last month's JavaScript framework face off, and we're doing just that! Aren't we so much better than politicians! :-)

So, this month we have the following two topics

Will Azure Become Skynet? - John Azariah (@johnazarlah)

OK - So that's not the title of the talk, but all John promised was a talk on big data in Azure and machine learning. So if Azure is doing machine learning, then I think we all know where that will end... Come and see how humanity's demise begins as John turns on the switch :-)

Homebrew Dev for the Oculus Rift - Peter Horsley

Peter will be bringing in an Oculus Rift (and maybe some airsick bags) and giving us a run through on building applications/games for it using .NET.
There will be an actual Rift present as well. Maybe if you ask him nicely and bribe him with beer he might even let you experience it for yourself.




Please let us know you're coming by picking up a free ticket, and we'll see you on the night!

---

P.S. Don't forget about the upcoming ANZ Coders virtual conference. We'd love to see you submit topic ideas and help make the week a great one.

Jan 27 - The new kids on the JS framework block

What? No .NET talks this month? No. Not this time. We're going all client side on your [donkey|ass] this month. We'll go server side next month, m'kay? K!

So, what do we have for you then? Well, now that dust has settled from learning that Angular 1.3 is soooo last week, and with no new Angular shaped bandwagon for everyone to climb on board for some time yet, what's a web developer to do? Why, look at all the other options of course! So this month, we're doing just that and bringing you two talks covering React and Polymer, with talks from those using these frameworks in a live-fire environment. Cool!

React – two DOM’s for the price of one
- Aaron Powell (@slace)

Another week and another JavaScript framework is released (well, it’s been out longer than a week). React from Facebook has the claim to fame that it has a virtual DOM which it updates, diffs and then applies to the real DOM. It also has a scary syntax where you write HTML-like code in JavaScript!
So what do you need to know about React? What makes it different to the other JavaScript UI frameworks? And what’s it like to actually use on a project?

UPDATE: The recording of this is now available for you to enjoy

Introducing Polymer and Web Components
- Mohamad Meligy (@meligy)

If you ever used a JavaScript framework like AngularJS to be able to use HTML templates and pulled from individual files as needed, and be able to data bind them to your JavaScript objects, these features are all now getting native support with Web Components!

Similar to custom server controls in ASP .NET Webforms (which might be the one feature people miss from that framework), Web Components allow you to create custom elements that come bundled with their JavaScript, and completely independent CSS all in a single HTML import.

This is becoming a reality with browser support starting to take place already, and frameworks like Polymer building on top of web components, extending their data binding and providing essential components to get you up to speed.

In this talk, Meligy walks us the first steps into explaining how Web Components and Polymer actually work, and how they affect current JavaScript development framework like AngularJS.

*Meligy runs the AngularJS group in Sydney

Enjoy your Australia Day and getting Monday off work. Spend that extra time with the family well, and then trade the brownie points you earn for being such a family person for a night out on Tuesday with us! Grab a free ticket so we know you're coming, and we'll see you then. Sweet!

November 25th - A Triple Treat to Close Out the Year

This will be the last Alt.Net meeting for the year unless you want to meet on Dec 30th. No? You don't want to? OK then.

In that case, to wrap up the year and take us into the silly season we're going to have three talks as follows:

Docking, varnishing, and fiddling - Jason Stangroome (@jstangroome)

Jason will explain what Docker is, what it enables and how it's relevant to the Microsoft platform. He'll also demonstrate an open-source project he's recently built and released which leverages the power of Docker.

Removing the need to stab people over estimation - Luke Drumm (@lzcd)

Join Luke as he outlines his personal preferences for how teams can survive the treacherous waters of estimation and planning.
Be amazed as Luke describes how even a cynical, angry developer such as himself can survive such processes without resorting to career limiting bouts of gurning, screaming or violence.
Come for unnerving imagery. Stay for the blissful inner peace.

What just happened?! - Richard Banks (@rbanks54)

In case you missed it, Microsoft made a range of announcements at this month's Connect() conference. Chief amongst these being the open sourcing of the .NET framework, and the non-knobbled Visual Studio 2013 Community edition.
Richard will give you a run through of these and other recent announcements and open a discussion about what they mean for you, for the .NET community and the future of software development in general.


So with all that content, all that shiny, and all that silly, why wouldn't you come along? Get yourself a free ticket (only if you're genuinely intending to come), and we'll see you next week!

October 28th - Alt.Net gets Func-y

For something a little different this month we're going to get our Func on, and have two talks on F# to help answer your "What the F#?!" questions as well as showing you how you can use F# in your normal day to day development.

Intro To F# - Jorge Fioranelli (@jorgefioranelli)

Jorge co-organises the Sydney F# User Group, and the title really tells you all you need to know about this talk :-) And if you're someone who played with F# a few years ago, you'll still want to see this talk since the language and it's usage has grown a lot over the last few years and continues to do so.

F# Type Providers - Hadi Eskandari (@hadi_es)

Want to learn how to work with diverse information sources on the internet and modern enterprise environments? Type providers exist for JSON, XML, SQL, CSV, Twitter, WSDL, Excel, R, Regex, RSS and many, many more. While all of these won't be covered in the talk, once you understand how they work it is easy to start using others and creating your own.


Grab a ticket to let us know you're coming. We're looking forward to seeing you on the 28th!

September 30th - ZAP and Xam!

It's September! The nights are shorter and the days are warmer, so what better way to celebrate spring's arrival in true coder style by staying indoors, having some fun with others in the community and maybe even learning something to take your awesomeness level to 11!

For you this month we're going to have a Xamarin and MVC Mashup talk and a talk on the open source security tool, ZAP.

.NET MVC and Xamarin.Forms Mashups - Michael Ridland (@ridooz)
The best of all worlds - native, hybrid and offline. Sharing ASP.NET MVC Razor Views and Business Logic with Xamarin.Forms! It even works offline...


Zap yourself with the Zed Attack Proxy! - Paul Theriault, Mozilla  (@creativemisuse)

Paul will be starting with a brief, short skim over the basics (just in case) and then jumping into the juicy stuff and showing you:
- Elite haxoring techniques with Zap
- Integrating Zap into continuous integration


We're expecting a full house given the levels of interest people have in both Xamarin and security, so let us know you're coming by booking a ticket. We'll even make sure there's a slice of pizza and a beer for you when you arrive :-)