Tag Archives: .net

Job: .NET Software Developer – Edinburgh

Sigma Seven Limited are looking for a .NET software developer to work out of their Edinburgh office, near Holyrood, beside the Scottish Parliament.

Job Description
This vacancy has arisen from increased demand from our customers and forms a key part of our continued expansion plans. As a part of our development team here at Sigma Seven you have the chance to make a real impact on the growth of the business, working on our industry-leading mobile mapping product “GeoField” – for tablets and ultra-mobile PCs.

This role involves working on a variety of projects, both implementing customer solutions and developing core product enhancements using the latest development tools, targeting leading-edge mobile technologies.

Our development team works collaboratively to deliver innovative solutions to our customers, working closely with customer project teams, and adhering to defined project plans. As part of this talented team, you will be involved in making decisions throughout the software development process from initial concept and design, through coding and operational handover, with an emphasis on using your own initiative to push the boundaries of our product and solution capabilities. The nature of our work requires excellent communication skills and an enthusiastic approach to problem solving and team work.

Desired Skills & Experience
Candidates will ideally have 3 or more years of commercial software development experience, and should be passionate and able to demonstrate expertise in the following:

  • .NET 4.0, C#
  • Experience of the full software development lifecycle, from requirements gathering and design through to solution testing and operational support
  • Working closely with clients and end-users

The following skills and experience would be an advantage:

  • A degree in software engineering, computer science or a related subject
  • Experience of GIS and spatial databases
  • WPF
  • LINQ
  • XML

Further information and the application process can be found here.

Book: Introducing .NET 4.0: With Visual Studio 2010 by @alexjmackey

Introducing .NET 4.0: With Visual Studio 2010 is a book that many day-to-day developers will benefit from. It provides a great overview of what’s new in .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 – an obvious statement I know, however what sets this book apart is the fact that it makes reference to the new 4.0 content with references to both the earlier 3.5, 2.0 and 1.1 material. You’ll also find that the author chooses to refer to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) documentation using URLs as opposed to either copying the information verbatim or paraphrasing it some way: a refreshing change. This means that for much of this book, you are presented with straight-to-the-point information about the highs, the lows and the gotchas to look out for when you are building applications using Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET 4.0 platform. If you need a book that covers the salient technical points without going into huge amounts of detail, this is the book for you.

Alex is an experienced developer, he discusses his own personal experiences with many of the .NET 4.0 technologies, providing us with an insight into their history, their strengths and weaknesses – it’s all valuable content that can be hard to source elsewhere. And what’s more, given that this is Alex’s first book, he has done a terrific job: his writing style is contemporary, elegant and is easy to read.

Why should I buy this book?
Don’t be put off by the use of “Introducing” in this book’s title. It’s a book all developers should buy, from beginners to seasoned professionals. Beginners will benefit from the coverage of features, Alex essentially provides a roadmap of the things you need to look at in .NET 4.0 in order to gain the most benefit.

What’s in it for me? What’s this “roadmap” you mention?
Alex covers all of the bases with chapters about the following topics: Visual Studio IDE and MEF, Languages and Dynamic Changes, CLR and BCL Changes, Parallel, Workflow Foundation 4, Windows Communication Foundation, Entity Framework, WCF Data Services, ASP.NET, Microsoft AJAX Library, jQuery, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight Overview,WPF 4 and Silverlight 3 and Azure. This should provide you with a one-stop shop regarding the current .NET 4.0 technologies and tools: a great resource, especially for newbies, those developers moving to .NET 4.0 from the Java world, etc. and experienced developers looking to make use of new material in their applications.

One of the most common questions I get asked at developer events is “how do I get to know .NET?” – this book is a great source of up-to-date information, “newbies” and those moving to .NET 4.0 from other platforms should rush out and buy this book. Seasoned developers will enjoy the to-the-point writing style, the short code examples and the author’s reach out to “subject matter” experts from the field – if you need to know more, the links are there for newbies and long-in-the-tooth developers!

This book sits nicely in between Pro C# 2010 And The .NET 4.0 Platform 5th Edition by Andrew Troelsen (Hardcover – 3 Mar 2010) and Pro ASP.NET 4.0 In C# 2010 4th Edition by Matthew MacDonald (Paperback – 3 Mar 2010). Alex’s book provides all the groundwork you’ll need in order to be able to tackle the works of Troelsen and MacDonald – Alex’s book is available now!

What are you waiting for? Visual Studio 2010 will be released in a few months time! Get ahead now, buy this book, you won’t regret it!

Further links
Alex’s web-site
The APress web page for Alex’s book

[UK] Feb/Mar 2009 MSDN Events (inc. Professional Developers’ Day discount!)

Mar 23 Microsoft Professional Developers’ Day @ DevWeek 2009 London

Register for PDD before 27 February to receive the discount rate of £219 + VAT. The Professional Developers’ Day (PDD) is a Microsoft exclusive, single-day event designed to give you an early preview of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework v4.0 as unveiled at the 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles. We guarantee there will be no slides and no marketing fluff. Instead we’ll be delivering lots of code and lots of demos using the very latest technologies from Microsoft, including samples and more for you to take away. With so much new technology to choose from we have split the day into 10 self-contained sessions, each digging surprisingly deeply into what we believe are the most relevant and impactful changes in the .NET Framework and Visual Studio. Our goal is to ensure you finish the day able to identify which technologies will help you deliver better solutions in the future and hence focus your own research time in the right areas. And to add to the fun, we’ll be showcasing a range of ‘after hours’ technologies in the Expo area, including XNA, robotics, and Photosynth.

***

What:
MSDN: Catch Up with Microsoft Rich Client Technologies for 2008

Event Description
Audience: Developers

In this half-day session we’ll do a refresh of the technologies that we can use to build rich, interactive clients with .NET in 2008. We’ll take a look at how we can be cross-platform, cross-browser with Silverlight 2 and yet get the full development experience of a .NET application and then we’ll explore how we can take that further with the Windows Presentation Foundation V3.5 Service Pack 1 which allows for the richest, most-productive development model for Windows applications. There’ll be lots of demos and code as we bring you bang-up-to-date with what’s happening in the world of Microsoft clients.

Agenda:
Silverlight 2: From Scratch

Haven’t seen or experimented with Silverlight 2? This session is for you. We’ll explain the platform’s capabilities for rich, internet applications and we’ll look at how you go about building applications using a combination of the XAML language and the .NET Framework. Along the way, we’ll look at the major stepping stones like how we can make use of the network, how we can make use of the filesystem, how we can re-use and make use of existing controls and we’ll look at the controls that come “in the box” along with the ones in the Silverlight Toolkit on CodePlex. We’ll also look at the tooling involved in building a Silverlight 2 application with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1.

Windows Presentation Foundation: From Scratch

New to WPF? Coming back to the world of “rich client” after building web applications? In this session we’ll do a refresh of what Windows Presentation Foundation is, what its core capabilities are and how we build applications using a combination of the XAML language and the .NET Framework. We’ll bring this bang up-to-date by having a look at what’s new for WPF since its original release in 2006 and we’ll look at some of the newer developments such as the WPF Toolkit with its DataGrid and Ribbon controls on CodePlex.

Where:
Feb 10 London
Feb 12 Birmingham
Feb 24 Edinburgh
Feb 26 Manchester

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[UK] Feb/Mar 2009 MSDN Events (inc. Professional Developers’ Day discount!)

Mar 23 Microsoft Professional Developers’ Day @ DevWeek 2009 London

Register for PDD before 27 February to receive the discount rate of £219 + VAT. The Professional Developers’ Day (PDD) is a Microsoft exclusive, single-day event designed to give you an early preview of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework v4.0 as unveiled at the 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles. We guarantee there will be no slides and no marketing fluff. Instead we’ll be delivering lots of code and lots of demos using the very latest technologies from Microsoft, including samples and more for you to take away. With so much new technology to choose from we have split the day into 10 self-contained sessions, each digging surprisingly deeply into what we believe are the most relevant and impactful changes in the .NET Framework and Visual Studio. Our goal is to ensure you finish the day able to identify which technologies will help you deliver better solutions in the future and hence focus your own research time in the right areas. And to add to the fun, we’ll be showcasing a range of ‘after hours’ technologies in the Expo area, including XNA, robotics, and Photosynth.

***

What:
MSDN: Catch Up with Microsoft Rich Client Technologies for 2008

Event Description
Audience: Developers

In this half-day session we’ll do a refresh of the technologies that we can use to build rich, interactive clients with .NET in 2008. We’ll take a look at how we can be cross-platform, cross-browser with Silverlight 2 and yet get the full development experience of a .NET application and then we’ll explore how we can take that further with the Windows Presentation Foundation V3.5 Service Pack 1 which allows for the richest, most-productive development model for Windows applications. There’ll be lots of demos and code as we bring you bang-up-to-date with what’s happening in the world of Microsoft clients.

Agenda:
Silverlight 2: From Scratch

Haven’t seen or experimented with Silverlight 2? This session is for you. We’ll explain the platform’s capabilities for rich, internet applications and we’ll look at how you go about building applications using a combination of the XAML language and the .NET Framework. Along the way, we’ll look at the major stepping stones like how we can make use of the network, how we can make use of the filesystem, how we can re-use and make use of existing controls and we’ll look at the controls that come “in the box” along with the ones in the Silverlight Toolkit on CodePlex. We’ll also look at the tooling involved in building a Silverlight 2 application with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1.

Windows Presentation Foundation: From Scratch

New to WPF? Coming back to the world of “rich client” after building web applications? In this session we’ll do a refresh of what Windows Presentation Foundation is, what its core capabilities are and how we build applications using a combination of the XAML language and the .NET Framework. We’ll bring this bang up-to-date by having a look at what’s new for WPF since its original release in 2006 and we’ll look at some of the newer developments such as the WPF Toolkit with its DataGrid and Ribbon controls on CodePlex.

Where:
Feb 10 London
Feb 12 Birmingham
Feb 24 Edinburgh
Feb 26 Manchester

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052 – Guy Smith Ferrier on Internationali[s|z]ation, VS2008, .net 3.5, C# language features

Tenth the in the Twelve Podcasts of Christmas 2008!

Heroes Happen Here

Stealing a show naming scheme from the NxtGenUG chaps, this is “The One With The Semi-naked man in…”

Luckily it wasn’t our guest, esteemed Internationalisation expert and Microsoft MVP Guy Smith-Ferrier. Andy Westgarth, myself and Guy sat down on the most comfortable seat at this event and chatted about Guy’s session, his user group DotNetDevNet and a host of other things. I decided to edit out the semi-naked man scene in order to keep the flow, however I put it back in near end of the show…every podcast should have a man clad only in boxer shorts, yes?

Despite what it might sound like in this recording, no money changed hands…there will be no cash for questions here, no sir.

I reviewed Guy’s book, .NET Internationalization, over here.

Photos of the event can be found here.

Podcast feed – subscribe here!

This podcast: http://www.craigmurphy.com/podcasts/052-Guy-Smith-Ferrier.mp3

Resources
Guy’s user group, DotNetDevNet
Guy’s blog

The Twelve Podcasts of Christmas 2008
01 – Kyle Baley on ALT.NET and Brownfield Development in .NET
02 – Aaron Parker on Microsoft Application Virtualisation
03 – Caroline Bucklow from IT4Communities: charitable software development
04 – Eileen Brown on IT Professionals, TechNet, Women In Technology & Girl Geek Dinners
05 – Stephen Lamb on security, community, Linux and Twitter
06 – Cristiano Betta on Geek Dinners
07 – David Yack and Jonathan Carter on ALT.NET, MVC and Community
08 – Andrew Fryer on SQL Server 2008 and “upgrade”
09 – Viral Tarpara on Collaboration, SharePoint, Open Source (Port 25) and Community
10 – Guy Smith Ferrier on Internationali[s|z]ation, VS2008, .net 3.5, C# language features
11 – Matt Dunstan on event management, “engagement” and life as an Application Platform Manager
12 – Stephen Lamb on his new role in marketing / PR

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