Be afraid. Be very afraid. For you are about to enter the mysterious and foreboding land of regular expressions. A land of strange-looking hieroglyphics. A land of many flavors and implementations. A land whose inhabitants possess seemingly magical powers over text. But fear no more, for you needn't make the journey alone: a guide and a map await you.
In this session, we'll take a whirlwind tour of the features found in most regular expression implementations. Then we'll dive deep. We'll take a peek inside a regular expression engine. From character literals to character classes, from backreferences to look-around, you'll see every step a regular expression engine takes when it parses text. By the end of the session, you'll be able to think like a regular expression engine.
Ok, maybe not stupid tricks. "Various techniques you can use to craft xml in the exact shape you need" is more accurate, but far less catchy. Although XML is less sexy as it was 10 years ago, it is still incredibly useful, and many enterprise codebases use it extensively. If you're a member of one of these organizations, knowing how to create an object graph that correctly serializes to the required XML is invaluable. This session will expose you to techniques that will help you get the job done. Be a hero. Save the day. All with XML serialization.
Monads. You may have heard of them. You might be wondering what they are. You may just want to know what they’re good for. The funny thing is there's a really good chance that you're already using monadic patterns.
In this code-centric session, we’ll talk about what exactly a monad is. We’ll explore the relationship between monads and LINQ. We’ll discover how they can make your code more fluent and readable. By the end of the session, you’ll discover that monads aren’t as scary as you might have once thought. And you just might add another tool to your toolbelt.
So you've been writing code for a while. You're familiar with a few programming paradigms. Like object-oriented programming - you're probably fluent in that one. And you probably know about functional programming. But what about other paradigms? Older ones. Like, for example, procedural programming. How fluent (or even just familiar) are you with it? What if you could go back in time? To a time when procedural programming ruled the business world. Could you write something useful in a language from that time? Say, for example, in COBOL? Could you do it? *Could* you?
Well *I* did. And I'd like to talk about what I learned. I took my experience in object-oriented and functional programming and threw it away. I entered the land of the Y2K bug - COBOL. When I emerged from this strange land, I found that I had resurrected an old dinosaur. And I had a blast doing it too.
You know what open source software is. You probably use open source software every day. But are you contributing to any projects? Do you own any? How do you get involved in the open source world? Existing projects can be intimidating. Ideas for new projects are hard to come by. Or are they?
I've started several small open source projects in the last couple years. And I'd like to talk about why I created them. I'd like to talk about what it takes to get a project started. And I'd like to talk about the numerous benefits to owning an open source project. So go on, make that open source project - I've done it, and you can too.
"I'm thinking about doing a
talk about metaprogramming."
"Really? What's that?"
"Basically, it's code that
writes code, then executes
it."
"Wait, what? You want to write
code that writes code?"
"Well, I want to do a talk
about it, but that's close
enough."
"What possible use could
that have? And what kind
of sick twisted monkey would
want to do that?"
"Naturally, I would. You
know, since I'm a sick,
twisted monkey."
"Well that goes without saying."
"You see, some problems
are extremely difficult to
solve without metaprogramming."
"But... but... you *have* to be
violating some law of physics
or something."
"Nah. It's actually not that
hard to wrap your head
around."
"Really? You should do a talk
about that."
"Right."
This is a talk about metaprogramming. I program in C#. You should see this talk, it'll be fun.
Your dream has come true! You just got hired in as a game developer for Bad Snowstorm Inc. They are almost ready to launch their new text-based adventure game, but their development team (Billy, the CEO’s son) is having a hard time keeping up with changing requirements. Billy never learned about interfaces or loosely coupled code, so your job will be to implement better practices that will make adding requirements faster than an avalanche.
In this double-session we will be exploring Dependency Injection from several angles. Maybe the codebase you work in is an unmaintainable mess, and you want to do something about it. We can help with that. Or maybe you want to learn what exactly, DI containers such as StructureMap or Ninject do. Perhaps you just want to know if you can really trust DI containers. We can help with those too, since we’ll actually be writing a simple DI container from scratch. And maybe you’ve heard that DI makes your code more testable (spoiler: it does). In fact, DI and testability go together like peas and carrots!
So join us, and unravel the mysteries of Dependency Injection as we refactor Bad Snowstorm’s new game: Null Quest.
We strongly recommend (but do not absolutely require) that attendees bring a laptop to this session, as there will be follow-along examples.
Brian Friesen has been pretending to be a developer for the last 8 years and lives in constant fear of being found out. He still can't believe he was chosen for an MVP Award for C#. As an occasional public speaker, he prefers to talk about things that are slightly out in left field. He lives in Detroit and works for a seriously great company, Quicken Loans.