Jelle Druyts

I'm happy to announce that my second article just got published on the Microsoft Belux website:

The Command Pattern In Windows Presentation Foundation

Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly codenamed "Avalon"), or WPF for short, is a brand new Microsoft framework for developing very rich and powerful Windows applications. There is much to be said about Windows Presentation Foundation and its numerous new and enhanced capabilities, but this article will in stead focus on an old trusted friend, who has finally been given a dedicated room in the big house of Windows User Interface development: the "Command" pattern. This design pattern basically abstracts all actions the user can perform in an application into the notion of "commands"; it has been implemented in many different ways on top of various UI frameworks, but now, it has finally made it into the gut of the system itself.

Don't hesitate to let me know if you liked or disliked the article!

A lot of people have already noticed that I'm on the speaker agenda for the Microsoft Developer & IT Pro Days 2006 in Belgium, but here's the official word: I'm proud to be your host for 2 sessions in the Development Best Practices track! I'm giving the second one together with Steven Wilssens, so that should be a lot of fun.

Best Practices in Framework Design: The Art of Building a Reusable Class Library

March 8, 2006 - 09:00 - 10:15

This session presents best practices for designing frameworks, which are reusable object-oriented libraries. The guidelines are applicable to frameworks ranging in size and in their scale of reuse from large system frameworks to small components shared among several applications. Topics covered include the design, background and motivation for: naming conventions, namespaces and assemblies, types (structs, reference types, generic types), members, designing for extensibility, usage guidelines, and general library design principles. Attend this session to learn more on the best practices for building a reusable class library.

Best Practices for Application Development

March 8, 2006 - 10:45 - 12:00

This session presents best practices for developing robust enterprise applications on the .NET platform. The guidelines are an accumulation of years of experience in building frameworks and enterprise applications. We will show you best practices around exception management, logging, configuration, authorization, data access, unit testing, code analysis, documentation, daily builds, caching and testing. When attending this session you will also learn about recurring design patterns, general development guidelines and conventions.

Furthermore, Steven will also be presenting a very interesting session on Source Control:

Best Practices for Advanced Source Control: Beyond CheckOut and CheckIn

March 8, 2006 - 14:30 - 15:45

This session presents best practices for advanced source control management. We will examine different branching strategies and provide you with the necessary guidelines that will help you adopt the right Software Configuration Management branching mode. These best practices will help you increase overall product quality and process efficiency, reduce the incidence of software failures, and improve organizational performance. We will have a look at Team Foundation Source Control and answer following questions: What's new with merging and branching in VSTS and why is it better? What is shelving? What about continuous integration and how can you implement a gauntlet system with VSTS?

See you there!