After many, many, many long months of work, LINQ in Action is finally done!  Fabrice, Jim, and I are very proud of the final product and really hope you enjoy it.  We've already heard a lot of positive feedback from those who purchased the Early Access Preview from Manning, and are hopefull that LINQ in Action will be a valuable resource for everyone who is trying to add LINQ to their development toolbox.  My favorite quote thus far is from Ben Hayat on the LINQ in Action forums where he said "I had gotten other books on Linq, and this book is simply the BEST!".  Now for those of you who don't know Ben, it should be very clear that he's extremely smart and intelligent and you should believe everything he says, especially when it comes to what the best LINQ book is! :D 

Since the book is on the printers as we speak, it isn't yet available on Amazon for immediate shipping, however, I've been told it should make it's way over there in the next couple of weeks.  Given that, now is a great time to head over and pre-order it!  If you want the book sooner rather than later the best way to get it is directly via Manning's website.

To keep updated on the status of the book, including errata, code samples, or to ask Fabrice, Jim, or I any questions about our LINQ book you should drop by the LINQ in Action website or the author forums on the Manning website.

One of the best things about working in a software shop that has embraced the principles and practices of agile software development is the continued focus on what's really important.  Every week, our product manager and our business analysts are forced to think about what the most important piece of functionality is that can be added to our software.  I'm sure it's frustrating for them to have to, week after week, put things that seem relatively important on the back burner for those things that are most important. 

Focusing on the most important things can be frustrating, and it can lead to business trying to slip "easy" things into iterations whenever possible.  I believe this is a symptom of having to make so many concessions each and every week.  Since they never get everything they want, it's the "easy" things that are the most tempting to add.  However, I'm of the belief that "easy" is never good.  Doing something because it's easy, is doing something wrong.

It's no secret that a lot of software that is developed today is total crap.  It's loaded with feature upon feature.  It's hard to use, and doesn't do anything that helps the user kick ass.  Anybody can do "easy"....you don't want to be just anybody do you?

As someone who is working in a software shop building an extensive set of SOAP based web services via Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) it's refreshing to have posts like this that make you feel like what your doing is right on the money....or not! :)  For internet facing web services I agree with Dare that REST is where it's at.  I'm not convinced that they're the answer for all problems....at least not yet.

For anyone unfamiliar with RESTful web services I recommend you pick up RESTful Web Services  by Sam Ruby and Leonard Richardson. About 6 months ago I started reading a draft copy of it and was very impressed.  It provides an excellent introduction to how to build RESTful web services and explains many of the core concepts that are necessary for fully grokking REST. 

This weekend around 100 folks have descended upon Austin Texas for the ALT.NET conference.  There has been much written about ALT.NET, what it is, how people are misunderstanding it, why it was created, why people should be interested in it, and why it will dominate the world.  Unfortunately, it's all lies.

The truth is, ALT.NET is a scam.  I hate myself for being the one to figure it out, and now for writing this post exposing ALT.NET for what it really is.  The truth is, ALT.NET was created so that a bunch of nobodies [1] could get Scott Gu, Martin Fowler, and the others in the industry whom they have a geek-crush on to come to their conference.  All that talk about making better software, using the best tool for the job, its all bogus.  ALT.NET is all about trying to rub elbows with Martin Fowler. Sad. [2]

[1] by nobodies I mean people whom I love and respect :)
[2] Or maybe its for real and I'm just sad that I didn't go?

On Friday I went to Ruby East and got to hear a bunch of good presentations on Ruby as well as Rails.  In addition to getting the inside scoop from some Ruby experts I also spent some time with Brian talking about the Philly ALT.NET user group.  From what I know about the somewhat controversial ALT.NET movement, I think I fit the general demographic.   If you're a .NET developer in the Philly area, and identify with some of the things that fall under the ALT.NET moniker, I'd strongly suggest you subscribe to the Philly ALT.NET yahoo group.  A first meeting has not been scheduled as of yet, but it's coming shortly. 

Subscribe to the Philly ALT.NET Yahoo Group

Sam recently clued me in to a series of posts by his co-worker David Pallmann's that include a ton of great tips for using WCF.  I went through all David's tips on my train ride home a few days ago and was inspired to go through our code to confirm and/or change our services to use many of the recommendations that David put together.  If you're working with WCF, I definitely recommend that you check out David's tips and while your at it subscribe to his blog in case he drops any more tips the blogosphere's way.

• WCF Tips #1 - Service Interface Design
• WCF Tips #2 - Service Class Design
• WCF Tips #3 - Service Hosting
• WCF Tips #4 - Configuration
• WCF Tips #5 - Infrastructure
• WCF Tips #6 - Instrumentation
• WCF Tips #7 - Clients

Over the last year I've spent a lot of my "free" time with LINQ.  When not writing and/or experimenting with LINQ I've been trying to learn Ruby.  Since I'm primarily a Microsoft guy, I've spent time in some Microsoft "friendly" Ruby communities such as SoftiesOnRails. As I think is typical in most passionate technology oriented communities, most Ruby peeps aren't real big fans of Microsoft.  I've heard numerous people in the Ruby community discount all things Microsoft, which led me to wonder if any Rubyists would ever give LINQ a fair look.  A couple weeks ago I came across Chris' "Full of Ambition" post on the err the blog site.  As soon as I saw ambition, I thought to myself "hey, it's LINQ for Ruby".  From reading over the initial post, it didn't sound like the guys behind ambition where inspired by LINQ at all, but instead were gunning for Rack.  A noble ambition, but surely LINQ would be a better and more ambitious goal!  Well it turns out that since their initial post the gents behind ambition have found LINQ, and set it as their new target!  In their most recent post about ambition they state:

We’ve moved our sights from Rack to LINQ. That is, we don’t want to only support other ORMs—we want Ambition to be a query language for SQL, LDAP, XPath, the works. The 1.0 release will be backend-agnostic. Maybe then we’ll change the name to Hubris? Time will tell.

As a big fan of both LINQ and Ruby I'm glad to see some LINQ'ness finding it's way into Ruby. 

Links:
Intro to Ambition
Update to Ambition, with LINQ as the new target

Hey All,

It's that time of year again!  The 2007 Buddy Walk is on September 30th, 2007.  Christin, McKayla, Steven John, Keegan, and I will be attending the walk with our family and friends and would love to have you join us, or have you support us with a donation!  As some of you may already know, my son Steven John has Down Syndrome.   Steven John will be 4 on December 7th of this year.  He's been the most amazing blessing, and has brought so much joy and happiness to the lives of his parents, siblings, grand parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends.  Christin and I are truely blessed to have such an amazing son!

The Buddy Walk is an event that benefits the Trisomy 21 Center (http://www.tri21center.org/) at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.  The Trisomy 21 Center does a lot of excellent work that helps support children with Down Syndrome as well as their families.  That's Steven John on the front page of their website, which brings me to the next topic...

This year you have a very unique opportunity.  Not only do you get to support a great cause, but you also have the opportunity to support the poster boy of this year's event....none other than Steven John himself!  Steven has been on all the marketing material for this years event, and I believe will have a small autograph session at this years event to appease his many many followers.  To support Team Eichert you can go to the following page and donate lots of money. :) 

http://www.active.com/donate/CHOPBuddyWalk2007/teameichert

Just kidding, we love any kind of donation and can guarantee you at least 2 minutes of good karma if you do indeed donate.  If on the other hand you don't donate, well....lets hope nobody has to find out what will come your way if that happens!  In all seriousness, Christin and I would be very thankful if you would consider donating. 

Much Love,
The Eichert's
- Steve, Christin, McKayla, Steven John, and Keegan