Michael Minutillo held two internal information sessions to run through the new features and tooling available in Visual Studio 2010 to a highly receptive audience of Beacon software architects, developers and team leads. The aim of sharing this knowledge was to provide a heads up on the new features developers and project teams can take advantage of with Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework version 4.
What fresh information did you share with Beacon colleagues?
For Visual Studio 2010 (the tools):
- There are enhancements specifically for Test-Driven Development (or TDD) which is a practice we are actively investigating.
- There are enhancements for Windows 7 which we have since rolled out.
- There’s new capabilities for Multiple Monitor support (where all of our developers have two monitors, I believe).
- Many new tools for code navigation, code generation, debugging, deployment, configuration management, extension management
- Code Coverage (for Unit Tests)
- Test Impact Analysis
For C# 4.0 (the language):
- Named and optional parameters
- Co/Contra-Variance of generic types
- Dynamic
For .NET Framework 4 (the platform):
- Complex and Big numbers
- Tuples
- Lazy instantiation
- Code Contracts
- Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)
- ASP.NET MVC 2 (which is what I’m currently working on)
What did you like most about co-authoring the book?
I liked having the chance to dive into some of the corners of the tooling that I’d never really had an excuse to explore. It’s a strange process because you can’t rely on documentation (which is either already out of date or not yet written) and you have to try each option and widget yourself to see what it really does. You end up scouring the web looking for clues on new features and hidden options. Then a new release comes out and you have to go back and make sure that what you wrote is still accurate (which on several occasions it wasn’t). Towards the end of the process I started dialogues with a few folks internal to Microsoft and I really wish I’d done that sooner. They were all really forthcoming and helpful.
Why were you asked to co-author the book (don’t be shy)?
I was asked to co-author the book by the authors of the previous edition (Dave Gardner and Nick Randolph). When the new edition was due, Nick and Dave realised that they had six months to update a 1,000-page book. Some content would have to be revised, some re-written and some would be brand new. They asked some of the folks who had helped them out in the community with the previous edition (I reviewed a section about ASP.NET MVC in the last edition) and I accepted. Nick was one of the founders of the Perth .NET Community of Practice and Dave is heavily influential in that group as well.
Since joining the user group in 2006 I’ve been regularly involved giving many presentations (even winning a couple of annual DevJam events). Nick has since moved to Sydney and the user group has been taken over by Mitch Wheat. I’ve continued to help Mitch out.
At one point I was the curator of the Perth .NET CoP. I’ve been an active tech blogger at http://wolfbyte-net.blogspot.com and a member of the worldwide twitter community http://twitter.com/wolfbyte, and I even started a second .NET user group here in Perth (http://perth.ozalt.net). I put a fair amount of code out there for free (http://github.com/wolfbyte http://crank.codeplex.com/ http://code.google.com/u/michael.minutillo/).
In 2008 I gained some notice by winning a national programming competition (DevSta). The application I worked on won best overall application and best mobile application. Part of the main prize was an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas to attend the MIX 09 Developers Conference, which was a reward in itself, as well as a great forum to share the latest ideas in our field.
Michael exemplifies the calibre of people you will be working with whether you work with Beacon as a client, or for Beacon as an employee or contractor. Contact us if you have the skills and aptitude to thrive in a place like Beacon.