Agenda

Registration & Welcome: 1800-1830

Session: 1830-2030

Speaker Bio

Mark Rendle is currently employed as Principal Software Architect by Dot Net Solutions Ltd, creating all manner of software on the Microsoft stack, including ASP.NET MVC, Windows Azure, WPF and Silverlight. He is a Windows Azure Development MVP.

Mark’s career in software design and development spans three decades and more programming languages than he can remember. C# has been his favourite language pretty much since the first public beta, when you had to write the code in a text editor and compile it on the command line. Those were the days. You kids today, with your IntelliSense and your ReSharpers, don’t know you’re born…

Things vying for Mark’s attention lately include functional programming, internet-centric applications, the Azure cloud platform and NoSQL data stores.

"Functional Alchemy: Tricks to keep your C# DRY*"

C# 3.0 and LINQ have made anonymous delegates and closures a hot topic. C# 4.0 improves on them. But these “functional” features have applications beyond messing about with IEnumerable. In this session I’ll present 10 simple and not-so-simple uses of first-class functions to help cut down on repeated code and improve maintainability; hopefully you’ll discover a new and exciting way of approaching coding problems. The main thrust of it is that F# is cool and groovy but there’s a lot of mileage in functional-style programming in C#, which people are using every day, so let’s look at some cool examples there.

"How to manage your manager"

Developers and managers generally don’t understand each other. Developers know the arcane languages of machines and are motivated by inexplicable forces. Managers seem to spend half their time in meetings and the other half emailing each other Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. The result is that both sides end up frustrated, feeling that the other is stopping them from doing their job to the best of their ability.

In this talk, I will share some of the things I’ve learned in 20 years of being managed, including:

• How to get the PC you want, with the two big monitors and a decent CPU. 
• Also, how to get extra software, training, and even sent to conferences. 
• How to adopt best practices, like TDD, pairing and daily stand-ups even though your manager doesn’t know what they are, and probably doesn’t care. 
• How to earn the respect of people who seem to actively like wearing suits. 
• Maybe, possibly, how to respect them just a little bit.

Prize Draw

All attendess will be entered into a prize draw, with the chance of winning one of the prizes listed here.

Location and Directions

Venue: Room A12, RGU Building, St Andrews Street, Aberdeen, AB25 1HG

Directions: Map showing St Andrews Street

Aberdeen Developers Website

If you are not already a member of the Aberdeen Developers .Net User Group you can sign up here http://www.aberdeendevelopers.co.uk by using the "Subscribe to our newsletter" link.