In my day job, I am a web developer. My title is simply Developer, but most of my projects focus specifically on the web side of things.

Background

Before working here, I did minimal web development professionally. What little web development I did focused on portal systems, but because they were geared for a small-scaled audience, I programmed things with a very primitive approach. I did the things that now make me cringe - hardcoding login information and other things that are probably considered extremely bad practices. But I didn't have a solid enough foundation to steer me the right way, as all their previous apps were just as bad, if not worse. When I did work with another dev, it was a dev with similar background to mine, so that really didn't help. To add to the mess, development was only a small part of my previous position, so I was usually too busy to focus on improving my code, even though I knew deep down that it would be messy to maintain.

Web Sites and Web Applications

For my sole .NET application, I used ASP.NET Web Matrix to develop my app. I was working with ASP.NET 1.1, and since I'm well-rooted in VB, I chose to run with VB.NET. Whatever type of project it generated worked for what it had to do.

When I started my current job, I made the leap to Visual Studio 2005. I also switched to C#, as that's what they wanted to work with. I noticed I had the options of Web Sites and Web Applications. After finding many sites that talked about the differences, I learned that my project choice would come down to personal preference. Knowing how things work here, I've decided on web sites, which hasn't caused any problems yet.

But... my development background in general has always been application development, typically data entry of some sort, with a simple client-server relationship. It was only a matter of time before something new (to me) would come along. Recently, I've been asked to develop web services.

Web Services... Oh My!

From attending SIG meetings, I understood the basic concept of a web service. However, I had never programmed one, so I had no idea what I was in for. Thankfully, my buddy Russ has worked with them, so I spent some time going back and forth with him on how they work.

When I first created the ASP.NET Web Service project, I saw declarations and code that I had recognized from the SIG, code that intimidated me, mostly since I was unfamiliar with it. I closed Visual Studio and walked over to talk with Russ. After discussing what my services had to do and talking about ASMX versus WCF, we came to the conclusion that ASMX would be the easier way for me to start, especially since I needed a simple service.

With that, I re-opened the intimidating code and slowly worked my way through figuring it out. I managed to write what I needed, and I had Russ look at my code. Apparently the ASMX syntax I am working with is more similar to WCF than to the ASMX that Russ remembers, but after having him look at my code, I felt much better knowing that I was on the right track.

After working on it for the past couple days, I now have a web service that gives me what I want, in properly-formatted XML output. I've also figured out how to work with web references and proxies to have a page turn the properly-formatted stuff into the format I need it in.

I'm looking forward to Cleveland Day of .NET coming and going, so that I can eventually get back into playing with new things (like Silverlight and SQL 2008) and learning about stuff that I probably should know but I haven't experienced yet (like web services). And maybe one of these days I'll put the coding back into my site name.

Labels: ASMX, WCF, web applications, web services, web sites

Cleveland Day of .NET is this Saturday at the Hilton in Beachwood. We have speakers coming in from MI, TN, other parts of OH, and even some local Cleveland-area speaker. Our topics are as spread as our locations - covering Silverlight, WCF, IronRuby, IronPython, F#, Agile development, ASP.NET, Sharepoint, SQL Server, SEO, TDD, WPF, and something a little non-technical but very useful - Soft Skillz.

If you don't know what "soft skills" are, I'd recommend you check out Brian Prince's talk. He encourages audience participation, and it helps to hear about the non-technical skills that we really do need to focus on and use as developers and architects.

If you will be in town on Friday and want to get together with other people, check out our social networking site - Cleveland Day of .NET on CrowdVine. Corey is organizing the gatherings, and he is planning on mentioning the events there. As I hear of them, I will post them here as well.

If you haven't registered yet, please get to the Cleveland Day of .NET site and register today!

Hope to see you on Saturday!

As much as I was hoping to screencast my presentation, the more I work on it, the more I realize it doesn't lend itself to screencasting. There are parts that will require some audience interaction, and the presentation wouldn't make much sense without those parts.

So for those who are interested in my presentation but cannot make it to the Cleveland Day of .NET, stay tuned to this site sometime after May 17^th.

I was reading Dan Rigsby's post on West Michigan Day of .NET, and one of his comments really struck me.

It seems if you are in a different Microsoft district, you either don't know much about what is going in other districts, or are afraid the break the barrier.

He's got a good point. I live in the Heartland District, which encompasses Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan (south to north). Whenever there are events within our district, we have our evangelists who let us know what's going on. But what about Days of .NET in places that are just across the state line, in one of the other districts? We don't typically hear about those, and I don't know why that is either.

While planning the Cleveland Day of .NET, I realized that our location is well within a few hours from the PA state line. Having made many day trips to Erie and Pittsburgh, I know just how long those drives are, and I know that I drove further just for Central Ohio Day of .NET. So, rather than letting this realization lead to nothing, I contacted every evangelist listed for PA, asking them to pass the word on to their followers. I did receive some support from them, and we were supposedly mentioned in the Pittsburgh .NET Users Group's newsletter. So I'm hoping to see some PA .NET people at our event!

If you're a .NET/CodeCamp/etc. event organizer, if you want to reach the districts outside of your own, check out the Meet Your Local Microsoft Evangelists page and reach out to them. Maybe we don't get people crossing district lines because the word just doesn't get out to them. Maybe people are afraid to spread the word. But if we want people to cross the district lines, we need to get the word out to them so that they know that our events exist!

With the last 2 weeks of Cleveland Day of .NET planning here, I'm quite busy in getting the last minute stuff together. This FedEx box from DHL, with no damage on the outside so no UPS visit, has a lot of swag. Thanks to... oh wait... you'll just have to come to the event to see what we have! Not registered yet? Get to it! Register at the Cleveland Day of .NET website!

My buddy Nivex though is good for keeping me in the loop on various web comics, and I had to laugh at this. So... a little math geek humor for you to enjoy.

And if you don't get it, you just aren't a math geek. Not all geeks are math geeks, oddly enough.

While working on my IronPython presentation, I came across the announcement for PyOhio. They are now calling for proposals and accepting submissions until June 1. It's good to see a familiar name to contact with proposal questions. Mat Kovach is a Cleveland-based developer who is involved with Northeast Ohio Open Source Society. He runs with my friend Martin, and he was also a presenter at Ohio LinuxFest 2007. He's definitely someone to be familiar with, especially if you're in the developer crowd in Cleveland.

If you're interested in Python, definitely check out the PyOhio website. It's taking place on July 26th in Columbus. As I hear more information about the PyOhio event, I will blog about it here!

Labels: IronPython, Mat Kovach, NOOSS, PyOhio, python

I've been reviewing presentations that I saw down at Central Ohio Day of .NET. This morning, as I started putting my handwritten notes into slides, I realized that this will be my first public presentation using slides.

My past talks to groups and presentations typically involved demos and interaction with the audience or sitting on a panel and relaying notes from our project throughout that week. Seeing as I was in front of a Linux crowd for my user group presentations, using PowerPoint wouldn't have been a good idea. It was bad enough that they tormented me for not sticking with one operating system and for volunteering on MSN Gaming Zone; I didn't need to give them any more Microsoft ammo. I could have used the OpenOffice equivalent (Impress) but I didn't really find slides to be that useful. Most of the group knew me - the token girl at the Linux group - so the only slides I would've used would have been for my presentation title and for the resources at the end. Why bother writing slides for those when the resources would be posted on the user group site?

As much as I want my Cleveland Day of .NET presentation to be like that, the more I look at my notes, the more I realize that I may have to use slides. Now granted, not everyone works from slides and not all presentations lend themselves to slides. Matt Casto was creative enough to put his project to work - he did his presentation in his Silverlight app with XAML slides. As much as I'd want to put my IronPython project to work and let Merlin do all the talking, it won't be going down like that. I'll definitely be in PowerPoint presenter mode, but have no fear, the speaker in me doesn't like letting my audience stay quiet, so I will definitely encourage audience participation.

Two weeks to go until the big event... if you haven't registered, get to our site and register. If you have any issues with OpenID while trying to sign up, feel free to contact me at sarah at codinggeekette dot com and I'll work with you on getting you signed up. I hope to see you there!