CodeMash 2008 Here I Come!

Well, it's official I've gone and registered for CodeMash 2008! I'm really looking forward to this conference. If anyone who reads this is going to attend let me know, maybe we can meet up at some point.

These are just some of the interesting topics I'm looking forward to.

1. LinqTo: Implementing IQueryProvider (Bill Wagner)
• Has anyone out there taken a look at what it takes to implement your own Linq provider? It's a major pain in the rear! Now, I don't know to what depths Bill will go, but any good overview would really be helpful. For this session I'm not really looking for a good how to implement guide, since I doubt I'll ever work on my own custom Linq provider, but really it's more to help me get a better grasp of how Linq is working under the covers to help myself in consuming it!
2. Putting the Fun into Functional with F# (Dustin Campbell)
• Ok, so I've kind of been watching the boat sail on all of the popular dynamic languages. I've dabbled in the past with python, but only very slightly. I've written a modest amount of javascript to get the hang of the ideas behind it, but I think a good solid introduction to the up and coming dynamic first class citizen of .NET is in order. Let's get a good introduction to all of the fuss. I should have enough of python to follow along with the presentation. Again, this isn't something I plan to use on a day to day basis, but rather just help me understand how the other half lives, and help me to understand why I make the choices that I do.
  
3. Introduction To Behavior Driven Development (Andrew Glober)
• This one concerns me a little bit with the introduction tag, but I'm starting to become a big fan of Behavior Driven Development or (BDD). Any additional insight in to the thought processes which it takes to implement it properly would be beneficial to me. Plus the fact that it is being shown for a Java implementation might help me to think a little bit out of the box while implementing BDD myself in the C# world.
4. Story-Driven Testing (Jim Holmes)
• This one basically belongs with the prior item. It's just an area which I want to learn more about. I believe this one should have a .NET focus (not that it is even necessarily for the topic).
5. Introducing Castle (Jay R. Wren)
• Castle is one of those projects I've grown to enjoy. I still won't use some parts of the project (like ActiveRecord), but that is also the beauty of Castle. You don't have to. You take the pieces you want. I've grown to enjoy Microkernel/Windsor and while I've never actually used MonoRail, it actually makes a lot of sense to me. The Microsoft MVC framework actually helped me realize just how good of an MVC framework already existed for the .NET platform. So, while the term Introducing may be a slight put off, there is still a chance to see some items in a different light. Plus, I've met Jay in the past, and he's a sharp guy. I would like to see a full presentation on what he has to say about the subject.
6. Introduction To Workflow Foundation (Keith Elder)
• On this one I don't really mind the Introduction part. I really don't know much about implementing WF. I understand you need to run the engine yourself, and I've seen the GUI used to create workflows, but really I don't know much beyond that. It's something which has seemed like it would provide benefits to me and my projects in the past, but I haven't ever gotten enough expertise to know for sure if it was something to invest in or not. Hopefully this will help me down that path.
7. Rails: A Peek Under The Covers (Brian Sam-Bodden)
• I'm going a bit in to the deep end on this one. I understand only the absolute minimum of Ruby, yet who hasn't heard of Ruby on Rails? This may give a better oversight regarding why it has become such a popular framework. I'm familiar with the ideas behind what the Rail framework offers, but seeing how it works with Ruby should be interesting.

And this is just a short list. I haven't actually checked to see what the times are for these sessions, lets just hope I am able to get to all of them.

Hopefully I'll see you all at CodeMash!

--John Chapman