I first posted about some learning materials just recently and during the time between then and now I discovered some more good introductory material that can be found on Stefan Cruysbergh’s personal web site. Stefan has produced a three part series to introducing the basics in the Entity Framework and then some more detailed investigation in the final instalment of his series of posts. Stefan also has a blog separate to his web site.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
If you read my previous post listing Julie Lerman’s tutorials and the DNR TV episodes with Dan Simmons you should find this series of posts from Stefan a nice accompaniment to those.
I have Julie’s book on order and look forward to reading that when it arrives and a few more are now starting to surface. Joydip Kanjilal has a tutorial and Roger Jennings is working on a book as is Jim Wightman and MS Press have one on the way also.
Also, I have also recently posted about a new version of my implementation of the Specification Pattern for Entity Framework that enables the use of that pattern to build dynamic queries and test Entities for equality. Currently I am working on the Repository Pattern to accompany the Specification Pattern and will also get around to working on NHibernate like Fetching Strategies as per my LINQ To SQL framework that included all three features. Download the code for an early look at the refactor here.
I thought it might be useful to include the entire code base from this previous post with the change to the Specification Pattern alone at this stage, in case anyone wanted to see the changes incrementally as I refactor the entire library. Time to version this code as it may be production bound before too long! The code is in the usual place here.
Something that intrigues me is the very nature of the way software development skills are rated. It’s not altogether unheard of that the more technology specific stuff you put into your resume the better understood or rather perceived you might be and the more design and practice oriented stuff you put in that resume, may find you perceived all the more esoteric.
I am pretty sure that too much attention in my resume given to practices such as DDD and DI /IoC amongst other things, has been been perceived as fringe and understanding of their value was getting lost in some cases. Typically employers and recruiters are often more interested in how many years of Ajax, ASP.Net, Web Services, ADO.Net etc that you have and I should point out that this is not a criticism of either merely an observation; it comes down to the individual to demonstrate what indeed the value of such knowledge and skills are to any relevant interested party.
So basically I guess my point is this, if your constantly finding yourself perplexed
by what skill you need next, then perhaps you should look at the outlying aspects rather than the obvious and make sure that you give some time to practices or learning new patterns that will help improve the quality of your work regardless of your technology choices. I should point out that whilst many would consider Inversion of Control a technology (I use IoC as an example here), I consider it more a methodology or design practice for the sake of this post and demonstrating the point I am trying to make.
So rather than worry about WCF or WF 4.0 or some other fancy PDC 2008 technology today, perhaps look at Castle Windsor or Spring.Net and begin to get to grips with how DI / IoC can help you write better software or even buy Jimmy Nilsson or Eric Evans books and have a look at Domain Driven Design and see what you can learn from that approach - a wise man once told me "it’s not always about the latest tech!"
PS: I am not saying you should ignore new things as a matter of course (I plan to look at Oslo and M in the coming months myself) but try to balance and give some priority to assigning value to that of the here and now!
