Community developer blogs

Sebastien Lambla

Recent Posts

• When agile goes bad, slides and pointers

  Posted: 27 Jun 2009 at 14:27 by Sebastien Lambla

  I’ve given that talk quite a few times now, and always forget to give the full material. So here goes. The slides can be downloaded at A couple of references that I mention in my talk. Father of crystal, Alistair Cockburn (that I somehow always call Ian, shame on me) / For Lean Software Development, one cannot ignore the Poppendiecks: / Extreme Programming, BDD from Dan North Continuous Integration, of which TeamCity, Cruise, CruiseControl (and CruiseControl.

• In how many ways can the Microsoft Ajax 4 syntax break XHTML?

  Posted: 12 Jun 2009 at 19:02 by Sebastien Lambla

  [Update: Added example pages from aria] For the answer, see the points below. I was going to email the comments below to some people at Microsoft that have shown an interest in opening up a conversation, but after a comment I left on Hanselman’s blog, and Bertrand Le Roy, a PM at Microsoft, responded by saying “I really wish we could concentrate on the fantastic features in Microsoft Ajax 4 instead of discussing dogma.

• Fighting for ReST, or the tale of the ice-cream maker

  Posted: 12 Jun 2009 at 14:26 by Sebastien Lambla

  I keep on reading things like the following quote from wikipedia’s talk page on the ReST article (a poorly written page at that): Decide on an unambiguous definition of REST. IMHO, Fielding lost and the engineers won. REST = XML over HTTP Rather than point out the sheer stupidity of such a statement, let me tell you the story of the ice-cream maker.

• London AltNetBeers #9 – At the glass house

  Posted: 10 Jun 2009 at 17:24 by Sebastien Lambla

  Same as usual, please register, limited space, it’s in Soho, it’s at 6:30, it’s about being a developer and talking about it, and it’s sponsored by ThoughtWorks.

• Formation nHibernate a Paris

  Posted: 09 Jun 2009 at 16:56 by Sebastien Lambla

  Une fois n’est pas coutume, cette entrée sera en Français. Vous avez sans doute vu qu’ayende a donne une formation nHibernate à Londres. Vous pouvez maintenant assister à cette formation, en Français, et délivrée a Paris, par nul d’autre que moi-même. Que demande le peuple ! ;) Si vous êtes intéresses, envoyez moi un email et je vous enverrai les détails.

• Looking for help on your project? I’m available.

  Posted: 09 Jun 2009 at 16:03 by Sebastien Lambla

  I’m available for work from now, so if you’re looking for a freelance that can code, coach and teach, pop me an email.

• Interfaces with static methods, reducing the cost of extensibility

  Posted: 09 Jun 2009 at 11:37 by Sebastien Lambla

  Someone last week mentioned that Java was now getting static methods defined on interfaces. We’ve had that capacity, through extension methods, since C#3, and is one pattern I keep on reusing. An interface, at core, is a contract of extensibility between me and other developers: Implement method Bla() and I promise you will be called whenever that stuff is needed. The problem with such an approach is that some functionality is repetitive and makes implementing the interface more complicated.

• Bridging the gap between communities – ColdFusion and SOTR

  Posted: 06 Jun 2009 at 18:42 by Sebastien Lambla

  Earlier this week, I attended the Scotch on the rocks conference. The organizers had the brilliant idea to invite developers from other communities with Amnesty tickets, to come and see what was happening in the ColdFusion world. I’m very grateful they did, as this event has been an eye opener for me. I arrived with preconceptions of script people afraid of real languages hacking together un-maintainable solutions. I should know, I’m still hosting one of those for one of my clients.

• Internal DSLs, method chaining and discoverability

  Posted: 31 May 2009 at 15:46 by Sebastien Lambla

  Paul says “The whole .NET space has gone fluent interface crazy”, and he is quite right. Everybody has their own fluent interfaces, and unless I’m missing the bigger picture, most of them seem to be about productivity over discoverability. The intent is clear, write more intent-revealing code in less time. More often than not however, you multiply the entry points needed to be known by developers. Let’s take an example with the criteria API in nHibernate. return Session.

• Summer speaking schedule, AltNetBeers, the alt.net conference, oh my!

  Posted: 21 May 2009 at 17:25 by Sebastien Lambla

  Wow, who would’ve thought the first conference season would’ve been so intense! I had an absolute blast meeting people, presenting, chatting away and drinking nice beers with so many interesting people! WebDD, DDD Scotland and DDD Belfast have been a blast! I also realize that I’ve delivered all the talks and workshops I announced in my last schedule, so time for an update, both on my talks and on the interesting conferences and events that are being organized.

• How some agencies make it hard to trust them

  Posted: 21 May 2009 at 13:30 by Sebastien Lambla

  I just received an email from Computer People, telling me “we agreed that I would keep in touch and update you with any further opportunities and developments around SharePoint”. I’m pretty sure that’s factually inaccurate, as I have very little interest in SharePoint development and certainly wouldn’t agree on the phone to be contacted for marketing reasons. But fair enough, if it was to help me find new clients, I wouldn’t be that bothered. But no! It’s to try and sell me sharepoint seminars!

• Yet another reason to love TestDriven.net

  Posted: 06 May 2009 at 13:55 by Sebastien Lambla

  As I was coding some new tests for the container integration part of OpenRasta (which, since beta 2 changes, has become much more complicated…), I discovered a feature I didn’t even realize was there. I use abstract test classes so that each container that OpenRasta supports automatically gains any new tests that verify the behaviour of the container matches OR’s expectations. In an abstract test, the test class that contains the test is marked abstract, and you inherit from that class for each

• My MVC Best Practices talk

  Posted: 05 May 2009 at 12:26 by Sebastien Lambla

  I’ve given that talk in quite a few places, and always promise to post the slides on my blog. But in fact, I was secretly waiting for the VistaSquad video to be released. Thanks to Ian Smith, you can now see it all, complete with slides and excessive arm waving. Vista Squad: MVC Best Practices By Ian Smith View in HD  Download Version  Visit Ian Smith's ExposureRoom Videos Page

• London AltNetBeers #8 – 12th of May, Back to the pub

  Posted: 04 May 2009 at 14:21 by Sebastien Lambla

  The next AltNetBeers is going to be on the 12th of May! Drinks and food will be provided by our two sponsors, SkillsMatter and ThoughtWorks, big thanks to them for helping our community strive! We’re moving venue for a while, and we’ll be organizing this one at the GlassHouse, on 55 Brewer Street. View Larger Map So we can plan ahead, please register for the event at http://ukdotnet.ning.com/events/london-altnetbeers-8

• The AltNetBeers #8 is postponed until the second week of May

  Posted: 23 Apr 2009 at 19:41 by Sebastien Lambla

  Because of the progressive.net workshops happening and the June event happing earlier in the month (and me not preparing early enough), I’m postponing the April edition to the second week of May. Will announce the details as soon as I get all the dates secured.

• Schedule of the AltNet London Beers and why I’m dropping the dot

  Posted: 21 Apr 2009 at 11:03 by Sebastien Lambla

  We’ve now had quite a few very successful events with the alt.net London beers. One thing that strikes me every single time in this event is how much people are interested in discussing the why and the how of our profession, and not so much the actual tools or platform we use. Our little community has been talking about DDD, SOLID, legacy code and many other side conversations that have, in the end, had very little to do with .net, and everything to do with being a professional developer. We’re

• Announcing the first London GayGeekDinner

  Posted: 06 Apr 2009 at 15:36 by Sebastien Lambla

  One of the most surprising thing for me has always been an impression by many LGBT geeks that they were alone, especially around the younger crowd out there. And indeed, the tech world is always very reserved about revealing what is a very personal thing. A group of us have been thinking for a while that it’d be nice to organize a social event to meet fellow gay geeks, have a pizza and some booze to go with it. Thanks to Ben’s effort, we’re now all set for our first event. It will all be happeni

• WebDD 09 Registration is open

  Posted: 30 Mar 2009 at 11:37 by Sebastien Lambla

  The WebDD community-driven conference registration is open, go ahead and book yourself for a day of fun and web technology! You can have a look at the schedule at http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/webdd09/Schedule.aspx

• Multiple views in OpenRasta, and delving into the pipeline

  Posted: 21 Mar 2009 at 01:22 by Sebastien Lambla

  I just had an idea to clean-up my resource definitions. I could’ve gone straight in the OpenRasta code and add just this small additional feature I really want, but OpenRasta is all about extensibility and composition, and I’m a few days away from the beta 1 release. So I thought I’d put to test the API from the outside, and tell you a story about how to define multiple views on a resource with the WebForms Codec. I may move this entry over to the documentation part of the project later on. -- I

• alt.net London Beers #7

  Posted: 20 Mar 2009 at 19:14 by Sebastien Lambla

  I’m not going to do yet another intro, the event detail is on http://ukdotnet.ning.com/events/altnet-london-beers-7 The place, same as usual, same people, Tequila\UK and ThoughtWorks helping us. Lots of brains, some beer, and many many opinions. Please register if you can, it’s not mandatory but it’s useful to gauge the amount of people we’re going to get!