Community user groups

Scottish Developers

Events coming up

• Nov 25

  Lean, Kanban and Theory of Constraints

  Dundee, United Kingdom

  The TalkThe application of Lean principles, Kanban and pull-systems theory along with Goldratt's Theory of Constraints revolutionised the manufacturing world in the second half of the twentieth century. Belatedly, the software world is waking up to the transformative effects these tools can have. There are still no silver bullets in the software world, but that doesn't mean that we can't improve our aim.

Past events

• Web Application Testing With Selenium

  Tue, 10 Nov 2009, 18:30 - 20:30 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  The TalkTesting is a fundamental part of the development process regardless of how you approach it however GUI's have always been trickier to test and web based UI's are some of the hardest. JavaScript, AJAX and browser compatibility are all things that make web UI functionality quite difficult and time consuming to test. Enter Selenium, a web application testing framework which makes the creation and automation of complex web user interface tests a joy.

• SQL injection attacks and tips on how to prevent them

  Wed, 28 Oct 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Dundee, United Kingdom

  The TalkIn light of some recent events, such as the man who was convicted of stealing 130 million credit card details through a SQL Injection attack, it is imperative that developers understand what a SQL Injection Attack is, how they are carried out, and most importantly, how to defend your code against attack.In this talk Colin Mackay will demonstrate a SQL Injection Attack on an application in a controlled environment

• Advanced TDD - An Introduction to Testing Patterns and Behaviour Driven Development

  Tue, 13 Oct 2009, 18:30 - 20:30 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  The TalkThere is more to doing TDD well than just Red-Green-Refactor, and creating a maintainable test suite as well as maintainable production software is vital. In this presentation we will look at common testing patterns, techniques and tools that can help make maintaining the test suite easier. From Shared Fixtures to Stubs and Mocks, we will take a look at common patterns that have been proven to work and the tools that help you take advantage of them.

• When agile goes bad: How to stay calm and move forward

  Thu, 24 Sep 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom

  The TalkWith applying agile methodologies comes changes in many aspects of delivering software. And with any change will come a time when something fails. How to convince the undecided? How to keep everyone calm? How to provide practical solutions to prevent people from reverting back to non-agile practices at the first roadblock? Through examples gathered from personal experience and the community, we’ll explore ways to prevent the boat from sinking at the first spilled glass of water.

• An introduction to OpenRasta, an MVC framework with strong opinions

  Wed, 23 Sep 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Dundee, United Kingdom

  The TalkEverybody seems to rediscover the MVC model, and new frameworks seem to appear all the time. Most of those hide the richness of the web.Come discover OpenRasta, a very opinionated framework that help you write MVC-style web applications and data services, using a unified API.The SpeakerSebastien Lambla runs Caffeine IT, a .

• Credit Crunch Code – Time to Pay Back the Technical Debt

  Tue, 8 Sep 2009, 18:30 - 20:30 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  The TalkTechnical debt is the cost of putting off good development practices. This debt, must be paid back to avoid the “interest payments” becoming crippling. This presentation will focus on a number of common developer (and project) behaviours that can lead to the build up of technical debt in a project, and together we will discuss and collaborate on methods to mitigate against them.The Speaker

• Developer Testing for SharePoint

  Wed, 15 Jul 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  The Talk The development of components for use in SharePoint is a complex process, and often seems to fly in the face of what is considered good development practice in a Test Driven Development world. In this session Richard will show how using some good design practices and tools such as Typemock Isolator you can develop testable components for Sharepoint without even having to have Sharepoint on your development PC.

• Your Application in Pieces – MEF and MAF

  Tue, 23 Jun 2009, 18:30 - 20:30 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  Kathleen Dollard will be talking about the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) and the Managed Add-in Frameworkd (MAF) Talk Description Decoupling portions of your application has tremendous payback during both development and maintenance. Your application becomes more testable and flexible and can more easily evolve to meet changing demands. Decoupling your application also allows a new level of partnership with external groups because you can safely incorporate their code in your applicat...

• Rethinking Object Orientation

  Mon, 22 Jun 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom

  Session details Decades after object orientation design altered programming, itâ??s still evolving, and weâ??re still learning to use it better. Many changes in the tools we use and how we write applications affect the approach we take to OOD. Some of these changes relate to architecture where new approaches like SOA and the layering revolution behind Silverlight alter the place of traditional OOD within the bigger picture of architecture.

• An Insight into Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Magic

  Tue, 12 May 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  This is a cross technology talk and is suitable for anyone with an interest in the design and development of websites. Abstract In this talk, Michael Briggs (SEO guru) will discuss the art and science of improving the visibility of your clients websites in the major search engines. Do you know how to make sure your website gives the search engines the information they need to maximise your ranking potential? Do you know your canonical meta tag from your keyword density? Genuflect to the Googl...

• Developer Day Scotland 2009

  Sat, 2 May 2009, 09:00 - 17:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  About Developer Day Scotland Developer Day Scotland (DDS) is a community event, run by community for community, which is based upon the highly successful Developer! Developer! Developer! (DDD) community conference events. Scottish Developers is pleased to bring this phenomenal success to Scotland once again. The very best of the UK speaker community will be presenting on the topics delegates wish to see. Highlights of Developer Day Scotland   Listed below are some of the key highlights of the...

• Two DBAs walk in to a room of Developers...

  Tue, 14 Apr 2009, 18:30 - 20:30 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  Did you hear the one about the two DBAs that walked into a room full of developers? If you want to find out what happened then come along and let Martin Bell and Satya SK Jayanty (our two intrepid DBAs) show you before heading off to the pub to have a good laugh about it all. Talk Description TBC Speaker Biography Martin Bell is a dashing and attractive redhead and you would never guess that he has been a freelance computer consultant in the UK for over 23 years. He?s worked on many relationa...

• jQuery - An Introduction

  Wed, 8 Apr 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom

  Abstract A new client-side framework has been taking the internet by storm, many have already been mesmerised by the power of such a small javascript library. And "what is the name of this fantastic framework?" I hear you ask, "jQuery" is my reply. jQuery is a robust javascript framework with a very small footprint (15kb minified and GZipped) which makes the complicated aspects of javascript very simple. From traversing the Document Object Model to complex AJAX functionality, jQuery can do i...

• Inversion of Control and Testability

  Thu, 19 Mar 2009, 18:30 - 20:30 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  Talk Description The architectural design pattern, Inversion of control (IOC) at last appears to be gaining some momentum in the .NET mainstream. Frameworks such as Castle Windsor, Autofac, Structuremap and Spring have given rise to the .NET IOC (inversion of control) container. Robert C. Martin says in his article on the topic of dependency inversion, "High-level modules should not depend on low-level modules. Both should depend on abstractions." An abstraction in this context implies that ...

• An Insight into SEO Magic

  Wed, 18 Mar 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Dundee, United Kingdom

  Abstract Michael Briggs will be talking about Search Engine Optimisation. [more information to follow] Bio [to follow] Agenda 18:45 Doors open19:00 Welcome19:10 An Insight into SEO Magic20:50 Feedback and Prizes21:00 End

• Live Framework

  Tue, 24 Feb 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom

  Abstract The Live Framework is the uniform way to program against Live Services from a variety of platforms, languages, applications and devices. As well as providing the operating environment and resource model, Live Framework also represents the way to access the synchronisation features offered by Mesh and provides a mechanism for replicating and hosting offline Silverlight (and HTML) applications. In this session we?ll try and demystify the Live Framework, clarifying what it is, what is ...

• Grok talks and Micro-presentation evening

  Wed, 18 Feb 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Dundee, United Kingdom

  This is an evening of Grok talks (short 10 minute presentations) and micro-presentations (20-slides, 20-seconds-per-slide). If you have something to talk about bring a presentation. Want some ideas? You can talk about anything you want if you think software developers will be interested in it. Did you discover a new technique that makes life easier, or produces faster results? Did you hit a problem and want to ensure others don't make the same mistake? Are you just really enthusiastic about s...

• Introducing OpenXML

  Tue, 10 Feb 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  Over the course of 60-75 minutes Craig will introduce OpenXML and will demonstrate how he is incorporating it into one of his line-of-business applications. Code examples will be written using C#.

• jQuery - An Introduction

  Wed, 4 Feb 2009, 19:00 - 21:00 in Dundee, United Kingdom

  Abstract A new client-side framework has been taking the internet by storm, many have already been mesmerised by the power of such a small javascript library. And "what is the name of this fantastic framework?" I hear you ask, "jQuery" is my reply. jQuery is a robust javascript framework with a very small footprint (15kb minified and GZipped) which makes the complicated aspects of javascript very simple. From traversing the Document Object Model to complex AJAX functionality, jQuery can do i...

• NHibernate

  Tue, 13 Jan 2009, 18:30 - 20:30 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  Chris Canal will be talking about NHibernate. Talk Description TBC Speaker Biography TBC Agenda 18:00 Doors Open 18:30 Welcome 18:40 TBC 19:30 Break 19:40 TBC 20:20 Feedback and Prizes 20:30 Pub (back bar at Waxy O'Connor's on West George Street) Venue Room M126 of the George Moore Building at Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow G4 0BA

• Internet Information Services 7.0 for ASP.Net Developers

  Tue, 9 Dec 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  One of the biggest and best new features of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista is Internet Information Server 7.0.  IIS 7.0 is the latest and most significant release of Microsoft's Web Server. With this release comes a new extensibility model which gives developers more options than ever before, more diagnostic tools with which developers can debug and locate issues. During the session Andrew will investigate the new architecture, look at extending, configuring and developing for IIS7, ta...

• Functional Programming in C#3.0

  Wed, 26 Nov 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Dundee, United Kingdom

  The newest version of C# introduces a number of language features that finally make it very easy to employ a functional style of programming.

• Red! Green! Then What?

  Tue, 18 Nov 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  So by now everyone knows about TDD (you do know about TDD right?) and the Red, Green, Refactor mantra, but what's this refactor thing? How do you do it? What should you refactor? Why should you refactor? In this presentation I'll show you the how, what and why's of refactoring. There'll be little by the way of slides and a lot by the way of code examples. By the end of this presentation you'll have a good understing of the principles of refactoring and you'll be eager to get to work on Monday...

• Using Git in a team

  Wed, 12 Nov 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Dundee, United Kingdom

  Git is a distributed version control system developed by Linus Torvalds. Distributed means no central server, everyone involved in a project has their own copy of the *complete* repository - all the files, all the history. Git also makes it very easy to create branches and merge the branches back into the main trunk. This talk will introduce you to Git and show you what you need to do to enable Git to work over the wire and how your team can synchronise their repositories with each other. Sp...

• Look! There's my Data! Virtual Earth san Javascript

  Wed, 29 Oct 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Dundee, United Kingdom

  Colin Angus Mackay will be showing the new Virtual Earth ASP.NET server side control and demonstrating what you can do with it without resorting to Javascript.

• An Introduction to ASP.NET MVC

  Thu, 16 Oct 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom

  In this session we'll take a look at the drivers behind MVC, the architecture of a typical ASP.NET MVC application, new features in ASP.NET that make it possible and we'll build a simple ASP.NET MVC application to explore the key concepts.

• An overview of ALT.NET Technologies

  Tue, 9 Sep 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  An attempt to raise both awareness and interest in technologies that have evolved from other sources apart from Microsoft.

• An Introduction to Oxygene and its Parallel Coding Features

  Wed, 6 Aug 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Dundee, United Kingdom

  Barry Carr talks about Oxygene (formerly known as Chrome). It is an advance .NET (and Mono) language by RemObjects influenced by Object Pascal. Oxygene has all the features of C# plus several more powerful features unique to itself.

• Functional Programming in C# 3.0

  Tue, 8 Jul 2008, 18:30 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  The newest version of C# introduces a number of language features that finally make it very easy to employ a functional style of programming. However, from the perspective of an imperative programmer, there are lots of questions surrounding functional programming.

• What is Functional Programming?

  Wed, 11 Jun 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Dundee, United Kingdom

  This presentation aims to provide you with insights into what Functional programming is and show you how functional languages can help you develop systems for multi-core machines.

• LINQ to XML - Everything but the kitchen sinq

  Tue, 10 Jun 2008, 18:30 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  Colin Angus Mackay will present a comprehensive talk on the new XML classes in .NET 3.5 and the LINQ language feature in C#3.0

• Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008

  Thu, 3 Apr 2008, 18:30 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  The Scottish Developers "Heroes Happen Here" Community Launch of Visual Studio 2008 with Mike Ormond.

• The Grok Talks

  Tue, 11 Mar 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  The evening will be a smorgasbord of subjects packaged in to short 5 to 15 minutes talks with lots of interaction as well. The subject area of software development is too large for everyone to know everything, so this is a fantastic taster for learning a little bit about stuff you don't know much about already.

• Business apps with WPF - the full monty - Featuring Oliver Sturm

  Wed, 5 Mar 2008, 14:00 - 17:00 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom

  This double session walks you through the whole process of creating a business application with WPF, focusing on how it saves you development time.

• Team Foundation Server with Richard Fennell

  Tue, 12 Feb 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  In this session we will show how continuous integration, the automated building and testing of projects whenever files are checked in, can be used to improve the quality of any software development project.

• My Favourite Patterns

  Wed, 16 Jan 2008, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  Top speaker Gary Short presents his favourite patterns. If you missed this highly acclaimed presentation at DDD then this is your chance to see it.

• SQL Server Evening

  Wed, 14 Nov 2007, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  FREE Joint event with the Scottish SQL Server User Group with 2 speakers. Frank Kerrigan: Introduction to Microsoft Reporting Services Steve Phillips: SQL Server Managed Objects (SMO)

• db4o: An Embeddable Database Engine for Object-Oriented Environments

  Wed, 10 Oct 2007, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  Jim Paterson describes the key features of db4o, and shows how to save objects in the database, use the db4o query mechanisms, control transactions and object activation, refactor databases, replicate data to a relational database and use db4o in a web app. You will also find out about extensive the developer resources provided by the db4o community.

• Astoria and XBAPs

  Wed, 3 Oct 2007, 19:00 - 21:00 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom

  Guy Smith-Ferrier will be delivering two sessions on Wednesday 3rd October in Edinburgh: Microsoft Codename "Astoria" AND Using ClickOnce and XBAPs To Deploy Windows Forms and WPF Applications

• The Agile Enterprise and Independent Software Vendors

  Wed, 12 Sep 2007, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  Agile software engineering is not the same across the enterprise and ISVs. In this talk we'll look at some of the different ways in which agile software engineering principles are applied in the enterprise and in ISVs; where it's easy, where it's hard, and how to make it just that little bit less painful for everyone.

• SQL Server 2005 - XML and XML Query Plans

  Wed, 6 Jun 2007, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  In this presentation Martin Bell, will be looking at the different ways to create XML query plans such as T-SQL statements, SQL Profiler and DMVs. He will look at using XML schemas and the schema used for XML Query Plans. Methods of loading XML Query Plans into a database including SSIS, CLR and T-SQL statements will be demonstrated. XML Query Plans with be analysed using XQueries to show how you can monitor and detect performance issues.

• Introduction to AJAX

  Wed, 2 May 2007, 19:00 - 21:00 in Glasgow, United Kingdom

  The demonstration will end with a code example showing use of AJAX to enhance user experience, and a question-and-answer session. The excitement around AJAX ensures this is a "must attend" session for anyone involved in web design and development.

• Web Security Conference Day for Windows Developers

  Thu, 12 Apr 2007, 09:00 - 18:30 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom

  Scottish Developers have secured the support of two consultants from Charteris plc, a respected IT and Managemant Consultancy and Microsoft Gold Partner. Barry Dorans and Chris Seary are security specialists who regularly speak on subjects relating to the securing of web applications.