A book is born!!!

As most of you know, I was involved in writing a book about C# programming (we were 30 authors, each had to write a chapter and edit a chapter).You can click on its cover in order to be taken to download the PDF version:

Hope you will enjoy it.

Oh, almost forgot – it is in BULGARIAN . There were some plans to have it translated but as I am not a part of telerik anymore, I don’t have any information from the kitchen how far this project went.

Please be sure to say a great thanks to telerik for sponsoring this book!

It's time to vote again!

It is again time to vote for your best tools in the software development.
Don't waste time, showing some love to one vendor or another will help that vendor push harder in the right direction.

So click on the image and show some love to your favorite vendor.

Take a time to watch those things. The future is comming ...

I can't hide that I am very excited about what's happening with the technology.
About one year ago (maybe a bit more) I found an open source project called Touchless SDK you can find the post and the video (here).

I played a bit with the SDK back then and managed to do some trivial tasks - move my cursor with fingers, rotate an Open GL 3D globe etc.

I had some great ideas about this, yet I didn't have time to try to implement them.
Yesterday I was browsing to see if there are some TED Talks I haven't already watched and found this one (two parts):

Part 1:


Part 2:



I think that this technology is not yet implemented as it is shown in the video. My guess is that guy has some of it implemented and some of it - not yet. Anyway it seems very promising.

Hope you like it!

My chapter in the C# book is almost done!

I am about 80% ready with the first chapter of the book "Introduction to programming with C#" (this one was assigned to me on the initial meeting).
Lot's of things borrowed from the Java version of the book, still lot of things are new.

In the first chapter I teach the reader what he / she needs in order to create a simple console application.

Both ways are shown - using simple text editor (notepad in our case) and csc and using Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition (as being free for students).

I will mention #Develop. How to debug is also mentioned in the book.
I will soon (probably today) include some information about the .NET Reflector.


Wish me luck!

Introduction to programming with C#

As Vesko Kolev stated in his blog - a new bulgarian book about C# programming is in progress.
I decided to take part because it seems very interesting. I haven't much experience in publishing so it will be very beneficial for me to work on this.
Actually I was author in a software magazine few years ago (as far as I remember I was about 17 years old so it must have been about 6 years ago). It should help me as I took the first chapter - introduction to programming where I will show the readers how to install Visual Studio 2010, how to start their first project and how to write their first program, some diagrams of the .NET framework 4.0 will also be included in this chapter.

We decided not to include any advanced features in this book, just core programming language, no extensions, no lambda expressions, no var, no automatic properties, no nothing.
This is because this book targets potential software developers and not software developers. It should show the developer how to code, how to think etc. We decided that if a man / lady without any software experience may think that auto property won't take memory after it doesn't involve variables (at least visualy :).
That is why we do only core things.

Wish us luck. We would really love to expand bulgarian software development community with few more people :). After all if even one guy / gal of all the people that will potentiall read the book becomes an expert - our mission would be completed (we are dreaming for more impact ofcourse :).

As Svetlin Nakov and Vesko Kolev said - telerik is sponsor for this book so it should be published easilly than their prеvious book - "Introduction to programming with Java" and would probably joy some more marketing efforts.

That was it about the book.
Now about my motivation to join the project no matter my personal engagements and all the work I have at telerik and at the university.
The first reason is that I am a self - taught (almost) developer.
I never had degree that will help me find my work, join some society of developers that will help me when I hit a difficult problem.
There wasn't even internet in my hometown. A friend of mine gave me a book on programming with Delphi (that Sams 21 days brick :).
The Delphi help also helped me and I also downloaded html files to read later when I was at school.

Then I applied for a job in the city where I was studying (Veliko Tyrnovo).
It was all my collegues that helped me improve my skills.
I don't feel as a worldwide recognised expert or something but getting to the intermediate level from nowhere is achievement to me.
So reason #1 to join this book is to give something back.

Another reason is that I would like to see how a book is written, are there different proccesses than in the software development. It has something to do with the blog posts I guess :)
So reason #2 is to steal some knowledge :)

And some kind of nostalgy would be the last reason to join :).As I said, I was an editor in a software magazine, it was very nice thing to do. The article, then the readers asking for some more information. I miss this a bit :)
Reason #3 - to feel the old days when I was an editor :)

ASP.NET PRO readers choice awards

You can vote for ASP.NET readers choice awards here:

http://www.aspnetpro.com/awards/default.asp

give a hand to your favorite components, controls, utilities, editors and so on!

MCTS : Windows applications achieved today!

I got this badge officially today:



I am already entitled as a MCPD: Web Applicaionts but I wanted to achieve the MCPD : Enterprise Developer also so I needed to pass the windows thing.
In order to get there I only need to pass one more exam - the Distributed Applications exam.
Wish me luck!

Bulgarian IT Boxing - We (.NET team and fans) lost round 2, waiting for round 3 now ...

Last night the second round of Bulgarian ITBoxing took place. What is ITBoxing? ITBoxing is an event where developers using different platforms gather and present the advantages of their platform. After all the technologies are presented the audience votes about their favourite technology. Last night the following technologies were presented (votes included): Java 73 votes. .NET 45 votes. Ruby on Rails 13 votes. PHP 11 votes. This was the second round so now Java and .NET are on the top (the first round was for .NET ;). I was disappointed to understand that my technology wasn't first this time. Round 3 will be held in about a month or so and the topic will be Enterprise development. Hopefully there will be less Java

developers in the audience this time so we can win again ;). I think we deserve it ;).

NOTE: I wasn't in the .NET team, I was in the audience but tried to help with comments against Java ;).

No matter which technology wins I think those events are very helpful for all develeopers, as after all - our work is to complete our job on time and with less efforts. When you attend such events you can inform yourself about which type of tasks are easier to complete with Java, which with .NET, which with PHP and which with Ruby.