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Monday, February 08, 2010 ..:: Kathleen ::.. Register  Login
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A note from Kathleen

I’m the founder and lead of GenDotNet. My passion and focus is making individual programmers more productive in order to build teams that are more effective - including code generation, frameworks, and testing, and static analysis. I'm also interested in teaching people how to effectively use the framework, espicially tracing and generics. 

The technologies I work with lead to faster development, but that’s not why I’m excited about these technologies. Going faster is not helpful unless you’re also building projects better. One of the fundamentals of improving development is recognizing categories of code, isolating them, and using the right development shortcuts for each. Main categories of code include business logic that transcends any application, transitory technology patterns that can be reused across domains, and a code to chink the gaps so things work in an imperfect and ever-changing technical world.

Code Generation in Microsoft .NET
Released February 2004

Code Generation in Microsoft .NET
APress

This book presents a technical approach to Code Generation. It reviews several techniques including brute force code generation, CodeDOM code generation, and XSLT code generation.

Reviews...

I really liked the book, because it puts into words what I’ve long practiced and pretty much kept in my head.

The book goes through the basics of code generation like gathering metadata (that’s a big word for database schema), building templates, and combining metadata with templates to produce finished result. Actually, once you’ve read the first couple of chapters, you’ll see exactly why XSLT is such a useful technology here: the XSLT processor does most of the grunt work of churning out code and writing it to appropriate files.

Bottom line: if you have never used/written code generators, time to get into it - it will make you a fantastic coder. This book will help to take you to that level. Remember, most of the time it’s not about what a brilliant coder you are; it’s about how fast you can churn out reliable apps, especially in these days of massive outsourcing. Secondly, the book will unintentionally teach you a lot about XSLT/XML. Lastly, you’ll learn a bit on how to put together enterprise grade applications in a hurry.

Robert Gelb


"This book takes a bold step forward in the art of code generation giving developers the tools to extract information from a database structure and to then generate custom stored procedures and classes from this metadata using XSLT. The book's main focus is on using XSLT templates but also discusses the use of brute force and CodeDOM for code generation. As the developer controls every aspect of the code generation and the system is extensible it is guaranteed to enhance the creativity and productiveness of developers.

The book includes an excellent appendix on XML, XPath and XST that will get you up to speed on these technologies quickly.

In this book I have found what I could not in any of the code generation products, total control of the process and extensibility"

Robert O'Connell
 
 

I'd like to share what I'm working on, but understand that I balance a lot of priorities. I don’t know when, or even if they’ll be finished, but I am hoping by summer, but here are the two books I’m currently working on...

Refactoring with Generics

I'm working on a book about generics geared to guide you in incorporating generics. In the meantime, if you're looking for a book on generics - I like Professional .NET Generics  by Tod Golding (Wrox).

 

Deciding the Future of the GenDotNet Tools

What this actually means is I'm trying to determine the role of DSL and Windows Workflow in the next generation of software development tools. I'm optimistic that we're on the edge of a new cliff, and hopefully we have nice hang gliders. This has put the 2005 version of the tools on hold. Regardless, my goal for the next set of tools is that they can be supported by the community.

 

Speaking

 

I've decided to narrow my topics down a bit because sending people 15 topics if they are interested in my speaking to their user group does not seem constructive.

Topic Description   Audience
Generics Using framework generics, and using generics to reduce the amount of code you write 2005 programmers  or programmers looking for reasons to switch
FxCop Static analysis and FxCop let you check your code for categories of errors that won't show up in the compiler. You can control what is considered an error in your environment 2005 programmers interested in improving process
.NET 2.0 Implications for Code Generation Partial classes and generics significantly simplify the templates used for code generation, regardless of what tool you use for generation 2005 programmers doing code generation with any tool
Windows Workflow Foundation  Windows Workflow Foundation allows you to defne a series of steps and control their execution. See how to leverage that in your own applications (new talk - Fall 2006) Programmers interested in Microsoft futures
Tracing Features in 2005 .NET 2.0 presents a new wrapper for the tracing plumbing that greatly expands your abillity to trace your application. See why Debug.Assert is evil and how you replace it with better techniques Programmers interested in 2005
WinFoms Tricks See some very cool things you can do with your own Winforms applications. This tak implements a Outlook style interface with no third party tools 2005 WinForms programmers
WinForms Binding in 2005 See how simple it is to bind WinForms to either strongly typed datasets or your own business classes. This is a basics talk. Audience

 
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