Leadership Catnip

Are you a developer at heart finding yourself managing people? It requires a different set of skills to be a leader. Skills that you may not have or know about yet.

Join me as we talk about what it means to be a good leader, including understanding different personality types, your leadership style, and how to empower those around you.

Memory Management Fundamentals - GC Deep Dive

Memory management in .NET is one of the fundamental aspects of .NET, yet it also seems to be one of the most misunderstood concepts in the CLR.

Join me as we take an in-depth look at how .NET manages memory, allocates resources, and how the Garbage Collector works.

I first presented this in 2007, where it covered GC internals and the DIsposable pattern. Since then, it's been split into two separate talks, refined and updated many times, and includes feedback directly from the Microsoft team responsible for the GC.

Memory Management Fundamentals – IDisposable and the Dispose Pattern

We’ll re-cap the basics of how garbage collection in .NET works and then discuss the IDisposable interface and the Dispose pattern.

Join me as we talk not only about how to use the pattern but also about how to implement the pattern into your classes.

I first presented this in 2007, where it covered GC internals and the DIsposable pattern. Since then, it's been split into two separate talks, refined and updated many times, and includes feedback directly from the Microsoft team responsible for the GC.

Code Styles and Standards

Style is an often overlooked but critical attribute of writing, and coding standards are also an often overlooked but critical attribute of software development. Yes, we will cover some of the "holy wars" topics, such as "curly brace placement" and "tab size," but also things like white space and indenting, comments, spelling, and so much more.

Join me for an open discussion around code styles and standards. We'll talk about what they are, why they're important, what works and doesn't work, ways to make introducing code standards to your company easier, and some best practices around creating them.

This was originally a Microsoft TechEd "Birds of a Feather" discussion session in 2007. It's meant to be an interactive discussion, so the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it.