The Tampa ASP.NET MVC Developer Group had our second meeting this past Thursday, which was a code review of the 2009 Orlando Code Camp that was built using the ASP.NET MVC Framework. Just like the first meeting where we had 74 attendees, the second meeting had 75 attendees!! I am really excited about the popularity of the Tampa MVC Group and how the developers appreciate a group that is dedicated to teaching real-world, employable skills on web development and ASP.NET MVC!

The purpose of the second meeting was two-fold:

• Show ASP.NET MVC production code based on code and techniques presented during the first meeting.
• Help developers understand what it was like to move from ASP.NET Webforms to ASP.NET MVC from a developer that made the transition

Fabio did a wonderful job capturing everyone’s attention and presenting the material in a fun and pragmatic manner. All the feedback has been wonderfully positive.

T4 Template Code Generation

Prior to the main presentation, I gave a 30 minute presentation on the T4 Template Code Generation features leveraged by ASP.NET MVC. I showed per project T4 Templates and how to generate all the code presented in the first meeting in about 3 minutes without writing a single line of code. Albeit such a task would only be applicable in the simplest of forms-over-data ASP.NET MVC web applications, the demos really brought home the functionality and the ability to leverage T4 Templates per project for code generation and productivity. I will create a screencast on this small presentation later this week.

Books and More Books

A huge thanks to Apress and Wrox for providing us copies of Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework and Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 as giveaways to the attendees. Both books are great and will help the developers come up to speed on the functionality. I have read both books and posted the following reviews:

• Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework Book Review
• Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Book Review

For the person who really wants a “Pro” book I highly recommend Steven Sanderson’s Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework. For the person who wants more of a beginner book, you will appreciate Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0.

Homework Assignments

Different from other developer groups, the Tampa ASP.NET MVC Developer Group has monthly homework assignments that reinforce and challenge attendees on their grasp of what was presented in previous meetings. I will be sending the next homework assignment out this week, and as usual, within about a week before the next meeting post the solution source code as well as a screencast showing how I came up with the solution.

Conclusion

Thanks to everyone for their continued attendance. Next month’s meeting will be an Introduction to jQuery with ASP.NET MVC. Prior to that main presentation, I will be presenting the UI-related functionality in MVC Contrib and ASP.NET MVC Futures.

David Hayden