This week the guys talk to Damien Guard, a developer working on LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework. After discussing data access for a while, they talk about the programming font Damien publishes, Envy Code R.
- Damien assures us that LINQ To SQL is not at all dead and talks about some of the new features in LINQ To SQL 4.
- Damien discusses the T4 templates in EF/VS2010 as well as the LINQ to SQL T4 templates he’s released on CodePlex as L2ST4.
- New features in EF 4 (LINQ operators, ObjectSet)
- Additional LINQ To SQL mocking with ITable<T>
- Some general discussion of query performance optimization in L2S and EF, including some enhancements in v4.
- Code-only configuration to enable fluent configuration for EF
- Kevin compares the code-only configuration to Fluent NHibernate
- K Scott asks about how code-only configuration would enable TDD with EFF
- Damien talks about the challenges of TDD and DDD when developing a framework
- Jon asks the “Should L2S be on CodePlex” question
- Damien mentions Matt Warren’s LINQ IQueryable Toolkit
- Jon asks about the experience and improvements to migration from L2S to EF
- K Scott asks about common L2S mistakes
- Jon asks about POCO support in EF
- Kevin bemoans the lack of support for refreshing a L2S model when your schema changes
- The talk shifts over to the programming font Damien designed, Envy Code R
- Damien explains the intricacies of TrueType, bitmap fonts and hinting
- Discussion of font editing software, from FontLab ($500) to FontForge (free, open source), and Microsoft Visual TrueType (free, weird license agreement which must be faxed in)
- Damien’s crazy font hack to get italic comments in Visual Studio
- Jon asks about the new typography features in Windows 7, including the new DirectWrite API
- Damien prefers Mac font rendering for quick glances, Windows for long use
- Discussion of how fonts affect eyestrain
- Jon talks about font rendering on Kindle and how he’s using it as an RSS aggregator
Show Links:
- LINQ to SQL changes in .NET 4.0
- L2ST4 – LINQ to SQL T4 templates
- LINQ IQueryable Toolkit
- Envy Code R
- TrueType
- FontLab
- Microsoft Visual TrueType
- Windows 7 font changes and Gabriola
- DirectWrite
- Amazon Kindle
Download / Listen:
Herding Code 50: Damien Guard on LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework, and Fontography
[audio://herdingcode.com/wp-content/uploads/HerdingCode-0050-Damien-Guard-on-LINQ-to-SQL-Entity-Framework-and-Fontography.mp3]