I am really sorry to everyone waiting for my blog to start showing news from Microsoft PDC. My brain is running 90mph with stuff I'm seeing and thinking. The prime question is whether coming to PDC was a good time investment this time around. I know a lot of people who decided not to come because it looked like another Whidbey / Yukon / Longhorn / Avalon / Indigo show, which is exactly what we had two years ago. Admittedly there is some repeat but the Microsoft product teams have been busy over the past two years and there was lots to see and hear.
When I got to PDC 2003 I was already working on a Visual Basic 2005 book so a lot of the Whidbey stuff was not new to me so I tried to take in Yukon and Avalon stuff. Avalon and XAML really got my attention two years ago. I'm glad to see Microsoft actively going after that user experience (UX) model. It's exciting. This time around they showed off Microsoft Max, a photo sharing tool built on top of Avalon and Indigo - presumably as a dogfooding exercise. It's good stuff (actually, it implements ideas I had last year for a software product - glad I didn't go after that business idea...).
So what got me excited this year? Here's a partial list:
- LINQ (Language Integrated Query) - query and set operations extensions to the core .NET languages
- Windows Workflow Foundation - workflow services built into your app with a great DSL designer
- Improved security guidance including threat tree templates and heuristic risk calculation rather than a numeric system (like DREAD)
- Atlas - framework for AJAX development [caveat: I expect a lot of revision to Atlas before it is ready for the average developer - what works for the smart folks on the MSN / Hotmail team is not going to work for a lot of developers who didn't study at Standford or MIT]
- Sparkle interactive designer - great tool that generates XAML
- Quartz Web designer - a Web designer that does not suck like Frontpage :-)
I will have more thoughts to come on what I've seen at PDC. Stand by.
I am organizing a casual dinner for Friday after the Microsoft PDC wraps up (open invite for all of us who decided to stay until the absolute end and cannot fly out until late Friday or Saturday). I'm hoping to find a nice Thai restaurant near the LA Convention Center. If you would like to join us or have a restaurant suggestion, send me a blog comment.
This post is partly just a shelf for me to remember this later... MakeMeAdmin is a way to temporarily give yourself admin rights so you can run as a limited user normally and pop into an elevated security context when needed. This is a great alternative to Run As in Windows 2000/XP/2003 because you don't run into issues with applications that rely on the executing user's profile.
The first Atlantic Canada CodeCamp is coming up. October 15 is just around the corner! The CodeCamp is being held in Moncton, New Brunswick. We are actively looking for speakers from the Atlantic Canada region. You can find our Call for Speakers at http://www.atlanticcodecamp.ca/callforspeakers.aspx.
See you at the CodeCamp!
In my continuing search for talented ASP.NET developers to work in New Brunswick I have posted the job on Monster.ca (
http://jobsearch.monster.ca/getjob.asp?JobID=34032896). The resumes are starting to roll in. Good stuff! I opted for Monster over Workopolis because a basic posting is for 60 days versus 30 days.