November 2007 - Posts

BBQ Story Told
26 November 07 06:05 PM | despos | 6 comment(s)

A couple of weeks ago, during DevConnections in Las Vegas many people approached me at the end of my sessions or in the lobby to ask on my feelings about BBQ. In the recent interview on DNR, Carl Franklin insisted on that point and I told the story again. It's a kind of cult, now. So I thought that the picture I agreed to take had to be posted and, by the way, thanks to Luigi Bianchi for the picture and for the great dinner. We had dinner together but not in THAT restaurant.

Anyway, here are some notes about me and BBQ. The whole story started back in 1995 when my wife and I came to the States--first time ever--for our honeymoon. We stayed in NYC for a few days and then moved to some cities in the North-East, including Philadelphia and Washington DC.

While we were around the White House in DC, I saw people voluptuously eating a sandwich with some red-ish content. At a distance, it looked like a gorgeous hot dog. And as most Italians in the US for the first time do, I couldn't resist to the temptation of getting some real junk food. My wife made a few attempts to discourage me from trying the unknown. But I wanted it to. And I had it.

I couldn't tell more than just "I want this" to the man at the booth and, due to my poor English, I had no chance to ask more articulated questions on the food. When I first had it in my hands, it didn't look very attractive honestly. But I had to give my wife a proof that I was a real man :) capable of eating just everything. And in the condition of honoring properly her cooking skills once back in Italy. I had the first bite to the red-ish thing. And it wasn't great at all. I couldn't let it go after only ONE attempt, though. No real man does that, I thought. So I had a second bite, and then a third.

There was no fourth bite and the sandwich was soon thrown away in the nearest trash can. My wife laughed at me for a while and that was all of it. A few days later, we flew back home and completely forgot what happened. And I still didn't know the name of that red-ish thing.

8 years later, in the spring of 2003, I went to Birmingham, Alabama to interview a potential customer. At the time Mark Dunn was running DNR with Carl Franklin. Mark was in the same city as me and decided to go out to dinner together. "I want you to try a specialty of this area, the popular southern BBQ", he said with sincere enthusiasm. To me, BBQ meant something like good meat grilled, or sort of. And I liked the idea. We went out, Mark made the order, and we sat waiting for the food. When the waiter came in with the food, with my greatest surprise I realized that I had in the plate the same red-ish content of the sandwich I threw away in DC 8 years before. Who knows me, knows very well that I do hate to throw any food away. For a moment, I thought of some sort of revenge of the destiny. You threw some food away once, but now 8 years later the same food is back, right in your plate. Feeling kind of guilty, I made a point of eating it all to clear with the past and to honor Mark. I also hoped in a failure of my memory. And I also hoped in just a fluke event--it looks LIKE that, but it's not LIKE that.

In the end, it was exactly LIKE that.

I scored a still unbeaten record--I had four bites of it. But couldn't last any longer. I tried to be polite to Mark and for approximately twenty minutes I looked like a regular customer enjoying his food. Then, I had to confess that I didn't know the name of that red-ish thing. But I did know the taste, and I didn't like it. At all.

It was too funny of a story and Mark and Carl couldn't resist to tell it in the interview we had the next day. Back in October 2007 when I gave a new interview to DNR, guess what, the first Carl's question was if I changed by mind about BBQ. Sorry Carl I had no more BBQ since that night in the spring of 2003. No matter what this picture--captured Nov 9 in Henderson, Las Vegas--may suggest.

PS: For the most curious of you, we had excellent seafood in a side restaurant :)
PS: Experts say that my problem with BBQ is not with BBQ itself but with the red-ish and sweet-ish sauce that accompanies it. Don't know. And don't care :)

 

Training in Vienna
19 November 07 12:05 PM | despos | 1 comment(s)

December 17-19 I'll be in Vienna for an intensive 3-day class on ASP.NET AJAX programming. You'll see the easy and not-so-easy way to AJAX that passes through partial rendering and script services up to WPF and Silverlight--current and next.

See you at IT-versity. Feel free to contact me for further info on the topics being covered.

Filed under: AJAX Training

DevConn07 Fall:: MVC FX is it car or motorcycle?
07 November 07 12:42 AM | despos | 22 comment(s)

The MVC Framework is the next (not necessarily big) thing for ASP.NET developers. ScottGu unveiled some of its aspects a few weeks ago. Today here at DevConnections I attended a presentation about this new stuff. First off, the "new stuff" is really new and for the time being we're not allowed yet to play with it. No CTP is available at this time and no sample code is available for home perusal.

This is reasonable because we're clearly talking about a technology that is not even in alpha. But the funny thing is that we're here talking about it :)

<grin>
It seems that the bar of software preview has been moved one more tick down. There was a time when any software was top secret until publicly released. Next, we assisted to pre-release announcements and demos. Next, we were allowed to play ourselves with beta versions for longer and longer times. And our feedback was first appreciated and then requested. Next, it was the season of CTPs, progressive alpha versions that precede the beta stage--the teen-age of software.
With the MVC framework we reached the notable point of publicly discussing a piece of software that is not even a CTP. I wonder what would be the next step. Discussing ideas, I bet. And after that?
</grin> 

So the ASP.NET MVC framework. I totally agree with one of the sentences in the intro slide. The MVC framework is not Web Forms 4.0 but is simply an alternative to it. Like with cars and motorcycles, each has pros and cons, and everyone can find it simple or complex based on his/her preferences and attitudes. The MVC framework blinks at the Model-View-Controller pattern and apparently transmits the idea that just the MVC pattern represents its main aspect. But wait a moment. I just said that the MVC framework represents an alternative to Web Forms. Which is largely true and correct. And then? If the MVC framework is all about the MVC pattern, does it mean that the MVC pattern represents an alternative to Web Forms? Put this way, we're simply comparing apples and oranges.

So what's IMHO the main aspect of the MVC framework? It uses a REST-like approach to ASP.NET Web development. It implements each request to the Web server as an HTTP call to something that can be logically described as a "remote service endpoint". The target URL contains all that is needed to identify the controller that will process the request up to generating the response--whatever response format you need. I see more REST than MVC in this model. And, more importantly, REST is a more appropriate pattern to describe what pages created with the MVC framework actually do.

Is there any MVC in it? Sure, there is. The team just used the MVC pattern to implement a framework that adds REST capabilities to the ASP.NET platform. With this new framework you don't need the viewstate to save the last-known-good-state of each page and the postback model with all of its events is gone. Why? There's just another HTTP handler to serve the request and this new handler just figures out which action to carry out, grab data (the model), calls the appropriate method (on something called the controller), collects its output and prepares the response--called the new view. In my opinion, the MVC pattern is instrumental to implementing an alternative model for Web requests.

In this context, MVC is like XML in AJAX. It's neither the main actor nor the main factor. But it's in the name of the technology because, perhaps, it makes it cool. As I'll be explaining tomorrow MVC or MVP (Model-View-Presenter) can be applied to ASP.NET pages regardless of the model they use for posting back to the server.

Your take?

 

 

Filed under: ASP.N ET MVC

DevConn07 Fall:: .NET 3.5 Service Pack In the Works
06 November 07 11:28 PM | despos | 2 comment(s)

What I called ".NET 3.6" in the previous post, is actually going to be an important part of the .NET 3.5 Service Pack to ship sometime next year. So for ASP.NET developers, the SP will contain MVC, Silverlight controls, Dynamic Data controls, History, Astoria services, and maybe more.

Now, we ASP.NET 3.5 that counts just 3 new features, the SP is real step-up for Web developers :)

I just wonder if the multi-targeting feature of VS 2008 will support also .NET 3.5 SP1 as an option <grin>

DevConn07:: .NET 3.5, A Thing Of The Past
06 November 07 11:24 PM | despos | 2 comment(s)

I joined the attendees of one of the MS Silverlight presentations here at DevConnections a bit late. When in, the first thing that I saw was stunning.

<asp:Silverlight ... />

Wow. Super.

For the entire presentation I hoped that the guys on the stage were using the RTM of .NET 3.5. Unfortunately, for most MS presenters the .NET FX 3.5 is just a thing of the past. They are ahead, and certainly with reason.

The presenters of the sessions I attended today were running a sort of "ASP.NET 3.6" that adds up some of the controls currently in ASP.NET Futures, just properly revised and updated.

In the end, for .NET 3.5 applications, JavaScript is still the only way to go to set up Silverlight pages. And ".NET 3.6" is anyway just around the corner, just to complicate our life a little bit more.

What about a break?

DevConn07 Fall::First million-dollar question about Silverlight
06 November 07 04:35 PM | despos | 3 comment(s)

One of the million-dollar-questions of these days.  

I say that WPF and Silverlight will eventually make ASP.NET and AJAX obsolete. Dino, what do you think about this prediction?

I firmly believe that the two worlds—Web and Windows—will remain neatly separated for most of the foreseeable future.  At the same time, though, the advent of WPF and Silverlight generates many more possibilities of interaction between Web and Windows that were just impossible or impractical before.  Once the next Silverlight is available you can develop for the Web with much of the same ease you experience today for the desktop. You could even get to the point of using the same WPF document to power the Web and Windows front-end of a multi-tier system. Well, not for free, but is definitely a scenario that the use of proper design patterns (i.e., the Model-View-Presenter pattern) may enable. At that point, I believe that you just have two options--deluxe experience with a 100% Silverlight solution or normally rich Web experience with a combination of AJAX and Silverlight in the same ASP.NET page. With Silverlight used in this case as a rendering engine for special data.

To be more direct with the question: For Silverlight and WPF to dethrone ASP.NET and AJAX all developers on all platforms must agree to use it. Technologically speaking, nothing prevents this from happening. In practice, though, I wouldn’t bet on it. But I see a lot of interaction taking place between Silverlight and ASP.NET AJAX applications.

And now, let me rush to hear latest news from ScottGu here at DevConnections in Las Vegas.

Filed under: Silverlight