October 2003 - Posts
Eric Rudder presented a session this morning on the next version for Visual Studio.NET code name “Whidbey”. There are a lot of cool new features inside of Whidbey including, but not limited to:
- A stripped down web server that runs on a random port so you no longer have to install IIS
- Code flags that are color coded so you know what code was changed since the last time a file was saved
- You no longer need to have projects for ASP.NET apps, you can just have the .aspx files in a directory and point the IDE at that directory and it will know what to do.
- There is support for master pages that can be inherited, which is really cool especially if you want to lock a certain design in place
- As well as so many other features...
I am kind of tired and it's hard to think, but I still wanted to give an update.
One comment I heard was, “Damnit, there making VS.NET as annoying as MS Word. So when do we get the .NET Assistant? Think we could get a Ballmer assistant that will say developer 37 times?”
Any how the PDC is rockin' and there are many more things to come.
I am currently in the Indigo session which is being presented by Don Box. Though we are only 15 minutes into the session it appears to great session. If you see that Don will be presenting at any of the sessions I highly suggest attending. Don is such an entertaining presenter yet he also covers the material and knows his stuff.
This being my first ever big tech conference, I was pleased with the pre-conference stuff that took place today. I attending Jeff Richter's talk on the CLR Internals, which I found very informative, although most of it was just a review for me. I think there may have been quite a few more blogs posted from me if I didn't have a pounding headache right now from the hangover. As for now, it's early, I am gonna get some sleep so I can be on top of things tomorrow and so I can get up early to hear Gates' keynote.
I can't wait for this day to be over, not only did I not get any sleep last night becuase I was trying to get ahead in my school work, but the PDC is just around the corner. I have a meeting here at 5:00 for the ACM ICPC, then I am off to home where I can pack all my stuff up and continue reading blogs about all the cool stuff I will be seeing at my first PDC ever. I will have my digital camera with me and I will be only either via PDA or laptop. I am looking forward to meeting some really cool people as well as seeing some of the hottest technologies. I AM GEEKED... can't it be Sunday already???
As a student ambassador one of my objectives for the year is to get my campus more involved with .NET. As for student organizations most technical ones in the past have just floundered, as of right now I have 50 members in mine it is is constantly growing, but I want to do more. Many of the members of the GV.NET Users Group have never seen nor touched .NET until now and some students just don't have that drive to explore certain things on their own. Unfortunately I don't like to see this, but it's the truth of the matter. I have brought up the possibility of teaching a .NET course as part of the curriculum next year, but it doesn't appear that is likely to happen.
I figure where there's a will there's a way... I proposed to my department chair, what if I took an independent study next semester and worked with one of the professors to prepare a course centered around .NET, with the plan to teach it next winter. At first he was skeptical, but after a few minutes of coaxing him I think I may have convinced him, of what a good idea this would be and so GVSU may be on its way toward its .NET class ever.
So on Wednesday in my data structures we had a little discussion about one of our projects. The project is to create an automata and we didn't have to program for the epsilon transitions, but the instructor proposed that if we wanted to program for the epsilon transitions, we didn't have to take the exam. Now I am not a person that looks for the easy way out, so I think I may take the exam even after I turn in my automata program with the epsilon transitions working properly. Let's just say, I have a passion for CS and love to program.
Jeff, I would also like to thank you for the shirt. I will be blogging everything as well.
On another note, what day is everyone wearing the shirts? I think it would be a cool picture if there were a ton of us wearing them all on the same day.
I am a little perturbed by the image that is posted on MS “What is .NET?” website. Now either I am just off on some other tangent in life or they should really re-word the first paragraph in this image, under web services:
I really do not agree that web services are written “in” XML, I warrant that they are written to provide XML and are designed to use XML, but written in XML? Any thoughts on this?
This image is linked from the following site: http://www.microsoft.com/net/basics/whatis.asp
Well tonight was the first official meeting for the GV.NET users group. We had a turn out of about 20 individuals which I didn't think was too bad for starters. I will be holding an additional meeting on Wednesday of this week and hopefully I will see many of the same faces again as well as some new ones. It's great teaching others about the beauty of .NET. I think we can have a very successful year and I am looking forward to it.
Grand Valley State University will soon have a .NET users group. I am the one personally heading this up right now and our first two meetings are Monday, October 13 @ 5:30 and Wednesday, October 15 @ 7:00. If you are in the area and would like to see me give my first .NET presentation or you are just interested in the beauty of .NET stop by Henry hall around one of these times.
The first meeting will cover an introduction to .NET and it will also dicuss the role of the users group. I have alot of ideas for this year and I am really excited to get things rolling.
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