Archives
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PDC first impressions
I got here at 8:15 in the morning and there were a number of people around. The registration process went on smoothly except for a small glitch in the software: my last name is Sánchez, with a tilde in the a and that was too much for the registration software, but after a while the ladies at the desk figured it out and everything went OK. Now I've got my official PDC bag and shirt. The bag was full with the usual CDs and propaganda (but no Whidbey or Longhorn bits until tomorrow, sorry) and a heavy copy of Writing Secure Code 2nd Edition. Perhaps tellingly, the only big line here was at the Starbucks station. Commnet is working just right, there are 40 or 50 people in the room and probably more using wireless outside and now I have an hour or so to make up my mind about whether I shell out the almost $200 extra to get to the pre-conference sessions. Back to you when I have something more useful to report.
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My favorite presentation format
G. Andrew Duthie makes a good question about a presentation format: "Do you prefer to have a presenter write the code live, or do you prefer to have the presenter show a pre-written example, and explain how the important parts work?". As he gives us ample opportunity to ask for the "perfect" format, here goes my 2 cents:
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Guess who will be at the Smart Clients BOF
Life *is* full of surprises: a few days ago I hardly managed to go to the PDC, then I was appointed to "cover" the data-driven apps panel (which basically means I'll be in charge of passing the microphone), and now the uber-RD Tim Huckaby accepted me as volunteer in the Smart Clients BOF, where I will have to take questions from very real and scary geeks, luckily Tim will be the moderator and he offered to protect this South American soul, so now I'm counting the days but for very different motivations...
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ASP to ASP.NET Migration Assistant
I mentioned here that in the very near future we were going to see an ASP to ASP.NET migration tool. Seems like the future is here (at least, the alpha of the future). Too bad there are so many things I have to learn about Whidbey that probably I won't have time to check this tool.
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Bjarne Stroustrup on structs vs. classes
This article is really dedicated to C++ but have some really useful insight on when to use structs instead of classes (in C# for example). Usually, this discussion revolves around where structs and classes are instantiated (the stack and the heap) and performance in general, but here Bjarne defines and exemplifies invariants and in so doing proposes a very nice object-oriented way of choosing one or another. One more design pattern to my bag.
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Introducing Generics in the CLR
The MSDN site notifies me that MSDN Magazine has published an article on generics, one of the most touted new features of .NET Framework 2.0; among other things, it tells us that even if we can't get a copy of Whidbey, we can still play with generics thanks to Gyro. Of course, a nicer way of getting the real thing is going to the PDC. By the way, the article is not precisely new (as a matter of fact it even has a sequel) I just didn't notice it before, oh well, that's what happens when you don't use the corresponding RSS feed...
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PDC Panels: me too
Joel is a fellow RD who will be covering two of the PDC panels. I will be covering one myself (Client Architecture: The Zen of Data-Driven Applications). The idea behind the panels is interesting: put some authoritative Microsofties with a few hundred geeks, let the geeks fire at will and see if the Microsofties can come alive and complete... To put some order in this potential mare magnum, PDC Bloggers has setup a site where people can submit questions, vote for them and finally review the answers (and, of course, criticize them). Neat.
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A quick summary of .NET Rocks' Scott Guthrie on ASP.NET 2.0
I just finished listening to .NET Rocks! interview to Scott Guthrie on Whidbey's ASP.NET 2.0, here follows a quick summary (probably full of mistakes and misunderstandings). To keep it short, I've concentrated in the what's not in the how's, why's, how far's or when's.
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Visual Studio Tools for Office is here
And for those of you with a MSDN subscription, you can download it right now.
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I'll be there even if I have to pay myself
As a Microsoft Regional Director and member of the RD Advisory Committee I have the privilege of having *free* entrance to the PDC (thank you, Eileen), unfortunately that leaves the T&E part for me. Living in Ecuador, that could be a quite pricey part, but I'm tired of the guys talking like "Whidbey does this" and "Whidbey is that" and I'm eager of using generics, so I'm definetely paying my part of the deal and in just a few weeks, I'll be the envy of the Ecuadorian .NET community (and I guess my credit card owners are really happy now also). See you at the PDC!