Archives
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.NET smart clients on... Linux?
According to this interview, the Mono project is getting out version 1.2 in April, the big news for me is that Miguel de Icaza states that it will support Windows Forms in Linux. Now, you know I'm a smart clients fan, so you can imagine how cool this sounds to me. On the other hand, it's only a beta, and it's not WinForms 2.0, and the Mono Project has been dragging for years, but I want so hard to believe...
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Tiny C# shortcut
Reading about validation on Brian Noyes' Data Binding with Windows Forms 2.0, I found this funny way of checking for a string not being empty or null:
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And now Scrum for VSTS
Some people may think I have a carefully planned posting, mmmm, plan for this blog: first I talked about dynamic languages and almost at the same time projects on PHP, Ruby and Python make interesting steps ahead. Now, I start talking about RUP and how I don't like heavy methodologies and Scrum for VSTS is released... I like agile methodologies and I even have the Microsoft Scrum book but this coincidences are starting to get me nervous. No hidden agenda, I swear, but perhaps somebody is sending me brain waves from Redmond... The truth is out there.
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RUP anyone?
"... the most well-known variant of the Unified Process has grown its knowledge base beyond manageable limits. We need to go back to basics, find the essence of the Unified Process and then start to grow from there."1
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If you are new to Ajax and Atlas...
then you have to watch this video. I know, I know, old news, but I just watched it and I'm in awe with Atlas simplicity (something amazing, given that I'm actually a smart client fan). The first 12 minutes or so, it's pretty much your standard data-driven ASP.NET site demo, hang on because then it abruptly switches to *injecting* Atlas controls in the site, effectively Ajax-enabling it, and things get quickly interesting. As usual, Scott is generous and gives us the script for the demo complete with screen pics, so after watching the video you can repeat it at your own pace. Boy, I'm going to surprise the audience at tomorrow's Quito MSDN Tour!
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Remoting vs. WCF becomes S/O vs. C/S
A few days ago I talked about my question on using Remoting or WCF. Well, I will now try to summarize the discussion on the RD list. First the arguments in favor of WCF:
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And now a .NET Ruby implementation (may be)
After blogging about dynamic languages here and here, I had every intention of *not* talking about it for a while (I wouldn't wan't to be confused with an alternative languages junkie -something actually I am- as most of the time I do LOB applications), but then here I find a reference to this blog which finally takes me to this page (don't you just love the Web redundance?): a project to implement a managed version of Ruby nothing less! Although it is in very early stages, if it comes through it will prove wrong what many Java developers said to me about the .NET Framework CLR: that it was anything but "common language", that C# and Visual Basic .NET were just "skins" on pretty much the same thing (well, may be they've got a point here), and that every other .NET language implementation was doomed to be pretty much the same. Well, if IronPython was not enough proof, the Ruby.NET project -when and if it flies- would prove all that naysayers wrong.
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Whither remoting?
You already know I'm a
new toy junkieearly adopter, so when a project that is just starting needed a light smart client talking back to a business logic server I immediately suggested using WCF. To my surprise, another architect and *my* lead developer preferred remoting, their reason? They've had very good experiences with remoting, my reason? If this system is going to live 5 years, it better uses the most looking forward technology. As I am an RD, I naively asked in the RD list for reasons to use WCF over remoting, and I got a few good responses but then the remoting camp reacted and gave good reasons for *not* using WCF. So it seems like the question is more interesting than what I thought and, before summarizing the answers I got, I would like to ask you what you think: if you were to create a client-server like application in your *intranet* would you use web services or remoting? Why? -
Dynamic season at the CLR!
Talk about coincidences: as I was blogging about dynamic languages, Microsoft was holding a small nice event, the Annual Compiler Lab. Now for the freaky part: yesterday I was talking about Ruby, Python, PHP, and other dynamic languages, meanwhile at the event that very same day was the Dynamic Languages and Scripting on the CLR day! Devhawk has a fairly complete report on the event. For me, aside the good news on dynamic languages performance on the CLR, the interesting factoid was Phalanger, a managed implementation of PHP. It's definitively dynamic season at the CLR!
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The language flavor of the decade?
Dynamic languages seem to be enjoying a steady increase in popularity. Perhaps it's just that the developer community needs something different every few years or perhaps weakly typed languages actually fill a real need, I still don't know. In any event, it appears that 3 languages are getting most of the traction:
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ASP.NET custom controls webcast
Next Monday 13th at 9:00 A.M. PST I'll be doing a webcast on developing ASP.NET custom controls, although it's somehow directed to JSP tag libraries developers, most of the contents will be of interest to any ASP.NET developer so you are invited to register here (I'm told I've got 1.500 registered people already, please help me break a record!).
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The Java framework wars
Not a week passes without a new battle (or carnage) on which Java Web development framework is the true one, today's sample:
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=39358
The funny thing is that, just a couple of minutes after hitting that place, I read a blog pointing to this:
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.219431.12 :-)
As I've said in other posting, I do J2EE training for some of our customers, and inevitable somebody asks for a way of being framework-switch-protected, for example they want to right now use Struts but be able to switch to Velocity, JSF or *anything that could appear in the future*. In the .NET camp we only have ASP.NET (certainly not perfect but very good) and it still leaves us with a lot of choices in the details, so many that sometimes it irritates beginners, may be I should teach my ASP.NET students about their Java options :-) -
Smart client fan
I have to admit I don't quite get all the enthusiasm about Ajax, I mean:
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Good URLs on Visual Studio 2005 code snippets
One of the most useful features of VS 2005 (at least for guys like me, who tend to write more code than use wizards) is code snippets, not only they make you more productive but in a presentation you can amaze your audience writing (for example) a business entity with almost no effort and in a zip. Through this posting I found a couple of very useful references:
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What is WinFX– an Executive Summary
Here you will find a *very high level* overview of WinFx. Good as a first step on selling the use of WinFx in that next projecto to your CIO. Courtesy of the nice guys at IDesign (also authors of these very usable coding standards).