Jackie Goldstein's Weblog

While we can expect a lot of excitement, attention, and noise around the April release of VS 2010 and .NET 4, there are a few other strategic (i.e. longer term) technologies that I think we need to be paying attention to as well:

1. Windows Azure – Scalable Cloud Computing is all the rage these days (for many good reasons). Microsoft’s platform is not only compelling, but has also evolved to address many “real-world” issues. The offering goes live this month.

2. Silverlight 4 – Silverlight has come a long way from its version 1.0 Java Script beginning. The soon-to-be-released version 4 has added many of the missing pieces required to make it a serious tool for line of business applications. Without a doubt, Silverlight will increasingly become the primary Microsoft UI technology.

3. ASP.NET MVC 2.0 – While originally an “interesting” technology for the fringe of ASP.NET developers, the Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework is clearly destined to become mainstream. Version 2.0 will be included as part of VS 2010 / .NET 4 and has smoothed some of the rough edges of the initial release.
(I elaborated on this here)

You can find PDC sessions, slides and videos on these topics at http://microsoftpdc.com/Videos

Have you been subjected to a job interview like this?

(from http://www.resumark.com/blog/)

While originally an “interesting” technology for the fringe of ASP.NET developers, the Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework is clearly destined to become mainstream. Version 2.0 will be included as part of VS 2010 / .NET 4 and has smoothed some of the rough edges of the initial release.

One of the questions we have been struggling with at Renaissance is what browser development technologies to focus on for our in-house and client projects. Apparently we are not alone – I attended an audience-participation session at the PDC dedicated to the question of choosing between Webforms, MVC, and Silverlight.
Each technology has its pros and cons, and each development project must be analyzed for its particular needs and tradeoffs. Still, I would offer the following observations:

(1) The architecture encouraged by the MVC framework leads to more testable and maintainable applications, with a clear separation of roles – both in software and human developers and designers.

(2) For more “futuristic” applications, where you want more advanced graphics muscle and the power and familiarity of the .NET framework, go with Silverlight. As I said previously, it is the future of UI on the Microsoft platform.

While on the subject of MVC vs. Webforms,  check out the interesting post by Scott Guthrie:  About Technical Debates (and ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC debates in particular)

The January  meeting of the Israel Dot Net Developers User Group will be held on Wednesday January  20, 2010.   This meeting will focus on real-real issues and practices in developing unit tests, with a variety of tools.  Our speakers will be Dror Helper and Gil Zilberfeld from the company Typemock.

Abstract:

Unit tests increase the programmer’s confidence that individual units of source code are fit for use.

Although most software developers have heard about unit testing and some even use TDD at their work there is more to unit tests then writing tests using a framework.

This session is intended for developers that want to know more about unit testing and TDD and how it can help them produce better code.

Part 1 – Real life unit testing

Tools are not enough. If you want to succeed overtime, you need more ammunition. Some people call them best practices. We call them real life lessons. Let’s share.

· Why should every developer unit test his code

· Unit testing tools

· TDD & Unit testing best practices

· How to avoid writing fragile tests

· Testing special scenarios

Part 2 - How to make a mockery

So you’ve decided you want to unit test. Good for you. But are you ready for the next step? In the real world, applications are so complex, that in order to test a component in isolation, you need a new set of tools.

He’s what we’re going to learn:

• What’s the problem?

• Why is it so confusing?

• That’s how I roll (my own mocks)

• All sorts of Isolation frameworks

• Road-bumps and stabilizers

17:30 - 18:00   Assembly
18:00 - 19:15   “Real_life Unit Testing”  
                      Dror Helper and Gil Zilberfeld, Typemock

19:15 - 19:30   Break
19:30 – 20:30  “How to Make a Mockery”  
                     Dror Helper and Gil Zilberfeld, Typemock

About the presenters:
Dror Helper is an experienced software developer currently working at Typemock where he develops unit testing tools. Over the past 7 years, he has designed and developed applications in various fields including video streaming, eCommerce and performance tools. He is passionate about programming best practices and unit testing, and is always willing to talk about the subject. He was a guest presenter at several user groups. Visit Dror’s blog (http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/dhelper/) where he writes about software development and best practices.

Gil Zilberfeld has been in software since childhood, starting with Logo turtles. After 15 years in commercial software companies, he has vast experience in development and development practices. Currently Gil is the Technical Evangelist of Typemock, promoting unit testing and some incredibly cool tools. He's also taken part in the Alt.Net Israel community, and has run talks in different groups. Gil blogs on the Typemock blog (http://blog.typemock.com). Gil and Dror produce the “This Week in Testing” webcast on the Typemock site.

You can currently get tremendous discounts on Microsoft PRess books as part of a special promotion celebrating their new relationship with O'Reilly.  Select your books from their site  http://microsoftpress.oreilly.com/   anf then use discount code MSINT in the shopping cart to get your savings on every Microsoft Press title.

Happy Reading !

While the release of Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 is getting all of the attention this week, version 2.0 of the Microsoft Sync Framework was also released this week and can be downloaded from here.

An interesting article published in the Gallup Management Journal posits that workplace socializing actually increases work productivity.

Here’s the sides of the debate:

Every March, we hear dire warnings about workplace productivity lost to water cooler chats. In 2008, Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimated that the productivity lost to NCAA March Madness in the U.S. would cost the economy as much as US$1.7-billion. Idle chatter, it seems, is an expensive waste of workplace time.

Well, Alex (Sandy) Pentland, PhD., of MIT would beg to differ. In fact, Dr. Pentland, the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT and the faculty director of MIT's Digital Life consortium, and Benjamin Waber, a doctoral candidate at the MIT Media Lab, have found that workplace chatter, even the idle kind, increases productivity.

What has been your personal experience?

Included below is an article regarding strategic outsourcing of R&D that I recently came across. I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts and/or plans in this area.

Technology companies are increasingly partnering with Offshore R&D providers to surmount the challenges posed by rapidly changing market dynamics.

There is a considerable shift and restructuring in the way companies are approaching R&D. Rapidly changing technologies and market dynamics, increasing competition, and availability of similar types of products are some of the factors that are making product differentiation at faster time-to-market, an absolute imperative for businesses. Technology companies are consequently requiring their R&D function to significantly enhance their innovation yield so as to drive innovation, surmount these challenges and remain competitive.
The enormous pressure on the R&D function is further compounded by shrinking R&D budgets, rising costs and increasing complexity of the R&D process. Further, the current economic downturn is only making matters worse.

Faced with this scenario, a large number of technology companies are increasingly outsourcing product R&D to address this situation and achieve greater efficiencies at economies of scale. A leading research house notes that, on an average, 40% of the R&D work can be potentially executed by using external resources. And, this would mean a contraction of R&D expenses by about 20%, conservatively.

This increasing trend towards leveraging Offshore R&D and Outsourced Product Engineering Services is substantiated by the KPMG International / Economist Intelligence Unit Survey. The survey expects the proportion of companies with at least some R&D activity taking place abroad to reach 84 percent by 2010. Similarly, the number of companies outsourcing R&D to third parties is also expected to grow to 75 percent.
Networked R&D or Collaborative R&D offers a plethora of benefits to significantly better performance per R&D dollar.

A few of the benefits that companies are deriving from Outsourcing R&D / Offshore R&D include:
- Leveraging the know-how and key development strengths of partners for faster time-to-market and additional revenues.
- Using global talent for skills in shortage at a definite cost arbitrage.
- Optimized asset utilization, enhanced focus on core competencies and increased customer-focused research/listening more to customers.
- Enlarged innovation capacity with new knowledge and experience across the globe.
- Getting new and innovative products to market faster with enhanced efficiency and productivity.

If you are involved, or considering starting, your own technology business, I strongly recommend you invest half an hour to watch this video by David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails framework and Partner at 37Signals.

It is full of sound observations and advice and quite entertaining as well. 

My key take-away:  Don’t shoot for the stars (selling out for billions of dollars) – but a sustainable and growable business.  The odds of your success are much great.

Do you agree?