Summit Day 4 - Drill-Down Day (Final)
Well, today was the last day of the 2004 MVP Summit. I'm sad to say that it's over, but as they say, all good things must come to an end. I truly enjoyed my time here, and I hope those of you who couldn't make it for whatever reason have enjoyed my meandering and particularly the photos.
Like yesterday, I can't really share any of the details because so much of it is under NDA. I can say that Rob Howard had a great presentation on preparing for Whidbey. A few of the tips follow.
Watch out for the reserved directories e.g., /code, /themes, /data, and of course /bin. He didn't mention /resources, but I assume this was just an oversite. If you use these names off the app root now, you'll probably need to change them when moving to v2; for instance, the /themes dir only allows .skin files.
Watch out for class names that may conflict with all of the new classes in v2.
Don't put code in designer-generated regions. In the current version, there are regions designated by VS.NET as designer regions, and they usually say not to modify (e.g., the InitializeComponent method). In fact, I've heard many complain about loss of code in that method when they add their own event wirings. The warning here is for migration. They will be doing away with that section in Whidbey.
Think about the provider model/design pattern in Whidbey when designing your application services. That is to say design them with the model in mind to ease your transition--perhaps you can just port your code as a custom provider with a few changes if you do this correctly.
There was also a session today on some of the futures for debugging and tracing web apps in IIS. Looks like some great stuff that will help us diagnose problems and reduce the number of calls we need to make to PSS for help.
Omar Khan did a beneficial session covering the deltas from the PDC release of Whidbey to the new March preview release. They have really been busting their butts to make VS.NET a superb product, and I think they're on the right track.
Scott Guthrie covered an extended look into what the web platform and tools group are doing targeting the Longhorn timeframe. This is some awesome stuff and, I think, will change the way a lot of us think about web apps (and rich client apps, for that matter). The future looks really bright.
The pics today are clearly few (6) and are mostly for my own album (e.g., photos of me with friends), but if you're curious, here they are. I decided to give myself (and those around me) a break from the camera tonight as a group of us ASP.NET MVP folks went out to the 2 Dagos from Texas restaurant. If you're ever here, I recommend their mozzarella sticks (some of the best I've eaten) and fried steak bites. I also heard good reviews of the ribeye from Phil Winstanley, but who can trust a steak recommendation from a limey, right? :o)
I also met a few new folks tonight including Bill Evjen, Doug Seven, Michael Palermo, and Sam Gentile. Without exception, the MVPs and MS folks have been quite amicable, easygoing, and pleasant. It's a great world we live in where so many great folks can be found in one place.
So that's today. After a brief elevator ride (with Duthie, Gentile, and Avery), I'm here in my room for the last night in Seattle. I'll miss it, but it will be nice to get back to my family, my job, my life, and finally to get some sleep!
May you all have a blessed Holy Week and Happy Easter! For you Catholics, may I suggest you make an effort to go to the Easter Triduum services. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to Holy Thursday due to travel, but I think we all would do well to make an effort where we can.
Thanks to all for taking the time to listen to me, and I hope you've enjoyed the Summit series and, especially, pics.