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Thanks to Scott Watermasyk for a post with a link to fresh information from the Microsoft PDC on the coming ASP.NET "Whidbey" changes. This is one of many hot items currently being presented at the Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference (PDC). Most, if not all of the PDC ASP.NET Whidbey slide sets and demos are available at "Whidbey" PDC Presentations. Many of the session slide sets and code samples are now linked into the Sessions List. Microsoft is also sharing a lot of PDC information at PDC Central. For less formal but more immediate updates and reactions, see the PDC Bloggers site.
It's not quite like being there but having such information shared so quickly is great! Thanks be to Microsoft, the ASP.NET team, and all others who are sharing their invaluable PDC information and experiences!
Note that eligible MSDN Operating Systems, Professional, Enterprise, and Universal subscribers who were unable to attend the show may request the PDC software set. See the " Longhorn and Whidbey Previews available to MSDN Subscribers" item at the Updates from PDC 2003 for details.
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The Snippet Compiler, by Jeff Key, is a great tool for .NET programmers. It allows you to try out an idea quickly and efficiently without the full overhead of Visual Studio.NET. Recent releases have sported many improvements and development is very active. This one rates an emphatic “must have.”
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“The Ruby/.NET Bridge lets you use .NET and Ruby objects together in your programs. You can access .NET objects from Ruby and vice-versa.“
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Here I went and talked about SICP and Lisp for .NET and almost forgot to mention dot-scheme, a PLT Scheme extension that lets PLT Scheme access the Microsoft .NET Framework. If you want to actually play with SICP code, you will probably want these free gifts, also!
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Now that you have seen something about Lisp for .NET (You Are Not Lispless and DotLisp - A Lisp Dialect for .NET) and about MIT's new OpenCourseWare initiative, you will most certainly be excited to access the infamous “SICP“ course (6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Fall 2002).
You even get the invaluable free textbook, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, with Julie Sussman.
Congratulations! You have just been gifted with a great computer science classic and the opportunity to build a solid foundation under your software engineering. Here is a heartfelt “Thank you!“ to MIT and especially to the authors who have given us all such a priceless gift!
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A major step toward providing serious, high-quality educational materials to the public for free has passed a significant milestone. Here is a quote from MIT frees content online, a ZDNet article that gave early notice:
"One year after the launch of its pilot program, MIT on Monday quietly published everything from class syllabuses to lecture videos for 500 courses through its OpenCourseWare initiative, an ambitious project it hopes will spark a Web-based revolution in the way universities share information.
The MIT OpenCourseWare website is located at http://ocw.mit.edu/
What MIT offers is not exactly the same as a free college education, complete with live professors and all the classroom advantages, but if you really want to learn something, the OpenCourseWare initiative is truly an awesome resource. You may not get grades but look at what you can learn! MIT has shown us a hint of the promise of a truly educated future.
To me, this marks a major Internet historical event and a significant moment for the world of higher learning. MIT's leadership should be resoundingly applauded. I hope you can hear my best soccer yell,
Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!
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While we are Lisping, lispen close. You, too, can speak (code) with a Lisp! If you have Visual Studio.NET, or the .NET Framework SDK, but have not yet fully indulged your curiosity, you may not know that you already have a Lisp compiler that compiles to MSIL. Check out the CLisp Sample project in your “Tool Developers Guide” directory. You will find it located at your equivalent of
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\SDK\v1.1\Tool Developers Guide\Samples\clisp
Note that this sample is in the .NET Framework SDK, so you have it even if you do not have Visual Studio.NET and you even have it if you are using 1.0 rather than 1.1. As far as I remember, it was even there in the beta releases of the .NET SDK. No excuses accepted!
This CLisp sample does not implement all Lisp functions but the documentation states that “others can be added with ease, as they are implemented as a runtime library.“ That means you can have all the list processing fun you want!
There are some other pretty impressive goodies in the “Tool Developers Guide” subdirectory, so do investigate. In particular, the “docs” subfolder should not be missed:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\SDK\v1.1\Tool Developers Guide\docs
KEY TAKE-AWAY: “There's more to the .NET Framework SDK and Visual Studio.NET release package than meets the eye. Get curious and look around!”