March 2006 - Posts
The last couple of weeks where a total mess, crunch mode… no time to eat, sleep, think or write/blog. Sorry for the lack of updates.
Scott Guthrie wrote a post on MySpace.com handling a very impressive amount of page views (approximately 1.5 billion page views per day). Christopher Bissel, managing architect on MySpace.com mentioned on the mailing list that a good portion of MySpace.com’s runs on iBATIS. A couple of months ago I was called in to tune a badly performing application where we eventually ended up using iBATIS. This experience forced me to think hard about performance when using object relational mapping patterns, frameworks and tools. iBATIS lives up to its promise.
Just after submitting the survey I realized that the architecture track could use some improvement next year. Its kind off sad to only have one level 300 session! Another thing I disliked was that half of the sessions discussed Visual Studio Team System in some form. I haven’t tasted anything worth calling architecture.
Anyway, get the DevDays 2006 decks and code!
PS: Microsoft, the dev003 link isn’t working for me.
Thinking about consulting seems to be hot these days, see here, here and here. What does it take to be effective in any organization? Not only do you need to master your professional discipline, but also influencing and gaining acceptance for your ideas. Some call it consulting, I prefer the term advising instead. Expressed in an ancient formula:
E = f(Q * A * M)
Where (E) stands for the advice Effectiveness, technical Quality of the advice, Acceptance of your advice and Management regarding the implementation of your advice. Is it really this simple?
Claudio blogs (finally :D) about some real world obstructions I have experienced myself applying Software Factories and Model Driven Development (DLS). He also mentions the Software Factories Architect Forum 2006 organized by Bill O'Brien that took place in Dublin, Ireland. Boy, do I regret not being an Irish architect after missing out on this gig. Check out the slides and comments on Bill’s blog.
Time to update your CTP bits with the latest greatest, Visual Studio 2005 SDK March 2006 CTP. Pedro Silva mentioned in the Domain-Specific Language Tools section of the MSDN Forums that there are no new DSL Tools changes in this release.
This still means I have to have the latest bits on my box right :D
update (thanks to Claudio Perrone):
Just beware of the fact that designers created with the February CTP won't load straight away with the March CTP, although they could be easily fixed. I just spoke to Eamon O'Tuathail and he found that the problem is that the March '06 CTP VS SDK files are under
C:\Program Files\Visual Studio 2005 SDK\2006.03 whereas the February '06 CTP files are under: C:\Program Files\Visual Studio 2005 SDK\2006.02. So to fix the problem, open up designer.csproj in the designer folder in your old solutions, find "2006.02" and replace it with "2006.03", and everything will work. New projects created with the March '06 CTP will have the correct settings and don't need manual updates.
Just got back from the Dutch Developer Days 2006 (after a ridiculous 3+ hour drive). Yesterday I missed the keynote (traffic again) so I started out with attending to Edwin Jongsma’s session on Implementing Domain Specific Languages. Edwin explained horizontal DSL’s by demonstrating the class designer DSL which ships with the Domain-Specific Language Tools and a User Interface Process (UIP) Application Block DSL. Unfortunately there is no round trip engineering available, forward only generation and preservative generation using partial classes.
Next was Anko Duizer's session on Microsoft Solutions Framework and Visual Studio Team System. Anko had a great book tip on Microsoft's 21 Rules of Thumb - How Microsoft develops its Software. Anko, make sure you don't start the VPC console before attaching any external devices (thanks for the tip Sander).
Next up was Gijs de Jong's session with an introduction to the Windows Communication Foundation. I should have known better... this was last years session.
My last session for the day was Enhancing Visual Studio Team System by Marcel de Vries. Marcel is rightfully a MVP Team System... he knows his stuff!
I had the pleasure to meet up with a lot of smart people between the session. I realized this as I was going over al their names with Kitty. This is what the DevDays is all about! So far for yesterday... to be continued.
I’ll be at the DevDays 2006 in Amsterdam for the next two days, ping me if you want to meet up.
Now this is the third time I picked up on the statement "Agile does not scale very well". I dare to ask why?
Today my colleague has been disappointed in people one to many times. Sometimes you are right but lose anyway. These things happen all the time and will negatively impact your everyday enjoyment, and performance at work. I have a principle to share too enjoy your work again.
Learn something new every day
Sure, the daily interval isn't set in stone to make this work. Once every other day or week, whatever works for you is fine. Sometimes the answer is easy.
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