In Redmond for Devscovery
I am in Redmond (on the Microsoft campus -- first time) for Wintellect's Devscovery conference this week. I unfortunately missed my flight on Monday night, but arrived mid-day on Tuesday. I am impressed with the campus -- you don't really get a sense of what it is like until you get here! I have seen pictures, but nothing compares with walking around from building to building (today, it is shuttle time). I had a mini-tour with my friends Ernie Booth (and his wife) and Aaron Weiker (two recent Microsofties) last night after a great Italian dinner. It is something to see these buildings and know that tools and OSs I have worked with for nearly my entire career (19+ years) were built right here.
I attended Jeffrey Richter's "Exception Handling" and "Hosting, AppDomains, and Reflection" talks yesterday afternoon. This is great stuff. Much of the second talk is what I have spoken on at other conferences before (more specifically, how to further isolate and secure AppDomains through security policy). I also met Jeffrey personally; it was great to hear a larger perspective from someone I had learned a great deal from his books. For the rest of the conference, I will check out John Robbins' sessions on testing and debugging and Jeffrey Richter's threading sessions today, and some of the other database, ASP.NET, and security talks on Thursday. The next Devscovery is in April, 2006 in New York. If you have a chance, you should go. Well worth it.