March 2005 - Posts
With reference to a prior posting - here's an update on CodeZone from Chris Pels (INETA Board Member). There is a bigger picture and the use of Federated Community Services which puts it all under one umbrella.
RHS has a great little piece on Hungarian Notation. I particularly liked his affinity towards 'C' and how he started on it a couple of decades ago (a not too different experience for me as I recall). Since we are on the topic of language evolution & naming conventions - I am reminded of Fortran, a language I had used considerably in my earlier career years doing mathematical applications. Fortran has a unique capability with implicit declarations: variable names that started with 'i, j or k' were 'vectors' or integers. Similarly, 'd' was double precision or 'f' was a float (real) type. Fortran had another unique type that is still unmatched - the 'complex type' (it's matched only by a language's external function library). We are still not too far away in this path of variable declaration and naming conventions - see Cw (C-Omega) declaration of streams:
Example 1: int* OneToTen = FromTo(1,10); // explicit declaration of stream OneToTen
Example 2: res2 = select CustomerID, ContactName, Address, Phone from DB.Customers; // type implicitly known from query results
While I see the benefits of strong-types and using Intellisense in this case, we may have to still rely on some naming convention & declaration as shown in above Example 2. For now, naming convention to me is governed more by the application's requirements (client requirements, documentation, etc).
Wow! The recent INETA (MSFT) announcement regarding CodeZone has got a bit of skeptical discussion going - Hannes P, Frans B & Jeff P. Even Maestro Gunderloy has expressed skepticism.. ;-)
My inkling was to get our .NET Developers Group that is still in its infancy, more into the INETA fold. My understanding is that the CodeZone User Group Experience (full official title) is "the new place for INETA user group leaders and their members toget their hands on the latest and greatest technology goodness." (I like the last phrase - technology goodness). In essence, Codezone.com is an additional online resource available to an INETA user group (and its members). It is the one stop shop for getting your hands on the latest technology distributed in your Microsoft-supplied quarterly user group kits.
Apparently, CodeZone was first deployed in Europe (as stated in some aforementioned blogs) but this was done rather independently (across the countries). I think the current incarnation is unified under the INETA umbrella and brings in another facet - a distribution point for "technology goodness". Perhaps our INETA & .NET Evangelists can provide more insights.
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For the past several months, my attempts in configuring ASP.NET and SharePoint to work together has been tricky at best. A recent KB article has been most useful but a tool to manage the configuration could be better - perhaps a feature added to the SharePoint Configuration Analyzer. A simpler configuration tool would also help small IT shops that are not technically prone.
Microsoft announces CodeZone! Codezone will be a 'community of communities', a place for you and your groups to post links to your own articles, Web sites, blogs, discussions and events.
Connecticut .NET Developers Group is a member of CodeZone.
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Chris Bowen spoke at the Connecticut .NET Developers Group on Tuesday. It was attended by ~60 (standing-room only!) and it was very well received. Chris spoke about Agile Development (Unit Testing) today and tomorrow (with VS.NET 2005).
MSFT's recent announcement about VS2005 pricing for MSDN has just about everybody up-in-arms. Larkware (Mike Gunderloy) gives a good pricing analysis and Eric Bowen's insights on how the pricing may hurt MSFT is worth considering.
I believe the reasoning behind the price hike is the support (post-sale) costs of the VS2005 system. So, with that in mind - MSFT may want to reconsider its pricing for MSDN but perhaps, with no or very limited support of VS2005 for the MSDN subscribers. This can be under the umbrella of a 'developer edition'. With the current growth of developer weblogs, numerous websites, newgroups and discussion forums - the MSDN developer ecology may be able to self-sustain itself without (or little) support from MSFT for this product.
Chris Bowen (Sr Architect @ Monster.com) is presenting tomorrow at the Connecticut .NET Developers Group. His topic is 'Agile Development using VS.NET 2005' and we are all looking forward to it. If you are in the neighborhood (MSFT Farmington CT office) during 6-8PM, then drop in.
Also, Julia from the Vermont .NET Developer Group has a terrific idea - a PPT slide deck that plays in the background of meetings before the main presentation (kind of like in the movie halls). Like Julia's, we have a PPT deck also available for your group meetings.
Ralf Westphal has an ongoing series regarding the Future of Software Development. Worth reading since our industry is really undergoing a metamorphosis and he has some good insights that can't be ignored.
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