Tobler.SoftwareArchitecture()

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

A new interpreted Lisp variant for .NET has just crossed my radar screen:  DotLisp (see the SourceForge Page, also). This implementation does not claim compatibility with Scheme and Common Lisp.  DotLisp is *not* Common Lisp.  DotLisp is *not* Scheme.  DotLisp is a “Lisp variant.“  Note that you cannot yet compile DotLisp, it runs in an interpreter.  You can, however, embed a DotLisp interpreter object (a Dll Assembly) in your .NET programs.  Rich Hickey, the author of DotLisp, aims at “deep .Net integration, sharing type system, GC and other runtime services etc., with transparent access to .Net w/o a FFI or wrappers.“

Jason Bock's old list of .NET languages appears to be dead and gone but you can go here instead.

Am I the only one wondering why Microsoft Research appears to be treated as a poor lost unexpected Microsoft orphan child?  Two extremely interesting .NET language projects come immediately to mind:  AsmL and F#.  Why isn't the Microsoft .NET Blogging Conspiracy screaming to have a presentation on these (not to mention ILX or even the basic topic of alternate .NET languages) at PDC? Do our favorite CLR/CLS/CLI fanatics now care only about C# and VB?

Although my latest favorite Open Source tool was not developed in .NET, it is really cool and has taken its place on my "essentials" list: Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar. This thingie now meets 99% of my everyday searching needs. I particularly like how I can create my own search functionality with a little XML. They even provide a utility, Dave's Quick Search Deskbar Search Wizard to take care of the most tedious parts of doing so. Initially contributed by David Bau, DQSD now has a "healthy little online development community."

Several other techies have recently taken the Jung Typology Test so I fell into the trap and here are my results:

Chris Sells, Robert Scoble, and a raft of other bloggers sent me to Scott Hanselman's Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tools List where I found a truly useful list of helper utilities. I hasten to grudgingly admit that there were several cool ones I had not yet seen. I just had to add this link to CSharpener's Weblog for easy reference.

AsmL is one of the more amazing new .NET toys I have seen in quite awhile. Created by the Foundations of Software Engineering team at Microsoft Research, AsmL stands for the "Abstract State Machine Language." Why is it so interesting? Because it is an "executable specification language based on the theory of Abstract State Machines.