Adventures In SoftwareLand

MIX08 starts at 4:00PM today! I'm at the Venetian hotel and getting ready to go sign up to give a presentation in the MIX08 Open Space area. Don't miss the keynotes tomorrow and Wednesday! Assuming I get a slot (you have to show up @ 4:00 and take...

Over on Channel 9 the second of my series of podcasts (nicknamed the "buzzcast") intended to bring news and information about why you should be at PDC and what to see when you get there is now available. This week's episode is a 12-minute talk with...

Ok, well I've been consumed recently with getting an installation of VS2005 Team System working without having to go out and buy a couple of extra servers. And I got it working! It wasn't exactly falling-off-a-log-easy so I thought I'd share my methods...

Today I'll be posting 13 more podcasts that I did in the "Big Room" at PDC05 . In retrospect it was quite an interesting process to see something like PDC "behind-the-scenes". Many people did a lot of hard work to make it easy for attendees and...

After 3 months of experience with the Project Glidepath Technical Preview, we have now released Project Glidepath 2.0! It contains many additional features and facilities including multiple factories and better support for VB.Net along with C#. ...

As the first day of the Shareware Industry Conference continues I've been thinking about how to explain the connection between Microsoft and shareware. First off, there is a very nice history of shareware over at Paul Mayer's website, Paul's Picks...

<PERSONAL_RANT!!!> The news today ( from Engadget ) is that T-Mobile has pulled the HP iPAQ 6315 (PDA/Phone) from the shelves. I was an early adopter of this device starting about 6 months ago. I, after a while of searching, experimenting and tweaking...

This just in. . . a page dedicated to porting VB6 apps to VB.Net Now that the .Net Framework will be included in each copy of Windows Vista, porting from VB6 to .Net is the last big pain point I've heard from the MicroISV (Shareware) developers...

OK, this week the Christian Science Monitor opined " Endangered Species: US Programmers " (subsequently reprinted by USA Today and Yahoo and causing quite a stir over on Slashdot ) making it seem like everyone, everywhere is about to lose their job. At...

In the interest of saving someone else a whole bunch of time... I was creating a video that I wanted to publish to the web like we do on Channel9 and the default export settings in the Windows Vista version of Windows Movie Maker included only a handful...

Arrived late last night and scouted out the LACC today. It's going to be an absolutely awesome PDC05 I'll be around the PDC keynotes, breakout sessions, BOFs, Ask-the-Experts and Track Lounges starting Tuesday morning through Friday morning in a...

I've done 11 interviews, mostly with PDC05 attendees, in the last 24 hours and they're now all live on Channel9 . Enjoy!

As noted earlier, I’ve spent most of the last month working with the Software Factories team. It’s easily the most exciting thing I’ve been involved in since the inception of the Web. However, like many previous non-linear shifts in thinking, it can be...

First.... woo hoo! My real copy of Software Factories arrived. I've been reading PDFs and hard-copy of the PDFs for a month or so now and there's just no comparison with a real-live-book. While reading Software Factories I began to remember something...

One of my career-long passions has been programming language development. I've written compilers and interpreters for Pascal, BASIC, C, and quite a number of what are now called "Domain Specific" languages. Some of them (like Pascal/MT+ and Digital Research...

Yesterday Dan Fernandez , Jed Rose and I gave an hour long presentation and hosted an exhibit booth at the Shareware Industry Conference being held this weekend in Denver, Colorado. I am pleased to report that it all went exceeding well and surpassed...

Ok, this is SoftwareLand launch control...the code has been loaded and has passed all required security checks...3..2..1..Ship!!!! ...that's how my very first podcast ( www.softwareland.org ) started back on October 1, 2004. Little did I know then that...

Starting today on the PDC05 Buzzcast I'm doing a daily show leading up to the official opening of PDC05, September 13th, in Los Angeles. Each day will highlight something at PDC you just don't want to miss! At the PDC, I'll be doing a wide variety...

Whew! It's been quite a while since I last blogged and it's been because I've been participating in some very exciting things related to Software Factories . I've had the amazing opportunity for most of the past 3 weeks (with a short break for the Applied...

Q: #1 What do I need to have installed to use Feature Builder? A: Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition Release Candidate, the Visual Studio SDK for RC Q: #2 What do users need to run my Feature Extension? A: If it is an Ultimate Feature Extension...

Update: Our talks are on Friday and Saturday (not Thursday... oops!). We at Microsoft believe in developers and are keenly aware that quite a large portion of the innovations that happen in our industry start out in someone's bedroom, garage or small...

Once more on this trip I find myself in a conference room watching a keynote speech at an early hour. This one is being given by Jack Greenfield to the Generative Programming and Component Engineering conference (co-located with OOPSLA). Jack (as yet...

As I'm climbing the Software Factories mountain (I figure I'm at about 10,000ft of a 14,000ft climb) I'm deep in the middle of thinking about (see my last post) about Domain Specific Languages. In my last post I observed that I'd developed a number of...

UPDATE: Photos now online So today's journey was longer and less pleasant than yesterday's but still completely successful. I left Eureka around 7:30 AM and arrive in Tillamook, Oregon around 4:00PM. The first half of the day was beautiful. More pictures...

<PERSONAL RANT - Not To Be Construed To Be The Opinions of My Employer> Ok, well according to John Dvorak I contributed to the #9 item on the "The Bottom 10 Worst Software Disasters"! Specifically, I'm one of those guys who produced one of the ...