Visual Studio Team System Chats & Blogs

• Now blogging: the Visual Studio Team Foundation team (Introducing the Team Foundation Blog) – announced by Ling Bao, one of the Program Managers on Team Foundation.
• Noah Coad asked me to help spread the word about some upcoming chats with the team that’s bringing you Team Developer and Team Test: “Join the Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)'s Enterprise Developer and Test (eDT) Tools team at Microsoft in an online MSDN Chat! We will be focusing on the tools: Static Code Analysis (FxCop, PREfast), Dynamic Analysis (Profiler, Code Coverage), and Testing (Unit, Manual, Web, Load, etc). Experts from the development, testing, and program management teams at Microsoft will be available during these two chats to answer questions.”
• Wednesday, January 12, 2005 @ 5:30 PM (PST) Add to Calendar
• Thursday, January 13, 2005 at 8:00 AM (PST) Add to Calendar
• Sudhakar Sadasivuni, a Microsoft .NET MVP, recently hosted a chat on Team System. You can find the Q & A here ([ Q & A ] : My Community Chat Session on Visual Studio Team System 2005).

Visual Studio Team System News

• Matt Pietrek has the {End Bracket} column in the January 2005 issue of MSDN Magazine: “A year ago I was involved in my familiar routine working at Compuware's NuMega lab in Nashua, NH. Although I had often thought of working for Microsoft, I didn't think it was feasible since my young son spends most of his time in New Hampshire with his mother and I wanted to be nearby. But then a variety of events began to pull me towards Microsoft.” (Joining the Team).
• Dave Bost recently finished installing the Beta 1 Refresh release of Team System and shares his experience: “After my success of getting all of the Team System components installed, the true test came when I actually tried to create my first portfolio project.” (Team System - After the Install).
• Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch linked to my post about the December CTP release of Team System (November CTP in December? Is this the VSTS CTP?) in this post (CTP Build for 'Whidbey' Team System Expected Soon). You should also see this post (Team System Community Technology Previews (CTPs)).
• The November CTP for Visual Studio is out (Whidbey November CTP is published from Andy Boyd), but it’s not a Team System release – in case you were wondering. And I’m still optimistic enough to think Darryl Taft’s sources are wrong about the Team System CTP: “This CTP was initially expected to be delivered before Christmas, but it could come later, sources said.” (Microsoft Releases New Visual Studio Preview).
• Computer Business Review Online has a short article on Team System pricing, which is still TBD: “Prashant Sridharan, senior product manager for the .NET developer product management group, said: ‘You can expect our price to be in-line, around or near our price currently. We are not going to be astronomically expensive compared to ALM tools today.’” (Microsoft evaluating VSTS price ahead of big ALM year).

Domain-Specific Languages

• Bill Higgins of IBM and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to the UML v DSL debate: “I won't pretend to understand this debate at a deep level, as the people involved in the debate have been thinking deeply about modeling much longer than I have been in the field of software engineering. However, it's fun and a great learning experience to watch this debate unfold between such smart people from the IBM Rational and Microsoft camps.” (The great debate rages on - UML vs. Domain Specific Modeling Languages).
• And see this post from Andrew Stopford: “You owe it to your selfs to understand what Microsoft is driving at, the only works on the concept right now is Wileys Software Factories book, go out, buy it, read it, read it again and pass to all your work mates to read. 2005 is going to see the start of one epic journey.” (UML vs DSL).
• Harry Pierson hears clear the air on some of the points of debate: “Steve Cook responded to Grady Booch's latest comments on software factories and DSLs, which was in turn a response to an entry by Alan Wills. It's obvious that Booch is never going to agree with the DSL approach, but there are a couple of fascinating elements of the exchange.” (Booch on DSLs (Round 3))
• Gareth Jones points out that the DSL Tools category is now available on the Product Feedback Center: “You can now submit bugs and suggestions about the DSL Tools to our team through the magic of the MSDN Product Feedback Center.” (Bug us). And see this post about some feedback Gareth received on drag & drop in the October CTP of the DSL Tools: “Nicholas Allen wrote to me to comment on a piece of UI in our October CTP.” (When dragging is a big drag).
• Gareth Jones also had this post last week on some file format changes in the just released December CTP of the DSL Tools: “We're working to get our next Community Technical Preview shipped as soon as ever possible now. I thought I'd give a heads up on some changes we've made and something you might want to do if you've put any data that you care about into the previous CTP.” (Heads up: Upcoming DSL Tools CTP - file format changes) and he also blogs about some visual changes (DSL Tools: Look and (soon) feel). See here.
• Chris Masters reports on his use of the DSL Tools: “Here's a look at the concept editor in the first technical preview.” (Experimenting with the Domain Specific Language Tools concept editor).
• Alan Cameron Wills has the link to the Dec CTP download for the DSL Tools (DSL Tools preview downloadable). Of course, Gareth has it, too (December release of DSL Tools ships). I just thought I’d spread the wealth.

Testing

• Scott Dockendorf has posted some follow-up from his talk earlier this month on TDD: 12-1-2004 Talk Follow-Up: Test Driven Development & .NET (Plano .NET User Group).
• Sara Ford on false positives: “This is my first attempt at a series of ‘what’s wrong with this test case code’ entries.  Let me know what you think of this idea and if you’re interested in seeing more examples.” (What’s wrong with this test case code? – Identifying False Positives).

Process & Project Management

• Via Wayne Allen: “The Macau Productivity Center has released a PDF version of their book Essential Skills for Agile Development. It covers the basic development skills necessary for a programmer on an agile (XP specifically) team.” (Free Book - Essential Skills for Agile Development). Also, see this post, too (Rolling Rocks Downhill).
• David Anderson passed along this link in e-mail describing it as “…a précis of what happens on a team when you give them a common electronic means of communicating through a backlog. In this case a bug database…” (Efficiency of Exclusion)

Architecture

• Adam Gallant on Don Box’s four basic tenets of SOA: “When discussing SOA, people of make the mistake of interpreting this type of service-based design [some intimate knowledge required by both systems to understand the contents of the message] with a service oriented architecture.” (Services are, and are not...)

Other

• Jerry Dennany post on centralized build machines (Does your project have a Heartbeat?) had a responding post from Jeff Atwood (The Magical Build Machine), which brings us to Jerry’s response (Build Machines, Redux…).
• A nice post from Fredd on Microsoft blogs: “One of the most important things Microsoft have done to clean up their image is the blogging thing. I don't know exactly whether the reason behind it was for the image, or a legitimate attempt at being more open, or just something that sounded like a good idea, but I know in my case (and several other people I know too) it's definately worked.” (Microsoft and the transparency of blogging).
• I’m really enjoying Martin Fowler’s Bliki. See this recent post on MetaphoricQuestioning. It is interesting that software development is almost always spoken about using metaphors.

Bonus

• If you read this far, here’s a sneak peek at the Team Foundation Installation Guide for December CTP if you’d like a head start on learning how to install it. Please do contact me if you have any suggestions for improving it.