atmosphere - the developer blog of Bernard Wong : Southwest dev

Google launches a special treat just for developers

Admin — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 06:21:00 GMT

Very cool - this looks like it's going to come in very handy for me. Maybe you too? It seems the Google folks have just launched a new Code Search service at www.google.com/codesearch . They have indexed publicly accessible source code from all across...(read more)

Naughty or Nice - Lump of coal for the Visual Basic 2005 team?

Admin — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:25:00 GMT

OK, i know my posts have been very intermittent and matter of fact to the point of desiccation recently (ever since i was asked by Windows Vista to expunge one of my posts - it was their IP, intellectual property, watchdogs too). So you know what this means right? Yup, i'm well overdue to stir things up again...

So late Monday afternoon, i was over at one of the Redmond campus buildings to check out some (not overly) impressive demonstrations for the Coding4Fun booth that i'm supposed to be running at the big Anaheim launch event next week (don't worry if you're planning on attending though, i'm now working with my new pal Mark Miller, chief architect of Developer Express' CodeRush and Refactor! products, to come up with some much cooler stuff to show). Afterward, i made a call on my cell phone to arrange some Webcasts in the new year and looking out the window, noticed a whole gaggle of friends from the Visual Basic (and VS Data/LINQ) team walk by on their way to the nearby cafeteria.

When i got there to say hello, it became evident the purpose of the gathering was to get their team photos taken and do the big product box signing ritual. Of course, i was immediately greeted with (libelous) accusations of crashing any party that goes on (patently false by the way - just those worth crashing). Unfortunately (or fortunately as it turns out), i already missed their ship-it (product release) party combined together with their holiday party.

FYI, ship-it parties, in recognition of all the effort and long hours that go into a product development cycle, are typically a BIG DEAL - the SQL Server 2005 team are going up to Whistler soon for theirs, even the red-headed step-child of Developer Division (er, that would be the FoxPro team) would get to jet off to Vegas for the weekend. Holiday parties though not nearly as lavish as past years, are still a biggish deal - e.g., the team that i'm on are jetting off to Vegas next week, yeah!

So what top-rated, favorite American vacation hotspot did the Visual Basic team get to go to for their COMBINED ship-it and holiday party? Yup, you guessed it - that's right, Seattle Center for an all expenses paid buffet dinner! Congratulations on a job well done!

It's not exactly a lump of coal in their stocking but from any angle it looks like the Visual Basic team got the weenies end of the shrimp stick (i'll save the shrimp and weenies story alluded to for another post). They did a darned good job with Visual Basic 2005 like getting that Edit and Continue feature from Visual Basic 6.0 back into the product finally. And when you think about it, they really had their work cut out for them just trying to keep up with all the language innovations that their counterparts got into C# 2.0...

All kidding aside, i think the Visual Basic team deserve more. Maybe we could take donations on their behalf and at least send them to the distant lands of... beautiful, exotic Alki Beach in West Seattle. At least it would really be a proper weenie roast then!

What do you think?

See all the really juicy tid-bits i miss out on (and don't get to report) now that i'm mostly away from Redmond? No, i'm not asking for a write-in campaign to send me back! I like living in SoCal just fine, thank you very much.

Developer Connections conference in Las Vegas, November 7-10 - $100 discount off regular registration

Admin — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 06:26:00 GMT

As you have likely heard already, the grand launch for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 will be on November 7th and I can't think of a better opportunity to immerse yourself in education on these two massive product sets than the Developer Connections conferences running that same week at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. This is actually four separate conferences in one (covering Visual Studio, ASP.NET, SQL Server and a special C++ commemorative edition) and a single registration gains you access to any breakout session in any of the individual conferences.

As a special bonus, all attendees will receive Visual Studio 2005 Professional and SQL Server Standard Edition (with one client access license) since this edition of the conference coincides with the launch. The speaker list is absolutely stellar this time around with notable personalities like Charles Petzold, Bjarne Stroustrup, Stan Lippman and more.

I was extremely fortunate again to be asked to organize together the entire Fundamentals track of the Visual Studio Connections conference - a five day agenda (including pre-conference and post-conference workshops) especially arranged for developers who are just getting started with the .NET environment now. A couple of my fellow MSDN Events presenters (namely Geoff Snowman and Joe Stagner) and myself will be delivering several of these sessions.

OK, this is the special exclusive sweetener for those of you who haven't yet registered, if you register using the discount code of B101, you will receive a $100 discount off the regular conference rate.

Download location for the sample code from my x64 programming Webcast

Admin — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 20:33:00 GMT

For those of you who attended my Webcast this morning on developing for the Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition from Visual Studio 2005, you can now download the sample code and compiled solution.

There were no slides, just a brief introduction to the x64 platform essentials at the beginning. The Webcast demonstrations were drawn in part from the Hands-on Lab at TechEd 2005 that I put together on x64 programming (which were drawn in turn from the Intel Route 64 roadshow). Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 and a computer running Windows XP Professional x64 Edition are also required.

Have fun with the samples - someone suggested running the x64 specific release on the regular 32-bit Windows XP to see if there would be a sensible exception message... Any bets on this one?

Free two-day Visual Studio 2005 workshops coming to Phoenix and Las Vegas!

Admin — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 19:50:00 GMT

OK, let's see if this blog posting can successfully avoid inciting the guardian watch-dogs of Windows Vista intellectual property... I really still don't know what was so objectionable in my last posting, especially in this new era of supposed transparency. Anyway, here goes!

How would you like to attend a free two-day, instructor-led workshop offering a focused environment within which to learn and experience the new features and capabilities of the forthcoming Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005?

As loyal readers of this blog, I'm passing on invitations to these workshops intended for experienced, professional software developers who are already skilled in building software using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, even those employed by independent software vendors or those who work on corporate enterprise development teams. Attendance is strictly limited. Please do not register unless you are sure you can commit the two full days to attend the entire workshop.

The workshops will be held from 9:00am to 5:00pm. In Phoenix, the workshop will be held at the local Microsoft office on August 25th and 26th. Registration is open now at http://www.microsofttraining.com/devonsites - just use 304001 for the class/invitation identifier.

The workshop in Las Vegas on August 30th and 31st looks to be a much better bet (pardon the pun). It will be held at the loverly and talented Venetian Resort Hotel Casino, right on the strip. Of course, I do have to caution you that there might be lots of games of chance conveniently close at hand so be careful you don't get too distracted away from the workshop by all the lights, bells and shouting...

Register for the Las Vegas workshop at the same Web site, http://www.microsofttraining.com/devonsites, but use 304037 for the class/invitation identifier instead.

Bon chance!

This posting deleted at the request of Windows Vista (Longhorn) program management.

Admin — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 00:41:00 GMT

So much for transparency... I guess it only applies to whatever is OK for you to know.

Download location for the sample code from my Webcasts

Admin — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 18:33:00 GMT

For those of you who attended my Webcast yesterday and wanted to download the sample application from it, you can now find this via http://www.msdn.tv/BernardWong. Many thanks to MaximumASP.NET for hosting this site (it's only been a few hours now but everything has been smooth sailing) and the Digital Black Belt guy, Joe Stagner, for arranging this.

In the future, I'll be using this site to distribute the downloads of slides, code samples, etc., from my conference, user group, Webcast and other presentations, unless there already is an established publication vehicle.

If you're wondering why I publish and maintain listings of developer resources for Southern California and the Southwest on www.microsoft.com (what we call MSCOM) but I'm not putting these downloads into the Microsoft Download Center, it's because the publishing application (the thoroughly bewildering Download Management Tool) and the process to do so are altogether too arduous and complex for me and my mythical co-signatories to cope with.

I'm a big believer in utilizing established systems and not re-inventing the wheel. Yes, the Download Center is supposedly searchable, has plenty of bandwidth, uptime in spades and you reliably know where your download is coming from. All of these are admirable qualities but they don't count for much if the downloads don't ever make it there in the first place.

Theoretically, at some point down the line, the sheer number of downloads available on the new site will need to be properly indexed and searchable, the ISP will balk at all the bandwidth we're consuming around the clock, and myriad other scalability issues will arise that need to be dealt with but let's burn those bridges when we reach them. This simple, new site for you to get your downloads will work just fine until then. Happy downloading!

The official manufactured Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 disk sets

Admin — Thu, 05 May 2005 13:52:00 GMT

I received my custom advance order of six hundred of these - one for each attendee of the SoCal .NET Technical Summit coming up this Saturday in Long Beach, CA. If you're like me and lack the patience (and phat pipes) to download several Gigabytes of installation files, you can pick up your very own official Beta 2 disk set this Saturday and also catch great .NET sessions presented by some of the industry's finest speakers for just $99! I blogged about this prestigious event previously but didn't mention the Beta 2 disk sets then (I wasn't sure at the time that I would actually be able to get them in time).

So what do you get in the officially manufactured Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 disk sets?

Everything comes inside of a black colored hard plastic case similar to what DVDs and Playstation 2 games ship in. The printed slip cover is primarily dark blue. On the front are the typical Visual Studio branding imagery, the MS logo and the title "Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2". On the back are the minimum system requirements (600MHz processor, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 or Windows Server 2003 operating system, 256MB RAM, 2 GB available hard-disk space, DVD-ROM, etc.), handy URLs, fine print and the Part No. X11-22003.

Inside, there is a printed insert with a Greetings! notice from Soma and three disks held in place by a dual-clasp plastic mechanism of a kind that I haven't seen previously. The three disks are a DVD-ROM (though it isn't labelled as such) of Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Beta 2 (3.75 GB, includes Visual Studio 2005), a DVD-ROM (labelled with the DVD-ROM logo) of SQL Server 2005 Developer Editon Community Technology Preview (847MB, labelled 32-bit version only and 03/05 though it's reputedly and dated the April edition) and lastly, a CD-ROM of Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 2 (273 MB, includes Team Foundation Client).

Now that I've whetted your appetite, don't forget you can walk away with your very own Beta 2 disk set in hand on Saturday. It's not too late to register for just $99! We'll see you there...

Exclusive discount - save $500 at VSLive! Las Vegas, May 8-11

Admin — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:15:00 GMT

Yup, here's another exclusive developer conference discount offer for readers of this blog.

If you've been sitting on the fence about going to VSLive! Las Vegas, let me sweeten the pot for you... How about a $500 discount off the standard rate of $1,695 for the 4-day, all-inclusive Gold Passport? This special, exclusive discount is even better than the Early Bird price that was previously offered! All you have to do to qualify for the discount is register (discount is only available to new registrants) either online or by calling (800) 848-5523 and then using VSLBW for the priority code.

If you're not familiar with VSLive!, this is the developer conference formerly known as VBITS that is presented in cities all around the world by Fawcette Technical Publications, publishers of Visual Studio Magazine (among others). There will be over 75 hours of presentations available from industry experts across two separate conferences - ASP Live! and SmartClient Live!

Lastly, there is a conference room rate of $169 available for conference attendees (single or double occupancy) at the all-suites Rio Hotel and Casino if booked before April 29th.

Wow - learn cool stuff, hang out in Vegas with my friends talking .NET and save money too - wish I could be there!

Incredible $900 discount for upcoming Software Security Summit conference

Admin — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 14:39:00 GMT

If software security is your thing, Software Development Times (SDTimes) is putting together an entire conference just for you! It runs from April 12th to 14th in La Jolla, California (a rather fashionable suburb just north of San Diego which translates you're looking for an excuse . The Software Security Summit conference has a unique format consisting of full-day tutorials, followed by two days of in-depth sessions and the agenda is both multi-platform and multi-vendor. The conference faculty includes the likes of the renowned Allen Holub(!), my former colleague (and co-author of Writing Secure Code which is highly recommended, by the way) David LeBlanc (if you get a chance, ask him what he learned about the subject of security from his work experiences while living in Las Vegas...) and my current colleague Joe Stagner (where would I even start feeding you with questions to ask him?).

So what's the downside? There's always a downside and for conferences with quality speakers at nice facilities (this one is at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla...), the downside is usually the not so inconsequential hit on the pocketbook. In this regard, the Software Security Summit isn't substantially different - the full conference registration price is $1,395!

If you're like me and think this conference might be worth checking out, I've got an awesome deal to share with you. What do you say to a $900 discount off the full conference registration price? That's a saving of almost two-thirds!

All you have to do is go to the usual registration page and then use the special secret handshake SoCal user group discount code of SDUG to keep nine spare Franklins in your own pocket...

While you're at it, show your support for SoCal user groups by registering for the upcoming SoCal .NET Technical Summit on Saturday, May 7th.

See you there (both events)!

Announcing Southern California's own local developer conference!

Admin — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 02:33:00 GMT

Registration is now open for the inaugural edition of the SoCal .NET Technical Summit to be held Saturday, May 7th.

For the past few months, I've been working with the various .NET user groups in SoCal to organize this one day developer conference and we've planned an event that you won't want to miss out on!

Check out the roster of all-star speakers that we've put together to share their deep knowledge of ASP.NET Web applications, business objects and architecture, smart client (Windows Forms) applications, the .NET Framework and related technologies:

      Rockford Lhotka - author, Microsoft Regional Director, MVP
      Dan Appleman - author, MVP
      Michele Leroux Bustamante - Microsoft Regional Director
      Tim Huckaby - Microsoft Regional Director
      Ted Pattison (tentative) - author, MVP
      Mickey Williams - author, MVP
      Chris Rolon - consultant
      Mark Miller - creator of CodeRush
      Scott Mitchell - author, MVP
      Daniel Egan - author
      Scott Cate - MVP, ASP.NET Insider
      Scott Hutchison - MCSD

I just spoke at the Developer Connections conferences in Orlando with six of these exact same speakers but instead of paying well over a thousand dollars for conference registration plus airfare, hotel and other travel expenses, you'll be able to learn from this esteemed line-up of industry experts that will be assembling together almost in your own backyard for an incredibly low registration price as little as $79 (early bird price before April 15th)!

The conference will be held at the Long Beach Airport Marriott and we're even working on some kind of arrangement for shared bus transportation from San Diego to the conference.

See you there!

Tucson area .NET developers! First meeting of new user group coming February 22nd.

Admin — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 04:15:00 GMT

We know there is a lot of pent-up demand for a .NET developer group in Tucson. We even tried to get one off the ground last fall - apologies to those of you who tried to get to it but ended up in the wrong place...

This time around, we have a Tucson local spearheading operations. Gordon Bennett of Web Data Corporation has been making all of the arrangements, generating all the buzz and creating the group Web site at www.tucsondevelopers.net.

The first meeting will be held the evening of February 22nd, following my free afternoon seminar at the Radisson Hotel City Center Tucson. That will make it an especially long day and night for me since I actually have to start our seminar event at 7:15am! Good thing I'm not driving back to Phoenix after the meeting...

Apart from time devoted to organizational setup, ASP.NET MVP and ASP.NET Insider Scott Cate, will be driving in from Phoenix to present on the topic of migrating ASP (classic) Web applications up to ASP.NET. Following him, I will provide a brief demonstration of some of the new capabilities that you can look forward to in ASP.NET 2.0.

There will be pizza, soda, door prizes, lots of conversation and fun! See the Web site for location and start time details. Please RSVP on the Registration page so we have an idea how many people are coming. Check with Gordon if you would like to help with the operation of the group.

If you would like to find out about developer resources in the southwest, check out my Developer Community Web site or subscribe to the local MSDN Flash e-mail newsletter.

Hope to see you there!

Free Visual Basic .NET software, MS Press ASP.NET development book and bonus CDs - special offer

Admin — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 07:57:00 GMT

Wow! This is so cool, I can hardly believe we're just giving this stuff away.

There is a very special offer going on now through November 30, 2004 to coincide with a series of free ASP.NET technical training Webcasts from Ken Getz, Rob Howard, Fritz Onion, Carl Franklin and more.

All you have to do is watch three Webcasts - either live or on-demand (this means you watch a recording of a prior Webcast whenever it is convenient for you) and you can receive a complimentary gift package free of charge! The complimentary gift package consists of Visual Basic .NET Standard Edition, your choice of a Microsoft Press ASP.NET development book (either the ASP.NET Coding Strategies with the ASP.NET Team or the ASP.NET Programming with Visual Basic .NET 2003 Step-by-Step book) and two bonus CDs (the ASP.NET Resource Kit and Developer Training CD).

Complete offer rules are available on the registration Website.

Announcing the first meeting of a new .NET developer group for Tucson, AZ

Admin — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 04:20:00 GMT

Woo-hoo! Thanks to Pima Community College, we have a location for the inaugural meeting. This will be held at Pima Community College, 4905 E. Broadway Blvd., Building C, Room 105 from 6:30-9:00pm on Tuesday, October 26th.

For this first meeting, I'm going to demonstrate the new Membership and Personalization features coming in ASP.NET 2.0 and performance optimization with ASP.NET 1.1. These are two of the subjects that we're currently touring in our MSDN Events seminars seminars which won't otherwise be making a stop in Tucson (the nearest stop is Phoenix on Thursday afternoon) so you'll at least have this opportunity to see most of the content.

We'll also have pizza and soda and lots of door prizes available too so cancel whatever other plans you may have and join us!

To RSVP or receive notices via e-mail about the group, send us a message at swestdev@microsoft.com. Otherwise, we'll see you there.

Programming languages with .NET implementations

Admin — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 02:41:00 GMT

Yesterday, an inquiry came up internally over e-mail about whether a .NET implementation of the PL/I language existed.

This caught my eye because PL/I was the first language that I encountered on a mainframe (at the University of Toronto, from whom I have a piece of paper ascribing that my "higher learning" took place there - occasionally, possibly, somewhat). I wasn't particularly fond of PL/I but it was my first mainframe language. Actually, to be entirely accurate, it was really SP/k - a series of PL/I subsets (with k cleverly iterating from 1 through 8) that was devised for teaching purposes by some of the local professors who were also subsequently responsible for the Concurrent Euclid, Turing and other languages.

It seems that PL/I, one of the third-generation procedural languages, is still going strong after almost four decades. From its IBM origins, it has spread to a good number of platforms and operating systems. It has also won over its adherents, see this blow-by-blow comparison against the C language from one of the staff at the Computing Center of the University of Munster.

Back to .NET, it seems there is a research group working on such a PL/I implementation which they have named PL/IL for Programming Language - Intermediate Language. Their plans seem pretty ambitious too - object oriented extensions, Mono CLR support, .NET Framework class support, reflection, structured exception handling, etc., even LISP extensions.

So I was having dinner last night with my friend, esteemed author and software legend, Rocky Lhotka (perhaps I should make that self-proclaimed software legend as I don't actually see his name in lights on the Software Legends Web site...) The topic of computer languages came up as he has been kicking around the idea for a while now of creating a Logo-like language. His purpose behind this is ostensibly to teach programming to his young son but possibly as a project for inclusion in a book that we are collaborating upon together. I'm not sure how many developers in the general population ever aspire to create their own computer language though - notwithstanding Apress having just published a book entitled Build Your Own .NET Language and Compiler...

Rocky mentioned that a colleague of his at Magenic maintains a Web site with listings of .NET language implementations from APL to Boo to Cobol to F# to Lisp (hurray, it's a personal favorite language of mine for its idiosyncracies and cool, fun quotient) to Logo to Pascal, Prolog, Python, RPG and more.

I don't know about you but I'm just not convinced that there is a purposeful, pragmatic need for everyone to dream up their own private, boutique computer programming language. Maybe I'm revealing too much of my healthy personal cynicism when it comes to academia but aren't there already enough computer science faculty with excessive free time on their hands and sufficient hubris to think that they can come up with a better mousetrap than all the other research institutions all around the world?

This isn't because I have a favorite pet language to champion as the penultimate general purpose programming language, as Rocky initially presumed. I just think there is plentiful choice among programming languages already existing in the world. These have been time and experience tested and successfully proven their merit on countless occasions.

My vote says just pick one (or maybe a couple, if you really have ADD), understand them well and get on with the programming task at hand. Aren't the real challenges we face developing each application interesting enough already? Let's not re-invent the wheel by imagining some hypothetical need for yet another computer language we don't have time for (or at least leave it to the academics who do)...