My friends in Redmond were complaining about the heat around the Seattle area during the week, and oh, my heart reached out for them in sympathy. Not.

Ireland is having rather a wet summer so far, and the forecast has it continuing for another month or two. If you need constant, hot sun and blue skies, then Ireland is perhaps not the country for you.

The climate here is more.. mild. It doesn't rain ALL the time, but it rains more than Seattle (and as every Seattle resident knows, the stories of the rain there are mainly hype to keep too many of the Californians from moving up).

This morning the weather consisted of that special Dublin Drizzle. Not hard rain, but constant and very, very wet. As I'm still cycling into the office, there was just no point trying to keep dry, so I simply wore my t-shirt and shorts and resigned myself to it. Truth be told, it wasn't that bad: almost refreshing in fact. And after a lovely hot shower in the Microsoft changing room, I felt pretty good.

One thing I learnt is that ABS brakes on cars are very good indeed: someone decided to enter the roundabout at top speed when I was already on it this morning, and they skidded to a halt about 20 centimetres from me. It was a scary moment - and I've not even healed up after my last incident. I think I shall invest in some very bright clothing, and perhaps walk across that particular road junction from now on.

Today in the office I've been trying to gauge interest in an XNA support group, to meet up at lunchtimes and write code. We'll see how everyone is fired up after Gamefest! 

I'm delighted to be able to attend Gamefest 2008 in Seattle this July. I'm looking forward to the XNA tracks very much. If you are in Europe, the event travels to London in early August.

But now more about living in Dublin.

Dublin, as it turns out, has many pubs. So far, in my month's residency, I've managed to avoid going into said pubs. However, a good friend that I'd not seen for twenty years happened to be visiting the city for the weekend, and so we arranged to meet up in Sinnotts; a large, underground sports bar right next to St Stephen's Green.

It was a nice pub, and I enjoyed a pint (or two) of the first Guinness I've had in Dublin in many years. Unfortunately (or not) I'm not much of a drinker, so I reached my limit very quickly, but we had a good evening exchanging stories of technology from the good old days. Yes, nerd talk mostly.

I was planning on taking the LUAS home, but when I got to the stop, I realized I'd forgotten my LUAS SmartCard and I'd left my coins as a tip for the barman. The six mile walk didn't seem that appealing, but a LUAS train guard took pity on this clearly lost alien, and after telling me about how exceptional this was, wrote me a note on a little scrap of paper which effectively gave me a free ticket to get home. I'm not sure that would have happened in any other city. I like Dublin.

Yes, it's true - no more NEO. Now it's "On-Boarding". So, apart from being a hugely ugly word, what is "On-Boarding"?

When you join Microsoft, there is a huge amount of information to take in. From company values, to pension information, to health care options - there's a LOT of information. Microsoft therefore has a special day set-aside for new employees, and that's where I am at the moment. Well, it's a lunch break.

Although I've been a full-timer for eight years, there are enough changes that attending the MS Ireland day makes sense.

I'll tell you something else about Dublin: the roads are surprisingly slippy. This morning I was cycling to work, and whilst taking a nice, fast right-hand bend, the tyres on my bike completely lost grip, and I did a spectacular grating slide across the road on my right side. Lucky I wasn't hit by any cars, but I destroyed my shorts, damaged my bike and ripped an uncomfortable amount of skin from my arm, ankle and thigh. It looked a lot worse that it was, with blood everywhere, and I had to sit by the side of the road for a bit trying not to throw up. I was glad I had my helmet on!

Many thanks to Microsoft's first aid expert Patricia o'H. and and nurse Deirdre F. for patching me up, and reassuring me that despite the blood and shock it was only a fleshwound and a trip to the ER wasn't required. You know what men are like: we're convinced we're dying.

Being the good Microsoftie that I am, of course I'm in the office working. We're hardcore in Dublin!

As part of my career change, I also changed countries: specifically, I've moved from Redmond, Washington, I've moved to Dublin, Ireland.

Although I was born and raised near Belfast, I'm still a stranger here. Belfast is in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom and therefore a completely different country from Dublin, which is in the Republic of Ireland. If it helps, think of how Canada and the US are joined and yet very different, with their own governments, currencies and culture.

So it is with Dublin. I've had to get used to new accents (everything is always 'grand, so it is!') using the Euro currency, and sign up for an Irish social security number and all the usual things that come with moving country. At least as an EU citizen I've not had to worry about work permits or visas. With all this moving, I currently feel like I'm tri-national: I have family in the UK, a career in Ireland, and a large part of my life still in the US. Passports and borders are so last millenium!

I'm slowly finding my way around Dublin (having only visited it a few times previously). It's by no means a large city, but it's a nice one. There are parks, and galleries and museums, and a light rail / tram system called the LUAS (pronouced 'lewis') that I use to travel from where I live (and work) about six miles south of the city, right into the heart of Dublin. There's also a giant spike in the middle of O'Connell Street outside the General Post Office (historially, an important place) for no readily apparent reason. 

I've managed to survive without a car for the time being, as I can cycle to work - not a bad thing given the price of petrol/gasoline over here!

Microsoft Dublin is spread over three modern office buildings in a region called Sandyford. There isn't the same campus feel as Redmond, but the buildings are airy, bright and I've no complaints.There is even a Company Store and a Gym, and I can see green hills through the window from where I'm sitting, and the exciting Irish weather happening. Pretty nice, huh?

Some immediate and not-partcularly-well-thought-out comparisions between Redmond and Ireland:

In work

• Open plan offices - I'm getting used to doing without my own office. It's actually an interesting change, and promotes a team atmosphere.
• No free Coke - not that I drank much soda, but unlike Redmond, the cans are in a vending machine rather than an open fridge. Thankfully there's plenty of tea and coffee to be had. There's also a Starbucks for that early morning / mid-afternoon jolt.

Outside work

• The cost of living is definitely a lot higher here that the US, unfortunately.
• So cosmopolitan! Unlike N. Ireland, there seems to be people here from all over the world! There is a fantastic array of accents, and restaurants and shops.
• Smoking is everywhere. The clean air of Redmond is something I miss when I'm walking down the streets. Smoking is of course banned in public places, but you can seen dozens of people huddled outside offices trying to get their fix, creating noxious clouds.

So far I'm enjoying myself. My new team is great, my job is shaping up to be interesting and challenging, and it will take me a while longer to explore Dublin. And once I've done that, there's the rest of Ireland to discover and of course, the rest of Europe is a short plane journey or ferry ride away.

So, being a Program Manager working with XBox games teams - that's got to be one of the coolest jobs going, eh?  

Well come back to me in six months, and I'll let you know :-)

For the moment, as well as lots of PM-y type things, I'm trying to get myself up to speed on DirectX using C++. Any recommendations for good resources very welcome indeed!

 I've also been making a list of recently updated blogs and other sites that may be interesting. Again, feel free to suggest your favourites! 

• GamerscoreBlog
• Circlets - Elle's Xbog 360 space
• XNA Team Blog

By nature, I’m not what you would call a social chap. Meeting new people is something I find stressful, and of course, I am perhaps the worst person for remembering names in the entire universe (it’s a good thing my mummy sews a label with my name into all my clothes, or I’d probably forget that too).

However, one thing I do very much enjoy is getting together with some fellow nerds to talk shop. Programming techniques, platforms, open source developments, mobile technologies – this is the stuff that I like.

I therefore greatly enjoyed the local chapter of the ‘Open Coffee’ meet-ups that were held in Belfast. I met some smart people, and had a good chat that got me out of the house and away from the LCD monitor for a few hours a month.

Now that I’m Dublin, I need to look up the local version. One event that immediately caught my eye was TechLudd, which is having a meeting tonight. If you are interested in entrepreneurical computer and technology developments, it might be interesting. If you are going, and notice me lurking around, say Hi!

When we last heard from our intrepid blogger, he was doing something with Windows Mobile docs in Redmond. Then it all went quiet..

Well, good news everyone: I’m back. It’s all change though - this time I’m a Program Manager, working with the Microsoft Games Studios teams in Dublin, Ireland. Did you know Microsoft have an R&D facility in Ireland? Well, turns out we do, and I’m working in it!

I’m still at the point where I’m working out exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, as well as signing up for all the various things I need to sign up for, sorting out healthcare, tax and social security and locating the nearest restroom, discovering the cafeteria and so on. Moving countries is hard, even when they speak the same language,

I’m not sure what form this blog will take, and what sort of information I’ll cover. Back in the Windows Mobile team, it was my job to talk about stuff, and explain new features. Over here, I’m not really sure my manager would like it if I posted information about the really cool new.... ooops. I’ll have to be careful obviously.

OK heroes, this is my last blog entry as today is my last day at Microsoft. I’ve greatly enjoyed the last eight years here, and sorry I can’t say longer. However, it’s back to Ireland I go. If you would like to stay in touch, please feel free to visit my person website at: http://www.johnterencekennedy.com/

Thank you, and goodnight!

Good news if English isn't your first language, or, I guess, you want to test your foreign language skills. Using a rather cool machine translation system from Microsoft Research, the Content Publishing Team have managed to convert the Windows Moble 6 SDK into multiple languages. You can even read them side-by-side to compare, in case the translation is lacking.

Your feedback is definitely welcome, so please check it out.

(link now inactive, sorry)

Back to work for a moment: if you now go to the MSDN site and check the Windows Mobile docs - in fact, the entire Windows Mobile and Embedded docs - you'll see one important difference: nothing. Well, hopefully you won't spot anything out of the ordinary.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms376734.aspx

However, in the background for weeks, we've been moving around every single topic we own, and sorting them into a considerably more logical platform/release structure. This sounds both trivial and common sense, but I should tell you that this was one of the first things I was tasked to do when I joined this team about two years ago.

In order to move these docs around, poor Troy on the production team had to create massive lists of instructions for the MSDN engineers to follow. We had to create new entry pages. We had to try and work out what to do with older content (Pocket PC 2000, anyone?) that we're legally obliged to include. We also had to work out where Windows Mobile 6 content, and any future content, would go. All the teams involved had to buy-off on the moves.

So, in between writing documentation, we finally found time to do this in the past month, and it went live yesterday. There are still a few bugs that need ironed out (we can't change the .Net Micro Framework's extra quotation mark in the title for example - that belongs to a different team, and the request to change need to be filed in triplicate, recycled as firelighters, and fed to the Bugblatter Beast of Traal ), but things will settle down soon. No URLs that point to content have been changed as far as I know, so if you have bookmarks, they'll still work.

If this is the kind of thing that interests you, maybe there is a career for you in the exciting world of programmer/writing and information engineering! :-)

Someone suggested in a comment to a previous posting that I write about the current state of the industry, and as I’m leaving the company, I might as well be completely honest. That would be a great idea, but remember that I only have the viewpoint of a foot soldier rather than a general, and so I’m not sure that I know the current state of the industry in any way that would be meaningful.

Also, I don’t think I’ve ever been dishonest when writing this blog (haha) so there might not be much new here. And finally, I would like to keep the option of working for Microsoft in the future open. I do like this place, and the people and I still have stock!

With that out of the way, I am happy to start with a rant and say I dislike the latest version of Word and its default typeface Calibri a great deal. Drives me crazy. The kerning seems whacky, and it doesn’t come with my favourite Helvetica. There, that’s set the scene nicely. You can tell I’m going to be at least a little mean here, but in a nerdy way. J

So, to be honest, I have a feeling that we lost our way a little.

My favourite mobile devices were the early ones: the Palm-size PCs, the Pocket PCs. There was no attempt to be a phone, they were PDAs – and back then, this was a really novel idea. The competitor was Palm, and Microsoft really shook them up. Sure, the user interface was clunky (after eight years here, I am still not convinced that a Start button on a pocket device is a good idea, and I don’t think I ever will be) but there was some real innovation. Remember “Channels”, that funny icon that looked like a satellite dish? Those were a cross between desktop widgets and RSS feeds – and that was ten years ago. Ahead of its time. Even the mighty iPhone doesn’t quite have the same model in place for pulling down content. If those had survived until WIFI/GPRS, they would have flourished. Sadly, all we have at the moment is the Mobile Internet Explorer web browser, which, let’s be honest here, is not amazing.

Back then, Pocket PCs had the ability to write plug-ins for the home screen that was powerful and easy to do.  I wrote and sold a program called “Sticky Buttons” that let you use anything from South Park characters to Star Trek-style graphics as your user interface, and the templates people emailed me were stunning. They broke every copyright law in the book, but they were stunning. Everyone loves customizing the look of their personal gadgets, and it's a shame that it’s increasingly difficult to change the look of Windows Mobile devices.

The move away from innovative new ways of using mobile devices seemed to happen when we started to mate these pocket devices with mobile phones. Of course it was inevitable that this union happen, but bolting a phone onto a PDA was kind of back to front, and highlighted the “Start button” model. In my view, it should be a phone first, and a computer second.  We always seemed to get that the other way around, even with the Smartphone devices.

Now, when I say lost our way, that simply mean deviates from the kind of device that I, personally, would like. I’m not speaking for the entire market. The market that Windows Mobile devices seems to be two groups of people: the business person who needs access to email on the road, and the company that needs to tweak a device into a bespoke platform for remote access to data. Given Microsoft’s success with Exchange Email Server and database tools, this isn’t that surprising when you think about it. Plus, Microsoft has Visual Studio in its catalog – and I’m biased of course, but this has got to be the finest, most powerful development suite in existence.  

Windows Mobile devices have been very, very successful in these markets, which is a Good Thing. But then I walk into a local phone store and see Windows Mobile devices on display, and I worry. I think that if we have these for sale in a High Street store, we’re reaching beyond business users, and in that case someone is going to buy one of these, and then they are going to discover that the device isn’t really ideal for, you know, fun stuff. The web browser, the media player – these are features that have not kept pace, and ironically this is exactly where mobile technology is blossoming. Social networks, portable video, Web 2.0 – we’re lagging behind there. Thank goodness there are some cool apps happening and many changes afoot that I can’t talk about, but there is still progress to be made here.

I’ve seen people put a Windows Mobile device and an iPhone on a PowerPoint slide, and check off the features: email, media, web browser. Sure, the Windows Mobile device gets a check mark but that’s missing rather an important point. I would like to see us make a device that combined the amazing, industrial-strength business stuff we have pretty much perfected, with the type of experience that would make me personally want to buy one of these for my brother, who doesn’t need to stay in touch with his office.

There. I’ve said it. For fun stuff, we’ve a ways to go. And that is what I like doing with devices, fun stuff. It’s what I liked doing on Pocket PCs and Palm-size PCs, and it was easy to write some applications to make fun-stuff happen. These devices aren’t fun for me anymore. My personal phone is not a Windows Mobile phone.

Of course, there are just my personal opinions. I’m far away from any team that implements these features, and defines which market segment Windows Mobile is aimed at. This company exists to make money for the shareholders, not create a device specifically for me. My job here has been to try and help developers write applications, by wrestling with the enormous number of programming APIs on one side, and the enormous overhead of the documentation creation process on the other. When I do get to pop my head up and try and see what’s coming next, another wave of new APIs and documentation tools crashes down on me, and I get caught up in the enjoyable process (and I’m not being sarcastic there, really) of getting information onto MSDN in a way that someone might actually be able to find it, and think it useful. Hey, it was a wonderful job – but it wasn’t a job that could influence the next generation of device user interface.

So I do think we strayed a little too much into the business user side, and could have spent more time creating user interfaces, customization tools,  web features and media players. 

Last month was my last full month at Microsoft, which means it was also the last full month in which I had a chance of getting more hits on my blog than my manager. I didn't manage it! Despite the fact that he didn't have a single new post, he still beat me by a comfortable margin. That's the benefit of getting onto a lot of RSS feeds while in a different team, I guess...

So, perhaps there is still hope for this month. I might be gone at the end of this week, but at least my manager will see the stats for October.

 All I need to do is writing an amazingly popular blog post that hits Digg or SlashDot or something. Hmm.. I could leak some secrets.. or publish some pictures.. or leak some secret pictures..

You tell me: what should I do? I've nothing to lose :-) I'm leaving the company AND the country :-)

Update #1 

Did I mention that I spotted Steve Ballmer in a Subway last weekend?

Update #2

Is it just the fact that I work in the Windows Mobile team, or is it a trend in society in general that men think it is acceptable to hold a telephone conversation, or to send text messages and emails, whilst in the toilet? Here at work I always seem to notice chaps standing up, talking away on their phone, or on one memorable occasion, as I sat in the cubicle I was forced to hear the occupant next door telling a collection agency about his ex-wife's spending habits...

As a 40 year-old computer nerd, I’m interested in how home computer programming has changed over the years, and I’m seriously wondering if we’re seeing the end of the hobbyist computer programmer. Hey, I’m leaving Microsoft next week, so indulge me.

My first computer was one that I borrowed from a good friend when I lived in N. Ireland. That friend now runs a best-selling Linux magazine in the UK: it’s fair to say we have different outlooks on the computing industry. That little white plastic computer was a Sinclair ZX80. It had a Z80 CPU, 1K of memory (yes, 1 024 bytes), a built-in BASIC interpreter and it stored programs (if you were lucky) on cassette tape. The keyboard was a touch sensitive piece of plastic, and the display was a spare black and white portable television.

This was one of the very first home computers, and it was designed from the outset for crazy nerds like me with no girlfriends to write their own applications, type one in from a magazine, or possibly buy some on tape from another crazy nerd with no girlfriend. In my computer collection, this was followed by a ZX81, then a Jupiter Ace (when everyone else bought Spectrums, or Vic 20s, or Commodore 64s, or BBC Micros), then an Amstrad CPC464 and 6128, and then an Amiga or two. Or three. I loved the Amiga so much that I was co-editor (with my ZX80 buddy) of a UK Amiga Magazine.

Here’s my point. All these computers were designed to be programmed. Right up until the Amiga, the computers came with BASIC (or FORTH, in the case of the Jupiter Ace) in ROM. When you turned them on, there was no booting, no operating system, just a BASIC interpreter. Sure, 90% of the people who bought these would only type “LOAD” into that BASIC interpreter and wait 30 minutes to play “The Hobbit”, but if they wanted to, they could write a program.

On the Amiga, you really needed to buy a C or C++ based development tool to do anything serious, and at this point computers really were turning into something of an appliance or games console, but the fact is you could write a program if you wanted to. If you had the talent and time, you could write the same application as the number one selling game on the market.

In the UK at least, parallel to these home computers were the more expensive and serious computers such as the IBM PC and Apple Mac. These tooo were designed to allow serious development. By the way, my first experience of the IBM PC, with dual 5.25 inch floppies and something called MS DOS was at university, and boy, were those ugly machines. My professor gave me special access, but after 20 minutes I decided they were horrible, and didn’t touch a PC again for many years. Instead, I learnt Pascal on the Macintosh and tried to free my brain of the spaghetti coding that years of BASIC had hammered into me.

Ok, so summary: early computers in the 1980’s and 90’s – all designed to be programmed.

Then I discovered Windows Mobile devices (Handheld PCs they were called back then), and I learnt Win32 programming. One problem: I was broke, and the Visual Studio tool was expensive, and only available in the US. And the Windows CE SDK wasn’t available to anyone other than special select few. So I called in a few favours and got lucky, and someone at MS that I’ve never met was really kind and sent me Visual Studio. I need to send that guy something before I leave.. anyway, eventually I could write apps for Handheld PCs! And then Palm-size PCs! However, even at this point, it was getting difficult to get the tools. Imagine a platform that the manufacturer deliberately made difficult to code for.. this was a huge change from the 1980s.

Then Microsoft did a wonderful thing. They released the Embedded Toolkits for Visual C++ and Visual Basic for Pocket PCs for free. Completely free. This was a great move. Immediately the number of applications for devices mushroomed. Happy days! Life was good. Programming was free! 

And then things started to change. Instead of home computers, games consoles became the norm. Loading “The Hobbit” from a tape wasn’t as much fun as loading Mario from a cartridge. Sure it made sense, but how could you write a program for a games console? Answer: unless you were a company you couldn’t.

In my own world, Windows Mobile 5 now required the purchase of Visual Studio Standard Edition, for a few hundred bucks. This wasn’t going to break the bank, but much worse was the growing requirement for code-signing. As Windows Mobile turned more into a phone operating system, and less of a PDA gadget, it was deemed necessary to lock down features. This is probably only going to continue. As you may know, you can buy a Windows Mobile phone in a store today, bring it home, connect it to Visual Studio, and completely fail to run your application on it. Before you can run apps on your own phone, you need to work out the security certificates, and pay a fee to get it “code signed”.

Similarly, Apple released the most talked-about phone ever, and deliberately locked it down to avoid any development other than web sites. Sure, it was possible to “jailbreak it” and run apps until the last ROM update, but since then, it’s been impossible for anyone to write an application.

I find all this very sad. Sure, there are good reasons for making it harder to write applications, but for me, this makes the platforms less exciting. I’m clearly not a business manager or a lawyer, but I want to be able to write code for my gadgets. I want the 25-year younger versions of myself to get excited about the latest cutting edge technology, and make it their own. Rather than be consumers, I want them to be able to take it apart, expand it, learn about it – and make kick-ass things out of it by pushing it way beyond what the original designers ever imagined.

Instead, it seems, the industry is on a march to make it ever more difficult to do this by locking things down in order to protect sales, networks, reduce security risks, protect IP..

That said, I do see some good things still happening. Here’s a list of things that lift my spirits:

·         Visual Studio Express – free versions of Visual Studio, that make it possible to write applications for the desktop using professional quality tools. Another good move from Microsoft. I wish there was a version for writing applications for Windows Mobile.

·         Silverlight – I like the idea of a platform that can deliver amazing graphics but can also do it with JavaScript, meaning all you need is Notepad. I don’t know what the plans are for Silverlight on mobile devices, but could be a wonderful way of writing applications. Imagine a Windows Mobile phone with the Shell written – and customizable by you and me – in Silverlight/JavaScript.

·         iPhone SDK – a story on ArsTechnica today talks about the possibility of enhancing Mobile Safari to add more features suitable  for writing applications. Local storage, for example. Again, anything that lets you write apps in Notepad gets my vote. It’s not Cocoa, but it’s a start.

·         Xbox – the tools that let anyone write games on the Xbox are fantastic. Top marks to the Xbox team for that. Seriously, brilliant move.

·         Web Applications/Ajax – the popularity of the web as an application platform grows and grows. At one time “the network was the computer”, then that stalled, and the Web seemed to be nothing but pop-up adverts, But now, thanks to innovation like GMail it’s more a case of “the information is the application”. We need some better tools, but Ajax is a great start. Again, all you need is a text editor. I like that.

·         Tools on free operating systems such as Linux that include powerful C++ computers, and source management tools. Nothing like these existed back when I was using the Amiga

I guess I have a plea for anyone designing a new gadget. If you can’t make it user-accessible and programmable at the same level as you have access to, at least design some kind of sandbox that makes it powerful and safe for writing applications that are as indistinguishable from your apps as possible.

But I’m interested in your opinion. Is it more difficult now to begin programming? What it’s like to be locked-out from coding at the same level as “professionals” on most devices on the market?