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An Application Development Consultants view on software development
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I came to talk about podcasts with a customer today. I had two hours of driving in each direction, but it felt like no time at all. Both because I have so nice colleagues (thanks Jocke), friends and customers to talk to (yes I use a headset), but also because I listen to podcasts on my Zune. So what podcasts do I listen to then? Perhaps you can recommend some for me. Here are my list of recommended podcasts to listen to: - .NET Rocks – Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell are the hosts for probably the most famous podcasts about .NET development. Listen to them and you will keep up to date about what’s happening regarding Microsoft and development related technologies.
Rating: C# C# C# C# (four out of five C# symbols) - Hanselminutes – I confess, I had never heard of Scott Hanselman before I join Microsoft and went to Tech Ready 9 (an internal Microsoft conference) this winter. Sense that, Scott himself, his work, his blog and his podcast, Hanselminutes has become one of my favorites. Scott’s personality is just great and he really tries to make every one understand what is said on his shows.
Rating: C# C# C# C# C# (five out of five C# symbols) I listen to a couple of Swedish podcasts as well, and I really recommend those as well. - MSDN Radio – My friend and colleague Dag König is the host of this Swedish podcast about software development with Microsoft technology. The show is really easy to listen two and Dag and some other of my Microsoft colleagues talks freely about current subjects. Really keeps you, Swedish developers, up to date.
Rating: C# C# C# C# (four out of five C# symbols) But the podcasts I actually started to talk about with my customer was neither of those and actually are not about software development neither. The following to podcasts are actually humorous sketches, with reoccurring characters. Both are created and hosted by one of the public radio stations in Sweden, namely P3. So if you only are interested in technology stuff… stop reading here. -- No more technical stuff below this point -- If you are still reading, you probably feel like me, that it is necessary to relax from computer some times so take the time to listen to these, they are hilarious when you have listen to a couple episodes and starts to know the characters. Both of them is also available on radio, once a week. Tune in P3. - “Mammas nya kille” (eng. “My mothers new boyfriend”) - Really funny humor from a bunch of comedians from the north of Sweden. There are so many characters to love: Mangan, the hairdresser, etc. Thanks Petter for letting me know about this great podcast.
Rating: VB, VB, VB, VB, VB, VB (six out of five VB acronyms) - "Cirkus Kiev” (eng. “Circus Kiev”) – My new favorite show. Really sick Swedish humor with great characters. I cant help laughing out loud when I listening to this show, especially the character “Teknik Pata”. I guess you have to be a nerd to appreciate “Teknik Pata”, but he is so funny.
Rating: VB, VB, VB, VB, VB, VB, VB (seven out of one VB acronym) Sorry all you non Swedish talking people, you are missing some really good podcasts.
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I just installed Windows 7 RC and once again found myself sitting with a clean Windows installation with no applications installed. That might be a nice feeling, but if you are like me, you will start to feel bored and actually a little bit lost within a couple of minutes without Visual Studio :-) So how do you go ahead and install Visual Studio nowadays? Well, gone are the days where there only where one installer and you where done. Today there are several installers you have to run, just to setup Visual Studio 2008 to an updated application. This is due to extensions and service packs that have been released after the initial release of Visual Studio 2008. So is it not just to install all of these updates then? Well, yes and no. You should probably install them all, but it’s important that you do it in the right order. That’s why I completed a list of the order you ought to install Visual Studio and some of the additional updates. Here you go: - Install Visual Studio 2008
- If you have Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition och Development Edition, make sure you install both, cause they are since October 1st, 2008, one product.
- If you have Visual Studio 2008 Professional or any other version of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite, just install that version and continue to #2
- Install Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer
… if you are connecting to a Team Foundation Server instance… and you are, right? Make sure you install Team Explorer before #3
Download here. - Install Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
If you ever find yourself in the position that you have installed Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer after you have installed Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, then you have to reinstall the Service Pack once again.
Download here. - Install Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR R2
… if you have installed Database Edition or Team Suite.
Download here. - Install MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Download here. - Install any additional applications and extensions to Visual Studio you would like
- Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools
Download here. - Microsoft Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Download here. - Any Microsoft SDKs
Find links to every SDK here. - Microsoft Expression Studio 2
- SQL Server 2008 Development Edition
- Etc.
I hope this helps some of you getting started with a fresh installation of Visual Studio 2008.
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Yesterday, we released Silverlight 2. You can learn more about Silverlight 2 and install it on the official Microsoft Silverlight Site. I for sure will dig deep into Silverlight in a couple of days. silverlight.RealeaseNewVersionToPublic(new Version(2, 0)); // See you around!
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We have just recently started to talk about our next developer tool, Visual Studio Team System 2010, and I must say that I’m in love with one new feature already. Ok, I haven’t really tried it yet for myself, but just to read about this feature makes my Test Driven heart pump a little bit faster. Identification of Impacted Tests – Visual Studio Team System 2010 will have a Test Impact View, that identifies all the tests that should be run to validate a code change. That is great, cause TDD is all about: - Red – Make sure you have a test that fails, by running all tests. If no tests fail, then write a new one that does fail!
- Green – Fix the failing test by least effort.
- Refactor – Make the code better, without changing any behavior of the code.
Now this has worked well before, but the first bullet point might take some time when you have a couple of thousand tests. Well you might think that the application should be better partitioned so that you don’t end up with that many tests, but the reality is that you might get there anyway (and some tests might even be integration tests that tests complicated interactions between several components and sometime you want to run those too). Anyway, I’ve been there, where the tests take too long time to run, that you start to cheat. You try to guess what tests that are impacted of a specific code change and only run those. Perhaps you run all tests before you check-in your code, but perhaps you cheat even there (even though you know you shouldn’t… shame on you if you commit this sin… shame on me if I have sinned). This new feature in Visual Studio Team System 2010 will help you to figure out what tests are actually impacted by the code change you are about to introduce and will therefore speed up testing and development. Especially when using TDD. Read more about this feature and other new features in Visual Studio Team System 2010 here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/sv-se/vsts2008/products/bb725993(en-us).aspx
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Good news for all you developers that are also working with databases (I know... that's probably all of you.) We have made changes to Visual Studio Team System Editions. From now on Developer Edition and Database Edtion can be seen as one Edition. If you own or are about to buy one of these editions, you can get the other edition for free, right away. More info on: In the next version of Visual Studio Team System, code name "Rosario", these editions will be merged into one new edition.
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... and just thought I could share my experience with you. My training in the US is over and I’ve been back in Sweden for two weeks. It’s been two busy weeks with several customer meetings and an ALM Workshop… and ALM is Application Lifecycle Management. My fingers are itching to write some code, so here we go… 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: 5: namespace AI.Linq01 6: { 7: class Contact 8: { 9: // New Feature: Auto-Implemented Properties 10: public int ID { get; set; } 11: public string Name { get; set; } 12: } 13: 14: class Program 15: { 16: static void Main(string[] args) 17: { 18: // New Feature: Implicity Typed Local Variable 19: var contacts = new List<Contact> 20: { 21: // New Feature: Object Initializer 22: new Contact(){ID = 1, Name = "Kristofer"}, 23: new Contact(){ID = 2, Name = "Qiang"}, 24: new Contact(){ID = 3, Name = "Scott"} 25: }; 26: 27: // New Feature: Linq Query 28: // Retriev every contact with ID less than 2 29: var result1 = from contact in contacts 30: where contact.ID < 2 31: select contact; 32: 33: // Write the result to the Console 34: foreach (var c in result1) 35: Console.WriteLine(c.Name); 36: 37: // Wait for a key to be pressed 38: Console.ReadKey(); 39: } 40: } 41: }
Output of this program is:
Kristofer
Doesn’t seem so much, but I’ll dig deeper and deeper into Linq in the upcoming blog posts.
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... but we are not that different. I've just completed the role specific training of Microsoft Services University (MSSU) and I've found myself explaining my role, Application Development Consultant (ADC), as:
- I'm like a TAM but for software development organizations.
And that is quite a good explanation if you know what a TAM does. With that said I think I have to explain that first.
"Microsoft Services Premier Support helps you maximize the availability and efficiency of your IT infrastructure, reduce your risks, and improve your IT staff's productivity. It also provides 24x7 support coverage for your systems. Service management helps you improve your IT organization with proactive services, insightful workshops, and customized information covering the latest technologies. "
This text is taken from the Microsoft Premier Support site and it tells you quite good what you get when you sign up for this level of Enterprise Support. What the text doesn't tell you is that a TAM, is the one orchestrating this. To be able to do this, a TAM needs to develop a very tight relationship with the customer, and that's what they do.
But what if your primary business objectives is to develop software? Well it's still very important that the IT-infrastructure is working as it's supposed to do, but it's also very important that the development process is working effectively and according to best practices. So this is where we, the Appliation Development Consultants (ADC), comes into play.
What a TAM does to your companies IT infrastructure and IT staff's productivity, we do to software development organizations. Sometimes we have Independent Software Vendors (ISV) as our customers and sometime it an software development organization inside another bigger organization. So sometimes it's not a TAM that is responsible for a Premier Contract, it might as well be an ADC… but it's rare. And that fact brings out the need for us to tell you that we exist. So when my training in MSSU is completed, I'll start blogging about some more technical stuff, but I'll still keep you up to date what an ADC do.
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I'm currently attending Microsoft Services University, MSSU, in Redmond. There are classes all day long that teach us many things you'll need to know to work at Microsoft, and especially at Microsoft Services. I can't go into all details we are learning, but it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to get here and to meet other people from all over the world. We are about 90 participants from 30+ countries, on this MSSU25, so I meet a lot of new persons with new experience and other ways to look at life. It's not all that easy cause we are different in many ways, but in the same time we are all "One Microsoft".
Today I went for a walk with my new friend Scott and we went to look at the Microsoft Surface computer that was setup in one of the buildings. Really fascinating to play with and I'm hoping they'll soon introduce "Microsoft Surface" in the company store… well I guess they won't for a while, but it would be so cool to have one to make some cool programs for. I sat down and played with it for a while and the thing I liked most was the Virtual Earth program they had installed. With some swift movements with my fingers, I'd my hose right under my nose. You might not see that like a cool thing today when everyone uses these kinds of services online in there browser, but I can tell you that it's much more fun on Microsoft Surface.
I filmed some of my experience, so I'll see if I can upload that film to Silverlight Streaming soon. I'll let you know when the film is there.
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I believe I've always been quite good at explaining things to others. It's always seemed naturally for me to talk about stuff in a way that makes sense to people. But right now I'm having quite hard to find a way to describe what my role at Microsoft is all about, only using one or two sentences. I know what an Application Development Consultant, ADC, is supposed to do but I just cannot describe it just using just a minimal amount of words. You know that catching fraise you use when you meet someone you haven't seen for a long time:
- Hi, long time no see. Did you know I've just recently started my new work as a fireman? Yeah, I put out fires.
There is not such an easy way to describe what an ADC do. Someone told me, that being an ADC, is to be a trusted advisor to the customer when it comes to questions about software development. I guess that is the best "one-liner" I know at this moment. Right now I'm sitting on a plane between Chicago and Seattle, heading for some education in our corporate headquarters in Redmond. I might have a better short explanation of what an ADC does after these two weeks.
But what can an ADC do for you or your company? The short answer is: "A lot!" Here are some things I can think of right now:
- Be that trusted advisor that I described earlier.
- Be a single point of contact for all developer related questions to Microsoft.
- Be a trainer in various workshops or seminaries.
- Maintaining and follow up a "service delivery plan" that shows what activities should be executed now and in the future to make software development even more effective for the customer.
I'll try to have an ADC flavor to this blog, by talking about software development from all kind of perspective. Sometimes I'll dive deep into technical discussions about how to use a special API and sometimes I'll be more philosophical and just write down my thoughts about popular architectural patterns. Hope to see you around.
Kristofer Liljeblad
Application Development Consultant
Microsoft Services, Sweden
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