Luca Bolognese's WebLog : Miscellanea

Luca presenting F# at PDC 2008

lucabol — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:21:14 GMT

Next Thursday at 1.45pm I will present "An introduction to Microsoft F#" at PDC 2008. If you are there, please stop by or drop by the lounge area to chat.

There are a bunch of other great sessions from my team. They are all good (I swear I tried to format John's session correctly, but failed).

TL16: The Future of C#
Speaker: Anders Hejlsberg
Mon 10/27 | 1:45 PM-3:00 PM | Petree Hall CD
Repeated: Wed 10/29 | 3:00 PM-4:15 PM | 502A
TL10: Deep Dive: Dynamic Languages in .NET
Speaker: Jim Hugunin
Mon 10/27 | 3:30PM | 502A
TL11: An Introduction to Microsoft F#
Speaker: Luca Bolognese
Thu 10/30 | 1:45 PM-3:00 PM | 502A
TL12: Future Directions for Microsoft Visual Basic
Speaker: Paul Vick
Tue 10/28 | 5:15 PM-6:30 PM | 406A
TL54: Natural Interop with Silverlight and Office
Alex Turner
Tue 10/28 | 12:45 PM-1:30 PM | 404A
TL57: A Panel on the Future of Programming Languages
G. Bracha, D.Crockford, A. Hejlsberg, E. Meijer, W.Schulte, J. Siek
Wed 10/29 | 10:30 AM-11:45 AM | 403AB

TL44 IronRuby: The Right Language for the Right Job

l Speaker: John Lam
l Mon 10/27, 5:15PM, 515B

Brief review of "Total Workday Control"

lucabol — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:56:46 GMT

We get plenty of emails in Microsoft. Without a system to manage them you are dead. Or better, your mind plays strange tricks on you making you think that you still have work to do. You need to convince your mind that you are done for the day and to stop bugging you, please.

Almost everyone has a system. Some are better than others. My current system is "Getting things done" and it does achieve its goal of freeing my mind (mostly) without imposing too much overhead. But I'm always looking for something better. That's why I checked out "Total Workday Control".

The title conjures in my mind all sort of scary images of control freaks going through their days trying to achieve optimization of every single action. In reality the book is just a light update of David Allen methodology. The most interesting thing I picked out is the differentiation between a Master Task List and a Daily List. The former contains projects or delayed tasks while the latter contains tasks (typically taken from the Master List) that you want to perform today. It also has a system of prioritizing such tasks and give good rules of thumbs on how many you should have on each list and so on.

My rule of thumb is that if I learn one useful thing by reading a book, then it is a fantastic book. This book qualifies. If you are currently using "Getting things done", this book constitutes a nice upgrade. If you aren't, I suggest you read David Allen first, as it gives you the reasons for the system, before you move to the more technical "Total Workday Control".

Interesting 10 years retrospective on "The cathedral and the Bazaar"

lucabol — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 19:12:00 GMT

Interesting read on what open source has been good for, on the difference between Linux and Wikipedia and on how to best harness the power of crowds.

Also a highly positively reviewed new book that formalizes in almost mathematical fashion what diversity is good for (I haven’t read it yet). The classical work on the matter is “The Wisdom of crowds”.

Excerpt from the initial article: “Raymond was clear on that point when, toward the end of his paper, he examined some of the “necessary preconditions” for the bazaar model of production. “It’s fairly clear,” he wrote, “that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style. One can test, debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would be very hard to originate a project in bazaar mode.” In a recent e-mail to me, he was even blunter. “The individual wizard,” he wrote, “is where successful bazaar projects generally start.” “

Homeowner association transcripts...

lucabol — Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:19:00 GMT

Does anyone know if the homeowner association president for a condominium complex is legally forced to give the transcripts of their meetings to prospective buyers?

It is quite funny, the lady in charge just doesn't want to talk to me. I know, I know, I shouldn't buy that condo then... love over reason...

My first (and last?) post...

lucabol — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 21:18:00 GMT

Hello folks,

My crazy coworkers finally convinced me to get my own blog. They think I’ll say something funny, but I won’t – so don’t link to me – it’s probably not worth it. For the few perseverant ones, here is what I plan to talk about: object orientation, c#, sports, financial stuff and books (not in that order). See you later.

BTW: strange how this blog thing reduces the complexity of one's personality to a bunch of categories on the left of the screen...