Many people think that Microsoft and OS movement have nothing in common. Well, they are wrong. Just take a look at Open Source at Microsoft web site. Brad Wilson provides more personal experience with Open Source at Microsoft in his interview. Recommended reading.

There is a bunch of Iron* CLR-based language implementations that are provided by Microsoft to the Community as open source projects. Take for example IronPython, my favourite among them. I know that many of you will actually prefer IronRuby. It his there too.

If you haven't seen CodePlex yet I recommend that you do. CodePlex is a website for programmers that would like to publish their open source projects that relate to Microsoft technologies. One of my favourite projects there is Script# - it will be your favourite too if you know C# and JavaScript is rather a mystery for you. Script# allows you to write Ajax applications in C# that is later on "compiled" to JavaScript. Cool.

You may find a lot of interesting blogs that relate to Open Source topics on Port25. Recent hot topic: parallel programming.

On April 21st, 2008... it was announced that 3rd refreshment to Windows XP in form of Service Pack was completed. Stay put for now, since it requires some time to post it to the web (Windows Update, etc.). But the work has been finished. I personally tested it already and I assure you - installation is piece of cake.

What is there for me? - you ask. There is no better place to get to know that than Windows XP Serive Pack 3 Overview. In short: over one thousand bug fixes, exciting features known from Vista (e.g. Network Access Protection), better cryptographic modules in kernel, black hole router detection.

It will be available for download since April 29th, 2008.

If, by any chance, you are interested how we do what we do here, in Developer Division, I recommend you to read an interview with Mark Osborne. It is more of a high-level overview of how developers' work is organized to meet multiple goals and avoid pitfalls. That is not easy in an 1000+ organization. Mark also talks about dogfooding (our famous term).

 Enjoy!

Long time no see.

There were many reasons why I suspended blogging for some time. The most important one was that I was working on high-profile, confidential project of huge impact not only to Microsoft Customers but to humanity...just kidding :) but... I am on the track to do that some day.

 To blog one has to have an idea what may matter to the Readers. And sometimes it is just not possible to blog about the very thing you would like to. That was the case for me. So I kept my fingers crossed but not extensively busy writing blog posts.

The newest Customer Technology Preview (CTP) of the next version (code name Orcas) of the Visual Studio is publicly available as of Monday, October 30! You can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C09B5A2D-EB6A-44B6-8BBD-3764A2FDA9CE&displaylang=en

It is available as an Virtual PC image split to 7 separate downloads. You can run it using either Virtual PC or Virtual Server of which both are available as free downloads for some time now. There was also base Virtual PC image of the operating system.

What's new? A lot, and you can read it all here. I would like to highlight just a few interesting features:

• ADO.NET 3.0 Advancements - support for LINQ
• LINQ over XML (XLinq)
• Multi-targeting  (.NET Framework 1.1, 2.0, etc.)
• A high performance trace listener which logs XML to disk in the event schema - great news for everybody that wants to understand how an application behaves. Just log what you need and let the performance be with you.
• Security Platform Parity - Suite B support: AES
• New IO types that expose almost all pipe functionality provided by Windows - pipes are good for plumbing... your application.
• A new high performance set collection - do not implement set-alike algorithms using Array or List types. Clarity is very important and you should use sets!

Please give it a try! Download here.

I was already blogging about Guidance Explorer here. Now seems to be the time to download the newest version (20060922). It has autoupdate feature build in and some changes to structure of guidance tree. Valuable tool you should try!

At the beginning, there was pure HTML served by the mighty servers. The number of clients, or terminals was big but it was the server part to do most of the job. The client was merely displaying some textual data.

Now it seems that there is not so huge difference between server and client machine. AJAX, JavaScript, Java applets, Flash applications - all that is changing the way we perceive the client-server relation. It is much more about reliability, the data stored and served, but not about the heavily loaded server and client doing little processing. AJAX application requires rich client with sufficient processing power to handle it. Not that current computer can't handle the load but it is substantially more than they used to handle to present webpages to the User.

Where for years the most complicated code executed on the client platform was probably Java (applets), after Flash, and then JavaScript, now AJAX is getting most popular. It turns out that AJAX + browser is perceived by some developers as a new kind of environment generic enough to handle most of web applications. Some of the well known desktop applications are webified - this trend is known for some time. But with AJAX it is not only easier but requires less sacrifice in terms of graphical interface.

At the beginning, the network bandwidth per view was not so expensive. Now every session can result in MB of data sent out from the server. Web application must be wise enough not to download the same data all over again. This achievement is economically efficient for the webserver owner as well - bigger load, less bandwidth. And no frustrating repeats.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

The summer was suprisingly very busy time for me so I suspended blogging for some time. There is a lot of thoughts that I hope to share with you soon. For now lets remind of a few worthwile events in the software world:

1. IronPython 1.0 - after a few Betas here it is: final version of .NET Framework 2.0 Python implementation which is almost compatible with CPython 2.4.3! This is great news and giant leap towards proper recognition of Python language. Congratulations to Jim Hugunin and his team. Along with this edition, there is a number of pretty cool samples published to the IronPython CodePlex website. It is definitely worth checking out, as it is probably the first scripting engine to be considered to be included in your .NET Framework application.
2. Guidance Explorer - although the 20060831 release was postponed, there is 20060816 release available which adds substantial UI fixes. Worth updating.
3. .NET Framework 3.0 - (known also as WinFX) right now there is RC available and final release is getting closer. There are so many cool features (Communication, Workflow, Presentation Foundations, CardSpace) in it, that it would be better for you to start playing with it before it become mainstream. There is also dedicated website for it: http://www.netfx3.com/

Not so long time ago on GotDotNet I came across patterns & practices Guidance Explorer which is a tool to serve .NET and ASP.NET application developer with guidance on patterns, security and performance.

How to use it? Authors created this tool with the following scenarios in mind:

Yesterday, on June 8th, MSDN Wiki (http://msdnwiki.microsoft.com) become available to broad public audience. Concept of wiki is widely adopted in the Internet so I will skip brief intro to wikis. The purpose of MSDN Wiki site is to integrate community contributions into the Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 documentation.

We know that many of our Customers are willing to share their experience and expertise in programming on .NET Framework with Visual Studio 2005. To date, almost the only way to do publicly share (and ask) was .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2005 forum at http://forums.microsoft.com. Now you can add your snippets, good practices, information about tools and many more to the structured hierarchy build around .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2005 MSDN documentation.

On the current site you can add content and edit other people’s contributions in a wiki-like fashion around the official Microsoft-authored docs. In the future we are thinking of allowing people to edit the Microsoft-authored docs directly.

Your feedback on this initiative is greatly appreciated. Please visit MSDN Wiki  and comment this entry with your thoughts.

You have Visual Studio 2005. You are equipped with impressive hardware. Yet, you may be unable to write a large software system. Why? The key point is your perception of patterns that applies to big systems. Some say, they are applicable to each and every system - that the world is of systemic nature. Whether it is true or not, patterns are definitely the most powerful mental concept that allows you to embrace large system and  to do it in non-chaotic way.

In Microsoft we value software patterns a lot. There is special group called PAG that runs patterns & practices Developer Center (http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/).

There is also PatternShare (http://www.patternshare.org/) webpage devoted entirely to sharing and promoting usage of software patterns. In their own words: "PatternShare.org is a wiki site that aims to increase pattern sharing, dialog, and usage by bringing together people who want to learn proven solutions to common problems from people who have solved them before. The pattern format combined with the flexibility and community ownership of the wiki make the site ideal for this kind of community".

Pattern "language" become a common language to explain on high level how a software system works. It is essential to know the language that more and more software developers around the world is using nowadays.

If you think seriously about software development on .NET Framework you should visit these sites frequently and get acquainted with Software Patterns…. and practices.

PatternShare  - http://www.patternshare.org/

Patterns & practices Developer Center - http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/

Not everybody knows that Visual Studio team has excellent tools to connect with Customers worldwide and hear to their voice. Our division is proud to host one of the first Customer feedback solutions of this scale in Microsoft. A system internally called Ladybug was initially created as a pilot project for MSDN Visual Basic teams. Due to great success, it was rapidly scaled to the entire Developers Division and has now been in use for over 2 years.
 
Groups implemented a closed Customer connection loop. Each and every bug was investigated.  Almost 1/3 of the entries are suggestions which help us make Visual Studio more useful for our Customers. Your voice is really heard!
 
We will soon be moving from Ladybug to the Connect infrastructure implemented by the Windows Server organization. It serves as a place for Customer feedback (including bug submission), can provide downloads of Beta versions of products and much more. Connect has more features and a more flexible architecture, so we decided to move to it and decommission Ladybug system. Currently there is ongoing migration effort which will be complete before the end of June.
 
We are glad that users of Visual Studio so eagerly provide feedback. This will be even easier and unified across Visual Studio and other product groups in the nearest future.
 
You can submit a bug or suggestion: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback

If you have any hints for improvement for Microsoft products please go to: http://connect.microsoft.com/

An improved Beta of IronPython was recently released. There is a bunch of bugfixes, more and more C Python testcases are passing (list of passing tests) and this version was the first of Betas to be signed with a strong name.

More details on changes are here:  http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/ironpython

You can download IronPython 1.0 Beta 7 from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5024FDAA-634B-4A8E-916D-FB2CD2B78821&displaylang=en

Happy coding!

IronPython team released sixth beta on the way to 1.0 release. You can download it from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F5BB7DEF-7C71-40D0-9AD7-81E60E85E3DB&displaylang=en

Changelist in comparison to previous one (mostly bugfixes): http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=ad7acff7-ab1e-4bcb-99c0-57ac5a3a9742

Happy coding!

I was blogging about it some time in November and it seemed to be an important scenario to our Customers. I am happy to inform that there is a tool to help with targetting the .NET Framework 1.1 with Visual Studio 2005! It is called MSBee and is available as a Beta 2 on GotDotNET as a part of MSBuild Extras. Since it is a quite mature project you should be able to use it without problems.

To clarify (see: comment): MSBee is just an addition to MSBuild so it should work as well on Express Editions as on full versions.