The Mail Owl Scrolls

April SA Developer House Warming - Conclusion

There’s no excuse for me not blogging recently.  I could say I’ve been too busy but I think Rich…! would have my balls in a vice about that.

Never the less, here are the pictures from Ruari’s first house warming.  I say it’s the first because we’re definitely going to have another one when his family and furniture arrives.

Of important note is the pool table which came with the house; this is definitely, as far as SA Dev members are concerned, the most important feature.  You can also see the awesome braai area which has News Café like tarpaulin drop down wall and window to keep out the cold.

A little secret I found out, which Cape Town had been keeping quiet is that Ruari occasionally puts on his baking hat to create marvellous chocolate-chip cookies.

So make sure you’re available for the next party at Ruari’s place.

Dev Days 2005 - Conclusion

It’s now the weekend after Dev Days in Johannesburg and to tell the truth, I’m still pretty overwhelmed by it all.  This was my first such event and even more I was a partner.

But I digress; the event up here in Johannesburg was awesome.  The venue was new and interesting; the catering, if a little badly timed, was delicious and filling and the coordination was well timed and I never felt rushed or bored from sitting in the talk.

Here are pictures I took and I’ll be visiting Ruari later today to get his.  It was awesome to see JancoW and TMF in RL and I hope this means we’ll be seeing them soon at a SA Developer meeting.

I also managed to do a bit of casting on the Key Note, Talk 1 of Track 3, Talk 2 of Track 2 and Talk 3 of Track 3 which was interesting of its self and not as easy as experienced bloggers make it out to be.

Now it’s on to Tech Ed – South Africa!  Funnily enough, after talking to the speakers in the closed door sessions on Friday, I learnt that Microsoft puts a higher priority on Dev Days than on Tech Ed; and that you’re more likely to find a greater number of “high profile” speakers at Dev Days.

So see you all at next years event, if not hopefully sooner.

May SA Developer [Update] House Warming - Johannesburg, South Africa

I know I've left it pretty late, and I've going to blame Dev Days taking up my time (and in truth it's alot harder than I initially thought).

But moving swiftly along, the social scheduled for today is still happening, but the venue and the topic have changed slightly.  We're having a House Warming braai at Ruari's at 13:00 in his new home at 8 Du Plessis, Windsor Glen (Map here)

Please bring chairs, tables, meat, snacks, drinks, wives, girlfriends and kids as Ruari still has nothing in his home except a huge pool table (did you read that Mario) and this beautiful home is just begging to be filled.

Location: Ruari's home, 8 Du Plessis, Windsor Glem (Map)
Time: From 13:00

Talk 3 (Track 3) - Tools for Architecture: Designing for Deployment

Shoo! There’s actually a bit of work in managing a stand.  Walking around, chatting and promoting the community.

The next talk I attended was back at VSTS and it was nice for a change to actually see some working forms.  Through half closed eyes I saw how easy it was to export your list of tasks to excel, make changes and import it back into the server.

We also played with the policies where even the speaker got fed up with having to Rebuild and Sign-off before being able to check-in.  As far as checking in is concerned, Microsoft scored a big brownie point from making sure all the functionality is available from within the IDE including assigning code to tasks and attaching other documents.

During the break, I suddenly had Ruari asking if I can fit a couple of speakers in my tiny car to take to the After Party.  What After-Party!?  So it was a quick decision to agree to meet at News Café in Boksburg (actually, I’ve heard nothing but good things about the venue).

For the second last talk, they’ve locked the doors, so there’s a couple of dawdlers wondering around now (I decided to skip it the talk so I could blog and tidy up the stand) and I think there are going to be even more for people for the next talk as things start to wind down.

We’ll be giving away our prizes at the end of the QA session (We’re giving away a fully licensed Visual Studios 2003 and Age of Empires) so people will have to last just a little bit longer.

Today has been a good day and if Dev Days is anything to judge by, Tech Ed is going to be awesome!

Talk 2 (Track 2) - C# 2005: IDE Enhancements

On to the C# 2005 IDE Enhancements talk.  The opening started with a “visit our sponsors and communities” experience.

Initially, we’re working on the Watch Window.  They’ve cleaned it up, properties and methods grouped and added some style (glyphs) to make it easier to read.  Ooh! And intelli-sense has been added to the Watch Window, making it easy to find objects and a Visualizer which allows you see the data you way want and it’s easy to build your own (just build a windows form inheriting their controls and drop it in the correct directory).  Datasets are also easy to get data out of using a Datagrid-styled Visualizer.  Now developers just need to get used to using the new feature enriched Watch Window.

OK, Amazing!!! The intelli-sense has also been pimped because Microsoft sees C# developers as “code focused”.  When you open it, only the main methods are shown and grouping drop-downs to get to the rest of the properties.  Hitting CTRL also makes the intelli-sense transparent so you can read the code underneath!  This little feature brought great applause.

The Exception window has also been enhanced, and includes hyperlinked tips.  Edit and Continue has also been added so you can change the code while you’re debugging.

The Class View window now comes with a search tool so it’s easy to hunt for stuff through existing code.  Class Diagrams are also available where you can either create or drag-and-drop classes and get a visual view of what’s happening.  The diagram is also interactive so changes in the code are automatically seen in the diagram.

There’s also a Code Definition Window so simply clicking on code will show it’s origin in separate window.  Even for definitions where you don’t have the code, VS2005 has a Meta Data Source which will generate in a C# style the Class Definition!

Unbelievable!  They’ve also added an Object Test Bench, where you can, with a simple click, instantiate and invoke methods in a run time environment, without actually running your application!

There is also Refactoring! Enough said, my mind is already blown.  Refactoring is the method of restructuring code without changing its behaviour.  This means you can select a piece of code and the IDE will put it in its own method and call the method where the original code was.  Refactoring also, and this is just another feature, allows you to automatically build properties from public fields.  Cleaning up WTF code is now actually easy to implement.  YTRF (Yet Another Refactor Feature) is that you can remove a parameter from a method and the IDE will go and remove the parameter from all references.

OK this is also cool.  It’s also piss easy to rename classes and methods and the IDE will go by its self and rename all the references to it.  There is also a preview window if you want to see what’s going to be changed.  You can even rename from the Class Diagram.

I don’t know which the coolest feature is; it could even be the snippets which is boiler made smart code which you can also easily create.

Talk 1 (Track 3) - Managing the Software Lifcycle

OK, so casting isn’t easy if you don’t have a connection in the talk.  I have to go back to the Partner stand to get a good connection otherwise my connectivity comes and goes.  But I’ve going to persevere and keep reporting on what’s happening.

I decided to sit in the VSTS talk first, having already been to good talks with SA Developer on the new features in C# and ASP.NET 2.0; I’ve also attended a good talk with SA Architect on VSTS but it’s still too new to really know what’s going on.

In a show of hands asked by the speaker a lot of the people attending the talk weren’t using a methodology in their business.  There must be over 100 people in this talk, so hopefully this means that we’ll be seeing a move to effective methodologies with the final release of VSTS.

With the solution designer in VSTS it’s possible to import Server and Service configurations into the design, meaning that you can setup Production environment before you code, so that developers can be restricted in design time with the limitations of the “real world”.

It’s important to note that UML is not being used in VSTS; Microsoft is focusing on specific functionality and the overall designer in this version.  However, they are working with partners such as Borland to bring UML designs into VSTS and with version 2, they’re returning to the universal standard.

Personally, I’m really excited about the introduction within the VS2005 of unit testing, static code checks, managed source control and build engines.  I know it’s going to cause hell in probably 90% of companies running, but just think of the quality improvement if it’s adopted!  Something else that’s going to annoy developers is a policy that disallows code to be checked in unless it’s tied to a work item.  Thankfully, work items are available from within a tonne of integrated tools (Excel, Outlook, Projects and even Tasks in VS has been extended to use it) this means that everything a developer does will be useful towards the project and requirements can be closely managed.

The last piece was on licensing which is still a sore point, and I must admit that I still don’t understand the different packaging deals, plug-ins and possible licensing options.  So you’ll have to speak to Microsoft if you want to get it.  But they are aware that it’s really problem for smaller software houses, and they are working on a solution for them.

Casting from Dev Days

I’m so excited; as I’m casting from Dev Days!

Unfortunately just as the talks were supposed to start we had a power cut.  So, we’re starting with Q&A in the semi-darkness.

The introductions are quite good, with a suggestion to run the next Dev Days in both Johannesburg and Pretoria.

A quick word on the venue, it’s quite simple with a number of medium to small building and lots of little gardens and fountains.  The Dev Days branding is slick and simple yellow and black motif.

The first question, on continuing COM+ support, brought silence to the speakers before they answered it, but they came back with a good reply, so maybe it was just initial nerves.  Their answer was that with VS2005 and especially with Indigo you can use the features from COM+ but there is platform support for loosely coupled events, etc.

Oh, something I didn’t know was that with VS2005 you can inherit the IDE if you want to build your own designer “In 4 lines of code” (GO sharpDevelop!)

Watching the people, I see lots of knowing glances and looks of excitement to some of the comments about new features coming with the second Framework.  I think people are getting a little anxious as to which speakers and talks they want to attend; understandable as there’s a wealth of information available.

LOL, the biggest QA question was “Is VS2005 coming out in 2005” which the WHOLE crowd was interested in hearing.  While they wouldn’t release a specific date, they “sort of” committed to this year but stressed that they weren’t going to release until they were happy with the final version.

I was lucky enough to ask a question about the dropping of references and custom controls.  Can you believe I got applause for asking that, so it’s obviously a Very Big problem!  Their answer was that they think they’ve fixed it in the next version.

The things I do for friends

Sometimes I can’t win!

My house-mate has just asked me if I could make myself scarce on the night of Dev Days as his chick is bringing a female friend over for a 3some.  Oh, and can he borrow my camera.

Now unfortunately, I do intend to take my camera to Dev Days and to the After Party and I was looking forward to soft clean sheets to sleep on after a long day.

So I hope you guys will at least pity my predicament on Thursday.

Sometimes I can’t win!

BTW, I’ll try and setup the hidden spy camera with live feed before I go.  But I’m making no promises.

The disappointment of DirectX 9.0c SDK (October 2004)

Eventually I got round to installing the DirectX 9.0c SDK (October 2004) this weekend.

My first surprise was to see the “and XNA” in the graphic header of the SDK.  While it’s not mentioned anywhere else in the documentation, I think that it has to do with the new Sample Framework that comes with the latest release of the DirectX SDK.

So what’s new in the SDK?  Well, besides the cleaning up of class structures and fuller documentation that you’d expect in a new release, there are new classes supporting Spherical Harmonics and Precomputed Radiance Transfer.  I have no clue what this means; but I assume it’s got something to do with shading and light calculations.  Then there’s the Sample Framework.

“The sample framework is a layer used by most of the Microsoft Direct3D® samples and is built on top of the Microsoft Windows® application programming interface (API) and the Direct3D API. Its goal is to make Direct3D samples, prototypes, and tools as well as professional games more robust and easier to build. It simplifies the Windows and Direct3D APIs for typical usage and is designed to help make simple to moderately complex Direct3D applications.”

Personally, I think the framework is a path of brambles for a developer learning DirectX.  All the samples use it, but it would have been better if they had written clean code that ONLY does what the sample was supposed to show, and provided the documentation along with pictures and diagrams in the help files, rather than as comments in the code.

Yes, there are benefits for using the framework; but only after you understand the concepts and functions that the framework has overtaken for you.

I feel so though I’m back where I started, having to read piles of irrelevant code in chance hope of understanding, what I think, should be relatively simple object model.

Microsoft TV Campaign

Microsoft has TV campaign called Stationery is Bad which is promoting Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 and it’s hilarious.

Check out the short movies on their website.

Microsoft CRM Report Manager

I don’t know why I never blogged this, but suddenly I was looking for it and couldn’t find it in my posts.

It’s the Microsoft CRM Report Manager Pack (KB834791) and the proper way to manage (Adding, Editing and Deleting) reports in the CRM Crystal Enterprise Repository.

It’s a limited, customized version of the web Crystal Admin Launchpad interface.

When I’m back at the office, or have a chance to take some screenshots when I’m at a customer, I’ll post them up along with a quick guide.