Rudolf Henning

My manager at work sent me the following link on how Jim Allchin managed to turn around the development culture inside Microsoft. Its something developers and architects must read to understand that even the world's biggest software company can 'learn' from its own mistakes.
Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software
In the beginning mr Gates and CEO Balmer were against it but they gradually learned that this is the way to go. Now we can look forward to a 'better' and 'meaner' next version of Windows - Vista!

Alhough too late for the PDC trip I finally got my own laptop. I opted for the new MSI 645 laptop which I got through Pinnacle Micro. Although it might not have all the fancies like other machines (like playing multimedia while not switched on) it is a small powerhouse of performance. The specs of mine are:
CPU: 1.86GHz Centrino Pentium M
RAM: 2GB
HD: 100GB
DVD: Dual layer DVD writer
Screen: 15.4" wide screen plus some new technology to make it brighter from higher angles
GPU: NVidia GeForce Go 6600
Connection: 100Mbps LAN, Wireless 802.11g, Firewire connection, telephone jack
Ports: 4 x USB2, Type II pc card, Fash card reader, S-Video out, VGA out
The rest is fairly standard. I've already written some DVD's on it and it works fine. It could write at full 8x speed for a normal 4.7GB DVD.
One complaint that I have is that the keyboard seems a bit 'unsensitive'. You have to make double sure you pressed a key properly. This could be my fault as I'm use to my MS natural keyboard that is quite forgiving.
At least now I'll be able to have my own machine at presentations and training sessions.

One of the more 'valuable' pieces of information to come out after PDC is short article on the language wars by ' Scott Golightly'. He goes on to describe the foolishness of people that continue to wage (religious) wars over what languages to use and how it doesn't help anyone. The winners and losers are us, the developers. The vendors are described as the 'arms dealers' - sounds like an arms race if you ask me.

http://commnet.microsoftpdc.com/content/pdcreflections.aspx

During PDC I saw fantastic features for both VB.Net and C# being showed. In some cases it turns out to be a language specific feature which is sad. In VB.Net there is the concept of xml literals which like string literals makes typing easier. Unfortunately it is not available in C#. All (some) of the upcoming C# features in the C# 3.0 timeline won't be in VB.Net again. In a way this is sad because this force some developers to use a language instead of them using the language they are most comfortable with.

Why not create VB# and get it over with. ;)

So many things happened at PDC that I only remember some of them thanks to some related stories I read. I followed a link from winderivers.com to http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3549406 where they write about the 'lighter' moments of the conference.

Needless to say the people at the conference enjoyed it tremendiously when Bill was talking about how he always wants to compare the software industry's reliability to that what the power companies (should be). But after the power outs the previous day he had to add the following: “What I meant to say was that we should be more like them, not they be more like us...”. He had to pause a few moments as the crowed roared of laugther.

Then there was the ficticious movieclip about software developers feeling (physically) the pain of users when they logged a 'fault report'. With spikes, electrical shocks and ejection seats they showed a lighter way of sharing the pain of the user when things go wrong... I surely hope that video clip could be made available somewhere on the web - Please MS!

Attending PDC 05 was an experience. There was so much to learn and experience and I probably missed more than half of it - there being so much to see and so little time.

The following is a summary of the things I thought was cool and exciting (this is by no way a complete list of everything that was available at the PDC)

1. Bill Gates keynote, he talked alot about the future and where Microsoft is going and that they are not blind to what 'others' are doing. I was just wondering why they keep on refering to the 'other' browser (hint - Firefox). That 'recruitment' movie clip was way cool!

2. LINQ project. This is going to be the future of data access coding. Why haven't anyone thought about this before? I loved Anders Hejlsberg and Paul Vick demo about LINQ. I attended Anders's later session on LINQ and it was brillant!

3. Office 12. The windows workflow stuff and the new way 'toolbars' replace menus were impressing!

4. Windows Vista. What more do I have to say. This release of Windows is going to rock the world (and your pocket too since you must have a desent graphics card to really make good use of it)

5. Atlas. Microsoft's answer to AJAX. This is going to make web development a whole lot easier and better.

6. VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Applications). Being able to customize custom applications is going to help a lot of developers build highly productive applications. Bye bye VBA.

7. BizTalk 2006. Although this is not exactly 'new' anymore I spoke to the developers of the product and wow, this version is going to rock a good product even better. Its about time to allow developers and operators to 'correct and resubmit' messages that might be incorrect once they are inside of BizTalk. Although there might be good reasons not to allow it most 'operators' need this functionality in the 'wild' since that is the way they must operate.

And thanks to the organisers of the event for all the bananas. It really helped to have fresh fruit in between sessions...

[Update: I almost forgot. Two features that really is worth mentioning is that future versions of Windows Server will not have the GUI as default - yes, thats right all those fancy graphics the administrators don't need anyway. The Linux/Unix guys gona love this.

The second thing is the total modularity of IIS7 and total break away from metabase. Now developers can have complete control over what their applications are doing.]

This last week has been one big rush ( a good one)
I learned so many new things, not just Microsoft related but also that there is a 'bigger' world out there that is vastly different from ours yet many things are still the same. Don't ask me to explain that last sentence because it only makes sense if you have been 'out' of our little world for a while - hehe.
One thing I can mention is that the Americans (more specifically those from Los Angeles) know how to drive properly. They actually stay with the speed limits, keep a following distance (something no respectable Cape Townion knows about...), Give way to incoming traffic (read no taxi mentality here) and yes, know how to use the hooter.
However, they do seem to lack a sense of humour. That is something we south africans can teach them a good deal about. We have a real 'multi cultural' environment and we have learned to overcome most of out differences (ok, lets say the majority at least). The 'average' or perhaps most Americans are not even aware there is a world outside their country or even outside their city.
And then there is the conference. I think I need to make a seperate blog posting for that because it's going to take a while to just write is all down...
Thanks again for Lillian, Ahmed and Ruari for the opporunity to attend PDC. It was a life changing experince and a welcome break away from 'things' that just break you down in your every day life.
Oh and yes, Bill Gates was cool! I liked his 'little recruitment' movie clip during the key notes. I did'nt know he could be an actor hehe!

I'v just came out of one of possibly the most interesting sessions I've been at PDC (or perhaps my life..). Anders Hejlsberg was talking about some new language enhancements that is coming in the future releases of C# (and VB.Net I think) that might revolutionise the way we do and data centric development. There is a technology called LINQ that basically is a form of query language embedded into development languages and solve a lot of those Object / relational mapping issues. Actually, it can do much more than that plus the whole framework is extensible.

I can't wait to get home and play with these new 'toys'. It is exciting times again to be a developer!

 

With just about 3 hours before I take off (the plane more technically) my PDC experience is about to start. Wish me luck. LA doesn't know whats going to hit it!
I'll try to keep the news flowing whenever I get to some Internet connected PC :p

I've been looking around for an alternative to store all the hundreds of pictures I'm going to take on my PDC trip. Getting a laptop is out of the question...still cost too much. Originally I thought of getting just one huge CF card to put in my camera and hope I can fit everything on it. Then I came across a product one of my suppliers sell, the Apacer ShareSteno. It is a portable hard drive plus it can operate without a PC...yes that's right, without a PC. It's great for people on the road that just quickly wants to backup your pictures so you can clear the flash card and start shooting again.
It also doubles as a plain external USB2 hard drive. Inside it has a 40GB laptop hard drive so it can store a good couple of thousand pictures. It has its own internal rechargeable battery (Lithium based). I did found the relatively short battery life of only about an hour when constantly using it a bit limiting and the fact that while it is connected to the PC via USB it still only run on the battery and not of the USB power. This simply means you have to plug in the external power in as well if you continuously use it on the PC. As long as there is an extra two point power plug around its OK.
Another weird thing about it is that the 'onboard' software/hardware of the device can only support FAT type file systems. Although FAT is not absolutely bad it does mean the hard drive has to be partitioned into two because 40GB is too big for even FAT32. Despite these little irritating issues I like this little device - and I mean little. It is just slightly bigger than the laptop 2.5 inch hard drive that is inside it. It came with its own poach which unfortunately (again) is only big enough for the drive itself and perhaps one of the cables you need. The power cord and transformer you have to carry separately.
Given the 'relatively' low price compare to buying a whole new laptop it was worth the trouble. Hopefully they can update the firmware on this device to support NTFS some day.

Firstly thanks to a collegue I got a link for another guy who seems to be an expert on the subject and has a couple of (very) useful links related to our beloved BizTalk.
Have a look at David Crawford's WebLog for a whole bunch of utilities and useful stuff.

And now a tip from my side:
Some people are under the impression that when BizTalk deal with files (plain files) it can only do it from the default application pool(Host) and thus the default security context under which BizTalk runs. This is not true as you can change the application pool (host) under which the FILE adapter run which can run under a different account from the BizTalk main process. All you do is create a new 'host', specify the account under which it runs (some domain account that has been allowed access to file shares by your admins) and then under 'adapters' change the 'Receive Handler' and 'Send Handler' properties to use the new 'host'.
The reason 'we' discovered this was simply because our 'admins' got a fright after discovering that for 'file receive' functions you need the 'Full' permissions on a file share for BizTalk to pick up a file correctly. Specifying only read/write is not enough. Therefore the original 'serviceaccount' under which BizTalk itself run was not given rights on fileshares for full permissions. We either had to 'reinstall' BizTalk (not something you do for fun) or change the account the File adapter use for pickups.
Funnily enough, for file 'send locations' you only need 'read/write'. Every day you learn something more...like how admins can freak out and avoid 'reinstall hassles' making everyone else's working on the problem... ;)

Tonight we have another .Net Juniors session at the waterfront. The topic is going to be ASP.Net - one of the main topics why many of the 'juniors' enrolled to these sessions.
The one thing that still bothers me is that we lack a bit of equipment to make it easier to present these sessions. Personally I cannot afford a laptop or something similar at this stage. Poor old Hilton have some bad luck with his one being in and out of service the whole time.
If someone perhaps knows where we can get a 'cheap'ish' one for our sessions please shout!
See you all there (don't worry, the rain cannot melt people ... yet)

This is the last week before I go to PDC. The nerves are starting to work overtime. There are still a couple of things to sort out so hopefully I will get everything done before my flight friday afternoon. In total I'll be in the air about 24 hours (give or take a little).
So keep your fingers crossed that I won't be sitting a hole in the plane...or that I'll survive that! hehe

If you play around with installation packages or regularly install/uninstall stuff this tips might be useful to you.

You can add a context menu item to "my computer" for "Add/remove software" by using the following reg file

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\shell\AddRemSoft]
@="Add/remove software"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\shell\AddRemSoft\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\system32\\control.exe C:\\Windows\\system32\\appwiz.cpl"

This does assume you have a default Windows installation.
Just copy and paste this into notepad and save it as "AddRemoveSoftware.reg" and then in explorer double-click on it.

By the way, is there someone with some more info about creating cascading menu items for Windows explorer context menu's (i.e. sub menus of these context menus)