Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? If some of the responses I've
heard from attendees at the Professional Developers Conference 2008 are any
indication, the answer might be yes.
More accurately, a lot of folks felt that Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's corporate
vice president of the .NET Developer Division, could have used a lot more time
to work through the enormous cache of developer announcements that he unloaded
during his limited time on the stage.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/29/20082 comments
Day three of the PDC and Microsoft pauses to cast its vision forward, with Microsoft Senior Vice President of Research Rick Rashid taking the stage to talk about Redmond's efforts in basic, foundational research.
In the post-golden age of corporate research, defined by institutions like Xerox PARC and Bell Labs, it's fascinating to hear Rashid make a compelling case for pure research. By any measure Microsoft Research is a vital organization. Over the past 17 years Microsoft Research has published more than 4,000 publications and years ago surpassed the publish rate of IBM. The organization, Rashid points out, is larger than the entire faculty of Carnegie-Mellon or Brown University. With offices in Redmond, Wash., Cambridge, Mass., Cambridge, England, Bangalore, India, and Beijing, Microsoft Research has grown into a global organization.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/29/20080 comments
The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference is the largest developer industry confab in years, so it's hardly a surprise that Redmond is pushing multiple themes during PDC this week. In addition to
Windows 7
and the far-reaching cloud computing launch featuring the CTP release of
Windows Azure
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/28/20080 comments
Steve Sinofsky, senior VP of Windows and the Windows Live Engineering Group,
may be known as the guy who won't talk about his development projects, but during
the keynote he produced some pretty powerful mea culpas regarding Windows Vista
and some of the decisions in its development.
Talking about the transition from Vista, Sinofsky said, "We got lots of
feedback. From reviews, the press, a few bloggers here and there. Oh, and commercials."
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/28/20080 comments
As expected, Microsoft rolled out its cloud computing vision during the opening
keynote of PDC 2008 this morning, and I have to say, there were surprisingly
few, um, surprises.
Don't get me wrong -- the services-based cloud operating system known formerly
as "Project Red Dog" isn't a small deal. Far from it, the ultimate
scope of Windows Azure should dwarf that of Microsoft's latest client OS launch
in Vista. This is a play for the entire Web, from hosted enterprise applications
and services to hobbyist stuff running over the wire.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/27/20081 comments
Microsoft Technical Fellow Anders Hejlsberg drew a big and enthusiastic crowd as he provided a look at the future of the C# programming language in a session at the company's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles on Monday.
Hejlsberg offered a rundown of what developers can expect from the next version of C#, with a heavy emphasis on the increasingly dynamic nature of the language. If the response of developers attending the presentation was any indication, there will be a lot to like about the next version of C#.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/27/20082 comments
The Microsoft
2008 Professional Developers
Conference
(PDC) kicks off tomorrow at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
For
RDN
readers, this is perhaps the single biggest industry event in
the past three years. While we expect more than a few surprises at PDC 2008,
there's a lot that we already know will be featured at the confab.
We do know that the two key pillars of PDC 2008 will be the upcoming Windows
7 client operating system and Microsoft's far-reaching cloud computing initiative.
By way of confirmation: Cloud is the topic of Monday's show-opening keynote,
while Windows 7 and the Microsoft Live platform are on tap for Tuesday's keynote.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/26/20080 comments
We just put to bed the Nov. 1 issue of
Redmond Developer News
, and I
couldn't help but notice something funny: The news section of that issue is
absolutely jammed with Microsoft-specific news.
OK, that's not surprising for a publication that's tasked with covering Microsoft-
and .NET-based development technologies and issues. What is surprising, though,
is the sheer volume of product news coming out of Microsoft just weeks ahead
of its biggest developer event in three years.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/23/20080 comments
It seems like it's been forever since Microsoft first started talking about
Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E) and its vision of a XAML-based,
cross-platform media and application runtime. And while Silverlight 1 was nice,
in a sort of me-too Flash media player kind of way, most developers recognized
Silverlight 1 for what it was -- a vehicle for getting the all-important browser
runtime bits onto millions of machines.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/21/20081 comments
If you've been reading the pages of Redmond Developer News, you know that Microsoft has been hard at work building out its Model View Controller (MVC) story. This has been a remarkable effort, and one that previewed Redmond's strategic shift toward a more open -- and more open source-friendly -- technology stance.
After all, the minds behind the MVC push were snapped up by Redmond precisely because they understood the open software market. Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack and Rob Conery have really helped lift Scott Guthrie's Developer Division, as it has taken the lead in Microsoft's more open and pragmatic course of late.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/16/20081 comments
There's an old saying that goes: Life is about what comes next. And nowhere is that idea truer than in application development. Dev managers must constantly check their assumptions, track competing and complementary technologies and be ready to adapt their plans.
Look no further than today's official launch of Silverlight 2.0, the long-awaited update to the Silverlight rich Internet application (RIA) development platform and runtime that provides an encapsulated subset of the .NET Framework. As Scott Guthrie explained in a press conference yesterday, Silverlight 2.0 significantly extends the ability of .NET developers to deliver robust applications over the wire.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/14/20083 comments
In the Sept. 1 issue of
RDN
, we
covered
reports
about Microsoft's secretive Midori project and its implications
for the post-Windows landscape.
In that feature Rockford Lhotka, principal technology evangelist at Magenic
Technologies and a contributor to RDN's sister publication Visual
Studio Magazine, made a cogent and concise observation about the .NET Framework
and its evolution. Said Lhotka:
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/09/20080 comments