I was talking to the folks at
ComponentOne
the other day regarding their
Studio
Enterprise 2008 v3
suite of cross-platform components. The suite was released
last week and packages up a wide range of modules for WPF, Silverlight, ASP.NET,
WinForms, .NET Compact Framework, iPhone mobile and even ActiveX development.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 12/09/20080 comments
Sun Microsystems today officially announced the launch of its JavaFX runtime,
platform and development tools for rich Internet application (RIA) development.
JavaFX consists of the JavaFX Development Environment compiler, libraries and
runtime tooling; the JavaFX Production Suite for managing assets and workflow;
and the JavaFX Desktop runtime environment. Developers craft applications using
the declarative JavaFX Script.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 12/04/20082 comments
The final
Redmond Developer New
s issue of 2008 -- due to hit the street
on Dec. 15 -- will offer a glimpse into what promises to be a very stressful
and no doubt eventful 2009. Among the observations of our expert panelists:
- The economic downturn will do more than crater IT budgets and throw developers
out of their jobs. It will spur programmers to adopt cutting-edge technologies
and master new skills that will ultimately position them for the recovery
to come. The downturn will also transform dev organizations as they flock
to hybrid, open source/proprietary solution stacks in an effort to balance
cost and value.
- 2009 also promises to be a year of catching up, as developers assess new
and refreshed technologies like Silverlight 2, WPF, Windows Azure and .NET
Framework 4.0. You'll see real interest in cloud computing among firms suddenly
strapped for cash to pay for capital expenditures, but the heady task of planning
any cloud transition will prove daunting.
- No surprise, 2009 promises to be a busy year for rich Internet application
(RIA) development. But what's really interesting is how enterprises may turn
to RIA tools and runtimes to help them deliver cost-effective apps.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 12/02/20081 comments
You know what they say about Microsoft software: It always takes them three
tries to get it right.
Well, if the third time's really the charm in Redmond, we should all be pretty
excited about the early news on the next version of Microsoft's Silverlight
rich Internet application (RIA) platform and runtime. Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's
corporate VP of the .NET Developer Division, offered a sneak peek at what's
to come in Silverlight 3 in a blog
post on Sunday.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/18/20080 comments
The current issue of
Redmond Developer News
features a newly arrived
columnist. Starting in the Nov. 15 issue, which focuses on the just-concluded
2008 Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Andrew Brust will be penning
the Redmond Review column.
Andrew is chief of New Technology for consultancy twentysix New York, a Microsoft
regional director, and co-author of Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2008
(Microsoft Press, 2008). He's also deeply engaged with the development community,
serving as a member of the Microsoft Advisory Council and as co-chair of the
VSLive! family of conferences.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/18/20080 comments
We're taking a close, hands-on look at the Windows 7 client operating system
for an upcoming issue, and as part of that effort I started talking with developers
about their impressions of the 6801 pre-beta build that was
distributed
at the 2008 Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles
last month.
If one theme emerged from my discussions with attendees at PDC and after, it's
that Microsoft seems to have delivered a remarkably stable preview product.
Anyone who recalls the rough-and-tumble days of the Windows Vista development
cycle knows this is a huge win for a group that just three years ago was plagued
by ugly delays, buggy code and redacted features.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/13/20080 comments
Microsoft is working overtime to change the way you write software. That message
might have gotten lost in all the news about Windows Azure, Windows 7, and all
the .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio advances at the Microsoft 2008 Professional Developers
Conference (PDC) last month. But one look at the messaging and tooling coming
out of the "Oslo" project makes this fact crystal-clear.
We spoke at PDC with Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in the
Connected Systems Division at Microsoft. He's in charge of managing the Oslo
project, which is comprised of the "M" modeling language, the "Quadrant"
visual modeling tool and the Oslo repository. These tools, currently in community
technology preview (CTP), allow developers to create their own domain specific
languages (DSLs) that are tuned to address a specific set of issues or requirements.
Just as important, Oslo encourages developers to further abstract their thinking,
building application behaviors based on configurable models that can be reused
and reshaped.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/11/20081 comments
Maybe Steven Sinofsky and the Windows 7 group at Microsoft have mastered the
fine art of lowering expectations. Or perhaps Windows Vista did the job for
them. Whatever the case, it seems Windows 7 is poised for a warm welcome among
IT and development professionals alike, when it ships (possibly) in 2009.
But we're impatient. We want to hear what you think of the next great Microsoft
client OS right now. If you've worked with the Windows 7 pre-beta, send us an
e-mail with your thoughts. And let us know if the new features and capabilities
of the OS might make Windows 7 a more appealing dev target. E-mail me at
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/11/20081 comments
When I read the news that Microsoft was officially ending the licensing of
Windows 3.x earlier this month, my first surprised thought was: Microsoft still
licenses Windows 3.x?
Windows 3.x, of course, was the last 16-bit operating environment designed
to run atop the DOS operating system. Windows 3.0 was introduced in 1990 and
it quickly captured broad market share for the struggling brand. Several updates,
including Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11 and Windows for Workgroups, would follow
over the next four years. By 1995, that run was over, as the vastly successful
Windows 95 operating system introduced 32-bit computing to the consumer desktop.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/06/20084 comments
By this time tomorrow, we'll all finally know the result of what has proven
to be the longest and one of the most passionately fought U.S. presidential
campaigns in memory.
In fact, my first election-related memory goes way back to 1972. I don't remember
much about second grade, to be honest, but I do have a clear memory of marching
around with other kids in my classroom, singing: "Nixon, Nixon, he's our
man, put McGovern in the can!"
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/04/20081 comments
As the father of three young children, I can't help but feel a bit of a Christmas
afternoon vibe in the air as the 2008 Microsoft Professional Developers Conference
closes. The packages have been opened. The gifts have been strewn about the
house. Long months of anticipation have given way, inevitably, to a bittersweet
mix of contentment and exhaustion.
In short, it's been a very good several days in L.A., both for developers who've
learned so much about the future direction of Microsoft-based development, and
for Microsoft itself, which I feel did a very good job of articulating its most
important strategy since the launch of .NET Framework in 2000. Despite some
confusion among attendees around the Windows
Azure cloud OS launch, it's apparent to me that Microsoft decisively moved
the ball forward on several fronts this PDC.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/31/20080 comments
Lost amid all the sturm und drang of the
Windows
Azure launch
and
Windows
7 preview
and
Visual
Studio 2010 CTP
is a rather intriguing tale about Microsoft's effort to
introduce and support parallel programming across both the native C++ and .NET
dev stacks. Not so ironically, as it turns out, Microsoft is getting very busy
with parallelization...in parallel.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/30/20080 comments