Posts about 'Development'

With the surprising news of Sinofsky's leaving Microsoft still fluttering in the winds, I knew I'd hear some rants about Silverlight be heard among the XAML-lovers out there. I decided I needed a blog post (albeit a short one) to say my peace.

I've heard many say that Sinofsky is responsible for the death of Silverlight and that it's absence on Windows 8 is a shame. I hear a lot of Silverlight enthusiasts (or apologists) that Silverlight, while being a great technology, was killed because DevDiv and Windows couldn't get along. At last year's build, it was big news that Sinofsky actually said the word Silverlight made news. While the idea that Silverlight ran on a Mac certainly caused waves in the Windows team, it's not the reason for it getting pushed to the pile of technologies that are now in 'sustaining engineering' mode. If any executive is responsible for the current state of Silverlight it's one who is no longer with us...and not even part of Microsoft: Steve Jobs.

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(UPDATED 11/12/2012: Added links to meetups/groups)

What a weekend. Much to the chagrin of my beleaguered girlfriend, I signed up to be part of Startup Weekend here in Atlanta. I haven't had the chance to do one of these events before and it was a lot of fun. I want to thank the organizers and the great people at ATDC for holding a great event.

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I've always been a big fan of George Carlin. I remember watching one of his first HBO specials when I was quite young. No matter whether you agree with his point of view, you had to admit he had an impressive mind and a way to stay relevant no matter where the country went.

Recently, I was watching Louis CK talk at a Carlin Tribute when he told the story (that I'd heard before) of Carlin's philosophy of throwing out his act once a year to work on a new show. This got me to thinking how this could apply to what we do.

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Nearly a week ago I installed Windows 8 as my main laptop operating system. I could finally do this once the Windows Phone 7.1.1 SDK update was released (making the Windows Phone emulator work on Windows 8). So I am not knee deep into Windows 8 as a desktop operating system.

NOTE: is that I am using Windows 8 on a non-touch laptop. This means I want to test it as a replacement for Windows 7 on my development machine. This is a particularly important test for the Operating System for me. I've used it on a Tablet for several months now and I really like it. The Samsung Tablet that we were given at Build is a good machine to see how real tablets will be. The lack of apps and battery life make it an approximation of real tablet use for me, otherwise I'd use it a *lot* more!

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Before I wax poetically about why to use distributed source control, let me talk about what it is (and why it is different).

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My new article disruptive technologies is now available on Software Quality Connection.  If you’re an organization or developer who are worried about what is coming next, my “Which Platform is Next: All of Them” may be a good read for you.

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URL: MangoAlarms.zip

Ok, maybe I like my distracting titles…my apologies.

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Recently, while working on my Windows Phone 7.5 book, I found the need to display a short URL to some specific documentation. I found that you could use msdn.com to do this but the results were not very satisfying. In fact, if you take a typical documentation ID (e.g. “ff402535”), you can simply do this:

This works but takes you to a simple page that reformats the topic instead of the full MSDN documentation. I didn’t like that solution so I registered http://msdnlink.net. With this new address you can do the same thing:

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While I have been exceptionally fortunate to get a Windows Phone 7 device, I still am using my Motorola Droid as my primary phone. The primary reason is that I use Verizon and my WP7 phone uses a SIM chip (Verizon doesn't use SIM chips). I expect you're reading this post to gleam some information about the WP7 phone, but let's start with the Android.

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I've been speaking at user groups and conferences for a long time now. Usually at these short talks I don't get asked much about how I use Visual Studio.  But now that I am teaching Silverlight, my students are never shy about asking what I am doing while in Visual Studio.  I am often amazed by how people use Visual Studio without learning some of my favorite hotkeys/snippets.  Here are some of mine:

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