Rants Tagged with “PDC”
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Coming December 16, 2008, i'll be at the Atlanta stop of the MSDN Developer Conference to see the PDC content. These events will give you an opportunity to see the Azure platform, Windows 7, Silverlight, F# and even Oslo.
I will be presenting the "Lap Around Oslo" with David Struggs. If you want to learn about the newest stuff coming out of Redmond or just want to show up and argue with me about Domain Specific Languages, show up at the event.
For the nominal $99 fee you get admission, food and the chance to win some fun prizes.
See you there!
As many of you might not know, I am not at the PDC, but am interestingly watching to see what comes out from it. Usually at the event times, everyone blogs too much about what they like and don't like. Everyone wants to be the first out the door with some news from a keynote. So I am layng low and letting all that happen without me. On the plus side, I can now talk about some things that I've had the opportunity to play with for some time (now that they are public knowledge and I am not hurting any NDA's):
- I've been playing with the WinFX PDC bits for a couple of weeks now and I think it is coming together nicely.
- The Expression designer is cool, though still a bit wonky for extended use.
- I like the ideas behind LINQ and C# 3.0, but like the C# 2.0, I think it will change a lot between what we see now and what will be used in production.
Is it just me or does LA suck for conventions? Oh well, its still a 'must' to attend. So I would expect that Yukon/Whidbey will ship by the PDC (or at the PDC). What will the big topics be at this PDC? Probably Avalon/Indigo. Oh yeah, that was last PDC ;)
Being at the PDC has been a blast, but a bit overwhelming. There is so much to see and so many people to meet. I have come away from the first few days with a couple of observations:
- WinFS truly is revolutionary as a file system. I will hold my breath to see if they can make it perform well enough though. In the current bits given out at the PDC, security hasn't been enabled yet so there probably needs to be a great effort in tuning it before it ships.
- Avalong is really cool for a UI. Sleek and sexy. I do have a concern that since it is using the GPU in a machine that Laptops and Tablets will lose battery life faster than before. I can only hope that the GPU's are much more power efficient or Fuel Cell Batteries exist by 2006 when Longhorn ships.
- You should always make sure the sound guys don't suck when you're renting a PA for a band. I played with the INETA All-Stars at the end of the "Ask the Experts" session. And while it was fun, the sound company turned off the PA's (leaving only the monitors live) and we didn't get it fixed until the last song.
- ObjectSpaces will be a real boon to productivity, but it may be at the expense of performance tuning IMHO.
- OPath (used in WinFS and ObjectSpaces) is an unnecessary new search language. I just wish they had figured out a way to use XQuery or XPath since both of those languages would have uses outside the ObjectSpaces technology.
- Bill Gates really needs to let us get ours hands on that "Behind the Techonology" video from the Keynote
Till tomorrow...
Other than LAX being 'smoked' in, there is not much to report today. A number of MS employees seem to be stuck at SeaTac waiting for the smoke from the bush fires to clear out. On my way in last night, we flew over the fires. It was pretty impressive. We were in a holding pattern over the fires and could smell the wood smoke in the plane. After a few nervous passengers asked the staff, we were reassured that it was only from the fires below
Since I am not registered for the pre-Conference sessions, there isn't much to do today. After walking around the conference hall, it is clear that this conference is all about Yukon, Whidbey and Longhorn. No doubt about it.
Until tomorrow...
Well, I am off to LA Saturday morning. In all the years I've been doing this stuff, I've *never* been to a PDC. Now I am feeling overwhelmed with what to dig into while I am there. I am lucky that I've had the opportunity to see Longhorn, Whidbey and Yukon before the PDC, but just haven't had the time to dig into Indigo and Avalon.
I'll be blogging intensely throughout the PDC. I will be scouting out SQL Server for O'Reilly as well as trying to find more authors for ONDotnet.com. If you're there and want to share what you know with the managed software world.
The PDC talk is heating up and it is clear to me that there is a huge number of 'wow' features that will be unveiled in LA. It seems like most of the other bloggers are talking about what I think is protected behind the multitude of NDA's I've signed. So to be safe I am keeping my mouth shut...tightly. What I can say is that what you'll see at the show about Whidbey, Yukon and Longhorn are phenomenal. Some of it is evolutionary, but much of it is revolutionary. I think you’ll be pleased... I am.
Since Don (Box) can’t seem to not talk about it, Indigo has gotten me really intrigued. I haven’t seen any of it, but I really want to know everything I can about it. That’s where I will spend my time at the PDC.
On a more mundane note, it looks INETA is going to be fielding its own band at the PDC. So far I know its Richard Hale Shaw, Carl Frankin and I. But I expect it to be a blast a number of people to come out of the woodwork to play.
In the last four years, I have been so heads down in my writing, developing and spelunking that I have neglected my own music ramblings (see http://mp3.com/shawntwain). The PDC has given me a reason to spend some time tuning up the old fingers.
