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Well, that's done. The last few weeks have definitely been "interesting".
I've been involved in the launch of two new sites for MSDN: Oslo and Azure (and the WCF REST Starter Kit, but that's just a few pages). It's meant a lot of meetings (remotely), converting numerous documents using various internal tools (each with their own quirks), re-encoding videos, and loads of email. Hopefully the sites will be helpful and informative. Let me know if not.
Chris has the welcome message, but I figured I'd take some time to point out a few of the highlights (at least in my view) of the site.
Getting started with Oslo:
- First things first, I imagine you'll want the bits. Usual warnings apply (don't put this on a machine you don't feel like flattening -- I don't *think* it will affect anything, but I've gotten old and cranky about Betas lately).
- Second things second, read David Chappell's overview article. It provides a nice grounding in the concepts
- For those who learn visually, start chewing on the videos that the team have been generating.
- Last things last (for now). If we're missing something on the site, let me know. If you're an author and want to write some kicking Oslo content, let me know. If you've got a blog that covers Oslo and want me to watch it, well... you know.
- More videos
- at least one of the hands-on labs to help you learn
- more articles
The author has an open, conversational and inviting writing style. My wife's niece picked up the book while she was visiting, and prevented me from reading it for days while she was here (as she was reading it almost full time). The book is irreverent and reverent at the same time: he points out a few of the stranger rules, but actually points out many of the benefits of even the stranger ones.
While I enjoyed the book, there were a few unanswered questions at the end:
- Did he blow off Mr. Berkowitz after the end of the experiment?
- Were there any non-Temple requiring rules that he didn't get to?
- Did he stop being a vegetarian after the experiment?
- What's next? Spend a year mapping the Internet? 12 months reading every child-rearing book on the market? 52 weeks at the gym?
- Did he manage to get on the "Do Not Fly" list?
[1a] It's better than "that other book by Dawkins" you may have heard so much about (generally by people who haven't read it). If you have a lot of time, take a chew through "The Ancestor's Tale" as well, but it can be a bit of a slog due to density, and my needing to digest the concepts.
[1b] Or some proxy he doesn't identify – sort of like some Program and Product Managers at the Fish Shoppe
[2] I have considered a couple of times to spend some time visiting each of the churches, temples and whatnots in the valley, but I'm lazy.
Congrats to Phil, Tim, Simone and everyone else who worked so hard to get this out, and thank you from this lazy one
There are (at least) two truisms when you work for yourself:
You either have too much work, or almost none.and
You can take a vacation anytime you want, as long as you're willing to spend just as much time apologizing to customers and struggling to catch up, and you're willing to not be paid for that time.
With those two in mind, we[1] decided to take a week off and head over to Yoho National Park. I decided to document this trip using this 21st century equivalent of the old elementary school teacher's favourite, "What I did on my summer vacation."
We have been to Yoho in the past [2], but this time we were finally going to see the Walcott Quarry site: "The world's most significant fossil find of all time. Ever!"[3] of the Burgess Shale. We've been wanting to see these for ages, as – all joking aside – I do think they are incredibly important in understanding how our world (and us) developed. They represent some of the first important multi-cellular organisms on the planet, they are a documentation of early ecosystems in action, and they provide yet more insight into our evolution. In addition, they show examples of all of the major phyla[4] that currently exist (and a few more).
The walk itself was a fairly brutal (for this aging keyboard jockey) 5-1/2 hour trip up, and 3 hours down. It's about a 760m (2500 feet) elevation gain, and – this is significant as I'm acclimated to sea level – that is from a starting point about 1243m (4000 feet) above sea level. There were 15 of us, plus the guide and his assistant. Most of the attendees were university students of various sciences, but there were also a couple of engineers and a lawyer. As with any guided hike, there were the stops to discuss topics related to the area, as well as plant and animal (hoary marmots) identification. The highlight, of course, was the quarry itself.
Opabinia (from Wikipedia)
Anomalocaris (from Smithsonian)Ninety-nine years ago, Charles Walcott was up there to find examples of what the railroad workers had called, "stone bugs". He (or his wife) saw them while riding over the Burgess Pass (thus the name Burgess Shale, despite the fact that they are on Mount Field). This led to multiple expeditions and digging to extract and identify some of the strangest creatures who ever lived. The shale samples represent creatures from the Cambrian (about 500 million years ago), well before we (or the dinosaurs) cluttered the place up. They are believed to have lived on a ledge in a shallow sea, and were swept down by a mud slide into the depths, where they were preserved. In between now and then, they were lifted to their current location in the midst of the Rockies through the wonder of plate tectonics. The animals (and plants) show great diversity in overall body shape: from the sponge-like Vauxia, through various insect-like trilobites and Canadapsis, to the WTF?! of Hallucigenia and Opabinia. Alas, they didn't actually have examples of those last two[5], and only the "headless shrimp" forelimbs of Anomalocaris (those things dangling at the front of the creature in the picture to the right), but we did see great examples of the others. Yes, I'm a biology geek, but touching a piece of stone containing more stone that was a replica of something that once lived was magical. Photos and more to follow as I get the stuff off of the camera.
And now for the obligatory (and gratuitous) link to technology.
During periods of hypoxia, it struck me that the evolution demonstrated at the Burgess Shale was paralleled in the evolution of programming languages. After a slow start involving various machine languages (bacteria), we had an enormous explosion of creativity and experimentation, where multiple language forms and styles came into being. Back in the Dark Ages while I was in University, my friends [6] studied Fortran, APL, COBOL, Algol, Spitbol, Snobol and many, many others. These were just a sampling of the varied and creative languages of the Seventies (for some reason, I don't recall them taking C, Lisp or Smalltalk). Some of these languages continue (at least in spirit) to this day, others mutated into 'something else', while others died out – either completely, or essentially – when was the last time you saw a job posting requiring Pike expertise? After some time, more 'niches' emerged: GUIs, networks, the Web. As each niche emerged, there was a burst of development and experimentation, just as we see when organisms are introduced into new ecosystems[7]. The initial Mac development language of choice was Pascal, and of course Windows was home to MFC [8] and Visual Basic. The first networks really drove the power and joy of C (and its many offspring: C is truly the arthropod phylum of programming languages), although it was fairly dominant before. The Web of course gave us HTML, CSS, JavaScript, VBScript and more. We're now seeing the increasing usefulness and importance of scripting languages, such as Ruby, Python and PHP. Along the wayside we have Rebol, Eiffel, MUMPS, Prolog and many others.
I believe we are now beginning the colonization of new niches, in particular multi-core, parallel development. We've already seen some movement in this area in the form of Map-reduce, Intel's concurrency checker, Microsoft's Parallel extensions to .NET, Erlang, and others. I suspect that we will see much more in the coming years, as various attempts are made (and failed) to create both easy, transparent ways of coding for parallel systems, as well as fine-tuned "know what you're doing" methods.
We can learn much about the future of our favourite languages from what happened to the Cambrian creatures. In particular:
Pikaia: notice any family resemblance?
(from Berkeley's Evolution site)You can't really predict future success from current success. Looking at the Cambrian creatures, many would say that Anomalocaris – the most dominant predator – might rule the future. Or perhaps the trilobites, the most common body form of their time. Few – if any – would have picked a little slug-like creature that happened to have a novel structure: a backbone [9]: Pikaia.- Stuff happens, and bad stuff can easily happen to successful creatures (and programming languages). You may be highly successful, but pile a mound of dirt on you, and you'll still be eliminated (see Delphi), leaving only fossils and legacy code.
[1] By 'we' I of course mean that M decided, planned, scheduled and executed the trip. I was pulled away from my keyboards to navigate and 'enjoy myself.' Bless her soul.
[2] On the previous visit many years ago, I was accosted by a squirrel. While walking through the campground, a squirrel ran up to us, and ran up my pant leg (about up to pocket level). After we matched gaze for a few moments, he finally decided I wasn't a pine, and continued his trek across the campground.
[3] A running gag of the guide's.
[4] Phylum (plural phyla) is a major grouping of organisms within a Kingdom. You can think of a phylum as a "body plan". There are many phyla, but the major ones are: sponges, molluscs, jelly fish (and anemones), worms, insects, stars and chordates (the phylum that includes us). The broad categories that are used to identify groupings of organisms are kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species (if you don't remember – or have ever learned – the mnemonic, it's, "King Phillip came over from Greece, singing").
[5] These have been removed by miscreants and hoodlums from the Smithsonian and ROM gangs. Sadly, they also didn't they have any sample of Pikaia.
[6] Alas, I didn't get a degree in Computer Science, much to my chagrin.
[7] See Darwin's Finches, cichlid evolution in Lake Victoria and Lake Malawi, and others.
[8] Yes, I know MFC is not a programming language, but I see APIs that are as huge and "development model changing" as MFC as different enough from their core language as significant to track as real programming languages.
[9] OK, technically, Pikaia didn't have a backbone, but a proto-notochord. However, this did distinguish it from the other animals of the Cambrian period, and it did eventually evolve into our backbone.
Are you test-driven? Agile? Are you up on all the latest three letter acronyms (IoC, BDD, DRY)? Or are you just a curious sort who wants to know more about developing using these technologies? If so, you should strongly consider heading to the ALT.NET Canada event. It's not your normal developer event, as it's actually designed by the attendees in a model that has become known as "Open Spaces".
Whoever shows up is the right group. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. When it's over, it's over.
The conference runs from August 15-17, 2008 in Calgary. Details at their Web site. I hope to see you there.
Like many geeks, I was a big fan of "the new" X-Men growing up (Back before The Beast went shaggy for you children. Now get off my lawn.). So, seeing this opened up some scary possibilities. It seems there are a group of frogs in Cameroon that - when threatened - drives bones through it's flesh to cut up the attackers. No mention if they hang out with toads that control the weather, or salamanders with laser eyes.
On another front, if you're looking for a nice, amusing, light summer read, take a gander at Gods behaving badly. It's a story of "What would happen if the gods of the Greeks were still alive, and living in London?" (I also spent way too much time as a child reading Bullfinch's and every other myth book I could get my hands on). It's a fast read, full of inside jokes for Greek god fans, and it recharged me so that I could take another tilt at The Ancestor's Tale again.
World of Warcraft - 5/25/2008 Character Transfer Complete!
Sure enough, when I tried to log in, the password had been changed. I changed my password, and sent off an email to Blizzard, and hit the armory to see to my characters. The character that had been moved (to Bladefist, for the curious) was gone. Not just gone from the server, but gone-gone. One of my other 70s was now nekkid, and left without his hearthstone, deep in Ogre territory.
Another had his body left in a dungeon, his spirit deep in a river half a map away. Again with very little equipment, and having his professions deleted. Banks of course had been emptied. I'm not that good or active a player, so there were only a few blues, and mostly greens, but I think it's the principle of the thing.
What's to learn from this little adventure? Well, I guess it's my fault for using a public Wi-Fi network. I only want to warn others so that it may not happen to you. Don't log in while you're on an unprotected network, or perhaps run a NetMon scan to find out if anyone is listening for passwords.
To whoever did this: Congratulations. You pwned me, you are so l33t. I bow to your superiour abilities to run WireShark and/or NetMon. You must be proud.
Just in case anyone at Microsoft reads this, and you have contractors who are staying at the Homestead Inn on campus this weekend (May 24, 2008). Do me a favour and ask them if they like to grab passwords from the WiFi, I'd really like to thank them in person.
Updates to come, if Blizzard ever replies...
Update 2008-06-02: Well, after getting nailed with a 72 hour suspension for whatever else they did (fortunately, I only suffered through 48 or so of the hours), I got my stuff back. Gold came a few days later, but it all came at once, to my first character on that server. Unfortunate as I have characters in both the horde and alliance and my main is still cashless. I still had to do a couple of corpse runs (they had destroyed my hearthstones), and one character is currently profession-less. Ah well, it certainly could have been worse.
Brian pointed out that I may have been wrong and that it may have been the current Flash exploit. So, if you haven't yet, download the current version of Flash to save yourself.
My complaints in the last post are no longer valid. As of the 4/16 release of the MVC framework, VB no longer has that weird behaviour. Now, all action methods must return an ActionResult, so they become functions in both VB and C#.
Of course, you already knew that because you're not behind on your reading, and you've already read ScottGu's post on this. I just read blogs for a living (partly), unfortunately the posts I want to read oftimes get pushed back because of it.
ActionLinks:
<%=Html.ActionLink(Of ViewEngines.CategoryController) _Form definition:
(Function(c As ViewEngines.CategoryController) c.Add(), _
"Add Category")%>
<% Using Html.Form(Of ViewEngines.CategoryController) _The Function(c as ViewEngines.CategoryController) c.blah syntax is the equivalent syntax to the shorter, more symbolrific C# syntax: c => c.Add().
(Function(c As ViewEngines.CategoryController) c.Update(ViewData.CategoryID), _
FormMethod.Post)%>
That was still giving me an error. What I found (see below) was that the trick seems to be to change your methods into functions (instead of the Subs that I was using), and it would work:
Public Function Update(ByVal id As Integer) As Object
Dim c As New Category()
c.LoadByKey(id)
c.LoadFromPost()
c.Save()
RedirectToAction("List")
Return Nothing
End Function
Now someone can please tell me I'm wrong, and there is a simpler solution. Barring that, I think I might stick with using the "less correct" versions of the calls (or, more likely, using C# for all my MVC sites)
(Special thanks to Chuwanga on the asp.net forums for the original solution. I wouldn't have figured out that last step)
While these pages are in Flash, they can/should also be inspirational for those working in Silverlight. Probably even for WinForms and ASP.NET developers.As the good Jon Galloway pointed out the other day, Silverlight developers should really think of what they are doing from the user perspective, not from the developer "oh, shiny!" perspective. Don't just create something that could be done in HTML with a little JavaScript. Doing this just creates a site that is less functional, less searchable and overall less worthwhile. (yes, I'm looking at you Download center beta)
There was a backlash against Flash when people added it to their sites without consideration. Hopefully Silverlight can avoid a similar backlash, but only if developers avoid making the same mistakes.
I went down to the regional district office last week for one of their planning meetings. The masses had gathered to determine a vital matter for the three communities of the valley: Should there be a new gas station?While the matter certainly wasn't anything of global proportions, it did bring one characteristic of the citizens here to light: Just how long have you been living here? One speaker after the other started their proposal with, "I've been here n years..." I imagine the message is supposed to add weight to their opinion.
You see and hear this all the time in dev circles as well: want ads ask for "Java developers with 30 years experience." Developers make blog posts and statements that begin with, "I've been using .NET since n" as though it really matters. I use myself as an example. I wrote my first .NET code a few months before it was shown at PDC, before it was even called NGWS (pronounced Nigwiss). However the set of .NET developers more skilled than myself is roughly equal to the set of .NET developers in the world. It's not how long you've been doing something, but the degree to which you're pushed yourself at really learning it. Don't get me wrong: I have pushed myself, but as my life is not measured in kloc, I don't consider my skill equivalent to someone who has to keep metal in motion.
So, how can you learn something so that it actually means something? Well, the first (and obvious) method is to actually use it, but to use it in a way that you're actually learning something. Stepping through samples from articles and Web casts is fine, but you need to break things, change values, make it fizz. Scott Hanselman's series on reading code is quite useful, especially if you try to "guess whodunnit" before-hand (predict how the code should work, what would happen if you changed it in some way, how you can use it in your own applications, etc.) Another great resource is Larry O'Brien's series on learning a language. Run through them every six months or you. You'll be surprised at how different your resulting code might be as new techniques and larnin' enters your brain and fingers.
While it may seem counter-intuitive, teaching is an amazing way of learning -- I learned more about programming[1] by teaching it to others than I did by actually writing code. Different developers have different (sometimes way different) ideas about what is good code, and by discussing it with them, you grow (even if you were right in the first place). It also helps solidify your own arguments by forcing you to actually think them through and explain them in ways that others can understand. Plan a lunch workshop series at work, do a talk at your local User Group, or even sign up to help at the local continuing education facility.
You learn by doing, so go do something.
(For those interested, they still haven't decided if they'll allow the new gas station.)
[1] Don't even get me started on what I learned administering and teaching Microsoft Mail for years
For that, I thank him. Rest in peace, good sir.
However, Apple support boggles. Here's the *full* text of an update that came out today:
MacBook, MacBook Pro Keyboard Firmware Update 1.0
This MacBook and MacBook Pro firmware update addresses an issue where the first key press may be ignored if the computer has been sitting idle. It also addresses some other issues.
The update package will install an updater application into the Applications/Utilities folder and will launch it automatically. Please follow the instructions in the updater application to complete the update process.
For more information about this update, please see About the MacBook, MacBook Pro Keyboard Firmware Update 1.0
"It also addresses some other issues". Can you give me a hint? Oh, and if you do click the link, you get exactly the same text, plus the list of machines affected. Still no hint. Compare to a recent hotfix from "the other guy":
Look at that: an actual explanation of what it's trying to fix.Security Update for Windows XP (KB946026)A security issue has been identified in the mrxdav.sys driver that could allow an attacker to compromise your Windows-based system and gain control over it. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.
I'll leave it to the conspiracy theorists to figure out what would happen if Microsoft published fixes that "fix stuff -- really you don't need to know."
Thanks again to Sonu, Karl and the rest of the DNS team.
We're back from Victoria, where I did another version of my "A quick look at SubSonic" talk (it was a shorter version of the talk I gave in Winnipeg). What did I learn?
- People don't stay all day at a Code Camp. During the kickoff, there looked to be around 100 people in attendance. There were all of 8 or so people in my talk (and a big 'Thank you!' to all of you), and the other two speakers (I would have gladly been in either of their talks) during the last session claimed 25 each.
- I really need to force myself to get out and speak (and write) more
- While I feel generally apprehensive around the whole "LINQ thing", the syntactic sugar they added to VB to help on the XML work is excellent. You can now declare and use an XML element (or document) on the fly:
Dim custs = <customers>
<customer id="ALFKI">
<company>Alfreds Futterkiste</company>
<address>
<street>Obere Str. 57</street>
<city>Berlin</city>
<zip>12209</zip>
<country>Germany</country>
</address>
<contact>
<name>Maria Anders</name>
<title>Sales Representative</title>
<phone>030-0074321</phone>
<fax>030-0076545</fax>
</contact>
</customer>
'...more here, but removed
</customers>
Dim contacts = From cust In custs...<contact> _
Select cust.<name>, cust.<phone>
For Each contact In contacts
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0}: {1}", _
contact.name.Value, _
contact.phone.Value))
Next
M forgot her Hotmail password. So, I decide to go through the wizard to help her get it back. They will kindly mail out a new password. To her Hotmail account. Who came up with that one?
The network gives me a "convenient" distraction most days: waiting for a Web project to start up? Check a few blogs. Need to grab a few graphics? Well, I'll just go to this Web site.... Ooo, shiny, I should look at this article. Finish a task? Well, I'll just check the Auction House to see how things are selling. Etc, etc. Just disconnecting for a little while was invaluable. I was better able to focus on the job(s) I needed to get done, and just do them. Granted, I was still working on three documents, but it was much more conducive to focus than usual. I really think I need to do it more often, perhaps declare a "Day without network" once a week or so.
It also reminded me of that great Microsoft tool -- "The Off-site". Every once and a while, a group will go off and work "somewhere". It may be at some hotel or other facility (although these are very rare these days, I imagine), at another building on campus (or another campus), or even just in a meeting room for a day. They serve two purposes that I can tell. The first is the above: they tend to be disconnected affairs, where you are supposed to focus on some task. The second is that it breaks up the normal order of things: by being in a different location, you don't fall back on normal behaviours. You don't end up going to the same cafeteria/coffee bar, you don't have all the niceties of your normal work environment, you're forced to talk with people in your group you don't normally talk with. In short, a reset. A fresh seed in your randomizer.
So, my recommendation. Once a month or so, just work somewhere else for a day (assuming you're not a call centre drone or other job where you can't do that), preferably without a network connection. You'll be (hopefully) surprised at how much you can actually get done, and how it may recharge your energies and mind going forward.