Sharing my revelation over here

Are you or do you know a VB6 programmer who is still worried about the leap, learning curve, etc. to .NET? To me the most daunting thing was not wanting to just do things the VB6 way when I moved to .NET. I didn't want to be just another mort. Well this looks like a REALLY promising series of webcasts that takes VB6 devs by the hand and shows them the real meat of .NET. Quoting Duncan MacKenzie

A series of 15 webcasts & lab exercises for the VB6 programmer... (see the full list here)

MSDN Webcast: Program Execution in the 21st Century - Level 200
2/3/2004 1:00 PM - 2/3/2004 2:30 PM Live Meeting Webcast

This is the first webcast in the 15 part series “Modern Software Development in .NET Using Visual Basic”.

Developers shouldn’t miss this opportunity to examine the following topics with renowned author Joe Hummel, PhD: Virtual machines, sandboxes, garbage collection; Class libraries; Execution in .NET: CLR, FCL, JIT compilation, GAC; Quick discussion of application designs: monolithic vs. component-based

Presenter: Joe Hummel, PhD. DevelopMentor instructor and course author, DevelopMentor

I will be making sure that not only everyone in my user group knows about this, but I will use my INETA connection to get this out to all user group leaders around the world.

Every once in a while, while working on a windows app in VS.NET2003, I lose the design view of a particular form. The solution Explorer only displays it as a class and there is no way to access the design view of the form. The components all still exist in the code. It's a little bit of a heart stopper. But then removing and then readding the project from the solution brings back the form. 'Sup with that?

[syndicated from Julia Lerman's Don't Be Iffy Blog. Please refer and comment here]

(reposting due to timestamp issues from cross-post)

You saw it here first, but Darryl Taft has done a little more research and has more details in this e-week article.

[syndicated from Julia Lerman's Don't Be Iffy Blog. Please refer and comment here]

(reposting to weblogs due to time stamp issues from cross-post)

I have been looking at the BCL a lot lately in preparation for a presentation on What's new in the Base Class Library for Whidbey that I am doing at EdgeEast and at DevTeach.

Ever since K.C. pointed to this brilliant visualization of Tom Lehrer's “The Elements“ song, I have been hoping someone with more talents than I would attack it from the CLR perspective. But alas. Here is my first crack at it:

System, data, SQL Client, Text and XML
Reflection and Collections, Port and Diagnostic hell
Windows Forms and Drawing, Web, U.I. and WebControl
and Timers, Threading, Logging. I.O., Ports and Protocols
Security, Cryptography, Discovery, Transactions
Configuration, Interop and Serial-i-zation
I don't know what's come over me, this constant revelation
It seems it's from a lethal redpill/koolaid combination

ok - lame ending but hey, I gotta get back to work

[syndicated from Julia Lerman's Don't Be Iffy Blog. Please refer and comment here]

A few months ago there was a proposal in the works for the state of Massachusetts that looked like someone was trying to force Mass to use “Open Standards and Open Source” software only and not get locked into licensing etc. (my interpretation of lengthy legal document...) This is pretty scary for a LOT of people, developers, Microsoft, etc. Just out of curiosity, I checked over on that site again today and coincidentally, they posted their official policy yesterday. They have split “Open Standards and Open Source” into separate policies and renamed Open Source to Acquisition, where they now strongly encourage the consideratoin of open source and freeware, but they do still have proprietary software on the top of their list. Phew!

Read more here:

• The press release
• The open standards policy
• The Acquisition Policy

[Please refer and comment on the www.julialermaninc.com/blog]

(I swear I am going to stop cross-posting soon, but I don't want this to get lost)

bummer - this is what I get for working instead of playing on BLInk! Well, being first wasn't my intention. I was just experimenting, really.

Seem's like Loren's got a winner. Here's what Peter (aka Tabula PC) has to say about it.

Always the last to know! I got an email from a good friend of mine who is a Java programmer at BEA telling me about www.theserverside.net (“Your Enterprise .NET Community“) which was just launched this morning.

The Middleware Company today announced the launch of TheSeverSide.NET, Your Enterprise .NET Community. In his opening letter, TSS.NET Editor-In-Chief Ted Neward talks about his vision for TheServerSide.NET, his commitments to the community for the future, and why TheServerSide.NET is important to the .NET community as a whole.

Wow! Take a look at that. Ted Neward is the top dog editor. They've got video interviews with Don Box and Scott Guthrie. Looks like it is chock full of content - original content.

My java/BEA pal tells me that theserverside.com is “the” place for J2EE. So they've got lots of great experience already that will be leveraged for the .net version.

It looks awesome. Oh god, MORE GREAT STUFF TO READ! EEEEEEEEEEEEEK! (When's a girl to find time to sleep?)

The next INETA newsletter is on it's way out. I got some awesome help this month (and going forward) from Sheri Nawrocki who is on the INETA Marketing committee and also a graphic designer (consultant hint hint) as well as a .NET Developer. Sheri did a major redesign of the newsletter and it is just beautiful. She also is doing the physical production of the newsletter which is a huge help to me. We finally have a home for old newsletters (you know, old newsletters never die, they just fade away) at www.ineta.org/newsletters. We will also start putting the international newsletters there as well. Since INETA is know defined as regions (North America aka NORAM, Latin America aka LATAM, Europe, MiddleEast/Africa aka MEA and AsiaPacific aka APAC) each region will be doing their own newsletter, though the one I do (NorAm) does have a bit of a world view still. Though some of the news is user group related and INETA related, it may still be of interest to others and you can subscribe to Sheri's thing of beauty on the home page of the INETA website. We'll get the January newsletter onto the newsletter page shortly if you were not susbscribed before it went out.

Robert is asking this question of Mark Cliggett, the new community guy for VS.NET. This will only cover a slice of those asking, but if you live in the u.s. (or are visiting) and have access to one of the 30 major cities on the DevDays tours, GO GO GO!

I love the description of this talk!

Zen and the Art of Web Services (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love WSDL)

Will Web Services save the world? More importantly, will they save you time? Are Web Services just a bunch of hooey? We’ll separate the good from the bad and dig into the WHY of Web Services and the HOW of the . NET Framework. We’ll go low level and sniff packets on the wire and we’ll go high level and design business documents with XML schema. We'll auto-generate Business Domain Objects and Messages. We’ll discuss the meaning of the WS*.* specifications, interoperability and get our heads around the "Zen" of Web Services and see where . NET succeeds and where it falls down. This talk will be as technical as you want it to be, but it will also be valuable for the Business Person or Project Manager who really wants to answer the question "Web Services: So What?" Doesn’t sound like the typical Users Group meeting, does it? You’ll just have to come by and find out!

Scott is an INETA Speaker and this event is being sponsored by INETA.
more here...