Entries for Charles

PDC 2008 Who's coming to PDC Thread [PDC 2008 Who's coming to PDC Thread]

Charles — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:17:39 GMT

See you there?
C

in reply to PDC 2008 Who's coming to PDC Thread

Erik Meijer, Dave Thomas and Pratap Lakshman: Perspectives on JavaScript

Charles — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:51:00 GMT

JavaScript is a language that appears to have a long lifespan given its ubiquity on the web. It pretty much powers the client-side in-page execution of hundreds of millions of web pages. As a language, well, it's cool and strange at the same time. It's not evolved much over the years and is the topic of hot debate in the halls of the web standards committee. At any rate, a few people who know a thing or two about dynamic languages joined me in a conversation to address JavaScript and dynamic languages for the web, generally. The great Dave Thomas and fundamentalist functional languages high priest Erik Meijer sit down with Microsoft JScript Program Manager Pratap Lakshman and myself to converse on JavaScript the language and virtual machine. Of course, as you can imagine, the conversation winds effortlesssly into various geeky tangents.

This is the second year I've been lucky enough to take part in the cross-platform software engineering conference JAOO. Like last year, I was very fortunate to get to sit down with a few key players in the programming languages design field and watch several technical presentations that span the industry and problems we face as software developers. One of the truly great things about JAOO is that it is not a product-focused conference: it's about programming first and foremost and enables the sharing of perspectives and ideas among the world's best and brightest programming minds. As you can imagine, I, like many technical types here at Microsoft, am a huge fan of JAOO. Thank you Trifork!!!

Enjoy!

Anders Hejlsberg and Guy Steele: Concurrency and Language Design

Charles — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:27:00 GMT

This is the second year I've been lucky enough to take part in the cross-platform software engineering conference JAOO. Like last year, I was very fortunate to get to sit down with a few key players in the programming languages design field and watch several technical presentations that span the industry and problems we face as software developers. One of the truly great things about JAOO is that it is not a product-focused conference: it's about programming first and foremost and enables the sharing of perspectives and ideas among the world's best and brightest programming minds. As you can imagine, I, like many technical types here at Microsoft, am a huge fan of JAOO. Thank you Trifork!!!

In this conversation Microsoft Technical Fellow and Chief Architect of C# Anders Hejlsberg sits down with programming language design legend and computer scientist Guy Steele (creator of Scheme and expert in several languages ranging from LISP to Java). I think Guy is one of the smartest people I've ever met.

The topic of conversation is the elephant in the modern general purpose programmer's living room: Concurrency. With today's widely-used general purpose languages like C++, Java, C#, VB, Ruby etc it's hard to express parallelism in productive ways. Anders et al are working on both language enhancements to C# and VB.NET and BCL support (Parallel Extensions to .NET for example). Today, Guy is working on a mathematical language (domain specific as opposed to general purpose) and runtime, Fortress, that is so concurrent it makes it hard for programmers to even write sequential code!

Listen in to two of the programming industry's most successful thinkers and get a sense of their perspectives on the future of general purpose programming languages now that Concurrency and Parallelism are entering the development status quo.

Enjoy. More JAOO coverage to come.

IE 8: Compatibility and Versioning

Charles — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:06:00 GMT

As software evolves so to does the need for newer software to remain compatible with older versions. In the case of IE the notion of backwards compatibility is quite daunting and of supreme importance to the IE team. Consider the millions of web pages that were written to run successfully in older versions of IE. The latest incarnation of IE, IE 8 Beta 2, has a very useful compatibility feature that enables developers and users alike to run IE 8 in a mode that won't break pages that work in IE 7. It's as simple as pressing a button. Unlike IE 8 Beta 1, instructing IE to render a page in Compatibility mode does not require a browser restart. This is very cool indeed.

I wanted to find out exactly how this new compatibility mechanism works in IE 8 and discuss the complex issue of backwards compatibility and its impact on innovation with IE 8 Program Manager Scott Dickens. Scott is very passionate about compatibility (in fact his thinking up and prototyping ideas about IE 8 compatibility began as a side project which, not surprisingly, turned into a full time job for him).

Tune in and learn about how IE 8 compatibility mode works and learn why it works the way it does. Of course, being Channel 9, this conversation unfolds in a natural way and we dig into related topics as well (like JavaScript compatibility versus HTML/CSS compatibility, standards compliance and other interesting topics).

Planet Technologies – Award Winning Systems Integrator

Charles — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:53:00 GMT

Planet Technologies, an international IT consulting and services company, has been awarded the Microsoft Federal Partner of the Year for 2008, the fourth straight year they have received this. How do they do it? As a company with a 100% focus on the deployment, architecture and integration of Microsoft technologies, Planet Technologies is a systems integrator. They specialize in taking the different pieces of the Microsoft technology stack, combining and augmenting them to deliver business solutions to a broad range of customers. Watch this interview with Andy Norris, Planet Technologies’ Vice President, where he talks more about their award winning relationship with Microsoft.

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information related to partnering with Microsoft.

CoroWare Technologies: Mobile Robotics Integrator

Charles — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:01:00 GMT

CoroWare Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of CoroWare, Inc. (CROE.OB), is a systems and mobile robotics integrator. They’ve recently been awarded Microsoft Certified Gold Partner status. CoroWare has made their mark on Microsoft platforms through developing software and solutions for mobile service robotics and business automation. Here, we meet David Hyams, CTO for Coroware and learn more about how this company is shaping the future through technology developments to improve and simplify our lives.

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information related to partnering with Microsoft.

ESRI: Green Computing

Charles — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:34:00 GMT

ESRI, a Global ISV partner, is pushing the envelope on technology adoption and environmental issues. In this interview, I talk with Senior Product Managers Rob Elkins and John Baleja about technology advancements, development needs and what the Microsoft partnership means to ESRI. Through personal experiences, customer examples and a unique environmental perspective, Rob and John give us a look into the world of geospatial analysis and the importance of Microsoft technologies in their customer’s applications. SQL Server 2008 (new spatial types), Windows Server and Client, Visual Studio 2008 (AJAX), WPF/Silverlight and Virtual Earth are highlighted in this discussion. As is the importance of the balance between managed and native code.

ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner dedicated to helping people to make better decisions that affect the world around us. In “an age of Software plus Services”, ESRI and Microsoft give application developers, analysts and consumers a platform that adapts to varying needs. Many examples are cited, including land use planning, home site selection, police in-vehicle crime statistics and drive time analysis.

More information
www.microsoft.com/isv/esri
www.microsoft.com/environment

Advanced Windows Debugging: An Introduction with Mario Hewardt and Daniel Pravat

Charles — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:04:00 GMT

Software Developers Mario Hewardt and Daniel Pravat understand the complexities of debugging applications that run on Windows. In fact, they understand it so well they wrote a book, Advanced Windows Debugging. They will also be presenting their knowledge at the PDC in October during both the PreCon and regular conference. The PreCon is a chance to learn the ins and outs of windows debugging, how to use various tools, what to look for in your code in terms of buggy patterns and go way deep into the art of native debugging today. It's an incredibly interesting topic and debugging can be very, very hard. With the tools of today, you can find bugs in minutes compared to days. I highly recommend both their book (I now have a copy!) and their PreCon at PDC 08. Do check it out!

Here, we talk, at a high level, about the complexities of debugging, common problems that require debugging tools to understand and we get a demo of how to track down a handle leak in less than five minutes. In the end, debuggers will lead you back to your code and point you to the errors of your ways. When compared to the toolset we had just 5 years ago, 2008 is a great year for debuggers!

Tune in. Enjoy.

SQLSoft+: Teaching the Microsoft Platform

Charles — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:52:00 GMT

SQLSoft+ is all about training for technologies Microsoft is releasing to the world. They are a Microsoft Certified Partner, and thrive by putting themselves in front of the Microsoft train. Often their work requires building training about a product before it is released. How do they do it? SQLSoft+ was the first IT training company to gain the designation Microsoft Partner Solutions Center (MPSC) Sponsor Partner. In addition, they also work with other IT companies to develop trainings for their software offerings. Here, we meet Mark Scott, CTO for SQLSoft+ and learn more about how this small company is helping developers embrace new technologies at rapid speeds.

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information related to partnering with Microsoft.

Taking Some Time Off [Taking Some Time Off]

Charles — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:22:51 GMT

Dear Niners,

I'm going to be "off-world" for two weeks and will therefore not be around here at all. I just wanted you know why Charles seems to be absent over the coming weeks....

Please be good and have fun! :)

Keep on posting,
C

in reply to Taking Some Time Off

PDC08: Parallelism Track and PreCon with Stephen Toub

Charles — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:38:00 GMT

Parallelism will be an important theme of PDC08 (http://microsoftpdc.com/). You'll want to get up to speed with the current state of the art in parallel computing patterns and platform technologies like the Task Parallel Library, Parallel Extensions for the .NET Framework, etc. This is where a the Parallelism PreCon comes in. Spend all day with experts in parallelism (Joe Duffy, David Callahan, Steven Toub) and learn about what you can do today to take advantage of multi-core machines. Here, Stephen Toub makes a brief pitch for the PreCon in Parallelism.

Countdown to PDC2008: Secrets Revealed

Charles — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:12:00 GMT

Surface, SharePoint, Live Platform, Identity, Mesh, SQL Server 2008, Exchange, Ad Platform, Office Communication Server, Windows 7, Open XML, Silverlight, ASP.NET, Oslo, Virtualization, XNA and so much more content we can hardly keep our hard hats on! Why haven’t you registered for the PDC yet?! Plus Mike issues a new Hard Hat Challenge – will the winner this week be 9 years old? And, if you’re really curious about capturing the brainpower . . . check this out!

Building Channel 9: Inside EvNet - Part 2

Charles — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:59:00 GMT

EvNet, which is the codebase that powers all of our channels, was written from the ground up. How is the codebase designed? What's the architecure? What did each developer work on? What were some of the challenges? Who are these dev geniuses, anyway? This is part two of the great conversation with the awesome folks who build and innovate Channel 9 (and several other web sites). Tune in.

Part 1:

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Building-Channel-9-Inside-EvNet-Part-1/

Building Channel 9: Inside EvNet - Part 1

Charles — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:52:00 GMT

You asked. We deliver. Meet the developers behind Channel 9 (and 8, 10, Edge and MicrosoftPDC.com). Mike Samspon, Erik Porter, Duncan Mackenzie and Nathan Heskew are the super talented devs who built C9 V4. Unlike the older versions of Channel 9, V4 is a completely new codebase. Gone are the days of stitching together half-baked technologies (though, they did scale and Bryn and I deserve some credit for that! ).

EvNet, which is the codebase that powers all of our channels, was written from the ground up. How is the codebase designed? What's the architecure? What did each developer work on? What were some of the challenges? Who are these dev geniuses, anyway? This is part one of the great conversation with the folks who build and innovate Channel 9. Tune in.

Enjoy.

Part 2:
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Building-Channel-9-Inside-EvNet-Part-2/

IE 8 Beta 2!! [IE 8 Beta 2!!]

Charles — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:23:30 GMT

Here.
C

PS: Learn about the new dev tools for IE8 here.

in reply to IE 8 Beta 2!!

IE 8: Dev Tools - An Introduction with John Hrvatin

Charles — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:20:00 GMT

IE 8 Beta 2 is now available!

John Hrvatin, Program Manager of Internet Explorer Developer Tools sits down with me to discuss at a high level the new additions to IE 8's developer tools (aka Dev Tools). These include JavaScript performance profiling, CSS profiling and formatting exploration. And, there's more. :)

This is a conversation that addresses more than what's new in dev tool world. We also tackle some harder questions and learn a bit about John. We will be doing some deep dives on some the new IE 8 dev tools enhancements in upcoming interviews with the developers who wrote them.

Tune in.

Windows Home Server: PDC 08, New Features, Meet some of the Team

Charles — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:36:00 GMT

Windows Home Server is evolving. To learn about how to take advantage of the new capabilities of Windows Home Server, we sit down with Program Manager MCJ Saretto, Product Manager Mark Pendergrast and Software Developer Brendan Grant, aka dahat on Channel 9. Yes! Another Niner joins the ranks of Microsoft! Brendan is well known for the great add-ins he's written for Windows Home Server and, equally as important, for the full size Channel 9 Guy costume he created a few years back. Welcome aboard, dahat! It's great to have another excellent developer join the Happy Death Star.

Tune in the learn a bit about the next release of Windows Home Server, what devs will get to program against and meet some of the people who passionately drive Windows Home Server evolution. As always, the conversation is non-linear with a splash of fun and an extra helping of humanity. Windows Home Server is a great product and these folks are part of the reason why.

Enjoy!

Links galore:

Channel 10 Interview (with a first look at new Windows Home Server hardware)

Windows Home Server team blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/

Windows Home Server dev center on MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb981194.aspx

SDK:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb425866.aspx

Product website:
www.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver

Community forums:
http://forums.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver/default.aspx?siteid=50

Our top Windows Home Server ‘enthusiast’ site:
www.wegotserved.co.uk (not affiliated with MSFT)

IE 8: Privacy - It's about more than cookies

Charles — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:46:00 GMT

When you navigate your browser to website A is website A the only site you're visiting?

IE 8 Beta 2 is almost out of the oven. Given this, we of course want to find out all about it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Enter General Manager of Team Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, and Program Manager Andy Zeigler. The topic of this particular conversation (other IE8 interviews are in the pipeline) is a complex and important one: User Privacy and what IE 8 will do to inform users and protect their personal information when surfing the Internet.

Dean and the IE team are very passionate (and very serious about) user privacy. It’s a hard problem for a browser to solve, but a browser is the first line of defense and can therefore supply users with helpful information regarding what websites are involved with a particular session. Andy Zeigler is the Program Manager of the new Privacy features in IE 8. Dean and Andy shed light onto exactly what's been done in the realm of Privacy in IE 8 Beta 2. Two core new Privacy mechanisms are present in IE 8: InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Blocking (with InPrivate Subscriptions, a feed-based blocking service). We of course address more than the What, however, as you'd expect from Channel 9. Is true privacy on the Internet even achievable (is anonymity possible given the architecture and implementation of the Internet)? What role can a web browser play in protecting a user's personally identifiable data?

Tune in. This is a great conversation.

Synchronizing Data: Inside the Microsoft Sync Framework

Charles — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:16:00 GMT

The Microsoft Sync Framework is a comprehensive synchronization platform that enables collaboration and offline scenarios for applications, services and devices. It supports any kind of data type and any kind of data store. The framework was designed to be transfer protocol independent and to allow the developers to map any kind of network topology.

Here, Software Developers Aaron Greene, Andrei Maksimenka and Niner intern Christian "LittleGuru" Liensberger sit down with me to dig into the details of the Sync Framework and explore the complexities of sync, generally. As usual, the conversation winds down many roads and it's a great discussion (yes, it's a tad long, but find some time. It's worth it...). It's always a pleasure to chat with the folks who write the platforms and frameworks we depend on to get our algorithms written in efficient ways. The Sync Framework enables several interesting scenarios, most of which have yet to be thought up.Thanks guys!

Oh, and by the way, I hear that LittleGuru is doing a smashingly great job in his role as a PM for the Sync Framework team. Right on, LittleGuru! Go Niners! :)

Check out the Microsoft Sync Framework team blog. The team is very much engaged with developers who use our framework and monitor the forums very closely. Aaron and Andrei spend a good deal of time on the forums, just as many devs do in support of their products around the company.

What do you want? [What do you want?]

Charles — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:17:25 GMT

Let's start off the new year (fiscal year, that is, a few months into it...) by talking about what YOU want to see more of on C9 (in terms of content - interviews, text posts, screencasts, etc).

So, what do you want to see, Niners?

C

in reply to What do you want?

Gabriel Aul: N-State Chaos and Windows Performance

Charles — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:09:00 GMT

Gabriel Aul is a 16 year Microsoft veteran who has always had his hand in the chaotic world of system performance and reliability, from technical product support and testing to being a leader on the Windows performance team. In fact, he was part of the team that developed the original Watson failure reporting tool. He's a dev at heart (once a dev, always a dev) and understands the complexities of Windows as a platform: Windows supports thousands of devices and the thousands of drivers that make them useful to users (devices sometimes have more than one driver, so add that to the complexity quotient...). How can so many devices (drivers) work together successfully (meaning not hosing the system) with so many supported configurations and possibilities for drivers to bring Windows to a screeching halt (think about task scheduling, resource allocation, background processing, foreground processing user mode code execution, kernel mode code execution and the sheer amount of concurrent running code, all over the place, all contending for Windows' attention...).

The world of Windows as platform is incredibly complex (n-state chaotic). It's amazing, actually, that the chaos doesn't lead to more performance and reliability issues. The Windows performance team has some really powerful tools (and an effort called Velocity) that can help ISVs find highly complex performance issues. Gabriel touches on this in this conversation and we address the continued need for more guidance and samples for developers.

One thing is for sure: The developers who write applications and drivers for Windows are great developers. You are craftsman, artists. Windows is a great platform in many ways because of the people who innovate on top of it. You know who you are. Yeah, you. Thank you.

Engineering Windows 7 [Engineering Windows 7]

Charles — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:51:27 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

Good stuff!
C

in reply to Engineering Windows 7

Windows Vista - 64 bit in the Mainstream

Charles — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:46:00 GMT

Gary Schare and Bruce Burns sit down (well, sort of, Bruce stands, Gary leans) with us to talk about the sudden uptake of the latest Windows 64 bit client OS. It's very encouraging that Windows 64 is finding its way onto consumer client systems and into mainstream computing. This spike in uptake also poses some challenges for ISVs who are not 64 bit "ready". 32 bit Windows applications should just work on 64 bit Windows, right? Well, sort of. Tune in.

Vince Orgovan: Windows Vista Telemetry

Charles — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:21:00 GMT

Windows Vista contains a much improved telemetry system that collects fault data and sends detailed reports to Microsoft that are used in fixing problems that cause apps to hang/crash (of course, this data only reaches us if you choose to send it...). What have we learned so far? What does Microsoft actually do with crash data? How do crash reports turn into bug fixes that make their way up to Windows Update or, more commonly, into third party application updates?

Meet Vince Orgovan. Vince leads the Windows reliability and analysis team who are tasked with analyzing crash data and isolating problems that cause applications to fault on Windows. Vince is very passionate about quality and his team works tirelessly to isolate problems that lead to crashes. Here, we learn about what we've learned from all the telemetry data we've gathered from Vista and Vince provides insights into the state of health of Vista in the wild. This is a great conversation. Enjoy!

Rebecca Norlander - Challenge and Success

Charles — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:13:00 GMT

In the often male dominated world of computers, Rebecca Norlander has made a name for herself by taking on big challenges, and proving she has what it takes to deliver results. Join us to learn how Rebecca got her start at Microsoft, advancing through roles where she had tremendous impact on Excel, Internet Explorer, Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista Security, and now as Technical Strategist to Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie.

Rebecca will share with us her insights around the obstacles she has overcome, the lessons she has learned, and how she became a strong advocate for customers while working on a variety of high profile projects.