Don Xml's Grok This

It is a major pet peeve of mine; presenters that use Console Application Projects to demo some non-UI code.  That’s so 1990’s.  So, what should a presenter use?  Well, Test Projects, of course!  It is something that I think should be added to Scott Hanselman’s 11 Top Tips for a Successful Technical Presentation (it sort of fits ...

Disclaimer: I do not work for Microsoft, but I am a Microsoft MVP.  The following is all derived from public information, and any inferences or extrapolations are entirely the work of my imagination, and is not something that I know that Microsoft is working on.  If I knew Microsoft was working on things like this, it would be covered ...

I spent a couple days in Seattle/Redmond thanks to the MVP program and the MVP Global Summit.  This was my second Summit, and although I thought it to be impossible, it was even better then the first one.  Some of the other MVP groups got to see mostly repeats of the PDC, but not the XML MVPs.  Our team (the System.Xml team, aka ...

Don Smith hinted at it and Hernan de Lahitte gave a little more detail about it, but boy was I surprised at the“Patterns and Practices for Designing Service Oriented Applications — An Illustrated Example” PDC pre-con session.  The guys over at PAG (aka Patterns & Practices) create a Guidance Automation Toolkit for Visual ...

Remember, you heard it here first!  In about 2 years (when C# 3.0) is/has shipped some C# purists are going to start a petition similar to the whole Classic VB petition.  I can see some C# developers complaining that the new C# is too hard for the average programmer.  You will not see me sign that thing, I love the ...

Over the last couple days I’ve found myself preaching the importance of a couple books, and although I’ve mentioned here before, it is good to remind folks.  If you are doing any service-like development (XML Services, data services, business services), it would be worth your money to go out and purchase the following hard cover ...

Well, well, well, Pablo Fernicola finally has a blog.  Pablo is a Group Program Manager for the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly called Avalon).  He will be presentation the following session at the PDC: PRS309 - Windows Presentation Foundation (''Avalon''): Overview of Windows Vista Graphics September 14, 1:45 PM - 3:00 ...

I recently began the process of reviewing the sessions for the PDC 2005 and setting up my schedule (which I never seem to follow).  The way I normally do this is to scan the speaker list, searching for my friends and those that I have mentally tagged as must see speakers, and checking out what/when they are presenting.  Once I have the ...

First off, I really, really wanted to love Microsoft’s latest graphics tool, codename Acrylic.  I down loaded and install the first public beta, and wasn’t impressed, but hey, it’s an early view into what they are doing, so I decided to cut them some slack (it is based on Creature House Expression, which MSFT bought in 2003).  I ...

I recently told this story to M. David, who got a kick out of it and just had to blog some of it.  One of my favorite parts of conferences is hanging out with my ‘net friends, and getting into some deep conversations about topics that make normal folks just wonder what planet we are from (I call them the “scaring the ...