- Posted by
scott
on
April 25, 2008
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So here I am attending the heroes happen conference in Orlando, Florida. I left about an hour and a half early knowing I would get there on time. I was driving down the road and the first toll I come to, they said they won't take a company Amex card. I told them I didn’t have any cash so what happens now “do you take me to jail”? Here I was thinking I would have to pull off the side of the road and be talked to by a cop. Oh-boy, but he then spoke up and gave me a small toll violation sheet that says don't do it again.
I pulled off at the next exit and got $20. So right before I was about to get off at the final exit, I go over this small bridge and a cop was waiting on the other side. Seeing that I was late, I was trying to make up time by going 77 mph. The thing I didn't know was this 4 lane highway had a speed limit of 55 mph.
Oh boy, I got pulled over and I now have to pay $200 to an Orlando sheriff’s office. So I pull in to the convention center and now running about 30 minutes late and for those who haven't been to the Orange County convention center. It is huge, no doubt about it. So after driving around, I thought I arrived at the concourse, so I got my stuff together and started walking. I asked a staff person where Microsoft was and of course he had to say “not in this building”. Oh boy not again. I get back in my jeep and I find the Microsoft conference. I’m in the home stretch. Not ten minutes goes by and I have LOST MY WALLET! I drive back to the other parking lot to look and don't find it. I decide I’m wasting time and I guess I’ll call all my banks soon to cancel my cards. I go back to the convention center and found out they require $10 for parking. I don't have my wallet and therefore don't have cash. I decided to drive over the curb to get in. I’m not proud of it and will likely regret this for a while, but maybe ill mail the convention center $10. So I’m finally in. I arrive and the developer session is getting ready to start. I grab one of those Microsoft handy dandy lunch boxes and go into the session. So anyone want to donate $200 to my cause? Email me at spoiledtechie (at) gmail dot com.
The sessions are brought to us by www.Devfish.net.
Disclaimer: I was expecting to write an in depth article on what I learned, but these sessions were not able to go into learning new things, it was all about what Microsoft rolled out and so my points are brief.
Now on to the session:
They started off with a brief presentation and moved right into the changes with Visual Studio 2008.
Some features they listed off include:
Split view window
The split view allows for both your UI code and the UI display of the page to be displayed. It was one of those wonderful improvements that came with this upgrade.
JavaScript debugging
A big update for JavaScript which can let you go through the code and set breakpoints just like in your code behind page. This along with JavaScript intellisense is a HUGE improvement.
JavaScript intellisense
Just like the intellisense for the code behind page, they now have intellisense for JavaScript. This brings the entire library of JavaScript into our hands instead of looking through a book for them. Amazing!
Framework drilling
This feature allows you to change and upgrade your framework from 2.0 to 3.5 in just a few clicks. It is done by selecting the properties of the solution and clicking on the drop down in the display to select the framework. Quite impressive.
Ajax control toolkit at codeplex.net
The toolkit now comes with both .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. Both of which is old news, but still very cool.
Next session: creating an outlook form control.
They talked on how to implement our code into office products. They used a web service for communication along with LINQ. The front end was built with regions and WPF.
They went on to discuss Sharepoint workflow's which looked interesting. They hit on about 20 steps in visual studio 2005 that needed to be completed in order to create workflow's. It looked extremely tedious, but now with VS 2008 It was only 3 steps.
Side note: if you know Microsoft, you know they love blogger's and if you know me, you know I am not the one to hold back. So in this session, they were probably told by Microsoft just what to talk about and probably got a lot accomplished on those topics, but they definitely need to look for better speakers next time that can code and speak at the same time.
Next session: smart client applications.
Presented by Russ Fastino with Microsoft and John Goodyear with aspsoft.
They talked about how to make client applications with a better user experience.
They asked about the weaknesses of what Microsoft is doing with WPF. I had to speak up and tell tem that my MSDN license doesn't allow me to use the Expression Studio. It costs too much for the average developer to ask his boss to upgrade to a better user experience.
Interesting point: WPF is offered in Visual Studio express and that means average developers can code with it and have it rendered.
They then showed off the tech preview for Expression Blend 2008. Awesome stuff. I already played with it and used it, but its always fun to see it again. Expression Blend 2.5 has full Silverlight 2.0 support.
Free Stuff received:
Microsoft Lunch box
Vista Ultimate
SQL Server 2008
Windows Server 2008
Visual Studio Standard 2008
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I found my wallet and $20.00 when I went back to look for it where I got pulled over. Interestingly enough, I found $20.00 in the grass and the wallet on the passenger side of the jeep.
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- Posted by
Scott
on
April 23, 2008
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Boy am I tired. I can literally say I am exhausted. Now here is why. Sessions today were AMAZING and today was a good day because yesterday I found a programmer just like me who is as young as I am who wants to start up his own company just like I do. I am not telling you his name, but I got his contact information and will be giving him a ring ding ding soon! Anyone else interested in helping me with my ideas? I am poor and don't pay until we actually produce something, but I am looking for some takers. I don't mind splitting 60-40 or even starting a small business with employees. It will NOT be a consulting business, too many of those floating around. I want to start a business with my own ideas and make them a reality. Any takers?
Sessions Attended:
Building Custom AJAX Controls:
Taught by Dan Wahlin. If you have ever met him, he is as tall as me and married. One question I asked him personally is how he gets so much done and his wife be okay with it, when I have a girlfriend of my own. He said she gets used to it. This guy is also pretty interesting and pretty informed on the subject of ASP.NET. I enjoyed this session, because the JavaScript he taught was pretty much down to my level of understanding. He hit the topics of web services and JavaScript debugging in Visual Studio. He hit on the things to do when your starting up a new JavaScript file and make sure it talks to ASP.NET. Cool session, but far too much to be explained here.
Building N-Tier Applications with LINQ:
Taught again by Dan Wahlin. Another great session about how to implement LINQ into your projects and showed the easy parts of LINQ which only gets easier from T-SQL. Thank you Dan for this great session. It is a lot to implement in this short session.
Can you tell I am getting tired?
PLINQ: LINQ but faster:
Taught by the one and only Stephen Toub. The same guy I met last night is now teaching a session. I didn't know much about what he was talking about last night, but when he hit on it today in the session, I WAS BLOWN AWAY. So, he has got this 24 CORE computer up in Washington that he ran demos for us on. If you don't know what LINQ is I should ask that you check it out. PLINQ is the next step up and which you can select and transfer data at tremendous speeds using the processors that a person has in their computer. He completed a select statement with one processor with 256mbs worth of data and took about 20 seconds. The second select statement was with PLINQ with the same amount of data and the select completed at .5 seconds. Amazing STUFF. This kind of data selects could be used for gaming and even the Folding@Home project where they use personal computers from all around the world to fold protein. Amazing things if they only had their hands on this.
.NET Rocks:
Live interview with Dan Wahlin. I screamed a few times and asked the first question. Great interview and good times thanks to Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell and Dan Wahlin.
Time to Go home. Thanks for reading. More to follow.
Side Note: I am required by my company to do a "What I learned" white paper. I will post it to this blog when done, because it will contain a lot of things that I thought would be too detailed to explain in these entries.
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