August 2006 - Posts
I had lunch today with my good mate
Derek Miller. I've worked with Derek over a heap of projects over the last 6 years, and we agree on a lot of things in the software world. As .NET matures (and Java declines(?) - I don't know if this is true, but there seems to be a lot of ex-Java folks coming in), we're seeing more and more interesting architectures in .NET projects being put in place be those that used to call Java home. Put simply, the majority of these architectures are abysmal. They contain half-assed ports of various Java frameworks that duplicate a lot of the in-built stuff in .NET, and eagerly implement a bunch of design patterns without any clear idea why the pattern was used, needed or wanted.
This afternoon I was listening to Five Yards by
TISM (off the wonderful
De Rigeurmortis CD). For those that have yet to undertake the TISM experience, their Wikipedia
page is a good starting point. Anyway, the jist of Five Yards is that we're closer to unfortunate positions then we care to acknowledge ("Your only one fad from being retro, Your only one drug away from liking techno, ..., Your only five yards from being a f-wit". And, then, it stuck me:
Your only one dependancy-injection pattern away from being a Java architect.
I was looking at the feedback for my C++ session at TechEd, and noticed that a few people found the font too small to read. If you are ever having trouble reading the code, please speak up - I'm sure the speaker will be only too happy to bump it up. I checked before the session, and it looked OK to me, but I prefer small font (I'm at 1920 by 1200 resolution user).
Two off my favorite comments where:
wish there were more sessions like this for C++ devs!
Finally, some real passion for the presentation. Excellent.
On Monday 28 Aug Ron Jacobs (yes - the Ron Jacobs) will be presenting at the Sydney Deep .NET User Group (SDNUG). Details
here. Come along and be impressed!
As Frank
mentioned, two folks from the Visual Studio Product Team (Ian Knox & Eric Lee) out for TechEd in Sydney got together with the local MVPs and collected some feedback on VSTS and TFS. It was a great get-together, and, to use an Aussie colloquialism, we gives it to 'em over some of the areas in VSTS and TFS that could be improved. As we where givesing it to 'em, an interested thing happened. They listened. Eric and Ian both took a huge amount of notes, and where forth-coming and honest about what they saw as the strengths and weaknesses of the products as they sit today. It would be fair to say that Ian and Eric had a persona and style more condusive to frank and valuable interchange with community than some of the other folks that preceeded them in the VSTS marketing effort.
Obviously, not all the feedback was negative, and across the room, they actually where given some really postive feedback about features that work great in V1. The load tool in VSTS Tester Edition and the successful import of a very-large
and well-maintained VSS database into TFS where two areas that Ian and Eric where glad to hear about.
For those folks that haven't interacted with Microsoft at a product team level, it is easy to presume that they are an organization with infinte resources. When you break it down by all the products that Microsoft ship, and break down all the components inside these products, and then look at the suppporting infrastructure (marketting, testers, project management, documentation, installation, support) that each of these components need, the amount of folks left to actually architect and cut the code becomes really small. It is easy to say that this feature is required and that feature isn't done as well as it good be, but it is always fascinating listening to product managers at Microsoft and realize how they face the same issues as everyone else in the software industry. Geeting good devs is hard, selling a feature to the rest of a large organization is hard. Pricing a product appropriately is not simple.
One of the hard parts of the VSTS story is that developers that where used to getting everything in a Universal Subscription now don't get everything they used to. It is a difficult problem to solve, and I'm not sure anyone has the complete answer. Microsoft developers (i.e. us folks on the outsid who use Visual Studio everyday) want a return to the golden-years where everything came in VSTS Universal for a couple of thousand bucks. The VSTS team can't develop a premium offering and give it away (and hope to receive long-term funding to build an even better VSTS v.NEXT). I came away with a lot more appreciation from how the world looks from the VSTS teams perspective looking out, and I think Eric and Ian left with some great feedback for improving the product.
Like Frank, I want to thank
Andrew for organizing the session.
Its always a let-down to return from the great technology showcase that is TechEd to the boring and mundane world of the regular software guy, full of BAs, testers and the like. Overall, TechEd was a great experience, and like most folks, I had a good time.
Some of my highlights were:
Getting through my sessions without stuffing up anything badly. There is always a lot of nervousness going into TechEd about whether a session will come across well, and whether all the demos will work. I was happy that I got my points across, and the evals have been generally positive.
I had more people at my 2006 C++ session than I did at my 2003 C++ session
Catching up with old comrades like Bill McCarthy and Ken Schaefer that I haven't seen in a while
Chatting to a number of folks excited about .NET performance and the new C++
Hanging out in the developer area and soaking up the ambience.
Helping out with the HOL and meeting folks taking up the learning challenge. There was one lady from Canberra who must have got through 20 different labs. She was there every time I was rostered on.
The sessions I did get to attend where all great
The Cabana sessions where a great place for hanging out and doing session that where like a 20-minute verbal blog entry.
The VSTS breakfast (more on this in a later post)
CommNet and the wireless network worked flawlessly for me for the whole event.
Convincing a VB.NET MVP that C++ is still an exciting language
Things that could be better:
Someone else suggested this, and I think it was a great idea: Provide lookers so delegates are forced to carry a massive amount of gear around with them all day. I commuted in from Cronulla for the first two days, and carrying around all my gear was a real hassle. I noticed heaps of bags left around just because carrying all the gear was too much for many folks.
I didn't find the party much fun. The bouncers where very aggressive, having two boof-heads like Willy Mason and Mundine was an "interesting" choice (someone with a bit of dignity like Brad Fitler or ET would have been a better choice from the league ranks) and the music was so loud that speaking was impossible. The Canberra party was much better in the wider choice of options that attendees where presented with.
Overall, well done to those that put in months and months of hard work to make the event happen. See you all next year on the Gold Coast.
I don't usually do posts that simply point to someone else's blog entry (I find the whole blog-just-to-link-to-another-blog thing pretty boring), but for anyone organizing a technical conference,
Geoff A's post is a must. Basically, he says the whole presentation thing isn't the main focus, and he'd prefer everyone just to sit round and talk shop. This echos my sentiments exactly - I view the presentation we put on at
SDNUG as simply an elaborate excuse for a bunch of tech folks to get together and interact.
Like Geoff, I rarely go to the actual sessions at TechEd, and prefer to sit around and talk. Sometimes when I do go to a session I end up talking to the person I'm sitting with so much, I get tut-tutted by those actually trying to listen to a session. I wonder if our experiences only pertain to speakers who already know their problem domain at an expert-level. Ironically enough, I love listening to the US TechEd and PDC sessions off the DVD, so maybe its not that I don't need or like the sessions, I just find the gas-bagging much more profitable.