The Problem Solver

Now this look pretty cool, reminds me of Tom Cruise in Minority Report.

So I am not only doing a Chalk&Talk session during the DevDays next June 13 and 14^th I have also been asked to, ahum, star in an ad

You want to see the result? Are you sure? Really sure? Okay but don't say I didn't warn you first, here it is: http://www.microsoft.com/netherlands/msdn/devdays/uitdaging.aspx#4

If you ask me the lighting was pretty bad but then I am no camera/lighting man.

See you at the DevDays in Amsterdam!

Do you live in the Netherlands and would like to help out in the VB section of the SDN? Well let me know because we have a vacancy and we could use an extra hand.

The SDN is quite a large user group divided into lots of smaller subgroups each with their own responsibility. I take care of the Visual Basic section and as the result of someone dropping out am a little short handed. As we live by the motto “lots of hands make for light work” we are looking for these hands.

If you are coming to the SDE next Friday and have any questions that would be a great opportunity. If you aren’t coming just send me an email
 

Next Friday, June 1st, the SDN is organizing another Software Developer Conference in de Reehorst in Ede. The theme this time is Software as a Service, something that is getting to be quite a hot thing at the moment. For more information and the complete schedule check out www.sdn.nl/sde.

Hope to see you there.
 

Microsoft just released the news that the Professional Developers Conference 2007 (PDC) is canceled and will be rescheduled at a later date. As a reason they give that there are too many products being released at the end of this year. According to the announcement the PDC, focused on future technologies, should be held at a later date that is better timed for future technologies. No date is given though.

Read the announcement at: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/events/bb288534.aspx.

Guess that makes the choice between the PDC in October and the TechEd Barcelona in November an easy one . Still too bad because the PDC is always an exiting event.

Microsoft just released the news that the Professional Developers Conference 2007 (PDC) is canceled and will be rescheduled at a later date. As a reason they give that there are too many products being released at the end of this year. According to the announcement the PDC, focused on future technologies, should be held at a later date that is better timed for future technologies. No date is given though.
Read the announcement at: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/events/bb288534.aspx.

Guess that makes the choice between the PDC in October and the TechEd Barcelona in November an easy one . Still too bad because the PDC is always an exiting event.
 

Yes that seems to be the case. Cory just reported that Miguel reported that the new JavaScript compiler that comes with Silverlight is written in VB. And Paul Vick just confirmed that it was the case and that the next VB compiler after VB9 (the so called VBx) will also be written in VB as well. Nice to see that Microsoft is starting to use VB more for these kinds of things.

Enjoy VB!

Then you really need to take a look at the TextFieldParser class. And if you never run into it that might be because it is tucked away in the Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO namespace, not exactly the first place I tend to start looking. But it parses either delimited or fixed with files. It has loads of options like setting the delimiter characters or specifying whether the data is enclosed in quotes or not. A real useful class to gave lying around given the number of questions I hear about reading CSV type files.

And yes C# diehards out there, just add a reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll and you can use the type just as well

Enjoy!

Well in that case you might want to check out these videos. There are 8 of them at the moment and they show how to do the most common tasks. These videos are created by Beth Massi of the Visual Basic team so all the code is in VB but even if you are a C# developer they are real useful!

Update: It is kind of useful to include the link so here it is http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/bb466226.aspx.

Recommended!

 

I recently listened to a heated discussion about better equipment making for better developers. In fact the discussion was about dual monitors and whether a developer good do a good job if he or she didn’t have a good monitor.

Well my take on the subject is that is doesn’t matter at all!

Come again I hear you saying, doesn’t it?

No it doesn’t! Good tools will make a craftsman more productive but will not make him a better craftsman in my opinion. If you never learnt how to lay bricks even the best bricks and mortal aren’t going to help you build a solid house. And yes I am comparing a software developer to a craftsman because in my opinion the tools that make for a real software engineer just aren’t generally available yet. Most software is still developed by people who will judge is a certain algorithm is good en fast enough and that judgment can only come from experience. The tools to check if the specs and the implementation are really correct aren’t really there yet. Of course experience only comes with practice and that is the hallmark of a trade.

But back to the dual monitor issue. Will giving dual monitors to an average Mort make him any better? No it won’t! It might make him more productive, something also very valuable and useful, but not better. Of course I am all for productivity so by all means give Mort, or anyone other developer for that matter, a second monitor just don’t expect his programs to become any better. You are going to end up with the same, possibly crappy, software only slightly faster.

Okay so is there no relation between the equipment and the quality of the code?

Well actually there is but it is at other end of the scale. Give any developer, how ever skilled and experienced, real crappy and slow hardware and the result will suffer. If your edit, compile, test and debug cycle takes to long you won’t get into the flow and that is a prerequisite for anyone to be productive. Now an un experienced developer might never reach a state of flow but an experienced developer will. While in a state of flow someone can become very productive and usually also produces very good code. But if the development cycle takes to long its impossible to get into a state of flow. Now with the average modern computer a developer and Visual Studio 2005 there is no reason not to be able go get into the flow. But if you give you are forced to use really old crappy hardware or so little memory that Visual Studio and for example SQL Server keep swapping out thing change. In a case like that you are likely to become distracted by the long waits and as a result will not reach a state of flow and become very productive.

So conclusion: Better hardware doesn’t make for better developers but does help them become more productive. Bad hardware is enough to kill of any productivity in even the best developer.
 

Talking about conferences we pretty much finalized the session schedule for the SDC this year as well. And the session schedule is even more impressive as last year. We are holding back on publishing it for a bit longer until we have confirmation from all the speakers but stay tuned for more

Hope to see you there as well

We are getting closer to the DevDays this year and the session schedule is looking pretty good . And this year Microsoft is adding some extra whiteboard sessions to the schedule. I will be hosing one of these whiteboard session with Windows Workflow Foundation as its topic. I already have some interesting ideas about the topic but as a whiteboard session is all about interactivity I thought I would ask for suggestions. So if you are coming to the DevDays in Amsterdam and have a specific WF topic you would like to see discussed during the whiteboard session then go ahead and send me an email.

Hope to see you there!

If have Dutch language users of your applications and you want to localize the installer packages Visual Studio 2005 produces you might want to check out Willem van den Broek work. He created a complete translation so all you have to do is set the Localization property to Dutch and you are good to go.

Download the package from www.vbcentral.nl/msi. You can find more details on the same page.

Enjoy!

The first Dutch Code Camp was held yesterday in Barneveld. With lots of people showing up there was a real nice vibe and all I can say is it was a smashing success. Lots of people wanted to know when we would organize the next one; someone even went so far as suggesting we organize four code camps a year. Well I don’t think we will do four a year but given the success we will certainly plan another .

I hope to have the slides up real soon but for now all I have put online is a lot of photo’s I took during the day. Mind you I didn’t make any selection, this is the whole set, and I haven’t done any Photoshop work on them yet either. But if you want to take a look this is where you can find them: http://picasaweb.google.com/maurice.de.beijer/CodeCamp2007.

Of course the code camp wouldn’t have been possible without all the sponsors. First of all Microsoft provided us with the space and contributed to the catering. Of course Infragistics and WantIt contributed with additional funding making sure everyone was fed . And besides the financial support Infragistics, Dundas, Red-Gate, Telerik and ComponentArt contributed lots of software as prices. The first price to go was a complete Xbox 360 provided by Detrio. With all the prices the drawing during the lunch actually took quite a while but given the prices I don’t think anyone minded at all. Well except for the few who didn’t win anything at all that is but they still had a great day

So up to the next edition!