Anyone using Visual Studio .NET reading the start page would know about this, but I thought it neeed a dedicated post.

Microsoft has completely redesigned the navigation and search of MSDN. 

I personally dig the new design, it isn't as convoluted in other browsers (like Opera and Firefox).  In IE it also works smoother than the previous bloated tree version (which still appears sometimes).

Competition is a key factor of the software industry.  It's why the industry can get the talent, people, and entrepeneurial spirit that it has.  A problem has come back that is a familiar beast in the indusrty, everybody is short of 100% on staffing.  The key factors are still there in the staffing needs;  competancy, experience, education, determination, discipline, and of course attitude.  The problem I've noticed however is not the number of available people but the attitude and even the competancy and experience are just lacking.  Lately many candidates that I'm known to come onto projects are billed and sold by recruiters as far more advanced than they are or even sold to positions that the candidate isn't even particularly looking for.

Currently the project I am on has been fortunate to find some great people that are of high competancy, senior level, and also have a great work ethic and attitude.  Our people have been some of the best I've seen in the industry too, no pressure selling here or urging candidates into positions they wouldn't or shouldn't be in.

We're, in addition to having a little trouble finding enough of the perfect cadidates, rocking and rolling with the power team that we currently have.  Patterns and architectural work have been put into place that is allowing us to really start pushing forward, and sooner than later, we'll be providing some real progress on the massive project I'm currently on.  I'll be really happy though when ROI is realized by the company we're working for.  I'll know then that we've done far more than merely build a massive scalable and capable enterprise application, but we've helped improve the world for a few hundred thousand extra people in the world.

If anyone out there is looking for work, and you're a senior level code person that cherishes good code, well written, with patterns, practices, and a good happy hour after work, I think my company is still looking so lets here from you if you're interested in working in downtown Portland, Oregon (the coolest urban environment in the entire western United States).

- Yeah, yeah, Seattle and San Francisco are ok too. 

I started last night working some demo modules out of the Professional Community Server book from Wrox written by Wyatt Preul, Keyvan Nayyeri, Jose Lema, and Jim Martin.  The book has been a good starting point and for the most part well written, I do however have a few points of contention.  While working through the first sample with a fellow techie, he being a network engineer and myself being a software architect we barreled through the sample easily.  The problem however that I must draw is that the sample is unable to be directly (or indirectly tested) because it only sends an e-mail out "if" an exception of CSException occurs.  At the end of the example, compiled, put into the bin, and the config set properly, one then has to force a CSException?  Maybe I missed that chapter, but it seems this is a relatively weak sample.  Great book, but that one sample just irks me.

Otherwise I must say thanks to all who put together the book!  It's been a great kick start!

To beat a dead horse and return to the problem point I have with that one example, when I get through developing a few other modules and am more familiar with exactly what I am doing, I will follow up with a module or two that provides the points I feel are missing.

As I sat down on the bus and hit the web via my Sprint PCS Wireless card I thought, "I really need a dedicated to do or task list application that I could deploy to my domain or somewhere on the web to maintain things with."  Being that I'm a developer I didn't want to just use some application I wanted to develop my own, at least control, have, and be able to change the code.  With that in mind off to Google I went. 

With many of these standard sample type applications there are literally dozens on the web.  I thought it would be really cool though to specifically have AJAX and of course an ASP.NET based application.  In went the search string "ASP.NET AJAX Task List" and back came the results.  Again I see one of my favorite bloggers has content specifically on this wish list item of mine.  ScottGu has an entire write up on the AJAX enabled ASP.NET application.  In addition to that he linked the same app, plus a lot of other cool applications in another entry dedicated to great available apps.

With that in mind I was off to a good start on my endeavor.  More to come later...

So a while back (almost a year) I made an entry about speedtest.net.  Well I did another test and I got a smashing faster speed (just check the old speed records).  Then of course there is a "local" test location now which is a plus.  6,089 kb/s is very cool though!

Great development tools are always sought out by great developers.  One tool I found recently has kicked me off to start a list of my own cool tools that help me produce great software.  This first tool is ReSharper by Jetbrains software.  Go check it out at Jetbrains.  My list is available on a continuing basis via the files section of the site.

As I sat in the Silverlight session this morning in Vancouver, Washington for the Portland area's Code Camp I stumbled on some odd thoughts and questions.  The more I hear about Silverlight, XAML, and these other things that Microsoft is pushing the less I see this promised code once and start deploying to web or windows.

But then of course that was the promise of Java too, which sorta, kinda, in a way works right?  So where is the big picture these days from Microsoft?  Where are they heading with these tools?

Silverlight uses XAML and so does the Windows Presentation Foundation.  The XAML for Silverlight is however a subset of the XAML for the Windows Presentation Foundation. So "maybe" a WPF XAML file will work within a Silverlight application?  Something doesn't seem to be properly connected with this paradigm.

Instead of a resolution, these tools/foundations just seem to be providing band aids to minor incompatibilities Microsoft proprietary files and tools have with other applications.  Which is nice, but is in no way a real solution to the bigger picture.

...BUT...

as the class went on a major key item was brought up.  Silverlight is multi-browser, multi-OS compatible.  The stuff can run on any system.  So if one actually writes some managed code, compiles it into a dll, and executes it via Silverlight one can execute actual dlls on a Macintosh, Linux, or in Firefox or Safari.  Now that is actually powerful!

With this last covet, which took some time to point out, Silverlight really points out its value.  With .NET on the client, we now have a real programming model, debugging capabilities, and it's vastly faster than AJAX stuff.

In the end, back to my first point, it still seems like there is a large part of the Java paradigm here, except Microsoft actually has the power, market, and momentum now to push something like Java, except it is wrapped into the whole Silverlight/.NET/ASP/AJAX technology bundles.

Jason Mauer took a different approach to this particular session.  Instead of having a set outline he decided to just present off the cuff.  This approach created an interesting session atmosphere.

Right off he dived into creating various 3D objects, dealing with the vertexBuffer, and other various aspects of getting something drawn on screen via the XNA Game Studio.

One point brought up is the backwards or reversed x, y and depth coordinates of the graphics.  There has been a change between Direct X and XNA (even though there is a lot of wrapping going on) where the left right basis of the coordinates has changed.  The basis for this is XNA has done a fair job of dumbing down things from Direct X to simplify the actual Game Development process.

Other topics where covered, many being somewhat unknown by me, but interesting and understandable anyway.  I shutdown my note taking at this point out of intense curiosity in the various things Mr. Mauer was speaking about.  The rest of the session went well and we got to see some pretty cool code executed and generating cool 3d objects on screen.

...and the last tidbit that I didn't realize!

There is a $20 dongle for enabling the Xbox controllers on a PC.  I just have to go find this now!  :)

So I went to hit up my second session which is about XNA Development.  I caught the tail end of the Speech Server Session (Code Camp Link) by Mithun Dhar.  In hat short 10 minute tail end of that I must say I am very interested in the voice recognition, the Windows Workflow, and other features he was using within the Visual Studio IDE to build out the call/voice application.  Very quick, very smooth, and very useful for any company that wants to streamline the call in or other needs in that spectrum.  I'll be looking into this more in the near future.

With Erik Mork presenting the Silverlight or WPF/e presentation went well.  He provided good sample material and a nice overview of what Silverlight is, what problems it solves, and what could be done or should be done with Silverlight.

The major point, besides the cool examples, was that Silverlight is a XAML kick up from AJAX interfaces.  It provides browser compatible access to WMV Videos, MP3s, and other such media.  I have more comments about the whole notion of Silverlight in a subsequent entry I'm putting together.

The other major point that Erik brought up was the power that is brought via Silverlight by enabling managed code to be written and then executed at the client side.

A few other cool tidbits of Silverlight is LINQ, Web Services, XmlHttpRequest, the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime), and some other things here and there.

To summarize, my first session at Code Camp was interesting.  In addition this first session was a good overview and summary of Silverlight.