If you are at PDC and you are Canadian there are two informal get togethers going on.
Excuse: Breakfast
Date: Thursday Sept. 15th
Time: 7:45 am - 8:30 am
Location: Under the Canadian Flag in the dinning area
Excuse: Beer
Date: Thursday Sept. 15th
Time: 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Location: Millennium Biltmore Bar
Pass it on!
Barry Gervin has a post with some LINQ links that is very useful.
Just to show you how easy it is. Here is the Query Don Box wrote during the key note today. I haven't seen it yet but I am told it's even easier to read in the VB syntax.
This is only the query itself so assume that p is a collection of processes and d is a class associated with a table and columns in the Database.
var query =
from p in Process.GetProcesses()
where p.WorkingSet > 4194304
orderby p.WorkingSet descending
Select new
{
p.ProcessName,
p.WorkingSet,
Description = ( from d in db.ProcessDescriptions
where d.processName == p.Processname
Select d.Description
).FirstOrDefault()
};
This afternoon I attended three session and they were all good. I already mentioned the VSTS session in my last post. After that I went to a session on SQL Server 2005: Building Distributed, Asynchronous Database Applications with the Service Broker. The demos went a little fast to follow. I have heard and read about Service Broker before so I knew what was going on, if I hadn't I would have left thinking, “What is Service Broker anyway”. I think it's going to be an unbelievably useful tool for developers. I hope everyone goes to see it and understand how they can use it in their architecture. Service Broker Rocks.
After that I attended Windows Forms: Harnessing the Power and Flexibility of Windows Forms 2.0. This is a popular subject. The room was overflowing. It wasn't a huge room mind you. But it was the second time it ran today, the first time they added satellite rooms, the presenter told us 2 or 3 extra rooms. Plus they have added another session later in the week. We got to see some real stuff that will be available soon including ToolStrips, DataGridView, BackGroundWorker, and TableLayoutPanel. The presenter Erick Ellis did an excellent job. TableLayoutPanel is a very cool tool. If you create localized applications you need to look at this.
Dropped in to PDC underground over at the Weston Bonaventure. The RD's were all doing short presentations on various subjects. Very entertaining as usual, although Billy Hollis had trouble with his machine and could not do his presentation. :(
Someone named Holly won an i-mate JASJAR tonight for getting spotted in her hat. She was no more then 2 feet from me in my hat. <|:) Maybe tomorrow.
So the first keynote was very long. It was good though. They told us we could buy an i-mate JASJAR at mobile planet for $149. But when the session got out they were sold out. Apparently they had 1000 for nearly 10,000 people. I went to mobile Planet the day before to buy a bluetooth head set which was $45 which I thought was a good deal, the guy at the store said to wait until after the key note, apparently there was a deal. At the key note Jim Allchin said we could buy one for $9.95 but they are sold out also. :(
Now I am wearing a hat around in the hopes that I get spotted and win one.
The coolest thing I saw in the Key note was LINQ. This is a feature of the .net framework that lets you write queries against any collection. In Anders Hejlsberg words, “If you can for each it you can query it” He and Don Box proceeded to query a collection of processes running on that machine. Then they added a text box to a web page and allowed the user to query for processes using a where clause. That is cool in it self but wait there is more, then they accessed a Database table which contained a process name and description. They Joined the collection of processes to the table in the Database and also displayed the description in the result set. :) Very Very Cool. All of this was done in C#.
We were also given a preview of Office 12. The new interface is really nice. I think my grandmother could have used Excel if it looked like this.
Apparently I can go and pick up “The Goods“ anytime also. This will contain 6 DVD's full of Beta's and CTP's.
I sat in on a VSTS session a lot of it was nothing new. But these was a demo at the end that was good. Doug Neumann created a C# application that made calls using the TFS object model. Using a utility he turned it into a TFS Web service to notify a developer when they break the build. The extensibility of this product is amazing.
I have to get out there now so someone sees me in my hat. <|:)
It's day 1 of PDC. Well not counting the precon. I Caught the first bus from my hotel to the conference. Mostly because I'm still on Toronto time.
I got my name tag changed this morning. I of course filled out the form wrong and was walking around as Dave Lloyd Lloyd.
I'm looking forward to this morning it's the first Key note. I have yet to be dissapointed by Bill Gates telling us where MS is going. It's always full of the best demo's and is usually very entertaining.
If you want to watch it too you can, it's being broadcast live, check out Bill Gates KeyNote.
I wonder how Rob Windsor slept after stealing winning that phone last.
Rob Windsor steps off the plane checks into his hotel and heads down to The 64-Bit Question, a .NET Rocks! Quiz Show. They ask a multiple choice (with three choices) question about Garbage Collection and the contestant on stage gets it wrong so they ask someone from the audience and he gets it wrong. So they ask Rob.
So of course Rob wins an i-mate Jam. I got a t-shirt but then again so did 8000 other geeks at this conference.
All I can say is it's nice to be Rob. I'm not jealous, I'm very happy for Rob who was sitting right next to me, really I am. :)
After registering for PDC. I hopped on the bus back to the hotel the driver pointed out that one of the traffic lights was out. Then another and another. All of LA was out. When I got to the hotel the manager was in the lobby explaining that the power was out.
Without a computer and the internet what can you do? So I went for a walk, left my tooth brush at home so I had to get one. I passed by a wrap place and they were serving as long as you had cash. The lady in there told me it might be terrorists. She has worked in down town LA for many years the power has never gone out. :)
After I ate I noticed the lights on in the hotel lobby so I went up to my room and turned on the TV. Pretty much every channel had the LA Power Outage running across the banner at the bottom with Ariel shots of suburban LA.
Turns out someone at hydro cut the wrong cable. Accidents happen.
By the way if anyone from LA is reading this. When the traffic lights are out treat the intersection like a four way stop.
Tonight I'm heading back the the convention centre for the The 64-Bit Question, a .NET Rocks! Quiz Show
So here I am in a massive hall at the Los Angeles Convention Centre posting my first PDC Blog. The flight was long and cramped. But I am here all checked in and have my PDC05 bag full of goodies. The conference starts for me tomorrow. But I have avoided the rush of registration in the morning which will be crazy tomorrow morning.
There should be some good stuff at this PDC. Lets face it there always is. This is my third and I'm still waiting to see some of the stuff shown at the first one I went to 4 years ago. :)
At the moment I'm standing in Internet Alley. Behind me is the marketplace (a Microsoft store). In front thousands of people eating lunch. I'm going to wonder over to the exhibitors hall to see what is going on.
I'm going to be tired on Friday.
The built in Static Code analysis in Visual Studio 2005 is pretty cool, and quit intuitive to use.
There are a couple of nice features worth mentioning that are accessible right from the Error List.
If you come across warnings in your error list put there by the Static Code Analyzer. There are a couple of quick ways to deal with them.
Create a Work Item:
This is a nice way to remind yourself to deal with the issue later. You could even assign the Work Item to someone else so they can deal with it later. :)
I wish you could add a Todo: to the code from here. Sometimes I don't want a Work Item I just want a reminder in my code to fix it up. Maybe next version.
Suppress Message:
If this is not an issue for this particular project or class you can suppress the warning by selecting Suppress Message.
For example if you create an Enum and its members have values 1 - 4 you will get the warning CA1008 Enums should have zero value. For this instance you are knowingly breaking the rule, although you would like to continue to be warned when this happens. When you select Suppress Message from the context menu it will add an attribute to the enum telling the Static Code Analyzer to ignore the rule. If it's a project level rule a new file is created in the project called ModuleSuppressions.cs and attributes will be added to it.
This blog entry is not a battle or comparison of the two languages. I love both of them the same.
What I did want to pass along is this great page I found. Actually I think someone may have told me about it but I can't remember who, if someone did point me to this I would like to publicly thank you.
If you, like me switch between these languages often you find your self sometimes trying to use the wrong keyword or needing to look up the equivalent. “I know it's internal in C# but what is it in VB again?” I could ask my friend :) but they forget too.
This page is a very useful resource for just such an occasion. VB.net and C# Comparison. If you use both languages often you will want to make this a favorite.