VS Live 3.1
The latter half of the 3rd day was AWESOME. There were exceptions, but mainly
a great day.
MSBuild – Basically, this is a port of nAnt.
This is understandable considering that there was such a close collaboration with
the nAnt crew. I wondered if there was a compelling advantage so I asked about
differentiating tasks with nAnt. For instance, is there a task to drive assembly
versions during a controlled build environment? I don’t want to roll my own again.
Answer: No.
I am not saying it is bad, it is just average. We’ll probably use it though,
since it will be native to the environment.
Smart Client Architecture – Billy Hollis has got to be the most dynamic
and engaging speaker that I have ever heard. Billy is from Nashville and he
makes me feel like I am sitting in Sunday morning church with a fire-and-brimstone
Southern Pentecostal service.
I also really like the way he thinks about building software. MS talks a lot
about “less code is better“, but Billy is able to demonstrate that if
you think that way already, you don’t need Whidbey to make it so. Reuse is good.
Design Patterns – Richard Hale Shaw is not known for being timid
and while his presentation style started a bit rough, he gave a fantastic presentation
on design patterns. This was a great review for many in the crowd and a wonderful
discussion for the more junior developers.
I am so happy that MS and the community in general is starting to take pride in design. Microsoft‘s
commitment to discussing patterns and practices has exploded in the last two years.
Thank God! That whole VB 6 thing really was an elegant code killer, wasn’t it?
We now have the ability to write elegant code because any OO language in .Net allows
it.
We use several of the patterns discussed at the session in our projects at Healthwise and
I was proud to see that the direction we are headed is truly progressive.
This was a great wrap up to the main conference and the whole team was very pleased
with the discussions that it sparked.
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