Most of the time I lose track of where people blog. I only view posts in my reader.
I’m constandly reminded that some are on Blogger because their feeds keep switching back and forth between full and partial: Dan Ciruli, Kim Greenlee, Dr. Chadblog. I’m sure many others.
I understand the switching cost (I’ve done it twice now), but please get off of Blogger. Use a tool that works. WordPress.com is free and it works. Use that.
Please.
John says:
Digipede Evangelista Kim Greenlee will present at the Bay Area .NET User Group on Thursday, September 28. The show starts at 6:30, at 1 Market Street (the “Landmark Building”) in San Francisco. (Yes, that’s Microsoft’s office — go to the second floor, and score some free pizza.) It’s an easy BART ride from wherever you are (in the Bay Area), and it’s well worth the trip. She’s talking about concurrency, a topic near and dear to the hearts of architects and developers everywhere. Multi-threading, grid computing, clusters, grid objects — if you’re thinking about scalability and concurrency, this talk’s for you. Details and registration — go here.
Check it out!
. . . or how I learned to stop worrying and love .NET 3.0.
There has been a petition out for a while asking for the reversal on the decision to move from WinFx to .NET 3.0. I’ve been kind of busy, but it has been bugging me that I haven’t mentioned this, so here goes.
I have blogged on the change and have requested for decoupling .NET 3.0 from the release of Vista (here and here). This latter point is a bit different from the petition where it is being requested to go back and decouple WinFx from .NET.
In my previous posts I come around to not caring what it is called and hoping that Microsoft will not bring us back to those “good old days” when there was no hope knowing what versions of Visual Studio 6 was installed.
So, here are my responses to the petition:
1. Future versions – .NET has defined a very solid convention for version numbers: major.minor.build.revision. Major version increments indicate structural changes; minor version changes indicate breaking changes. .NET 3.0 is neither a major or minor version change – it’s not even the same product. Future CLR improvements and API improvements will have the same interlocking naming. Worse, at this rate, the more significant CLR updates will be given the “.5″s while the “additive” (non-breaking) changes will have whole major versions.
This is an assumption that there was any commitment to the predictability of the .NET numbering scheme before this change; well two points define a line in three points define a plane, to three versions define a numbering scheme?
2. “Bootstraps” – .NET 3.0 does not have a “bootstrap”. It offers libraries that provide functionality as needed (just as it’s always been for .NET applications), but the “bootstrap” is in fact the .NET 2.0 CLR; “.NET 3.0 applications” merely make use of its libraries. Not only is this misleading, it impairs the modular paradigm of the .NET Framework. In terms of “kernels” and “bootstraps” as in the Channel9 video, the microkernel structure of the .NET Framework has been traded for a monolithic kernel.
I agree with that.
3. WinFX is an API, not a platform – Admit it. There are very good reasons that this distinction is made, namely that they are developed on separate schedules and are different things altogether. Though you express concern that without the version number increment it seems as though the platform has not improved, this is an invalid concern because a) .NET 2.0 is less than a year old; b) it is a lie to say that the platform itself has advanced.
WinFX may not yet be a platform, but that had always been the idea: WinFx was supposed to become the platform on which all Windows development space. So I think, we should give Microsoft some leeway on this one. The Microsoft Windows platform has in fact advanced a great deal.
4. WinFX is a better name – The name “WinFX” is more indicative of advancement and innovation than “.NET 3.0”. Furthermore, even though .NET 3.5 is where the real meat of changes to the framework stands, due to the previous major version number change, 3.5 is now a minor version change. This does not reflect the major additions that .NET 3.5 makes. Future versions will suffer in impact due to this change as well.
Pure opinion that WinFX is a better name. Odd that this is in a petition. In regards to what this means to .NET 3.5; would call in the next version .NET 4.0 solve this problem?
5. Non-Win32 (Microsoft and non-Microsoft) implementations – Other implementations of the .NET Framework, such as the Compact Framework, SPOT OS, Singularity and Mono will suffer from naming confusions. The CLR team took very, very careful steps to make sure the .NET Framework works on other platforms as well. Mangling the .NET framework with Win32 specific API breaks that, isolating the entire framework to Windows.
I agree that this is a problem, but one easily dealt with. As long as the .NET BCL (whatever version) continues to be portable, then the problem is solved. I do need to point out, though, that .NET 1.1 contains a whole Microsoft namespace that is not portable, so this isn’t really met today anyway. All that said, I do agree that convolving .NET 3.0 and WinFx makes this more confusing for Non-Microsoft implementations.
6. Where’s the “3″? – The current versions of all implementations will be stuck at .NET 2.0; the next version will be forced to be called .NET 3.5 even though the “3” portion is absent on non-Win32 implementations.
And why does that matter?
7. Explanatory confusion – on learning to program in C#, with the older naming, one can learn C# (2.0), and learn WinFX for Windows programming. Now, with .NET 3.0, one will have a hard time understanding why he needs to buy a C# 2.0 book that teaches .NET 3.0. In otherwords, it forces all .NET books to be updated and reprinted needlessly. Also, how are companies to “decide” what to use?
Artificial. C# was in version 1.0 until .NET 2.0, not “1.1″; and this was basically chance. There is/was no gaurantee that the C# language (or any other language) for that matter would move along with the .NET versioning scheme. The line “force all .NET books to be updated and reprinted needlessly” makes me chuckle. Why?
8. Merit – You justify the move chiefly by explaining the installation process. However, this does not add any value to the installation process. WinFX, ultimately being a library of .NET classes that can be installed to the GAC just like any other, is best installed by a normal installer like DirectX.
OK, you have me here. I don’t think there is any merit to this change from a practical perspective whatsoever. None. Zilch. I do think, though, that there is some merit in the marketing message: .NET 3.0 is how you develop on Windows. Period.
Look, versioning is a bitch. Naming is too. This is made way harder with a system containing lots of different components, and the WinFx name change is just a part of it.
I’m OK with it. Let’s move on.
And lastly, a surprise appearance by me. I didn’t really contribute much, but I wasn’t supposed to.
What was I doing there? Fair question. I was there to discuss the tech on a topic Steve never really got to.
Tags: Expert-Texture, Gillmor-Gang
Gabe Rivera was a bit cagey about some announcements about TechMeme for Monday. He suggests what it might (or might’nt) be about. He also said he’s rolling out some ads on his site.
One thing I thought was funny is that he said he suspects we might find TechMeme at the top of TechMeme on Monday. Sure enough, there it is.
But, Gabe, you can make that happen whenever you want, right?
Tags: Gillmor-Gang, TechMeme
Jason Calacanis says he’ll quit his job if AOL buys YouTube. He concedes that he wouldn’t quit if AOL buys them at a steep discount to exclude all the illegal content. I agree with Jason’s sentiment. (I will definitely quit my job if Digipede buys YouTube).
Most everyone agrees that YouTube’s great strength is the user-contributed content. YouTube has been a great enabler of it (in terms of distribution, discovery, and development of the community). But how much would that community have grown without the illegal content as a magnet? Doc says that if you strip out the illegal content you still have lots of value. But what if the illegal content was never there? How much would it have been worth then? How much would it have grown then?
And again, I agree with Jason: we shouldn’t reward entrepeneurs for leveraging illegal content.
I particularly enjoyed the latest Gillmor Gang — If 6 Was 9 Gang — I had a front-row seat, so to speak.
Here are some of the highlights, in 4 parts.
Some discussion on the Zune. There was mostly consensus that its success will hinge on the services Microsoft can bring to the table to supply content — Steve argues that Apple has already won this war.
Tags: Apple, Gillmor-Gang, iPod, Microsoft, Zune
A few of my thoughts on the term podcast.
Apple-OverReachesCast (spelled aorcast) and pronounced our-cast.
I have noticed a trend: a watering down of the term “death march”.
Robert Scoble is the latest to fall into it: blogging the reason his new show is delayed, he mentions that the PodTech Web team is on a death march.
Death marches (regarding software, anyway) are projects doomed to failure.
I’m pretty certain that isn’t what he means — if he did, I think Robert would be looking for a new new job.
Tags: blogging, Software-Development
A few months ago, we decided to stick with VSS for the short term. Aside from its many problems, it was working for us. My biggest beef with it is that branching doesn’t work so well. This becomes more an issue as our team works on more concurrent versions — currently 1.3.x, 1.4, and 2.0 are all at different stages of development.
Well, the short term has passed.
Our options now:
So, to any out there who are working with VSTS FS — is it really conceivable that we just drop it in without too much change in process? I don’t care too much about previous history (most likely I would just load the released versions into source control and toss the the greater VSS history).
I thought I’d check out Microsoft Max, but Don Dodge says it doesn’t support OPML.
What? A new RSS aggregator that doesn’t even import OPML?
I’m beyond surprised, and won’t check it out. I’m sure it looks beautiful (as everyone is saying), but without OPML support what value does it bring to me?
I knew we would be in the press this week with the release of v1.3 of the Digipede Network and announcing our recent deal with Digital Dimension.
What I didn’t know is that our product was going to receive an Editor’s Choice Award for Price / Performance.
A pleasant surprise! Thanks, GridToday.
I guess I’ve been asleep at the aggregator. Actually, just busy driving a release; anyway, I see from Kevin Burton that Rojo has been acquired.
In addition, Kevin puts on his 20/20 hindsight spectacles to praise himself:
In hindsight, I don’t ever think Rojo was given the credit it deserved. Feed search in particular. In fact, earlier this year when Ask/Bloglines released their feed search it was pointed out that Rojo had been doing the same thing for months.
Just kidding you, Kevin. Congratulations — I hope this acquisition is good for you.
Don Dodge asks if newspapers and magazines dying? I guess Steve Gillmor would say, no, they are already dead. Robert Scoble doesn’t read them.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t still have legs. Hell, I read them. Maybe that is why I’m behind in my news aggregator.
I read National Geographic, sometimes Discover (some of the articles are good), whatever tech magazines they keep sending me, Dr. Dobbs, and then whatever magazines my wife reads. Occasionally I read a guitar magazine. And almost anything on an airplane.
That is, now it is 1. I started blogging on September 3rd, 2005 just before going to PDC05. Back then the blog has a different name (Mind From R. Wandering) and was hosted elsewhere, but it is essentially the same. According to WP Admin, this is my 193rd post.
If my readership continues to increase at even a fraction of the same rate, everyone in the universe will be reading my blog within the year.
Long live the divide-by-zero joke.
Tags: blog
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