Do programmers dream in Byte Code?

Having had a phone 7 for a few days now and I thought I would share some thoughts on the platform, My overall feeling is 99% good, the office integration is great and the UI is delightful. The developer experience is fantastic.

The LG offer of free applications is amazing and Flowers is just a great game.

but as ever with a new device some nice to have features or oddities.

For Reference here they are, but honestly the phone is worth it

The MAC address for WiFi needs to be shown so it can easily be added to a locked down network

Certificate Management – none to be had as far as I can see, bad if you are sat behind Threat Management Gateway on WiFi.

The app store should show you which apps you already have, I know I should know, but I have jet lag

Lack of tethering

The lack of good ring tones (customisable) is just weird, i know it is old fashioned but I like a phone to sound like one. When I hear a nursery rhyme being sick in the corner of the room I know my phone is ringing is not the experience I was expecting.

Would like to be able to have multiple front panels to organise things more

Don’t like the fact that all my people have been imported and I can’t remove them (without deleting them) from Live. This must be a bug. Alternatively the ability to hide or categorise contacts would solve the problem.

b.

There is an October update for the Windows Phone 7 Developer kit get it here

It includes two new utilities, the Windows Phone Capability Detection Tool which allows you to work out which phone capabilities you need to register and a tool to allow connection to a phone without Zune for debugging , it also includes update for Bing Maps

b.

The Kodu team have an introductory video on teaching children to program with Kodu see it here

The Consolarium have released a set of videos as an introduction to Kodu , see them here. They are a Centre for Games and Learning, established by Learning and Teaching Scotland to explore the world of computer games and help teach programming. It is great to see centralised generation of quality teaching material for consumption across all the schools in a region, inspired. Just a shame we don't have this in England, luckily they are happy to share.

and finally a plug for the Kodu educational material get it here

b.

I am all packed and ready to head off to sunny Dublin with some of the Black Marble Design group to see the good folks at Microsoft Ireland and present on some of the great things Black Marble and Microsoft are up to. Expect two days of Expression, Phone 7 and Windows 7 goodness with Black Marble flair

b.

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking at EPICenter Ireland at Trinity College Dublin with my great friend and colleague Steve Spencer on our experiences over the last few decades <sigh>

This blog contains many of the links and subject information from this talk however here is a useful quick summary of some of the resources mentioned.

I think the summary I would like to pass on is, treat people well, don’ let them take advantage, provide good opportunities for training. One person what is the killer sign to watch out for, my answer “we will have to start from scratch”.

The guide to people and estimation came from  Rob Thomsett, “Double Dummy Spit, and Other Estimating Games,” American Programmer (now Cutter IT Journal), June 1996

The 13 symptoms of unhappiness came from Sam Guckenheimer Microsoft for reference here they are

13 Symptoms of Unhappiness

• It's the code, stupid!
• Actually it's the requirements!
• No, the problem is that you neglected the architecture!
• Architecture, schmarchitecture. I just want a working build.
• What good is that the way we mix up versions?!
• Not code versions, but the environments, don't you get it?
• Ever heard of security?!
• Yeah, but you ignored performance, duh!
• So what if it worked in the lab -- it's still unmanageable!
• Oh, and did we mention testing?
• Since you're not measuring it, you can't manage it anyway!
• With a process like that, what do you expect?
• It's our culture - you'll never change that.

The project success factors came from : The Standish Group International, The Standish Report, 2001

•Dynamics of Software Development

–Jim McCarthy (Microsoft Press 2006)

•The Pragmatic Programmer

–Hunt and Thomas (Addison Wesley)

•The Productive Programmer

–Neal Ford ( O’Reilly )

•Team anti-patterns

–http://ellnestam.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/software-development-team-anti-patterns/

b.

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking at EPICenter Ireland at Trinity College Dublin

This blog contains many of the links and subject information from this talk however here is a useful quick summary

The Tools for developing Microsoft Phone 7 applications are free (see below), Applications are either built as Silverlight or XNA however a lot of the components are common. The phone chassis is set by Microsoft allowing us all to receive updates and have a consistent platform. The phone screen size is 800x480 or 480x320, Capacitive touch:4 or more contact points,Sensors: A-GPS, Accelerometer, Compass, Light, Proximity, GPU: DirectX 9 acceleration, Camera 5 mega pixels or more.

Microsoft provide a Market place approx 100USD ( 57UKP+VAT ) , Unlimited paid apps , 5 free apps, 70% revenue share (in your favour) , customer payments by credit card and mobile (all done by Microsoft), device unlock and a great sales support infrastructure

from the main site http://developer.windowsphone.com you can download all the tools and links to forums.

b.

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking at EPICenter Ireland at Trinity College Dublin

This blog contains many of the links and subject information from this talk however here is a useful quick summary

Repository Database

Built on SQL Server 2008

Stores model definitions (structure)

Stores model instances (data)

“M” language

Declarative text-based modelling language

Aimed at “curly-brace” programmers

Can be used to define models for repository database

““M” is to TSQL what C is to assembly” – Don Box

“Quadrant” modelling tool

Graphical tool used to edit model instances

Targeted at End users “Business Analysts” and architects

 

SDK Download

http://msdn.com/data

Repository database

“M” modelling language (MSchema, MGrammer)

IntelliPad editor

NOW WITH ADDED “Quadrant”

b.

I am really pleased that I will be speaking at SQL Bits The 7 Wonders of SQL on SQL Modelling Services. SQL bits 7 is running from 30^th September - 2^nd October 2010 at the Heslington Campus of York University

You will have the first chance to see features from the next release of SQL Server – Denali. The first two days have a nominal charge and day three is free.

The agenda is here it is looking like it will be a great event

b.

Earlier today I was trying to use the Outlook Social Connector for Linked-in Facebook and live but it would not display the View/People Pane

the answer was odd after ensuring the add in was selected in File/Options/Addins, I changed the registry

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\SocialConnector  key=RunOSC, from the value 0 to 1

after some checking on the web it looks like this is a problem a lot of PDC Acer users are having.

hope this helps

b.

SQL Azure Labs have released Project Houston a lightweight web based Database management tool for SQL Azure. Houston allows you to develop, deploy, and manage SQL Azure and includes support for basic database management tasks like authoring and executing queries, designing and editing a database schema, and editing table data.

b.