MIX 07 Day 2

See I was right, in my post yesterday I said the key role missing in most WPF projects was the 'designer who can cut code' or 'coder with a design eye', the session Silverlight, WPF, Expression design projects - where do we get started today was on just this subject Paul Dawson and Robby Ingebretsen discussed the need for 'producers' who take on this bridging role, with tips on where to find them.

Also went to the IronRuby session, now this is not going to be anything you can use for business use soon, but will in the fullness of time provide a very interesting way to provide domain specific languages. It is sessions like this that I feel has given this conference a bit of PDC feel 'look soon you will be able to do this' as opposed to the TechEd feel of 'wow I can do this now'.

For me today does seem to have been a bit Dynamic Language (DLR) focused. It is easy to get bogged down in the when to use Ruby or Python, but I think the key here is how easy it is to provide a domain specific scripting languages within .NET for line of business application's scripting.

As to the most interesting sneak peek it was another PDC like session, the one by Simon Peyton-Jones of Microsoft Research on Transaction memory - this will be as like changing as virtual memory has been.

So it is the end of MIX07, I'm staying in London for the Office Business Applications Architect Forum tomorrow. I wonder how many other people are going to both events?