Angus Logan, Mr. Sharepoint around Microsoft Australia, has invited me to ask people random questions at next week’s APAC Sharepoint Conference.
So, if I ask you a question: please treat me kindly as I am a mere Sharepoint user, no expert.
Live in Melbourne?
Do you have your own Geek Story?
Are you free in the morning of Thursday 17th May?
Want to be as famous as Leslie Nassar?
The Crown Promenade is a good hotel. Above is a view of my hotel room late last week. You are a walk away from losing your cash playing poker in the casino; a little further away from Southbank eateries. Oh, and Melbourne does the best coffee outside Venice, in my book.
Now imagine never seeing outside, and joining the glitterati of the Australian Web Design community at Australia’s first ReMIX. User Experience, Expression, Silverlight and keynotes from US personages.
To keep up with the fun and frolic, you can also join the Twitter: http://twitter.com/auremix07
Come join us!
Microsoft’s John Lam and Jim Hugunin go large with the DLR at MIX07. Here are my notes whilst listening and watching the presentation:
What to expect: a Mac, TextMate, Javascript, Python, Ruby, Safari and Silverlight. TextMate equals text editing. Silverlight is not binary, its just XML and text. You can break it apart and look at the gooeyness inside. And some friendly Microsoft people bantering about Ruby vs Python.
And DLR is going Open Source, like IronPython.
What strikes me the most is that the language that people are comfortable with: Javascript, Python, Ruby, C# – you can code your client side in the same language as server side.
Also, having Ruby instantiate Javascript and call functions. Wow. With a C# object doing UI. Technorati via XML through Yahoo!Pipes to JSON to Silverlight on a Mac. Retrieving from the JSON object deserialised and queried via LINQ.
Let alone doing Basic, with REM and all.
In their only Powerpoint slide, Jim details the performance gains of IronPython on the CLR engine. I wonder if the perf gains are going to match to Ruby, too? Is the DLR/CLR going to be the saviour of the scaling bumps of Ruby?
Question: can use DLR inside console, ASP.NET?
Answer: yes, you can use DLR anywhere you are using .NET. More constrained in Silverlight, due to the sandbox.
Question: is it compiling an assembly, or executing script
Answer: Dynamic methods in .NET 2.0, for code generation lazily; and is a dynamic method. Only held whilst there is a live reference. ASP.NET scenarios with stress test not held onto. Not using method rental; System.Reflection.EmitDynamicMethod
Question: JScript.NET vs. new Dynamic Language Jscript?
Answer: Developer want language purity, not tight integration and following .NET. So follow the ECMA 3.0 spec. That’s Javascript. vs. Ruby “freelove” specification of Ruby is its implementation, not a specification document.
Microsoft has changed, big time. My head is spinning.
In light of the recent shenanigans of AMEX, its time to list my numbers in the “Do-not-Call List”
URL to register: http://www.donotcall.gov.au/
As per the Government’s web site:
Will it stop all telemarketing calls?
Registering your telephone number on the Do Not Call Register will not stop all telemarketing calls to your number. There are some exemptions which enable certain public interest organisations to make telemarketing calls. Exempt organisations include charities, religious organisations and registered political parties. You can also still receive calls from market researchers.
Hmm. I’ll still get push-polling recorded calls from politicians, and people asking for “market research”. All I want is no fricken’ calls from people I don’t know, fullstop.
Now, the site is broken and melting down. Ooops, Coldfusion just went hot. Dear webmasters: always overestimate the stresses on your sites. (Fixed at around midday.)
As I would have probably watched this on Australia’s ABC as a young un’, I now understand why I am a geek.
John Lam, why Dynamic Languages from John Udell podcast:
expressing my intent in the code.
Interesting interview between Tim Heuer and John Lam on Ruby as a part of the announcements yesterday.
The Ruby support from Microsoft is more than just Silverlight; it also crosses into the server and the client, outside the browser.
21st Century SmallTalk: IronPython 2.0 in a browser, performance and dynamic fun.
Miguel de Icaza, lead of the Mono project (opensource CLR) on the new Dynamic Language Runtime:
Binaries of the DLR were released today as part of Silverlight 1.1, and the source code was included with IronPython 2.0 (also released today).
The release for the DLR is done under the terms of the Microsoft Permissive License (MsPL) which is by all means an open source license. This means that we can use and distribute the DLR as part of Mono without having to build it from scratch. A brilliant move by Microsoft.
Keeping secrets is tough. Hearing about the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) from John Lam in February this year was one of those secrets that kept well.
John Udell interviewed John Lam, and has a backgrounder here. Some in the Ruby community didn’t see this coming.
Jim Hugunin has a posting on the new DLR, open source nature of the DLR on his “Thinking Dynamically” blog.
In addition to the Silverlight release, we’ve also made the full source code for both IronPython and all of the new DLR platform code available on codeplex under the BSD-style Microsoft Permissive License. All of that code can be downloaded today as part of the IronPython project at codeplex.com/ironpython.
The reality of being able to debug Ruby in a client-side UI framework on Safari on a Mac using Microsoft Silverlight tickles me, and others, greatly.
Blog from the keynote today, with all the ups-and-downs. Good to see I am not the only one who craves demos and has subversive thoughts in the midst of formal sessions.
Ryan Stewart has comments, and further links. The DLR adds 400K (what the!) to the Silverlight download. Wow.
zdnet has a sort of transcript of the Q&A that occured with Mike Arrington, Ray Ozzie and Scottgu.
Does Microsoft get Web 2.0? Yes.
Note with interest that you have sent me a fake/promotional credit card in the mail. Obviously as a direct mail campaign to attempt to get me to use your products: Qantas and AMEX respectively.
How many trees did you kill to send this piece of direct mail out? Not to say the environmental damage in the plastics in the fake card.
Yes, I have said it is OK to send me direct mail when I signed up for AMEX some years ago – but recalling having said “no more direct mail” with either of your organisations in the recent 2 years. (see previous post on this matter)
I am expecting someone to call me at home, on my unlisted phone number, between the hours of 6pm and 8pm sometime during the week commencing 1st May telling me the additional benefits of the card and why I should spend AU$395 for an AU$100,000 (subject to credit approval criteria). I will politely point them to this blog post.
Again I repeat: I use your products often. But now you are just pestering me for no reason. Your databases will show I have been “sold up” or “cross sold” to exactly zero AMEX products. Zero. I am now costing you more than you make from me.
Time to move on in your marketing campaigns, guys. Direct mail is old school.
Nick