.NET General
I'm no longer blogging on this blog. Please find me here.
I have heard throught the grapevine that the new ECMA CIL "standard" is about to be released. I use the word standard because I'm not sure of the right terminology.
I was able to get my hands on a copy of a few pages of the document through a friend of mine and it turns out that CIL will now support dynamic typing. My source has asked that I not reveal details, but I am allowed to say this: the Variant datatype is back and it is here to stay.
Evidently, there are a few difficulties to implement this in CIL, but the engineers involved had a breakthrough. I'm not privy to all of the details (I only have a few pages), but there was some feature that was discovered in generics that allowed for safe void pointers. My friend stated "We do dynamic loading; why not dynamic typing?"
I haven't been able to confirm this as of yet, but the feature appears to be so important, that the recent PR on the rescheduling of Vista was faked so that this feature could be included in the new operating system.
It must be something in the water. I have been evangelizing F# for some time and have had numerous invitations to speak around Milwaukee, WI and elsewhere in this region. Everyone that I speak to about F# "gets it". I have been having a lot of fun.
The good folks in the .NET Users Group in Rockford, IL (NETRUG; note that they are working on updating the web site; even though I'm not listed, I DID speak) were kind enough to invite me to speak at their March User's Group Meeting.
We had a fantastic meeting. The meeting took place on March 29th, 2006 and was located at a local business and we had the use of one of their conference rooms. Gerry and I arrived in Rockford, IL (from Milwaukee, WI) after an easy, 90 minute drive. About 10-12 people showed up. This post is a little late because I had written it and forgot to publish it (and a Rockford Users Group member emailed me to remind me; dude, where's our post?).
The part I like best about these meetings is hearing the issues of the local groups and how they manage those issues. In Appleton, WI, the toughest issue was trying to determine what topics to discuss in presentations in future meetings. Here the issue was organization and leadership. Leanne Fetter has done a great job getting this group together and they have a lot of great ideas. The group is working to solidify their leadership and roles so that the responsibilities are not placed on only one or two people. Many groups have these issues and it was great to hear open discussion in this group. Of course many other topics were discussed as well, but that the group was focused on leadership means that they are thinking about their durability and effectiveness as an organization.
After conversations on local group issues, I gave my F# presentation. Coming in to a new city, I usually don't know what to expect. The topic is not an easy topic, i.e. F# forces you to think in a number of different ways. I still find myself "context-switching" between C# and F# and "thinking in F#" only after a bit of effort. But the members of NETRUG picked up F# very quickly. As I walked through the presentation, there were a number of good questions and we covered a lot of depth. I try to engage each audience (in different cities) and hope that they respond. This audience responded. Given that the group size was 10-12, I could interact, on an almost individual basis, with each person. This provided for great tempo as well. This audience provided me with useful questions and commentary afterwards as well.
The Rockford .NET Users Group has solid membership and is growing. The group, like many others, is always looking for new members, speakers and leaders. If you are in the area, visit their site, attend the meetings or get involved.
I just arrived home from the FVNUG (Fox Valley .NET Users Group) meeting. I presented on F# (as usual). For a young group, i.e. this was only their second meeting, I thought they were well organized. I'm looking forward to visiting with them in the future, hopefully as a speaker, but definitely as an audience member. The meeting was more formal than those hosted by the WI .NET Users Group. One part that I really enjoyed was the "roundtable discussion". After I completed my presentation, I returned to my seat in the audience and the Chapter President, Chuck Goehler, opened the floor to questions about all things .NET. Any question was fair game and the idea was to get the group to talk about experiences in software development and in particular with applications in .NET. Because the group is new, a lot of topics were raised and those topics became future speaker topic items of interest.
I want to thank the group for their time. I also personally want to thank a few of the new officers of FVNUG:
- Chuck Goehler - President
- Christy Giblin - Director of Membership
- David Palfery - Director of Events
There were others to thank as well, but Chuck, Christy and David have started building a first-rate users group. If you are in the Fox Valley area, the group is looking for members and for leaders. I do know that they have a nine person board, for which only five positions have been filled. Visit FVNUG's web site if you are interested in either participating in these events, or are interested in becoming a board member. I can see this group growing quickly, so now is a good time to get in and make an impact.
Don't forget - Deeper in Dot Net is coming April 22, 2006. Space is limited, so register early . . .
Just a reminder that I'll be speaking at the the Fox Valley .NET Users Group tonight. I mentioned the details earlier here.
I'm leaving in an hour or so . . .
I'm speaking again on F#. On Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 6:00pm, I'll be giving my F# presentation to the Fox Valley .NET Users Group. Please note that the venue is Fox Valley Technical College Room F108. The Fox Valley .NET Users Group is a new organization. This is their second meeting and I'm really glad that they have invited me to give this presentation.
I first gave this presentation on Feb 21, 2006 to the WI .NET Users Group. I have since polished it up a bit, after feedback from a number of people.
If you are in the area, stop in for the presentation and the roundtable discussion that follows as well.
Don't forget - Deeper in Dot Net is coming April 22, 2006. Space is limited, so register early . . .
I've been taking the time to improve my competence in a few key technologies. F# is one of those technologies. But I believe that the WinFX suite from Microsoft will provide considerable advantage in the future. To that extent, any resources that I can leverage in books, websites, etc. are really useful.
Joseph Cooney's newest site, LearnWPF.com (I previously linked it here) is really giving me a good dosage of WPF. In particular, his Can I create Aero Glass"-style windows under Windows XP in WPF? (with link to Unni's blog) and How do I create WPF graphics using the Expression Graphic Designer? saved me a few hours on issues that many early release products face: capability. Sometimes, just not knowing what a product can or cannot do in its early stages is important and the simple positioning of usage may not be apparent in CTP documentation.
Joseph's LearnWPF.com is a time saver for those, like me that are learning WPF. Anybody that saves time for me is worth a look . . .
Tonight, Dave Bost will be speaking on VSTS and features in Unit Testing and Code Analysis at the WI .NET Users Group meeting. As usual, this is the second Tuesday of the month meeting, scheduled at 7:00-9:00pm. The usual free pizza and soda will be served.
I'll be there . . .
It is that time of the year again. Ok, for me, this is a first time event, but it has taken place in the past. The WI .NET Users Group's Deeper in .NET 2006 is in it's fourth year and this year seems to be bigger and better than ever.
This FREE event takes place at the Milwaukee Hyatt Regency Hotel on April 22nd, 2006. It starts at 7:00am on Saturday morning (dude, are you kidding? like I won't be out that Friday night before or anything?) and runs all day. At the end of the event, around 5:45pm, there will be lots and lots of prizes given away (I know for certain that the number is approaching $20,000 in total prizes; you must be present to receive prizes).
As a member of the Executive Committee for the WI .NET Users Group, I'm really excited to see the progress in the development of this year's event. WI .NET Users Group president Scott Isaacs (the one on the left) talks about the event further in Deeper in .NET 2006!.
Our speaker list is first-rate:
Read more here. Don't forget to register (required for attendance). Oh yeah, it's party time in the Brew City. See you there.
So its a good night in teh Labrary. I've been getting some F# stuff done. I've been spending time doing a few things on a number of technologies and F# has been at the center of many of those activities.
Anyways, C++ and Compact Framework Guru Travis Feirtag (founder of Feirtech, Inc.) has been busy as well. He's a total maniac with the Compact Framework. I've seen him do some very cool things. Between him and the lower cased one, I look like a total amateur on this stuff. So in a quick conversation with him today, I found out about a project that he's been working to complete. The article that is the result of his work is Drawing and Filling Bezier Curves using the Compact Framework v2. Ebidently, Bezier curves didn't make it into GDI+ on CFv2. So Travis decided, among other things, to do a quick implementation of this stuff. My personal favorite of the renderings (yeah, he included pictures for people like me; dude, that is not the MSN butterfly; there is source code, too) is the last one because it reminds me of my early childhood and some of the art that I made. I was making Bezier curves at a young age and didn't even know it.
Read the article here . . .
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Stego dogs wear keychains under a visible moon.
All of that there data at JJB Research that I work on - would be delivered in three minutes on this purple monster. I guess I had better place an order for two.
The Armed Geometer is
at it again. Ummmmmmmmmmm, this should be on
LtU.
With the release of a new version of .NET 2.0 in November, 2005, the question can be raised, What new security features and what new security holes have been introduced? Let's focus on new features. .NET Security Blog, run by Shawn Farkas, is one of my must read blogs on security and his coverage is spot on.
In a recent post, Enveloped PKCS #7 Signatures, Shawn covers the the implementation and usage of PKCS #7 messages, now as a feature of .NET 2.0. Take some time to read that post as the coverage there is good and there is little in the way of detail that I can add.
I do think that there is one important consideration that was left unmentioned. If during applications development, there is a requirement for the usage of PKCS #7 from within .NET, there previously were really only a few alternatives:
- Write a custom implementation.
- Perform calls into CAPI.
- Use some other library like Bouncy Castle.
- Some other alternative I haven't considered.
This changes the landscape for hardening of PKCS #7 messages in .NET. Those that choose to implement using these new features in .NET 2.0 will put themselves under the umbrella of that code. The upside is that implementations in applications are more concise and are based on standard .NET classes. This means that while the overall responsibility of security of an application that implements PKCS #7 does not change in requirements, the amount of code that is needed is less, i.e. less application code to harden. Additionally, this also means that the responsibility of fitness and hardening of these classes lays on the shoulders of the .NET security teams. Their code will be "put to the test" in the field. For hardening, the greater the number of instances in the field, the greater the likelihood that if weaknesses are to be found, those that engage in "breaking activities" will find them. Given the track record of security teams at Microsoft, I'm comfortable knowing that this both simplifies any application work and provides for a better, stronger code base over time.
Nice post and good work by the Microsoft security teams.
The other day, I mentioned that the Labrary went quiet. All servers and workstations were shutdown, or as one of my friends would say, optionsScalper=shutdown. Without my toys, I am nothing. I am defined solely by the CPU time across these machines. NOT.
Well, suffice it to say, that later that evening, optionsScalper=up. Everything restarted and I have a few more development boxes and other stuff running. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
BTW, the Labrary, now without the presence of a few dual Xeon rackmount servers, is significantly quieter and no longer running has a room temperature 88+ degrees F (31+ C). Note that in the cold Wisconsin winter, opening the Labrary window provided for virtually no relief in temperatures in the presence of those servers.
Back at it . . .
I'm finally back to having some free time for myself. Last weekend (yesterday and the day before yesterday) were fun days, but I was connected to my computers for most of the time. I had a choice to disconnect or do some other connected work and I chose the latter. I'm actually glad that I did, because now my docket is clear.
I recently moved to a new place and put much of my stuff in storage in the basement until I could find time to bring it out. I can now start unpacking that stuff and put it to work. Chad (the sensor man) gave me a NEC MultiSync XE21 monitor to use (actually to keep, he doesn't want it anymore). I had hesitated to bring out the "big guns", i.e. my larger flat panels, but now is the time. I'm also bringing up a few more servers, so if you hear a humming in my neighborhood, just ignore it and assume that there is considerable data munching behind these doors. I'd recommend you keep a safe perimeter of 50 yards or more so that you don't lose a limb with all of the activity. Seriously, I've spent the last four months on three machines and feel completely useless. It will be nice to get more of this stuff back in action. I need to get back to running some serious projects and have been itching to do so.
The Labrary is about to get "lit up" with dual 24" Samsung 243T's on workstation one and a single HP f2304 on workstation two. Of course, workstation one is the machine with dual pan-and-tilt cameras, dual Saitek joysticks, a Nostromo SpeedPad N52 and various other USB devices that will overload that monster.
My internet machine has one 13" Amdek amber monitor for my viewing pleasure.
After this silly shuffle, perhaps I can get back to yelling at the world a bit and even talking about something more interesting.
Since Jason Haley always links everyone else, and his blog (and site) got a great new facelift, I thought that I'd link him for once as an "Interesting Find". My only comments are 1) The view of the shoreline reminds me of how great the Boston area harbor and surrounding areas are and 2) I'd never look that good in a tux.
The new place looks great . . .
F# 1.1.10.2 was released by the F# Team at MSR. While there are a few minor changes in the language, the biggest change is the fsi - the F# interactive environment. It is now integrated into VS2005. While this integration may seem trivial, it represents a step forward for the F# environment and a move toward a competitive posture with other mathematics/scientific computing environments. The Visual F# Interactive session is global to the instance of VS2005, so interactivity with other F# code in the VS session is leveraged nicely.
One important not