Any similarities between Bjork’s latest album and Microsoft’s latest toolkit for web development are just a pure coincidence.
Posts Tagged: ajax
1
Apr 07
TechDays 2007, day 3… and final thoughts
With some delay here’s the "review", and my final thoughts, of this years edition of the biggest Microsoft based event in Portugal.
First of all, the "third day" review. Instead of detailing all the sessions I’ve attended, which could become a bit boring, I’ll just point two of them, even if both of them were from people I’m familiar with. The first came from my fellow and co-worker and covered the anguishes and the doubts of a software architect, but in a rather curious way: in a psychiatrist session. The other was from a former college teacher which dedicated a whole session to security in Windows Workflow Foundation, and it was one of the most professional sessions I’ve been the those three days (and the only good one about WCF).
And now for my final thoughts, the overall impression was good and I was able to grab some stuff about all those things I couldn’t turn my attention in the last months: Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.Net Ajax and LINQ. But, on the other side, there were two problems: the Hands On Labs simply hasn’t worked, a major flop, and the quality of the sessions dedicated to WCF and Windows Workflow Foundation wasn’t that good, almost looked like the event was driven towards "show-off" and "eye candy" technologies (like WPF or Ajax).
Technorati tags: techdays 2007, .net 3.0, wcf, wpf, wf, workflow, asp.net, ajax, LINQ
22
Mar 07
TechDays 2007, day 2
After the good start in the previous day this one was less interesting, it was the day with the weakest agenda and some of the sessions were a bit disapointing, yet there were some nice things to talk about.
As in the previous day, my main focus was the techonologies I haven’t put my hands on in the last months: presentation layer technologies. I was able to finish the complete series of Jeff Prosise sessions (one of the authorities in ASP) early in the morning, this one dedicated to ASP.NET AJAX but with an interesting twist: a real bash in the UpdatePanel control, probably the most widely seen feature in demos, and a . Sticking with the AJAX subject, Rui Quintino showed us some security issues and possible hacks in AJAX enabled sites.
Excited by Chad Hower’s WPF session on the previous day I attended hist session dedicated to WPF/E, the yet to be released (and yet to be properly named) subset of WPF that will target web and mobile platforms. Chad’s an excellent sepaker, but there’s much less to show about WPF/E other than a few nice looking demos, there isn’t much support for WPF/E not even in Orcas. So this one wasn’t nearly as exciting has hos previous session, and this time he used Powerpoint for the slideshow and, worst of all, it made me miss one of my goals for this event: C# 3.0.
The rest of the day was also dull, the only day I left before the end…
20
Mar 07
TechDays 2007, day 1
The main Microsoft techie event in Portugal has started today and will last for three days (with myself attending all of them), an event where the main focus, from the developer point of view, is the .Net 3.0 Framework and ASP.NET Ajax. Besides all the presentations, with all the available subjects and all the renowned speakers there’s an added bonus: the project I’ve been working for the last year will result in more than one presentation (regarding subjects like as Team System, SCRUM, and Windows Workflow Foundation), but have no fear because I’ve left that job to someone more capable than myself.
It was the normal slow start, typical in a first day of this kind of event, with some sales pitch or overview presentations. Still I was able to grab a hell of a show by Chad Hower on Windows Presentation Foundation, where all the presentation was made using WPF, instead of a regular PowerPoint.
Other neat stuff: one really cool demo using WPF, video and speech recognition!
29
Nov 05
Try Ruby in the confort of your browser
For those of you who have some read stuff about Ruby but haven’t got the time or even
[put your favorite excuse here] to try it, just like me, here’s your chance to do so.
Try ruby! (in your browser), a really cool and simple tutorial with a few guided exercices to play around with some of Ruby’s features. It aims to be a hands on tutorial performed in just 15 minutes, “aims” because it’s not finished yet but is worth the visit just as it is.
There’s no need to go into details, after all it was just my first contact with the language, but there are a few really nice and powerful features available; Ruby feels like a much more object oriented language, like Smalltalk, with a touch of Perl and Lisp.
If you want to jump to the next level, and from the same author, there’s the
Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, probably I’ll do just that in the near future.
PS – Even if you have no interest in Ruby check it out, there’s lots of AJAX going on there… 
