You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Tuesday, Jul 29, 2003, 10:11 AM in Tools
*Free* (as in beer) Access to VSIP!
Here. "Register to become a Visual Studio Industry partner and get FREE access to the VSIP SDK. As a VSIP you will have access to the technology, private newsgroups and secured technical content to assist you in seamlessly integrating your tools, components, and languages into the Visual Studio .NET IDE." Everything you always wanted to do to integrate seamlessly into VS.NET used to cost money. As of todays, it's free! Wahoo!
Monday, Jul 28, 2003, 5:30 PM in .NET
SlashDot Review of Essential .NET
Here. "Of course, there is the question of whether this book will actually improve your .NET development skills, but in riposte, you can honestly say that no volume details the CLR and its potential so well, and that this alone is worth the book's cover price."
Monday, Jul 28, 2003, 5:18 PM in Interview
Microsoft Plays Hiring Hardball
Here. "Like baseball's New York Yankees, Microsoft Corp. has been paying top dollar for top talent in an effort to dominate the new playing fields of XML and Web services." While I agree that finally coming to work for Microsoft is like a baseball fan getting to play for the Yankees, I'm not sure where Darryl got his "top dollar" information. Maybe I should talk to the other guys about their deals... : )
Monday, Jul 28, 2003, 12:00 AM in The Spout
My First .NET Show
In many ways, my list of "My First" articles lately have been written out of duty to all of the developers that have always wanted to work at Microsoft, but haven't yet been able to. I first applied for a job @ MS as a summer intern in 1988. I was turned down while another guy down the hall of my fraternity was accepted. He spent all summer building LCD panels into one giant screen and I spent all summer writing FoxPro code. I wonder if he still works here. I can't for the life of me remember his name. David something...
Anyway, every time some new, fun, cool opportunity comes up, I feel like I have to take it just so that I can share it with the folks that don't yet work here (seems like they're hiring everyone, though, so it shouldn't be much longer : ). This time, I got to be in an episode of the .NET Show. I was to be 15 minutes of code demo after Brad Abrams and Anders Hejlsberg reminded folks that .NET wasn't just about web services. There were all kinds of folks that Robert had on tap to give the demo, but they were all busy, so eventually they got to the last monkey in the barrel and had to settle for me. : )
I flew up this morning and had to call MS information: "Hi, I'm a Microsoft employee, but I'm new. Can you tell me where to go to get the MS Studios?" This in spite of the fact that I'd been there less than two weeks before! (I'm terrible at remembering anything that doesn't have a lot of parenthesis and braces in it). They showed me to Green Room #2, where they had some food waiting, just like I was a real "talent". Maybe the food was really for Brad and Anders. Maybe the food was for Nick Hodapp, Project Manager for Visual C++, who was in the makeup chair when I arrived. Nick was there to remind people that MS is serious about C++ both in the native and managed spaces and to show off the port of Quake II to managed C++.
While I waited my turn in the makeup chair, I watched Brad and Anders do their thing and made sure my demos worked. I was amazed that Robert never stopped the shooting while he did his interview. He did the whole thing in one take, which puts quite a burden on me to get my demo right the first time! I also spent some time eating the Green Room food, IMing my wife (she said to make sure not to use too much blue eye shadow or I'd look "trashy") and giving the makeup artist a talk on the benefits of Wi-Fi (she asked, honest!).
After Brad and Anders were through, they wandered into my makeup session. I've always wanted to meet the creator of C#, but not while having my eyes done... Anyway, Brad and Anders were having a debate about the merits of a new optimization of the .NET framework and it was really cool to see how practical Anders was. I don't know why, but I imagined a guy that could come up with something as clean and simple as C# to be pretty academic. That wasn't the case at all. His view of the debate was that he wanted to see a few uses of a proposed new feature before he even thought about including it, as opposed to judging it on the basis of it's "coolness" as can happen when engineers gather together in groups. That brief chat made me feel better about having him in charge of my favorite programming language.
After having just the right amount of blue eye shadow, I sat up on stage with Robert and Nick and my new friend Bob, who ran the entire shoot. He was like the voice of God, being only heard and not seen from his control room in the bowels of MS Studio. He and I bonded quickly as we settled into the banter of trading insults familiar amongst the wiseasses of the world (now *that* sounds like a cool domain name! : ). Robert was very causal and very smiley, very different from the seriousness he portrays on film. Nick was very polished and gave such a compelling demo of the managed C++ Quake II port that I couldn't help but jump in and beg for more. I, on the other hand, said the word "crack" and mentioned my colleague as he IM'd himself onto my computer screen, both times making Robert roll his eyes at me (off camera, I'm sure). I also went off into la la land once when I answered a question that Robert hadn't asked, causing Nick to jump in with an answer.
All in all, having yourself filmed for posterity was pretty different from giving a talk. It was nice, because I had Nick and Robert to play off of and Robert was very good about moving things along. It was hard because, unlike a talk, there were things that I said that I wished I hadn't merely because they are permanent. Hopefully it went over well as a whole. I don't know if I'll be able to watch it myself. Someone please tell me how it is when it's published next month...
Saturday, Jul 26, 2003, 2:28 PM
Marketing is not a Post-Processing Step
Here. Where has Eric Sink been all my life?!? Another great article on marketing by geeks for geeks.
Saturday, Jul 26, 2003, 2:25 PM
Marketing for Geeks
Here. Some straight talk about marketing from one geek to another. I wish I would've known this stuff years ago!
Saturday, Jul 26, 2003, 2:23 PM
Beyond CheckOut and CheckIn
Here. Eric Sink, the CEO of SourceGear, provides very lucid explanations of advanced features of source control, including labeling, cloacking, sharing, pinning, branching and merging branches. Even on medium-sized projects, I've *needed* at least half of those features, so getting to know what they're for is good for you (like broccoli : ).
Friday, Jul 25, 2003, 5:48 PM
Need an Excuse? Use a Web Service
Here. Someone transcribed an ExcuseBall (tm) into a spreadsheet and the rest was reflex.
Friday, Jul 25, 2003, 1:23 PM
"This is your code. This is your code, managed."
Here. I'm heading up to Redmond to do a taping of the .NET Show on Monday on the topic of managed code. Robert's idea is to show folks that still think of .NET as managed only just what they're missing. I've got 15 minutes for a code demo. Suggestions?
Friday, Jul 25, 2003, 1:06 PM
Another RSS + search application
Here. Rory Blyth put the Amazon.com web service to work building RSS feeds to search for new products in your favorite categories, further pushing the "RSS as intelligent search agent" idea [1]. And, if anyone buys from links on his feeds, he promises to give the money to charity (until such time as it provides enough income for him to sip umbrella drinks on the beach, I presume : ). [1] http://www.sellsbrothers.com/news/showTopic.aspx?ixTopic=703
Friday, Jul 25, 2003, 1:03 PM
Ingo says, "Sealed is Good"
Here. He's right and he's wrong. He's right because "sealed" let the WinForms team build something more efficient w/o rebuilding all of the Win32 controls in managed code. He's wrong because the use of it stops me from deriving from ImageList (which I've wanted to do). So, while sealed is useful, it still sucks. : )
Thursday, Jul 24, 2003, 2:54 PM
Not A Legend
Here. Maybe he's not a official legend, but he's done what I've never been able to do: build a successful software business. Eric, you're a legend in my mind! Plus, his site lampoons the "official" software legend site [1] nicely. : ) http://www.softwarelegends.com
Wednesday, Jul 23, 2003, 8:45 PM
Windows XP Remote Assistance Rocks!
Here. The one where Windows makes my life better.
Wednesday, Jul 23, 2003, 3:22 PM
"Intelligent Search Agents" Made Real
Here. Remember when we were going to have intelligent search agents that would search the web for us and find things that matched our interests? Well, Wired does it today with search results returned in RSS format. Clicking on the link for this item gives me an RSS feed for "longhorn" related items from Wired News, making sure I see what's up on that topic (as far as Wired News is concerned, anyway). To compose a new RSS feed tailored to your tastes, surf to wired.com and enter your search term. When it returns, clicking on the (rss) link will give you an RSS feed to drop into your aggregrator (my favorite is SharpReader). Then, whenever your aggregator updates, it'll check for new search results and bam! intelligent search agents acting in the background on your behalf. Very, very cool. [scriptingnews.com]
Wednesday, Jul 23, 2003, 10:23 AM in .NET
Active Scripting for .NET
Here. With the support for scripting built into .NET [1], I'm surprised it took this long for someone to rebuild the COM-based Active Scripting for .NET (although I wish it'd been us and that it was free : ). [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/02/08/VisualStudioforApplications/default.asp