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, Feb 24, 2004, 12:52 PM in .NET
Benjamin Summarizes WS Alphabet Soup
Benjamin Mitchell does such a good job summarizing Jon Udell's WS Alphabet Soup article that I felt no need to read the actual article. : )
Tuesday, Feb 24, 2004, 12:33 PM in The Spout
Of Mixed Career Minds
Here. The one where Microsoft's up-coming Mid-Year Discussion and a late night IM chat with Lutz Roeder makes me introspective.
Tuesday, Feb 24, 2004, 12:08 PM in .NET
O'Reilly Dedicates More Energy to Windows
The one and only time that I ever met Tim O'Reilly, I turned into fan-boy, telling him how I used to be a Unix guy and I would just buy every single "animal book," even if I didn't know what the topic was because the quality of the books was so high that I knew I needed to know whatever was between the covers.
Now a days, ORA produces too many quality books to purchase (or even read) them all, but I've been very happy to see them turn more and more of their attention towards Windows, where I've put all of my developer energies for more than a decade. In fact, I've written one book for ORA myself and I've got two more in the works, so I continue to be a big fan. Today they launched the Windows DevCenter, where they are concentrating and aggregating all of their considerable Windows juice. And, of course, they have an RSS feed. Subscribed!
Tuesday, Feb 24, 2004, 12:00 AM in The Spout
Of Mixed Career Minds
Tuesday, February 24th, 2004
Don and I have an ongoing debate -- whether everyone was put on this planet for one purpose or whether a person gets to choose their path. This all started back in the middle of the bubble where we thought that we were so smart that we could take our success in training and turn our minds to anything we chose. We thought we could be anything, but used to talk most about politics (and Don even promised to get me elected as mayor of Beaverton) and religion (I'd like to get in on the ground floor of one of those "free love" cults : ).
Of course, the bubble burst, giving of us perspective on just what part of the success was us and what part was the go-go economy. Now, most of us that used to have those conversations work at Microsoft as a place to keep doing fun work without traveling to globe trying to keep up our old standards of living. These days Don talks about all of us having a specific place in the world and that he's pretty darn sure that he's found his (and you should see the guy; he's in there, fighting for what he thinks is best for the platform and building quite an impressive reputation base to extend his influence wider and wider). He's also of a firm mind that I've found my place and that I should be a s/w guy of some kind for the rest of my life.
So, I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I'm happy with the spot I've carved for myself in the Windows developer community and I think that there are plenty of fun s/w challenges to meet. Plus, my resume helps me get good gigs.
On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of being "predestined" to anything. I don't like the idea that fate or even my inborn predilections decides what I do and don't do in my life. I also still think that I'm smart enough and flexible enough that I could start another career. My latest fantasies revolve around moving into a place that my wife could afford on her nurse's salary while I write novels and spend my afternoons filling the public education gap my kids are experiencing. Previous fantasies include getting my jurist doctor at Harvard and becoming a courtroom prosecutor on my way to being a judge (I always know what's best for everyone : ). Also, the equities market calls my name and I've got a little property investment business on the side that could use more attention. So, I've got plenty of things I'd like to dig into before I die that have nothing whatever to do with my background or training. In fact, I've got so many other things to try that Lutz was making fun of me just last night, "Haven't you noticed that everyone in 2004 wants a new career?" Still, should I stick with what's safe because I may never achieve in other industries what I've achieved in this one or should I roll the dice and takes my chances, knowing that life is pretty short to spend it all doing the safe, comfortable thing?
Don't get me wrong; I'm not going anywhere just yet. I've started this Longhorn thing and I've got lots more to do there before I'm done. But I do think about hitting the reset button some day and starting over again from scratch. What do you guys think? Have any of you hit the reset button and ended up reading this post? Has anyone tried to escape from this industry only to end up back here and are happy they did? Does anything think that my hubris is going to get me into serious trouble? : )
Monday, Feb 23, 2004, 7:50 PM in Tools
Genghis v0.5 On the Way, But Baby First
Here.
For those folks asking, another drop of Genghis is on the way, which includes an HTML link class that handles links for you, a user-sizeable panel, a gradient progress bar, a completely revamped FileDocument and a host of fixes and enhancements, including stacking support and terminal server support for toast windows. However, before that can come, Mike Marshall, the Genghis build-master, stopped to email me about the impending arriving of his first child. Now *that's* dedication! I doubt if I'd stop to email any of the folks in charge of the shared source projects I'm involved with on the way to the hospital... : )
Monday, Feb 23, 2004, 5:13 PM
Getting Started with Your Own Software Company
It's hard to dispute a savvy marketing/business guy who brackets paragraphs with "#ifdef do_as_I_say_not_as_I_do" and sites as potential platform problems that "The user's dog is barking at your app" (the latter had me laughing out loud). Eric's latest piece on getting starting with your own software company rocks (as usual : ).
BTW, I've seen the Eric's next piece and a Gary Larson reference had me in stitches, so remember to come back next month!
Monday, Feb 23, 2004, 2:53 PM in .NET
Chat: Longhorn Roadmap for Existing C/C++ Apps
On Monday, March 15th between 11am and 12:30pm PST, the VC++ product team will be hosting a chat on what to do with your existing C, C++ and MFC applications in the Longhorn time frame, starting with what to do now to best prepare yourself and your applications. If you're a VC++ developer, don't miss it!
Monday, Feb 23, 2004, 1:03 PM in Fun
50% Evil is Still 50% Good
According to the The Gematriculator, sellsbrothers.com is 50% evil. Nothing about "genius" is mentioned...
[via Ryan Farley]
Monday, Feb 23, 2004, 12:55 PM in .NET
Avalon Bezier Spline Designer Code
Here. By popular demand, Nikhil Kothari, a PM on the ASP.NET team, has posted the source code to his most excellent Avalon Bezier Spline Designer. This is the coolest real Longhorn thing I've seen that comes with soure. Thanks, Nikhil!
Sunday, Feb 22, 2004, 9:51 PM in The Spout
Adding Ref-Counting to Rotor
Here.
Well, I can't put it off any longer. I wanted to wait 'til Chris Tavares and I were able to figure out what the problem was, but after months of help from the Compuware guys using a complementary hunk of their latest and greatest profiling software, we're no closer to finding out what causes the massive slow-down in compiling Rotor when we add our ref-counting implementation to it. The problem, of course, is that if we can't figure out what the problem is, we can't optimize our implementation to fix it.
The good news is that once we wait for the compilation to complete, the hybrid ref-counting (for deterministic resource management) + ref-tracking (for memory management) programming model is a thing of beauty. No longer do you have to write Dispose methods or even call Dispose methods, because our updated JITter takes care of it for you.
However, because compilation of Rotor makes such nice use as a managed test of our implementation and because it currently sucks butt perf-wise, we're stuck. If you're into the low-level guts and you've got the time (that's what Chris and I ran out of), we'd love your feedback on our perf problems. Who knows, if we can make it efficient, MS might stick it into the next version of the CLR... (but I don't work for that team, so don't hold me to that : ).
BTW, I'd like to really thank Chris Tavares for his implementation work. It was my idea and my funding, but he did all the work up to and including several drafts of the paper. All I did was complain. Thanks, Chris, and I hope you're enjoying your child, which is a far better way to spend your free time than implementing my cockamamie ideas in Rotor.
BTW2, I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to Brian Harry. It is definitely the case that ref-counting *can* be added to .NET but I have in no way shown that it *should* be done. Thanks for letting me try, though. : )
Saturday, Feb 21, 2004, 8:56 AM in .NET
Ryan Dawson on Indigo
Ryan Dawson turns his attention to Indigo, building a client and server and then adding security and reliability. In his writing, he also points out a number of pitfalls for you to avoid when getting starting with Indigo in the PDC bits.
Friday, Feb 20, 2004, 8:38 AM in .NET
Exploring New WinForm Controls in VS .NET Whidbey
Long before Longhorn, we'll have Whidbey and an updated Windows Forms (as well as a bunch of other updated things, but I like Windows Form : ). This article enumerates some of the updated controls in Windows Forms Whidbey. Also, stay turned for an MSDN Magazine article by Michael Weinhardt and me with a broader look at what's new in Whidbey Windows Forms (in fact, Michael has already tackled the new GridView control).
Friday, Feb 20, 2004, 8:26 AM in .NET
WinFS Scenario #2: Event Planning
Jeremy Mazner presents his second scenario for WinFS, this time describing his idea app for event management that would be cake to implement using WinFS. In fact, I'm pretty sure you could do the whole thing in the shell.
On a related note, I was watching an internal training video on WinFS yesterday and it excited me in a way that's not appropriate for humans to feel about technology. The enumeration, update, serialization, relationship, extensibility and notification models just all seem so *right*. I'm looking forward to another drop of the bits that enables me to extend WinFS so I can really start building stuff.
Thursday, Feb 19, 2004, 4:53 PM in .NET
Prepare for Longhorn: Architecture Strategy Series
Steve Kirk has updated the Architecture Developer Center with a series of streaming video presentations about the core architectures that motivated Longhorn. Topics range Pat Helland on comparing technology architectures with city architectures to Gurdeep Singh Pall talking about real-time collaboration, which a wide range of subjects in between. If you'd like to get your head in the same place that Microsoft's architects were when the conceived of Longhorn, while still getting information that you can use today, check these out.
Thursday, Feb 19, 2004, 3:55 PM in .NET
Registration Open for WinHEC
If you need a look at Longhorn, but you couldn't make the PDC (or you're just dying for *another* look at Longhorn), WinHEC in May is the place to be. Of course, it's also the place to be if you're a PC h/w vendor, but then, you guys already know that. : )