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Microsoft TechEd Day 3

What has cracked me up every morning this week is that they take a bunch of geeks (who in general do not like a lot of attention) and basically make them feel like they are walking down the red carpet for each meal.

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Developing iOS and Android Apps with Windows Azure Mobile Services – Chris Risner – @chrisrisner– [Channel 9 Session Info]

As you are all aware mobile is huge right now. The problem is that there are so many options available to develop your applications with. Windows Azure Mobile Services allows you to use Azure as the backend for your applications. The cool thing about it is that Azure Mobile Services is essentially front-end agnostic. In this session Chris demoed using Azure Mobile Services with PhoneGap for iOS, native Android development, then he developed an iOS application with Xamarin. I was really impressed by the capabilities of the Windows Azure Mobile Services and how easy it was to do the server side and the programming for integrating with Azure Mobile Services. The other thing that I was really impressed with was that Chris was so good with all three development options that he was able to seamlessly switch between all the different tools and not skip a beat.

Essential Truths Everyone Should Know About Performance in a Large Managed Codebase – Dustin Campbell @DCampbell – [Channel 9 Session Info]

This is the second session I have attended from Dustin Campbell (he co-led the Visual Studio Tips and Tricks session I attended on Day 2). He works on the team that builds Visual Studio so I can imagine the code base that he deals with is enormous. He discussed the essential truths about performance management which are:

  1. Profiles do not lie
  2. Good tools make the difference/The right tool is essential
  3. Allocations are king

He explained the tool that they use at Microsoft (PerfView) and how they applied it to project Roslyn (C# & VB .NET Compiler rewrite project). He walked through all the different things they found (too many to enumerate here, go download the slides from the Channel 9 page for this session if you want to see them all). The key point though with all the “smells” is to not go on a witch hunt unless the profiler points them out make informed decisions on optimization based on the performance monitor results.

Design or Die: The Challenge to the Microsoft Developer Ecosystem – Billy Hollis – [Channel 9 Session Info]

This was not your normal TechEd session due to the fact there was very little code shown. What I experienced though was so much better. Billy was an incredibly dynamic speaker and he broke down how the standard grid based applications just don’t cut it anymore. He talked about how the iPad was a paradigm shifter but it just wasn’t cut out for enterprise apps. With the Metro/Modern UI/Windows Runtime interface and its supporting technologies (much faster development, better security and manageability, more device options to plug-in, and more form factors to choose from) we are in a much better position to deliver business apps that our customers can use. He also offered several resources for understanding good User Experience principles and better design process principles, one such resource was his Pluralsight course: Creating User Experiences: Fundamental Design Principles. Overall, this was a great session and I was brimming with ideas when I left the session.

Agile Testing Across Browsers and Across Devices – Matthew Aniyan – [Channel 9 Session Info]

This session was a non-starter for me. What I learned from this session, I learned in the first 5 minutes and that was you can do coded user interface tests using a neat little recorder tool that popped up when you started the test, then if you refactor that code and add one line of code you can do multiple browser tests.

On my way out of that session, I saw this guy and it pretty much summed up how I am feeling right about now…my brain is tired from all the learning.

this dude had the right idea

Single Page Applications with Microsoft ASP.NET – John Papa – @john_papa – [Channel 9 Session Info]

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this session, but I was completely blown away. All the lethargy and tiredness I had been feeling prior to this session was completely erased. I walked away from this session with so many ideas buzzing around my head was spinning. I had heard of some of the libraries that John talked about Knockout.js, Bootstrap.js, Angular.js, but once he introduced Durandal.js and Breeze.js I finally got it. By the way he showed it, the idea of single page apps really has an appeal for me for both the company I work for and the company that I run on the side. I really look forward to digging into the idea of SPAs.

That’s it for today, there will be more tomorrow.

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Microsoft TechEd Day 2

Wow, if I thought that my brain was full after day 1, it is overflowing now. If the theme yesterday was convergence, the theme today in the sessions I went to was convenience. Below is my assessment of the sessions I went to.

 

Building Windows Store Line-of-Business Apps – Brian Noyes – @briannoyes

I expected this session to be a down and dirty demo of the grueling work that you had to do in order to create a Windows Store app. Was I wrong. This demo was for a tool called Prism. Prism is a framework that handles all those dirty little details that I thought the session was going to be about. The main topics were the MVVM app structure within Prism, Navigation and State Management, and Validation. If you have a Pluralsight subscription, Brian recorded an in depth training course on Prism.

 

Visual Studio Tips & Tricks – Dustin Campbell – @DCampbell & Scott Cate – @ScottCate

If you thought you knew how you use Visual Studio, you are woefully mistaken. This demo was given by two guys that have a mouse that is collecting dust by the side of their keyboard. Some of my favorites that I found out today are:

  • Windows + # – toggle between items that are pinned on your taskbar
  • ctrl + ; & ctrl + ‘ – toggle between team explorer and solution explorer
  • alt +w then l – closes all windows
  • ctrl + [ then s – sync the solution explorer with active document
  • F12 – go to definition
  • Shift + F12 – find all references
  • ctrl + alt + down – document drop down. Beware though, on some video drivers this key combination will flip the screen .
  • ctrl + i – invoke incremental search
  • ctrl + shift + v – cycle through clipboard
  • ctrl + . – will pull up smart tag [my new best friend] (the smart tag is the little blue box that is almost impossible to hit with the mouse)
  • ctrl + F10 – run to cursor 
  • ctrl +shift + F10  – roll back while debugging.
  • shift + alt + F11 – step into specific (when you have nested function calls and need to step into a specific one)
  • magnify win + +, reverse win + -, jump to 100% win + esc

Microsoft ASP.NET SignalR: The Real-Time Web Made Simple – Damian Edwards – @damianedwards

If I thought that Prism was going to make building Windows Store apps easier, SignalR is ridiculously easy! I watched a simple real time chat system between two browser windows created with less than 20 lines of code. That being said, while the code he wrote right before our very eyes is not production ready code, it goes to show how powerful SignalR really is. The is a NuGet package that contains the sample code that will show you how to use SignalR.

I was also able to go to the Ask the Expert sessions as well to have some great conversations with some really smart people. I am looking forward to what the next two days have to offer. I will continue to blog as I am able.

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Microsoft TechEd Day 1

I am currently in New Orleans, Louisiana for Microsoft TechEd. So far it has been an absolute blast, but I think by Thursday, my head might explode! While I don’t intend to live blog the event (one of my co-workers recommended I bring a Go Pro to the event and have that attached to my head for the entire time I was here), I do intend to offer a recap of what has been going on from a developer’s perspective. I meant to get this post out last night and intend to post each night if possible, but see the next paragraph as to why I didn’t get it out last night…

I am writing this blog post on my new Surface Pro! Microsoft gave all the attendees a ridiculous deal on Surface tablets (they limited each of us on the number we could get so no, I cant get you one). Here is a picture of it as I was getting ready to write this morning.

my new Surface Pro

The conference started off in true Louisiana style with the Trema band coming on stage to perform. They were awesome!

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Next came the keynote by Brad Anderson and a whole host of other Microsoft VIPs. The two main takeaways for me from the keynote were:

  • No developer who has an MSDN subscription has any excuse not to use Windows Azure for their dev and test environments.
  • I can’t wait for Visual Studio 2013, it looks awesome! The heads up display blew my mind!

The foundation session that I went to was Building Modern Business Applications. Some key takeaways were:

  • Developers are dumb if they don’t embrace cloud VMs for their development.
  • It is possible to set up private VPNs with Azure so that your boss/security guys don’t have to freak out about you pushing things to the cloud.
  • The Visual Studio/TFS 2013 combination is a very powerful combination.

The next session was Microsoft ASP.NET, Web, Cloud Tools Preview. This was an awesome session aimed directly at developers. In this session the presenter demoed a bunch of the One ASP.NET toolset that is coming with Visual Studio 2013. Some key takeaways were:

  • By default in the One ASP.NET model websites styling will be based on Bootstrap. Mind.MentalState == MentalState.Blown. I had been meaning to look into Bootstrap for our group, now I HAVE to look into Bootstrap for our group.
  • The out of the box scaffolding that is available means you will probably never write an admin page by hand ever again!
  • Cassini is dead…long live IIS Express.
  • Web API routing is now an inline ability instead of having to provide long drawn out routing files.
  • They plugged Xamarin for mobile development.

My next session was on developing for Windows Phone 8. This session was a high level overview so it was not as in depth as I would have liked, but it gave a really nice overview. This talk was when it really hit home how much Microsoft is working on convergence. It is starting to become a major theme to what I am seeing. It was also one of those great times where you can learn so much by watching someone use a tool that they are extremely familiar with.

The session that I attended was titled Partner Solutions for Modernizing Your Applications, there were 3 companies that presented.

  • Mobilize.net – This company has an application that will take your existing Visual Basic 6 code and convert it to .NET code. It can even go a step further and take that .NET desktop app and turn it into an ASP.NET web application (albeit a very ugly one). We didn’t get to see the code that was actually created, but by looking at the file structure generated I was able to infer that the conversion was a straight one to one conversion, meaning that the semi-object oriented code that was VB6 was converted straight across into semi-object oriented code on the .NET side.
  • Xamarin – Xamarin is taking the world by storm. They have an awesome product that allows you to write native Android, iOS, Mac, & Windows Store apps using C#. If you architect your code correctly, you can get complete code reuse out of your business and data layers. If you are using Visual Studio, you can even have 1 solution that has all three front ends in it. Xamarin stole the show in this because they were able to demo the same app on both a windows tablet and an iPad emulator (by running the source from Visual Studio) to show the native look and feel of the apps on their respective devices.
  • Citrix – I felt really bad for the Citrix guy because he had to follow Xamarin with a product that didn’t have the visual flash that Xamarin did. If I were to have any advice for the coordinator, they should have put Citrix before Xamarin.

After the last session, the Tech Expo grand opening kicked off. I ended up making it to most of the booths with only 2 bags full of stuff (less to pack on the way home) so that was good. I was able to meet Chewbacca and Princess Leia at one of the booths which was pretty cool. Overall, I was very impressed with the breadth of products that were represented at the conference, some I plan on using (or am currently using) and some I won’t.

I had a great Day 1 at TechEd…I’ll post another entry after Day 2 is over.