More on the death of WinFx (Part 3)

January 19, 2007 at 3:28 am · Filed under Miscellaneous

Andrew Hilton recently commented on WinFx is Dead Part 2.  I am promoting it to a post so I can better comment on the comments.

Andrew says:

I’m of the opinion that it is not yet the official windows API because it simply wasn’t ready, and using .NET 2 with WinForms would have been too restrictive and no doubt would not have integrated with the subsystems of Vista (such as graphics). The .NET framework 3.0 was not released until almost the final release of Vista. The risk of developing the windows front end under the managed API and still ship on time would have been too great.

I think you are correct regarding the .NET 3.0 components of WinFx: there was an early plan that Vista and Office would take advantage of these technologies, but of course, everything was late.   Using .NET the .NET 2 WinForms really didn’t make sense either.

From what I’ve heard early versions of Vista and Office 2007 did use the managed API (or at least an early version of WPF). My feeling is that the dev teams simply couldn’t cope with a large framework like that shifting beneath their feet causing all manner of chaos. Hence the move by both Vista and Office 2007 back to COM, which also gave leeway to the WinFX teams to change stuff radically if they needed to. My assumption is that given the large technical leap of WPF, WCF etc there would have been many back steps as they were trying to go forward.

Yeah, but I’ll bet the delays of .NET 2 had a bigger impact on the likelihood of managed APIs in Vista than, let’s say, WPF or WCF.

I’ll be very suprised if the consumer version of Vista does not include some managed code WPF apps. All the indications are that WPF will do very well (for example see the recent video of the WPF version of Yahoo messenger), . . .

Yes, I think this is all true, but hold on.

My post wasn’t about .NET 3.0 (or what they were calling WinFx), but of the original idea for WinFx: a full (or fairly full) Windows API.

WPF and WCF have little to do with that, certainly WF has nothing to do with it, and Info Cards, not really either.  Of course, this last one is a part of Vista though as kind of an add on. 

All of this stuff is very cool, but WinFx was supposed to push managed APIs deeper down into the OS, not to be extra layers on top of it.  The internalization of these APIs were to supply a more robust and secure OS. 

And it is that WinFx that appears to be dead.

Tags: .NET, .NET3, InfoCards, Microsoft, WCF, WF, Windows, WinFx, WPF

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Windows Home Server

January 7, 2007 at 10:17 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

I saw this on Nima’s blog, Windows Home Server is coming.  Bill Gates announced this today (see Bill Gates keynote – Engadget).

I can see the niche for this product, except I don’t really want servers in my house anymore. 

It seems like most of the market for this product will be covered by LiveDrive.  Instead of Windows Home Server, I would have loved to see:

• LiveDrive announced ready for the Vista launch.
• LiveDrive free with Vista.  Of course, maybe it’ll be free for everyone.

Not to bash Home Server.  It is probably cool, but I don’t actually want more hardware and OSes in my house.  I want fewer.

Tags: LiveDrive, Microsoft, Vista

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VS 2005, SP1 and Vista

December 17, 2006 at 7:02 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

A few things:

1. VS2005 SP1 is out.  I am pleased with how quickly this turned from a beta to a release.  Good job guys.
2. VS2005 SP1 for Vista Beta bits are out now.  Good news.
3. I’m hoping that the Vista beta bits turn final soon too.

As is probably clear, I’m waiting for stability here before I go to Vista.  This time I can’t help with the beta testing, so thanks to those out there that have taken one for the team.

Tags: Microsoft, SP1, Vista, vs2005

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Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Trumps Vista

December 3, 2006 at 9:10 am · Filed under Miscellaneous

One of the things I thought I’d get to this weekend is to upgrade my laptop to Vista again.  It is a pretty easy background task and with Norton Ghost is quickly reversable if need be (as it was the last time I tried).

Unlike some (e.g., J. LeRoy who thinks XP is adequate), I really want the new UX and (the promise of) faster power state transitions, among other things. 

But, before the installation I need to be sure of two things:

1. Support for the VPN at Digipede (and the networking software required on my laptop).  This is no longer reported as incompatibile in the Vista Upgrade Advisor.  So, this is worth a shot anyway.
2. Support for Visual Studio 2005 (not to mention 2003 which I still use occasionaly).  I looked into this more today and while Vista may support VS2005, it won’t support the coming SP1.  I really want the fixes in SP1 so I have to choose between sticking with XP or sticking with the pre-SP1 VS2005.  A blocker.

Of course, Visual Studio 2005 SP1 trumps Vista, but I’m not happy about it. 

J. LeRoy (AKA, Cousin Jim) recently posted on What Color is your Vista? with a terrific quote:

So when Microsoft says that they “deliver the right balance”, that’s not your balance they are talking about.

Exactly (and I know I’m taking his point completely out of context).

Tags: .NET, Microsoft, Vista, Visual-Studio, VS2003, vs2005, VS2005-SP1

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HPC event in NYC

December 1, 2006 at 8:13 am · Filed under Miscellaneous

John and Nathan will be presenting at a Microsoft event in New York City this coming Wednesday.  The event targets fHPC for financial services companies. 

John and Nathan will . . .

. . . present information on how the Digipede Network integrates with and adds value to Microsoft’s entire technology stack, including the new Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS), Visual Studio 2005, .NET, Excel 2007, SharePoint 2007, and more.  (They’ll) run through some real-world examples of how our financial services customers use the Microsoft / Digipede solution to make more money by dramatically improving application performance and scalability.

One of our customers will also be a speaker at the event. 

You can read more about this (and find registration information) on John’s blog (here: HPC event in NYC).

Tags: Digipede, finance, financial-services, grid, Grid Computing, HPC, Microsoft

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PowerShell 1.0 Released!

November 14, 2006 at 1:14 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

Releases are coming like crazy out of Redmond.  Congratulations to the whole PowerShell team and specifically to Jeffrey Snover for getting this done.

I guess this means we should finish our PowerShell CmdLets for the Digipede Network.

Tags: Digipede, Microsoft, PowerShell

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And now Windows Vista RTMs

November 8, 2006 at 3:48 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

I thought it would still be a couple of weeks, but it has happened.  I wonder when it’ll be on MSDN.  Anybody know?

Tags: Microsoft, Vista, Windows

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.NET 3.0 Ships

November 6, 2006 at 10:11 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

Office 2007 RTM’ed this morning so I’ve been looking throughout the day for news on .NET 3.0.

And, yes, it came out too.  Here.   

I got what I wanted: the release of .NET 3.0 has been decoupled from Vista.  Of course, Vista is in escrow and will RTM within a few weeks so it isn’t that decoupled.

Anyway, congratulations to the teams for getting this done!  

Tags: .NET, .NET3.0, Microsoft, office, Office2007, RTM, Vista

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Into TFS

October 23, 2006 at 8:24 am · Filed under Miscellaneous

Over the last could of weeks, we at Digipede have been preparing to move out of the oh-so outdated VSS into Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS). 

This last weekend, we did the whole migration. 

My main reason for pushing this change: to make it easier for our team to concurrently develop on multiple branches.  This is fairly challenging in VSS due to its limitations.

So far, so good.  I’ll let you know more as we start to really use it.

Tags: Digipede, Microsoft, Source-Control, TFS, VS, VSS, VSTS

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IE7 to release today?

October 18, 2006 at 6:20 am · Filed under Miscellaneous

There seems to be much interest in the release — I’m getting a lot of people coming to this blog for the answer.

I don’t know if it is true; but, the rumor has it that today, October 18th, is the day.

Update: and it looks like the rumors were correct.

Tags: IE, IE6, IE7, Microsoft

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