Don Box's Spoutlet

Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) - now with source code!

don-box — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:12:00 GMT

Microsoft just shipped the MEF sources on codeplex.

It's fantastic to see the BradA's team getting this stuff into people's hands out-of-band with the big trains - very very nice.

Also cool is the fact that the source is there - I love this comment from Tuple.cs:

// NOTE : this is a TEMPORARY and a very minimalistic implementation of Tuple'2,
// as defined in http://devdiv/sites/docs/NetFX4/CLR/Specs/Base Class Libraries/Tuple Spec.docx
// We will remove this after we move to v4 and Tuple is actually in there

I love to see Tuple getting into the framework!

Oslo

don-box — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:33:00 GMT

As PDC ramps up, I find myself meeting lots of new people, many of whom have no idea what I do for a living (I work on the Oslo project btw). I decided to take a few minutes to write this post so I can stop giving the “what is Oslo” talk one person at a time.

Here’s the deal.

We’re building “Oslo” to simplify the process of developing, deploying, and managing software. Our goal is to reduce the gap between the intention of the developer and the actual artifacts that get deployed and executed. The approach we’re taking is to move more of the definition of an application into the world of data, where we (and you) can more easily make queries as to the developer’s original intent.

Microsoft has been moving in this direction for over a decade now – you can look at things like COM type libraries, .NET metadata attributes, and XAML as moving the dial increasingly towards “writing things down” directly as data vs. encoding them into x86 or IL. From day one of the project, I have thought of Oslo as the next step in that lineage.

With Oslo, we’re doing two things:

1. We’re making it easier for people to write things down in ways that make sense for the domain they are working in – the common term for this in the wild is modeling.

2. We’re making the things people wrote down accessible to platform components during program execution.

To make #1 as fluid an experience as possible, we’ve built a language that makes it natural to express models in text, which is medium that a lot of people (especially developers) feel comfortable with. Visual design surfaces are another medium a lot of people feel comfortable with, so we’ve built a design tool for working with the same information our text-centric friends produce and consume.

Even though we’re building a new language and tool, this is very much a platform play. That is, we’re making all of that modeling information that you either typed or drew available in a relational database at runtime. We’ve been busy schematizing various platform components so that I can write a service or an application by populating that database with the definition of my app or service. Our goal is to make it possible to build real apps purely out of data. For some apps, we’ll succeed – for others, the goal is to make the transition to traditional code as natural as possible.

I’m quite happy to finally be able to give people early bits next month at PDC – as Doug says PDC is the “end of the beginning” and the real journey starts then.

Elation

don-box — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:51:00 GMT

Lest the title of this post be interpreted as syncategorematic, let me say that I am elated that AlexSto’s dream has turned into a reality.

Today Alexander’s team got the first public release of the Microsoft Solver Foundation out the door.

I had the distinct pleasure of working with Alexander in the earliest days of what is now called Oslo, and it’s great to see his vision manifest itself as a DLL.

Bits are here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/solverfoundationfs1

Be sure to grab the new F# CTP (also went live today) here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61ad6924-93ad-48dc-8c67-60f7e7803d3c

Tito's Tacos

don-box — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:34:00 GMT

PDC is increasingly taking up my time, so I've got LA on the brain.

Having lived in LA for 39 years before joining the firm, I use PDC as an opportunity to visit my favorite haunts.

My first stop will be Tito's Tacos. Every time I go to LA (PDC or not), I go straight from LAX to Tito's.

For the PDC trips, I take as many people from my flight as possible.

My recommendation is some combination of Tacos (with cheese) and Tostadas. Skip the burritos - way too much food and you don't get that magical super-fresh lettuce/cheese combo happening.

Mary Jo's Codename Roundup

don-box — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:13:00 GMT

Ms. Foley has a call out for Microsoft codenames over at ZDNet.

I first read this on my phone and was busy coming up with names I thought would be interesting project names.

Unfortunately when I got home and read the blog, it was clear she was looking for actual names of existing projects, which I find way less interesting or fun.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of MJF, let me be perfectly clear that the names I'm listing here have no known correlation to any existing or future projects.

I just like the names.

Penultimate

Project Fifty Seven

Neville

Valhalla

Folsom

Cleveland

Loki

XK-4

Maybe once Oslo is behind me I'll get a chance to pick one of these up for my next gig...

Impromptu Vacation

don-box — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:37:00 GMT

For the first time ever, I took a completely spontaneous vacation by booking a flight Wednesday to head out to Martha's Vineyard to hang out with my wife & kids (and Sara Spalding's husband and kid).

I really like Martha's Vineyard - I also really like not having to make any plans.

Swimming in the Atlantic is also pretty cool - I forgot how much I like the ocean after 6+ years living near Lake Washington.

Wahoo - Microsoft Sponsors Apache Software Foundation!

don-box — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:21:00 GMT

http://port25.technet.com/archive/2008/07/25/oscon2008.aspx

This is great news in so many ways.

(Ed Note: Thanks to those who've pointed out that sponsorship and membership are distinct - the title is now correct.)

Naming the Baby

don-box — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:57:00 GMT

I've been working on "Oslo" for quite a while now.

Like "Oslo" itself, several of the major pieces of "Oslo" have placeholder code names that will be replaced with the actual names we'll brand the product with.

This makes writing titles and abstracts for PDC talks especially challenging. We can't use the internal code names, because they're not long for this world.

We also can't use the actual product names, because we don't have a vetted set of names. Even if we did, the marketing and PR folks want to do the "reveal" in a newsworthy session or keynote, not in a random update to the PDC registration page.

That means that the titles and abstract have to use vague adjective-laden terms, which is surprisingly hard to make sound understandable let alone compelling enough to want to attend.

For example, rather than just using a title like "Foo" Under The Hood or Programming "Bar", we wind up writing things like The Tool for Writing Declarative Applications Under The Hood or Programming a Framework for REST Information Retrieval and Update.

FWIW, this is standard operating procedure - we had the same challenge in 03 with WCF and in 05 with LINQ and WF.

With "Oslo" its harder, as there are several significant (and separable) technologies (so we have more names to come up with) and we've not yet found the right terminology/adjectives that efficiently convey what we're doing.

I can give a pretty accurate picture of "Oslo" if I have five minutes to talk or 1000 words to write - we still haven't found the perfect meme.

Fun times.

PDC Musings

don-box — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:11:00 GMT

This year's PDC will be my eighth as a speaker and my third as an MSFT employee.

The last two PDCs were more or less the same in terms of my involvement.

This year, I'm also helping out on selecting roughly one-fourth of the talks being given, which means I have the added pleasure of having to say "we don't have room for your talk" to lots of my friends in buildings 42, 35, 41, and 1.

We have a finite # of slots and a seemingly infinte amount of content to fit in, all of which is "vital and strategic" to at least the person pitching the talk.

One amusing moment was yesterday when ChrisAn described a proposed talk as "super geek porn."

I hope that talk makes it in.

MJF and WHG on Oslo

don-box — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:42:00 GMT

Mary Jo has nice coverage of David Chappell's Oslo talk at TechEd this week.

Also nice was BillG talking about the project in his farewell address as an FTE.

I'd love to hear from folks who saw the Chappell talk - I had to miss it when he was in Redmond last week to deliver it to the team.

10 is the new 6

don-box — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:02:00 GMT

I'm in a PDC planning meeting with the VS folks.

I just heard the mantra around the Visual C++ team is that “10 is the new 6.”

msdev.exe was one of my favorite executables of all time.

Wahoo!

Velocity (the cache, not the templating engine)

don-box — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:09:00 GMT

Congrats to the folks from Building 35 for getting the first CTP of Velocity out the door.

Here's a nice page on getting started with velocity.

First CTP of Managed Extension Framework (MEF)

don-box — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:17:00 GMT

Congrats to Shanku's team for shipping the first CTP of MEF.

We're using MEF daily and it's quite a useful bit of code.

E4X and/or VB9 XML Users - How's it going?

don-box — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:53:00 GMT

I've been spending a lot of time with XML again lately.

Since my last stint with XML, I know we shipped native XML suppport in VB9.

I also know that there are E4X implementations out in the wild.

What I'd love to know is how either of these are working out for people?

What do you love?

What blows?

What do you wish you had?

I'm also interested in hearing from XQuery users, but I'm keenly interested on how the “you got peanut butter in my chocolate” solutions are working out.

Feel free to comment here or via a private mail (dbox at the usual place).

PDC08

don-box — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:00:00 GMT

It's PDC season again.

The site went live this week - http://microsoftpdc.com/

It will be good to put bits in people's hands (or in our datacenters :-)).