The .NExT Step

Windows 7 Ultimate Commemorative Edition

Fernik — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:00:00 GMT

After 6 months of waiting, last week I received my Windows 7 Ultimate Commemorative Edition. This edition is an special edition awarded to beta testers for their positive feedback.

I am really thankful to Microsoft for considering my feedback valuable. I was accepted into the Windows 7 Beta Program since Beta 1 release. As with many other Microsoft beta programs I did learn a lot about operating systems, testing and the tough decisions that Microsoft has to made in order to continue supporting legacy applications and at the same time enable the next generation of software. It is not an easy task, it encompass more than software engineering. There were thousands or great ideas, I believe the top ones made their way into this release. There were many voices to listen among users, power users, developers, admins, partners, OEM, system integrators, etc. I realize that the management of such a project it is an epic adventure, which I would like to have the chance to live.

Here are some pics:

Last year I started a site about the Windows kernel. Although I am still studying it, and it takes me some time to write quality posts.I invite you to visit it at http://kernelexplorer.net/blogs/kore.

TechDays 2009 Chile >> Demo Code

Fernik — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:14:00 GMT

Hi, this post is just to share the sample application that was showcased on the session "How To Develop .NET Applications that take advantage the new features of Windows 7". The session was hosted by Daniel Montero and me at TechDays 2009 Chile. As a side note the focus of the application was to feature all the possible uses of the Taskbar. Although you may find useful how we applied the Linguistic Services API and the managed RIbbon control for WPF.

The managed Ribbon control for WPF can be downloaded from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa973809.aspx by clicking on the link "License the Office UI".

DemoCode.Zip

WinUnit released at CodePlex

Fernik — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:01:00 GMT

I just want to share that WinUnit has been released at Codeplex at http://winunit.codeplex.com. WinUnit is a unit testing framework for native code that seamlessly integrates and takes advantage of Visual C++ compiler features and it is TFS automation friendly.

WinUnit was first developed internally at Microsoft and used among many projects, then it sources were shared on an article on the MSDN Magazine here. After that no new features/fixes have been added. It coordinator and a team of contributors(I am one of them) have started adding new features and fixing existing bugs. This first public release addresses some issues regarding formatting and compiler compatibility, now the minimum compiler required is VC++ version 9.0 which is included in Visual Studio 2008. But the big news is that we ship the test runner already built for you on 32 and 64 bit flavors. We still have many items to priorize, specially an #include hell that happens when you want to test objects developed on MFC and ATL.

Anyway, the core message is that WinUnit it is not a frozen piece of code anymore and we are looking for a community that can help to drive the direction of future releases. So we are open to new suggestions and bug reports.

Office 2010 Technical Preview >> Developer Review

Fernik — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:03:00 GMT

Luckily I have been offered the opportunity to evaluate the Technical Preview of Office 2010(read pre-beta). Although there are many new features concerning the user experience and Office servers, I will focus on the development tools and extensibility of the Office 2010 client apps. My idea is to review the extensibility tools for the professional developer (powered by Visual Studio) as well as the tools for the advanced users (powered by macros).

All the Office 2010 client applications support on their installation a component called "Visual Studio Tools for the Office System 4.0 Runtime" which allows you to execute the solutions developed with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1.

Office solutions are widely used on the enterprise. Visual Studio 2010 besides supporting the same runtime described above, it provides the integrated tools to create managed code solutions that consume the user interface of Microsoft Office. There is no really a difference with the release 3.0 of Visual Studio Tools for Office available on Visual Studio 2008 SP1, since it features the same set of project templates to create solutions from Visual Studio. In this aspect I expected templates for Publisher, OneNote y Access. The only new features announced are related with the deployment of Office solutions more than to its development, you can find more information here.

As regards the extensibility of the Office 2010 clients itself, all except InfoPath 2010 still rely on Visual Basic for Applications 6.5.

InfoPath 2010 does not feature any new features regarding extensibility. It still provides the same Visual Studio Tools for Applications 1.0(based on .NET Framework 2.0) that featured on version 2007.

After describing the little news on extensibility in Office 2010, I realize that there is a huge legacy of code that depends on VBA. I have not developed on Visual Basic 6.0 since year 2000; I am still amazed by the acceptance and extensibility that it had provided to the Office family. Currently, Microsoft does not sells VBA to new customers, besides it does not recommends it to its partners as an extensibility mechanism on desktop applications (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/isv/bb190538.aspx) and at the same time it encourages the adoption of VSTA. At this moment VSTA is on version 2.0 and provides an IDE similar to VS 2008 with support for .NET Framework 3.5.

It is clear that Microsoft is is not eating their own dog food here. I believe that it is the time that Microsoft enables the Office suite with .NET, but .NET as a first class citizen. Office needs to start supporting VSTA and .NET little by little until they become the default extensibility mechanism. What I am trying to express is that Office client apps are very decoupled from .NET and I pretend a coupling level similar to the one that the Windows OS have with .NET. Of course without discontinuing the support for VBA, since there are a bunch of add-ins, templates and macros that need it.

Going to the 2009 Imagine Cup Wordwide Finals

Fernik — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:01:00 GMT

Long time, no post. I just want to share the excitement for joining the distinguished panel of Judges for the 2009 Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals. The finals will be held in Cairo, Egypt, from Friday, July 3 through Wednesday, July 8. We will be staying at the Intercontinental Citystars Cairo, where the competition will take place.

I will try to post daily reports about the event along with information about the innovative projects over the five days of intense competition. As Ray Ozzie will be present a couple of hours, I will do my best to get an interview(so feel free to send me any questions you may have). See you in Cairo!!!

.NET Framework Evolution Map

Fernik — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:56:00 GMT

Since the release of .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 I have noticed that not only users but also IT people, even developers get confused about how and what to install on a new system. I mean they think that .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 are decoupled from .NET Framework 2.0 and they download the installers for Framework 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 without realizing that they are reinstalling the same components and wasting time, particularly on enterprise scenarios. Take a look at the following table:

The header row is labeled with the .NET Framework releases and the first column is labeled with the 3 main components or axis of a .NET Framework release. The table will help you analyze the evolution of these components across the many .NET Framework releases.

Essentially you will be able to identify 2 kinds of releases: Evolutionary and Additive.

Evolutionary: The 3 major components of the .NET Framework have evolved. The CLR has improved its garbage collection algorithms, has added new MSIL instructions sets, has improved interoperability with legacy/COM, etc. New classes and hierarchies have been added to the Framework Class Library. New language features have been incorporated into the flagship languages of the Framework.

Additive: One of the 3 major components of the .NET Framework has remained constant (highlighted on the table), hence creating a dependency and coupling of the actual release with the previous release. Which mean that in order to install release "n", you must have installed release "n-1". Fortunately for us, Microsoft has packaged the installers in a way that they install all the required components whether they were already present or not.

So with this basic theory you can realize that in .NET Framework 3.0 the star of the show was the Framework Class Library, and in fact it was because it added WPF, WCF, WF and Cardspace. As regards .NET Framework 3.5 several classes have been added to support Lambda Expressions and improvements on WCF, WF and WPF mainly, also the languages have been enhanced to support LINQ, intializers, extension methods and anonymous types. However what remain constant is the CLR, which mean that in the case of the new language features there is no direct support through new MSIL instructions. Thus the compiler is the responsible for making the "magic" of translating the new language features into the existing MSIL instruction set of CLR 2.0. That is why some people call LINQ as syntactic sugar, because it sweetens the query syntax but under the hood nothing changes.

The 4th .NET Framework release is an Evolutionary release, the CLR and the languages have embraced a strong support for dynamic types and the DLR. The Framework Class Library supports generic variance and improved versions of the existing managed APIs as well as new ones such as MEF.

Fernik

Scrum metaphors with .net

Fernik — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:15:00 GMT

It's been a long time since my introductory post. I have been really busy studying and reading about Scrum in order to take full advantage of the Certified ScrumMaster course. For those interested in some pre-reading materials it is good to start with http://agilethinking.net/csm and then follow up with Henrik Kniberg's book, Scrum and XP from the Trenches. After that you will have an idea of how it works. However if you want more theory and some deep analysis(like me) then read Agile Project Management with Scrum from Ken Schwaber where you will find the fundamentals of Scrum. I highly recommend taking this course, for me it was a whole learning experience which allowed me to change some paradigms about the software development lifecycle.

Scrum and the whole Agile movement use metaphors help people understand and reason about it. So as I have to blog about .net I will contribute with my own metaphors inspired on the .net Framework. I hope you find it useful and eventually become as powerful as the metaphors already available. Here we go:

If a Sprint were a .net Framework type it would be System.String type because it is immutable.
If the ScrumMaster were a .net Framework component it will be the CLR because it is the supervisor and responsible for the correct implementation of the Scrum process just as the CLR is the supervisor of all .net programs, guaranteeing certain properties and behaviors.

Fernik

Hello BloggingAbout.net!

Fernik — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:11:00 GMT

Hi there, my name is Fernando Hualpa, known as Fernik on the blogsphere. Before introducing myself I would like to thank Dennis van der Stelt for providing me this new blog for my .NET adventures in software development. I used to blog in English at http://fernik.spaces.live.com, though you may find some posts in Spanish and Spanglish related to Imagine Cup however I plan to discontinue blogging on Live Spaces and instead focus on blogging in English here and blogging in Spanish on http://geeks.ms/blogs/fhualpa (the lead Microsoft blogging community for Spanish speakers).

Currently I work in Academia as a Microsoft Student Partner in Argentina and as a software developer in the private sector. I have been a Microsoft technical beta tester for 7 years on the main products lines such as Visual Studio, Windows Client and Server and SQL Server. This activity allows me to value the importance of the testing process in the SDL and hence become a better developer. My main areas of interest are development frameworks, languages, higher level abstractions, and any product that targets the developer. I also enjoy managing and collaborating on user groups and academic cells, the combination of Academia and Industry just rocks.

Essentially I think that this is enough to begin, if you wish to contact me you can reach me via Live Messenger through the sidebar when the presence icon is set on green.

Fernik