I was paving a box this weekend with the March Avalon/Indigo CTP and I needed the matching Feb CTP of VS05, so I installed the Feb CTP of VC# Express. I have to say, I’m impressed. Avalon integrated w/ no trouble. I have all the Intellisense, key bindings, options, code formatting and generics support that I went looking for (although I did have to find the Show all settings option in the Options dialog).

Only two things bug me about Express. The first is minor: I’m used to starting VS with Start->Run: devenv [Enter] and now I have to start VC# Express with Start->Run: vcexpress [Enter]. Given that I can install a bunch of Express products, it makes sense to me to need to learn a new EXE name for each of them (especially if I slip Asynch COM out of long-term storage… [dumping]… there, plenty of room!).

The second thing that bugs me is that I’m not allowed to specific a spot on my hard drive when I create a new project. As a guy with a background thread running Alt->F->S every time I typing idles, having everything in a well-known place is important to me. I’m a developer. Things crash!

Overall, though, I’m loving VC# Express. Recommended.

More people than you’d expect have been asking, so here’s an update on ATL Internals 2e.

This effort actually started in 2003, when Kirk Fertita updated the first 9 chapters to ATL7 as provided in VS 2002. Then he had to go work on his start-up, which represented his only income stream and would’ve gone belly up w/o him (selfish bastard! : ).

Then George Shepherd did a little work, writing bits of two new chapters on ATL Server before he had to bale.

Now, finally, we have an author that’s going to see this book to the finish line: Chris Tavares. I’ve written with him before and he’s excellent. He’s already ported chapters 1-4 to ATL8 as provided in VS 2005 and is on schedule to bring my and Brent’s work on ATL3, Kirk and George’s work on ATL7 and his own new work into a cohesive ATL8 book to hit the shelves 3-4 months after VS05 has hit RTM.

Jose “heard” that I’m working on an update for the first edition of Windows Forms Programming in C# for Windows Forms 2.0 (we’re not updating the VB.NET version due to poor sales for VB.NET-related titles in general). I didn’t mean to keep it a secret; it’s been listed at the top of my writing page for a year or more. : )

While we’ve been working closely together on the update, the bulk of the writing work is being done by Micheal Weinhardt, my main writing partner for the last coupla years or so. He’s got 90% of the book updated for VS05b1 already and is in the process of updating the whole thing to b2. After that, we pass it back and forth between ourselves for review-edit ’til we’re both happy. By the end of May, hopefully the whole thing will be out for review. After that, we apply reviewer comments and update at each successive beta/release candidate until the Whidbey team decides they’re done, at which point we send it to the publisher and 3-4 months later, it hits the shelves.

In addition to updating the existing material for WF2, we’ve made the following changes:

• Split a Layout chapter out of the Forms chapter due to all of the extra WF2 layout functionality
• Refactored the existing design-time and controls chapters and the standard components & controls appendix into the following chapters: components, controls, design-time 1 and design-time 2 (includes smart tags)
• Split the applications & settings chapters into 2
• Added a Document Management chapter for MFC folks finding themselves in the app framework-free environment of Windows Forms
• Dropped the data access chapter as covered better in other sources
• Re-wrote the data binding chapter from scratch with a story I always wanted to tell in WF1, but isn’t supported nicely ’til WF2 (object-centric binding instead of relational database-centric)
• Refactored the drag ‘n’ drop material into it’s own appendix
• Added a “What’s New in Windows Forms 2.0” appendix for those already familiar with Windows Forms 1.x
• Dropped the delegates bedtime story in favor of beefed up coverage in chapter 1 (and a more general knowledge of delegates in the universe as a whole). Don’t get my wrong, I love that story, but it doesn’t fit into the overall theme of the rest of the book. I knew this when I first edition shipped, but I just didn’t take the time to update the book properly to live w/o it

I have to say that working with Mike on this process has been fabulous. An ordinary author faced with updating to a new version of a technology might just update the material and leave the story alone, even if it needs update. Instead, Mike took the time to reexamine the book from first principles, fixing the problems in the story that always nagged at me in the 1st edition and proposing improvements to stuff I was pretty proud of. In general, even without the update to the new technology, the book is better than the 1st edition.

I don’t think that he’s saying anything new to the world of message-based programmers, but since so many of us are component-based programmers, I like how Rocky bridges the component and message-based worlds and points out the downside of component-based programs in an service-oriented world.

I’m also of the mind that the component-based world isn’t even very good for components unless you get to package the components and the apps all at once. For example, in the world I’d like to see plug-in applications like Visual Studio become, where the app and the plug-ins come from different places and version independently, message-based thinking is far more applicable than component-based thinking.

I was using one of my computers this morning, surfing around, reading my email, getting started with the day, etc. After a bit of fooling about, I went looking for the work I wanted to continue from yesterday. I couldn’t find it. Then I went looking for the program I was using to work on the file. I couldn’t find it.

Just before I was about to reinstall things, I realized — I was running a VPC image, not the computer’s native image. I couldn’t freakin’ tell the difference! Nice…

OK, the Omega Speedster is cool (very cool), but it doesn’t compare to this masterpiece:

Of course, I’d want the platinum model, but at $137,000, maybe I’d learn to tell time by the moss on the north side of trees…

Wow. This looks really cool.

[from Mike Swanson]