A Changing World

^{Diago.co.za has moved to Blogger as host, and has a fairly long history. One of the biggest changes will be the refocusing of the site to be about the author, and much less technical. In this post we look at the history of the site, why it was started, and how over the years the reasons for the site, and it’s content has changed. The site is returning to its roots, where the words are there not to harm or hurt, but to be written to put the thoughts of the author in order. You, the reader, are along for the ride.}

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

The older one gets the concept of change becomes less daunting and more understandable. In the last few months change has started coming over me like a slow running stream, affecting various parts of my being, my thoughts and my world. These changes take various forms, and among them is this blog. My online persona and virtual world. My legacy, as such.

Diago.co.za is now happily living on Google’s Blogger platform. The maintenance and costs of a virtual server for hosting the sites has not been viable for a while. In all honesty, I can come up with various reasons why hosting the site on a virtual server made sense, except none of them are valid. The money can be spent in much better ways, and since online blogging platforms provide all the required features, for free, the move should have happened a while ago. The process also provided an opportunity to clean up some out-dated entries. It is interesting when deciding what to keep and what to remove can also make one realise how much they have changed, even over a short period of time. It is however, not the first time the blog has been cleaned up, and looking back, Diago.co.za has a long history.

According to the WayBack machine the first recorded appearance of Diago.co.za was Oct 18, 2000. The name however had been around for longer. The first few versions of the site was never in the form of a blog, but rather a learning platform to understand technologies like HTML, ASP and even JavaScript. For a period of a least 3 years the site was fairly dormant, with no real purpose, and definitely no content. The biggest change was Diago’s Domain becoming Diago.co.za as the name of the site.

The first appearance of a blog entry was in 2004. Under the name Diago’s Diary a new entry appeared every day. Encouraged by an old roommate and friend, Jonathan Scott, to write to deal with my divorce, the power in the visibility of the entries became clear very quickly. For the next 2 years, friendships ended and relationships where destroyed because the realisation that entries could invoke reactions from the people reading them became and addictive, and very dangerous drug. After a period of time every interaction with others became a reason for an entry, and in doing so, push them away.  Age at the time made it difficult to see the important lesson being taught, one that only truly became valuable in the last few months.

The opportunity arose to move to Kwazulu-Natal, and for a year the blog was dormant. In 2007, heavily involved in the local development community, the blog’s focus changed again, becoming more technical in nature. During this time a lot of posts where made regarding community activities and technology, and over time it became the only entries regularly featured. Over time, as I settled in a new job and with life, communities became less important. Lately spending less time online, and in front of a computer, posting technology based entries seem less important, since the internet is flooded with competing information.

Today is the start of another change. Where in the past my blog had different meanings and purposes, its new goal is to be the collection of my thoughts and feelings. It is my place to reflect on my life, without the intention of invoking reactions, or hurting feeling. My blog should be therapeutic, written to understand and reflect on who I am, and what I am feeling or thinking. It is a reflection of me and my life.

And to you my dear reader, your just along for the ride.

Microsoft Developer Tools better then ever for 2010

I have been developing software since 1996. Back then I used Turbo Pascal, running on DOS. The most amazing application I ever wrote back then was a graphical interface for DOS to start other applications. Fast forward to 2002 when I first got my hands on the beta versions of the .Net Framework 1.0 and the only IDE that was provided was Notepad. (I am skipping Delphi and Visual Basic 6.0 for purposes of this post). When Visual Studio 2002 was released I was an early adopter, and have been using every incarnation of Visual Studio since. I normally switch to a new IDE when Microsoft reaches the Beta 2 Milestone. With Visual Studio 2010 it was no different. However, in the last few weeks I have started spending more time on my development tools, and have to admit that Microsoft is doing something right for developers.

Firstly, I have been a supporter and major user of SubVersion and CruiseControl.Net for the last 3 years. I never truly considered the value and features of TFS until I started working as a Microsoft Ranger in the beginning of last year, but even then the installation and configuration process continued sending me back to the former. With the release of Beta 2 Microsoft announced the introduction of TFS Basic, allowing developers to install a copy of TFS on their Windows Vista/7 workstations. I recently started a few new projects and decided the opportunity is there to go ahead and do the installation myself since I did not try it out during the Beta 2 release. The results of this exercise was exciting and painless.

In under 30 minutes, I was able to install and configure TFS 2010 on my Windows 7 workstation, using only the wizards. I installed a build server, and was actively creating Team Projects and running builds in the same time period. The best part. No active directory required. All of this is running  under a local computer account.

I am suitably impressed. TFS Basic provides a quick and easy level of entry to using and understanding source control, development processes and the ability to use continuous integration. The wizards are informative and simple to follow. The administration console makes managing the build servers and collections easy, and IIS happily hosts all the required services for TFS.

Visual Studio 2010 is lighting fast. The new WPF interface makes use of hardware acceleration if it is available on your machine for rendering, which means there is almost no wait for screens to refresh or dialogues to appear. The add references dialogue has been improved and now does lazy loading of the .Net Assemblies in the GAC, making the UI more responsive and easier to use. And please don’t forget the ability to zoom into your source code, now who can’t live without that?

The most interesting and exciting news is for those of use that develop for SharePoint. SharePoint 2010 can now be installed on Windows Vista/7. I decided to give this a try and although your restricted to a standalone installation, the procedure to install SharePoint is even more painless then TFS.

SharePoint 2010 installs on Windows 7 in Standalone Mode. This allows developers to write code for SharePoint on their local development machines, without needing access to Server 2008 or the deployed SharePoint solution. Furthermore, SharePoint 2010 does not require active directory when running in standalone mode. After installing SharePoint 2010, I was able to create and deploy a WebPart to SharePoint within 10 minutes, with no settings to change or difficult configurations to edit.

Along with all the new developer templates in Visual Studio 2010, including a Visual WebPart designer, the feature and packaging support has been upgraded to provide amazing customizability. The ability and power that these new features provide will make a massive difference to developer production and performance, allowing them to develop software more quickly and much easier then before.

I have to really give Microsoft Developer Team credit for the amazing job they have done making Visual Studio 2010, Team Foundation Server 2010 and SharePoint 2010 much more powerful and simpler to use for the everyday developer, allowing every developer, whether in a team of 20, or a lone Ranger, to share the same features, and abilities, and being able to focus on the one thing they enjoy.

Writing Code!

DevRally is born. Developers start your engines.

It started on a drive to work. To be honest, a lot of ideas and solutions to problems I find on my way to work in the morning. I have no idea why this phenomenon exists but it does and I have learnt to live with it. I am not sure what the inspiration behind the idea was, however it was exciting enough for me to give it some serious consideration.

Having been part of SA Developer.Net and SA Architect.Net for a few years now and also being the KZN lead for both communities has taught me a lot of lessons about running events, and I have been trying to find a way to improve the situation for some time. My sabbatical from communities and events seems to have cleared some cobwebs.

To solve the problem the simple solution is to host the event online. This in itself is not a problem, but if you’re living in South Africa, bandwidth is an extremely expensive commodity. Therefore there needs to be more than just an online meeting, and with the right approach it could also provide a bigger audience if the topic list was open and speakers could get involved from outside of South Africa. Based on this argument, and with some discussions with the better half and some of my more enthused colleagues like Ruari Plint and Robert MacLean, the concept of DevRally was born.

DevRally is an open developer event covering numerous topics selected by the community. The event itself will be hosted in one day, in 3 cities. Each city will provide a physical venue along with a central live web stream for the event, with speakers presenting either via a web stream or on stage.

Robert decided to actually registering a domain for the name I invented in an email, creating a website, and registering a twitter account, the event itself has become real. Alex Rozanski was willing enough to design a logo and interface for the website, which means the idea now has a brand. Along with all of this voting has opened on topics, and over the next month we will be looking at which technologies the event will cover.

How?

The event will be held on a Saturday. Delegates can either attend the event live at one of the 3 venues in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, or alternatively watch the event live through the website. The major difference between attending in person or online will be the ability to interact with the speakers, as this will only be available to the delegates at the venues.

What?

Topics will be selected by the community. The event itself will not be specific to a product, and will open the doors to various different companies or technologies to be covered. Some already suggested include Adobe, PHP, .Net, Ruby/Rails, SQL Server, Linux, Drupal and many others. Feel free to vote here for the topics you would like to see a presentation on. A decision on topics will be made by the middle of March if all goes well.

Who?

Both local and international speakers will be presenting topics in 2 tracks over 6-8 sessions. The speakers will either be presenting from one of the 3 venues, or alternatively will present via web stream from their preferred location. This means that some international speakers can be approached to get involved, without the cost of flying them into the country.

When?

The aim is to have the event in either the 3^rd or 4^th quarter of 2010. With the website up and running the next major challenge is deciding on topics and a format, and then to start drafting sponsors, both for venues as well as bandwidth.

We are hoping that the concept and idea behind DevRally will generate enough interest for us to have a very informative and powerful event for developers, covering the topics developers are interest in. If you are interest in learning more about DevRally, please visit the website or follow the event on Twitter.