From Lessons Learned to Lessons Productized
Tim Wagner discusses how the Visual Studio team at Microsoft uses customer feedback to improve the development process, testing and productivity of a 50 MLOC product.
Tim Wagner discusses how the Visual Studio team at Microsoft uses customer feedback to improve the development process, testing and productivity of a 50 MLOC product.
Leaked information suggests that Microsoft is working on unifying the Windows ecosystem, while Windows Phone 8 will be based on WinRT rather than Windows CE.
Microsoft has released the certification requirements for Metro style apps sold at the Windows Store. They range from technical specifications to strict controls on content. Not even processor types can be discriminated against.

Microsoft Sync Framework is used for occasionally connected clients, for peer-peer applications, and other applications where data needs to be synchronized between multiple data stores. While it doesn’t include providers for non-Microsoft databases, the framework makes it easy to add that support. Roopesh Shenoy demonstrates using PostgreSql.

After carrying out a number of benchmarks, Microsoft concluded that .NET offers better performance and cost-performance ratio than WebSphere. IBM rebutted Microsoft’s findings and carried out other tests proving that WebSphere is superior to .NET. Microsoft responded by rejecting some of IBM’s claims as false and repeating the tests on different hardware with different results.

In one of the most entertaining presentations on the topic ever, Dr. Jim Webber debunks myths about the mainstream ESB concept and explains how a lightweight approach can yield real benefits without giving in to vendor pressure. Jim claims that an ESB often ends up being just a thin veneer on an existing mess, and how an approach that doesn't put intelligence into the network is superior.

In this decidedly non-marketing presentation, Microsoft Architect Beat Schwegler shows how service-orientation affects system architecture. He introduces the notion of a service model as a mediator between the business and technology models, and explains how a migration towards such an architecture could occur through a step-by-step architectural refactoring.

In this interview from RubyFringe, John Lam talks about his work on IronRuby and how Microsoft is approaching Open Source software development.

In this interview filmed at RubyFringe 2008, Tom Preston-Werner talks about how both Powerset and GitHub use Ruby and Erlang, as well as tools like Fuzed, god, and more.

Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks is a book explaining how to use VS.NET efficiently. Organized into short and easy-to-grasp sections, and containing tips and tricks on everything from editing and compiling to debugging and navigating within the VS.NET IDE, this book is a must-read for all .NET developers, regardless of expertise and whether they program in C#, VB.NET, or any other .NET language. This book covers the Visual Studio .NET 2002, 2003, and 2005 Beta 1 releases.