Mike Vincent's Blog : Iron Ruby

Rails and Merb Projects to Merge

mikev — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:34:00 GMT

Saw this on Dr. Dobb’s Code Talk today. Big news for the Ruby community and really makes a lot of horse sense. The Merb and Rails projects are planned to merge. Merb 2.0 and Rails 3.0 will be the same.

Check out the blog posts by Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson and Merb project lead -- and now Rails core team member -- Yehuda Katz for more in-depth discussion of how this will work. And, these guys are taking a pragmatic approach to make sure it is done right.

Moving forward, this is especially big news for IronRuby. While at the PDC, I had a chance to chat with Jimmy Schementi about how IronRuby was playing with Merb and Rails. Jimmy had a lot of positive stuff to say. You have Ruby in the browser! That is, a language that runs either on a server or a user’s local machine can be pushed from a web server to run on the client, much like JavaScript, but it can be the same language on the server. Therefore, it could be the same exact code. We’re going to have an awesome development tool set when all these pieces come together.

Speaking of Jimmy, check out his blog post Jimmy hacking (at) Microsoft. A really good perspective on dynamic languages, Ruby, the DLR, Silverlight, Rails and Silverline.

LA Code Camp a Success

mikev — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:15:00 GMT

The first LA Code Camp held Oct 25 and 26 at USC was a success. It's been about 5 years since I was last on the campus (USC was a major client for a few years) and there are new buildings sprouting everywhere. I met up with Harry Pierson (Iron Python PM) on Saturday morning, one of several Microsoft people down early for PDC and really helping to add some great content. Other included Charlie Calvert (C# PM), Chuck Sterling and Grant Holiday (VSTS, both from Down Under). Harry was down early to make sure everything he was responsible for at PDC was running well and did his Pumping Iron presentation. The Iron Python team just got Iron Python 2.0 Release Candidate 1 out so I did a quick code update to make sure my examples ran on the updated code base. Grant and Chuck did A Lap Around Visual Studio Team System 2010 which was a great PDC preview on VSTS and a bit of polish on earlier Rosario previews. My session Sunday morning Dynamic Languages and the DLR was kind of a bust because the projector in the class room would randomly shut itself off after a couple of minutes. I finally had to move to a table and present straight from my notebook but by then the time was way short.

Overall, the Code Camp was good. The Geek Dinner Saturday night ran smoothly and participation was good, although I was hoping to see a few more. A big thanks to the organization team and sponsors.

Microsoft Product Team Meetings

mikev — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:54:00 GMT

In mid September I, along with other INETA NorAm board members, had the pleasure of meeting with several product teams at Microsoft while in Redmond for an INETA board of directors meeting.

In our product team meetings, we shared our overall plan INETA Programs for MSFT FY 09 including speakers bureau, regional speakers, virtual presentations and INETA Live as well as regular communications through our newsletter. We will be adding product focus to our newsletters. Also, a common thread for INETA and the product teams is one of measurement.

C#, VB .NET

We have some recent experience working with Charlie Calvert and Lisa Feigenbaum and their user group road show a few months back. The feedback was good and we want to build on that experience. We’re exploring several other ways to work together including leveraging more content produced by the team for INETA presentation.

VSX

The VSX team covers Visual Studio extensibility, ecosystem and the SDK. They are opening up to a much broader audience, and doing it big as evidenced by the recent VSX Developer Conference in Redmond. We can effectively work together by helping them get their message and content out to community influencials to leverage evangelism.

Visual Studio Team System

Visual Studio Team System is growing rapidly in the Application Lifecycle Management space and has a lot of new material coming in the not too distant future. We are discussing some ways to work together to more effectively reach both developers and key decision makers.

ASP.NET

Other INETA board members met with the ASP.NET team. Again our programs were well received. The team has several areas they will explore to work closely with INETA on.

Iron Python, DLR

IronPython 2.0 is getting close to release so they will soon have a lot to talk about. Where INETA can help the most is evangelizing through community influentials in the .NET community. Harry Pierson is very open to setting up monthly Live Meeting discussions with key influencers.

Iron Ruby, Dynamic Languages & Silverlight

The dynamic languages team is small and resources limited so they have to work in innovative ways for product evangelism. Iron Ruby has two distinct marketing objectives – moving Ruby developers to .NET and moving .NET developers to Iron Ruby. INETA can help with the later by reaching to our user groups. The dynamic language teams have a lot to say, we can help them get it out.

Virtual Earth

Mark Brown has some exciting new releases with Virtual Earth where INETA can play an important role. Just released is Virtual Earth Web Service. Mark has a VE Deep Dive web cast on Oct 3^rd so we’re jumping in to help with a special newsletter focused on VE.

Patterns and Practices

I didn’t personally have the opportunity to meet with this group but others did and they were well received. The group has an objective of extending awareness and reach among architects and developers. INETA can help by getting content and information out to influential user group members for presentation and demonstration.

MSDN Webcast: geekSpeak on Wednesday September 10

mikev — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:14:00 GMT

On Sepember 10, I'll be doing a geekSpeak webcast on Dynamic Languages and the DLR. The web cast starts at 12:00 noon Pacific time. The link above will take you to online registration. Hope you can join us.

Event Overview

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology, and they are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. In this geekSpeak, Mike Vincent explains how dynamic languages like Iron Python and Iron Ruby running on the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) give you new options when choosing the best tool for the job. Mike addresses the advantages you can gain from using dynamic languages, when and where you should consider dynamic languages, and what is important from the architect's view, the developer's view, and the business case view. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and Peter Laudati.

To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Guest Presenter: Mike Vincent, President, MVA Software

Mike Vincent is a solutions architect based in Orange County, California providing clients with software architecture, application lifecycle management and development services, primarily focusing on Microsoft .NET technology. He has been in the software business for over 20 years in addition to engineering and marketing management positions. He founded both the IASA SoCal Chapter and the Orange County C# Developers group and is Treasurer of INETA NorAm.

View other sessions from: geekSpeak: Join a Discussion Like No Other.

LA Code Camp

mikev — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:23:00 GMT

Coming up October 25 and 26 is the first LA Code Camp. It’ll be held at the USC campus. This is the weekend just before PDC so we may see some of the Microsoft product teams attending. I’m again doing my continuous evolving dynamic languages presentation. Currently there are 47 sessions registered. Plan on joining us for a great weekend of content and community.

TechZulu Interview

mikev — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:13:00 GMT

The TechZulu people were at the Inland Empire .NET 's special meeting honoring its Most Valuable Members (MVM). They have some really interesting interviews on people and action in the tech entrepreneurial space. I had the honor of being interviewed in which I talked about INETA and how we support user groups and about Iron Python and Iron Ruby dynamic languages. Check it out here http://techzulu.com/index.php/interviews/20-bus-dev/315-mike-vincent-ironpython-a-ironruby.

Dynamic Languages and the DLR presentations at user groups and code camp

mikev — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:33:00 GMT

Over the past month, I’ve made the rounds of several Southern California user groups and the San Diego Code Camp presenting “Dynamic Languages and the DLR.”

· San Gabriel Valley .NET on June 18

· IASA SoCal/SoCal .NET Architecture on June 19

· SoCal Code Camp, San Diego on June 28

· LA C# on July 1

· Inland Empire .NET on July 8

· I’m scheduled for San Diego .NET on August 26

Each presentation works off the same theme but the delivery has focused on the audience. You can download the presentation material here http://mvasoftware.com/media/p/47.aspx. Dynamic Languages are providing us a great additional set of tools for our development toolbox. I’m exposing architects and developers to potential ways to leverage the unique strengths of dynamic languages. These include leveraging code execution in the browser by pushing data and code dynamically from the business tier at run time and building unit tests with dynamic languages. I’ll be posting more content on these areas in the near future.

New PDC Sessions Added

mikev — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:29:00 GMT

On July 1, a bunch of new sessions were added to the PDC. You can see the full list of sessions that have been published (so far) at the PDC site.

Here are some interesting sessions:

An Introduction to F#
Learn about Microsoft's new language, F#, a typed functional programming language for the .NET Framework. F# combines functional programming with the runtime support, libraries, tools, and object model of .Net. Understand how F# asynchronous workflows help tame the complexity of parallel and asynchronous I/O programming and how to use F# in conjunction with tools such as Parallel Extensions for .NET.

Architecture Without Big Design Up Front

Visual Studio Team System, code-name "Rosario" Architecture Edition, introduces new UML designers, use cases, activity diagrams, sequence diagrams that can visualize existing code, layering to enforce dependency rules, and physical designers to visualize, analyze, and refactor your software. See how VSTS extends UML logical views into physical views of your code. Learn how to create relationships from these views to work items and project metrics, how to extend these designers, and how to programmatically transform models into patterns for other domains and disciplines.

Deep Dive: Dynamic Languages in .NET
The CLR has great support for dynamic languages like IronPython. Learn how the new Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) adds a shared dynamic type system, a standard hosting model, and support for generating fast dynamic code. Hear how these features enable languages that use the DLR to share code with other dynamic and static languages like VB.NET and C#.

Future Directions for Visual Basic
Come learn about the new capabilities in the next version of the language, including: extensions to LINQ, syntax simplifications, and improvements to the IDE. We'll provide insight into the direction of the language, including dynamic binding, meta-programming, and scripting.

The Future of C#
In this talk Microsoft Technical fellow and C# Chief Architect Anders Hejlsberg outlines the future of C#. He will describe the many forces that influence and shape the future of programming languages and explain how they fit into C#.

Visual C++: 10 is the New 6
Get more done. The next version of Visual C++ is all about improving developer productivity for large-scale applications. Learn about the IntelliSense and browsing experiences, changes to the project and build system, project-less browsing, collaboration through remote symbol indexing, and custom visualization of symbolic information.

Microsoft Silverlight: Building Business Applications

What if you could develop your solutions with the ease pioneered by Microsoft Office Access, deploy them like an Internet application, and take advantage of the power of Microsoft .NET? Learn about an exciting new technology that is all about making business applications for RIA (Rich Internet Applications) much easier to build. In this session, hear how we've made n-tier application development as simple as traditional 2-tier, provided application level solutions to developers, and how we're doing all of this with the same .NET platform and tools on both the client and server.

Microsoft Silverlight: Developing for Mobile Devices

Silverlight provides on mobile devices the same great capabilities you are familiar with on the desktop, but there are some differences you should understand when targeting mobile devices. This session shows you how to make your Silverlight applications device agnostic as well as how to optimize your designs for multiple targets.

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server: How We Use It at Microsoft

Take a detailed look at the present and future of Team Foundation Server (TFS). With close to 14,000 users, 2,000 projects, 33 million files, and over 2 million work items, Microsoft runs one of the largest known installations of TFS. In this session we share our internal best practices for version control, branching and merging, work item tracking, metrics, reporting, testing, and integrations with TFS.

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System: Software Diagnostics and Quality for Services

In this session we present processes and tools from the upcoming Visual Studio Team System code name "Rosario" release and Microsoft Research and show how we deliver on quality, scalability, and experience goals for the new class of applications that demand rich UI, service consumption, and frequent release.

Plus, a whole lot on architecting and developing cloud services including Mesh Services and Virtual Earth v next.

Silverlight 2 Beta 2

mikev — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 04:47:00 GMT

With the release of Silverlight 2 Beta 2 the Silverlight Dynamic Languages SDK has been updated as well. There is a lot of new stuff. Check out Jimmy Schementi's blog for details. Here's a quick recap:

This project represents the integration between Silverlight and Dynamic Languages running on the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). The languages included in this package are IronRuby, IronPython, and Managed JScript. The DLR, Silverlight Integration, IronRuby, and IronPython are released under the Microsoft Public License

This release corresponds with Silverlight 2 Beta 2.
Download Silverlight 2 Beta 2

Packages

Dynamic Languages SDK

These are necessary to create dynamic language Silverlight applications.

/bin
- IronPython, IronRuby, and Managed JScript language/library DLLs, as well as Chiron, the dynamic language development utility.
/script:
- tools for creating and running Silverlight applications, including templates for the supported languages.

Dynamic Languages SDK Samples

A bunch of samples to show you how it works. Best is to unzip into the SDK directory.

/samples
- sample applications for Ruby, Python, and JScript. Live samples can also be found on http://silverlight.net/dlr.

Dynamic Languages SDK Source Code

For you to get an in-depth understanding and if you want to modify the integration. Build using the solution file in Visual Studio.

/src:
- The source code to IronPython, IronRuby, the Dynamic Language Runtime, and Chiron

Iron Ruby: The Road to 1.0 - John Lam

mikev — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:44:00 GMT

Last session on Friday, end of TechEd Developer week. There were two sessions in this time slot that I wanted to attend – Rich Hundhausen’s “Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server: Migrate of Integrate” or John’s IronRuby. John’s information is changing almost by the day, so his session won.

Just before TechEd on May 30^th at Rails Conf in Portland, OR, John demonstrated Rails running on IronRuby. While this was a “Hello World” demo it is significant because Rails exercises such a large portion of the Ruby language and is a good measure of being true to the language core. The time in which this was accomplished is also significant, about 15 months compared to about 26 months for Rubinius and about 35 months for JRuby.

Iron Ruby is significant for the broad platform base that it will run under leveraging Silverlight and MoonLight. It is open source under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). Check out John Lam's blog for some specifics of the examples he demonstrated.

The IronRuby development pace is benefiting from the IronPython experience and is moving at a faster pace. No promises, but we may see IronRuby 1.0 by the end of the year. Go Team!

Dynamic Languages at TechEd

mikev — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:58:00 GMT

Tuesday morning at TechEd after the keynote, I went over to the Dynamic Languages area, introduced myself to the team and did a little promotion for my BOF session. Bill Chiles and I went over to Neil Ford’s session on Design Patterns in Dynamic Languages. Glad to see Neil updated his deck to all examples in Ruby, replacing the Groovy examples from his prior presentations at other venues.

I stopped and met Jimmy Schementi at the DyLan area on my way back to the INETA community lounge. Great enthusiasm for dynamic languages. I enjoyed Jimmy’s presentation in the afternoon on Silverlight “Dynamic Languages and the Web” and his current hot topic “Silverline.” What is Silverline? It’s Iron Ruby running in the client in Silverlight.

I talked up my Birds of a Feather Session on Dynamic Languages scheduled for Wednesday evening and invited the team to join in. Jimmy pinged John Lam on Twitter to join us as well.

On Wednesday morning, I stopped by the Dynamic Languages area again. John Lam was there so I introduced myself and spent a few minutes chatting with him.

BOF session on Dynamic Languages and the DLR

I had planned this morning to come up with some short descriptive information for the white board to kick off my evening BOF session. The Dynamic Language team had been building content on their white board since yesterday and it was the perfect description, so made my final prep work easy. Here it is:

What is a Dynamic Language?

Class of high-level programming languages such as Python, Ruby

Delays some computation (semantic binding) to runtime that static languages do at compile-time

Can extend the program @ runtime by:

· Adding new code

· Extending objects

· Modifying the type system

Provides reflection on everything

Eval-like statements, e.g. “eval(3.14*3+foo(n))”

Interactive, exploratory development of live program

Read-eval-print loop, top down & bottom up design simultaneously

Highly extensible. Very little syntax. More bang for the buck.

Meta-programming:

· domain specific languages possible in some DL’s

· support is common

On Wednesday evening, my BOF session came off well. I was delighted to have about 75 attend the session including the dynamic language product team and the C# product team. I only got about a quarter of the way into my introductory comments before I had Bill Chiles, Jimmy Schementi and John Lam actively engaged in the discussion with participants. Birds of a Feather sessions are all about discussion so this was great. I hope all who attended gained gained from attending.