I am very excited to be able to attend PDC2008 this year, thanks to my very gracious employer, Toolbox.com. I am honored that I have the opportunity to rub elbows with so many great people and represent Toolbox at such an awesome event. I find myself literally counting down the hours.
I joined Toolbox.com back in May of this year, and it has been a real eye-opener for me to see and understand how a complex site such as Toolbox.com is set up and works behind the scenes. I am surrounded by some really great developers every day, and I am having a blast. We have had the opportunity to re-write/upgrade nearly all of the old ASP code to C# and ASP.NET. It has been a lot of fun to say the least.
I am in love with C#. I've played around with a whole host of other languages, including Java, PHP, VB (who hasn't?), Pascal, as well as a little Ruby and Python. I admit to only scratching the surface of some, but it is C# and ASP.NET that feels most comfortable to me... but that's just me. I say that whatever language gets the job done best, for you, is the one you should code in. There is no perfect language, and they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. No language "Holy Wars" here!
I wouldn't call myself a fanboy, but I am definately a fan of C#, ASP.NET, the MVC Framework, and several other up and coming Microsoft technologies. It will be very exciting to attend the various PDC2008 sessions to get a feel for and better understanding of exactly where things are heading. You can hate Vista all you want and villify Microsoft to your heart's content, but nobody will ever convince me that Microsoft is not on the bleeding edge of technology in many areas. There are some REALLY exciting things going on out there! PDC will be a blast.
I will be jotting down my notes, thoughts, and impressions of the sessions I attend, which at the moment are the following:
Monday, October 27, 2008
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Under the Hood: Advances in the .NET Type System
Microsoft Visual C# IDE: Tips and Tricks
ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap
ASP.NET MVC: A New Framework for Building Web Applications
Microsoft .NET Framework: Overview and Applications for Babies
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
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Keynote
Visual Studio Debugger Tips & Tricks
Project "Velocity": A First Look
Project "Velocity": Under the Hood
Architecting Services for the Cloud
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
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Keynote
Panel: The Future of Programming Languages
SQL Server 2008: Developing Secure Applications
Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability
ASP.NET Dynamic Data
Mono and .NET
Thursday, October 29, 2008
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Microsoft .NET Framework: Declarative Programming Using XAML
Microsoft Silverlight 2: Control Model
Designing Your Application to Scale
An Introduction to Microsoft F#
I am really looking forward to the Keynotes by Scott Guthrie and Ray Ozzie, always great speakers. I am also excited to see Scott Hanselman speak, which despite his political leanings, is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter and his blog.
Of all the sessions I am currently planning on attending, I am most looking forward to "ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap", "Designing Your Application to Scale", "Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability", and "Mono and .NET".
So if you're interested in anything .NET, follow me on Twitter and connect to my profile on Toolbox.com, or subscribe to my feed -- I will be updating regularly!