Does the blogging activity of the Microsoft compact framework development team reflect it’s development activity?

I sure hope not because then they haven’t been up to much since august 2009.  The .NET compact framework team blog should have been a driving force for information about windows phone development, but is just quite anoyingly “dead”. Another blog hosted by blog.msdn.com called “The team blog for the mobile developer group“  shows the last posting from December 2008 as it’s last post. 

With all the hammering MS is getting from everywhere about it’s mobility strategy and development, are they giving up? is the battle lost?

Does anyone know of other official blog channels from Microsoft on the compact framework or Windows Phone? please let me know! Continue Reading

The NDC 2009 starts today and in lack of mobile technology content i have decided to go for more general topics than tech specific sessions.

Conference introduction

The conference opens at 8am with registration, and you have a hour  to roam around before everything starts. Im looking at the exhibitions at Telenor Arena and must give kudos to the site, I like this place a lot better than last year at the SAS hotel.

At 8:45 the conference kicks off with a lot of noise, Hip  Hop music and  a short introduction by the director of Programutvikling AS. She introduces Robert C. Martin for his keynote, that starts with a lesson on biology and history and makes the transition over to software development and testing.

This speak should be force fed to mangers, not developers – it is not developers that are responsible for the lack of testing in the software industry – it is the mangers that does not for some unknown reason see the value in it. But then again, if we as developers just did it, just included the time it takes to do the tests in our estimates we just might get it to work, and your manager can give their own shoulder a pad and say that they thought their developers well.. Continue Reading

NDC looks very promising this year, but as always.. i’ll be whining about the lack of mobility content on arrival.

Bit  sad since with the release of WM 6.5 Microsoft have the opportunity to present the new development features like gestures, touch and widgets to developers eager to get a glimpse into newTech. And also with the launch of Microsoft Marketplace for mobile, independent and commercial developers have a centralized distribution channel making it easier than ever to finally be able to get some hard earned return for the effort.

So far i’ve pinned these sessions:

• Tim Huckaby – Jump into WPF! … and become immediately effective.
• Michael Feathers – Working Effectively with legacy code
• Ayende Rahien – Producing production quality software
• Ian Griffiths – Writing custom WPF pixel shader effects
• Phil Haack – The Haacked and Hanselman show (this might be fun )
• Glenn Block – Framework design guidelines
• Ayende Rahien – Building scalable systems
• Roy Osherove – Introducing CTHRU
• Robert C. Martin – Clean Code
• Robert C. Martin – Clean Design
• Ted Neward – XML Messaging in .NET using WCF
• Mary Poppendieck – The lean frame
• Mike Cohn – User stories
• Mike Cohn – Agile estimating
• Mike Cohn – Agile Planning

Continue Reading