Things I Learned at the Microsoft Developer Conference

Some notes from the day-long dev conference lead by Marc Schweigert from blogs.msdn.com/publicsector and others.

Jim Newkirk, the guy who created JUnit and NUnit, now works for Microsoft. He's working on their automated test stuff.

Microsoft has a new open source project hosting web site: CodePlex. 1,482 projects so far.

www.SDLCinaBox.com:

The goal of SDLC-in-a-Box is to provide a FREE training kit that our partners and consultants can take, customize and deliver to organizations who want to experience a Software Development Lifecycle walkthrough using Visual Studio Team System & Team Foundation Server. It is intended to get individuals and organizations quickly up-to-speed on the Microsoft SDLC tools platform, provide them with a rapid environment for demonstrating and training others, and offer a set of resources to ensure the experience with Visual Studio Team System is a pleasant and successful one.

LINQ (.NET Language Integrated Query) is...

...the general-purpose query facilities added to the .NET Framework that apply to all sources of information, not just relational or XML data. (more...)

At one of my previous companies (which was wiped away when the tech bubble burst) we had a saying: Foosball tables are a sign of a company that will be wiped away when the tech bubble bursts. Microsoft has a foosball table in the hallway outside the dev conference. I'm just saying.


Also, this guy would make great desktop wallpaper:


Other cool things: ASP.NET AJAX.