Microsoft

Volta released...

Paul Vick — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:10:00 GMT

Just a little shout out to the latest project by that crazy language pimp, Erik Meijer. (He's the guy you have to thank for much of LINQ and especially for XML literals in VB.) In its own words, Volta is...

[...] a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

Although my focus continues to be on client programming by directly emitting IL for the runtime, I think Volta has some extremely interesting ideas contained within it. I'll be interested to see how this project fares, especially given the success of his previous ideas...

Ask me something in Japanese, please...

Paul Vick — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:21:00 GMT

For those readers of my blog in Japan (or who can speak Japanese), I'm being features on MSDN Japan's "Ask the Experts!" page this month. There's a short introductory video I shot, plus the opportunity to submit questions (or so I'm told) which I will answer later this month. So, if you've got something to ask, submit it and I'll be happy to answer!

What do I actually do...?

Paul Vick — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:45:00 GMT

Back in December, when discussing my bout of writer's block, I said that I should probably write an entry "What the Hell I Do [at Microsoft]," since I think that the question is sometimes a little murky (even to me). Most of my career I was just a "developer" or "manager," but now that I am an "architect," things are a little more complicated.

As far as I can tell, "architect" is such a general title at Microsoft that it's practically meaningless. It can mean totally different things in different organizations. In my case, being an "architect" seems to mean:

I've been around a long time.
I'm a developer (more or less).
I don't manage anybody.

(For those paying close attention, my title when I started this blog was "Technical Lead," which was an even more meaningless term, especially since I used to be a "Technical Lead" on Access when I was much, much, much more junior. And I believe that my title will soon change to "Principal Architect," which only means that if you're an internal Microsoft person, you'll have a general idea of what my career ladder level is.)

I should also be clear that I am an architect working on Visual Basic, not the "architect of Visual Basic." There are at least three other people who work on Visual Basic that share the title of "architect" with me, all of whom do wildly different things. Basically, we're just a bunch of senior developers who didn't want to manage people but were useful enough to keep around anyway.

So that's my title, but what do I actually do? Well, my standard cocktail party answer is "go to meetings and write emails." And (very) occasionally write blog entries. However, if you wanted to pin me down a bit more, I tend to spend my time doing the following:

Attending language design meetings. We tend to have two hour design meetings every week on Monday and Friday to talk about Visual Basic language design. This is where we hash out new ideas, work through details, and deal with followup issues. With where we are in Orcas, it's mostly followup issues at this point, but we should start gearing up to do some early thinking about post-Orcas soon.
Writing the language specification. This is a seasonal activity, so to speak, since it's really only done later in the release cycle when the various individual feature specifications have settled down. It's sort of a last formalization step for all the features and a chance for me to do a pass through everything we've decided. I'm actually just about to start this for Orcas.
Doing community stuff. This includes blogging, going to conferences and giving talks. I don't do a huge amount of this in any one year, but it's something I'm trying to do more of.
Writing code. Amazingly enough, I still do this. It tends to be what we call "long-lead" work, though, stuff that's maybe a little further than prototype but not real production. For example, I did a lot of work on getting the first couple of LINQ CTPs (the pre-Orcas CTPs) out the door. And I'm doing a lot of work right now on some other code that might appear a little at MIX and (I hope) a lot more at the PDC.
Answering questions. As the longest serving member of the language team, I get a lot of random questions from people about design questions, past and present.
Talking to other teams. Whatever I'm working on usually interacts with other teams in some way, shape or form. With LINQ, I spent a lot of time talking with the C# team and SQL team. With the stuff I'm working on now, I'm spending a lot of time talking with other teams. Coordination is frequently the name of the game.
Trying madly to keep up with my email. Like the rest of the universe.

Of course, what anyone does at Microsoft always tends to be a moving target, so I'm sure I can write this same entry each year and it'll be a little different each time. I guess that's what keeps life interesting!

For Jim Gray, wherever we may find him...

Paul Vick — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 18:28:00 GMT

Being on parental leave and not that up-to-date on the world, I wasn't aware of the disappearance of Jim Gray until this morning, when I opened my New York Times and saw a familiar face, much to my surprise. (The last and only other time that happened, someone who was in my class in college had won a Pulitzer.) I don't really know Jim well, but have crossed paths with him more than a few times in the past several years. The latest was my trip to Japan for the launch of VS 2005 and SQL Server 2005, where I did the VS keynote and Jim did the SQL Server keynote. For someone who has done so much amazing work in the computing field, I found Jim to be an amazingly down-to-earth, gracious and friendly guy. I'm not at all surprised by the outpouring of concern and effort on the part of the computing industry to help find him.

I can only hope that he will be found alive and well. My thoughts are with him and his family.

Localized programming languages

Paul Vick — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 13:00:00 GMT

Omer van Kloten's entry on Internationalization of Programming reminded me of a (possibly apocryphal) story that I was told when I started working on OLE Automation. I asked why IDispatch::GetIDsOfNames takes an LCID and was told that once-upon-a-time, the VBA team conducted an experiment in localization with VBA in Excel (which was the first application to host VBA). Apparently, they attempted to localize the entire language--keywords, function names, etc.--into French, and possibly other languages. This mean you could write code along the lines of what Omer outlines in his entry, except in French instead of Dutch.

The problem was that because VBA wasn't exactly compiled in those days, the Excel spreadsheet that you wrote your code in now depended on having localized Excel on the machine. If you sent your spreadsheet to your colleague in New York, they couldn't run the macros because their English Excel didn't understand the language...

"Want to build a compiler?" redux.

Paul Vick — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 12:32:00 GMT

Interested in working for Microsoft? Want to build a compiler? Want to work on the coolest programming language ever? (Note for the humor-impaired: that last statement includes an implicit self-deprecating wink and a smile.) Don’t want to mange managers? We’ve also opened a new position on the compiler team that involves working directly on the compiler/language and doesn’t require managing people:

Want to help chart the future of one of the most popular programming languages in the world? Interested in building a highly interactive tool that brings programming to the masses and makes professional programmers even more productive at the same time? Want to work on melding dynamic language and scripting concepts into a statically typed language? The Visual Basic development team is looking for a highly motivated software development engineer to work on future versions of the Visual Basic language. Responsibilities include:

Working with the language design team to help design new features for Visual Basic.

Planning, scheduling, and developing those new features.

Helping to develop the infrastructure used to build and test the product.

The ideal candidate will have a minimum of a B.S. in Computer Science/Software Engineering and 4 years of industry practice. A background in compiler architecture, database technology, and/or Microsoft .NET Framework usage is a plus. If you’re ready to step up and join a dynamic, fast-paced team which delivers high-quality development tools to millions of customers, we’re waiting for you!

Here’s a link to the actual listing.

Black hole projects, redux

Paul Vick — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 01:05:00 GMT

I thought of this old post of mine today…

Was an and-2 but now am an and-1

Paul Vick — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 16:42:00 GMT

Sometimes a useless Microsoft story crosses my mind and I think “gee, that might be mildly amusing to post on my blog.” But the story’s small enough that I don’t really have a good hook, which means that it’s hard for me to justify posting it. Well, Adam’s given me a good enough hook to hang a few stories on:

One that I hadn’t thought of is the fact that I’ve been around long enough (14 years last week!) to be an and-1, with the alias paulv. The interesting thing, though, was that when I was an intern 15 years ago (now I’m feeling really old), I was actually an and-2, t-paulvi. I don’t know if there was a Paul V. intern before me who didn’t join full-time or what, but there you go. The biggest problem now is that there are a number of and-2 and and-3’s with the first name Paul and the last initial V, so I tend to get mail for them from people who leave off the extra letters. Since several of them are Scandinavian, this makes for some interesting mail at times…

Adam mentions some people got an and-0 (i.e. just their first name). Circa 1997, this was verboten, but a new hire on our team managed to do it. I won’t use his real name, lest people pull a 867–5309 on him, but let’s say his name is David. We all quickly noticed that his email was david, and we were puzzled: how did he get IT to sign-off on a first-name-only alias? Simple. His last name was, let’s say, Duchovney, and he asked IT to give him the email alias that was, “The first four letters of my first name and my last initial.” Since it was an unclaimed alias, it went through the system and his alias was, technically, DaviD.

The other stupid alias story was that when I joined, one of the team members was named Suchada. A coworker told me the story of printing out something and going to the printer to retrieve his hard copy. There was a pile of printouts Suchada had made sitting there, with the banner page containing her email alias in large letters. Her maiden name’s last initial was Y. “Yes,” the coworker thought, “yes, it is.”

Want to build a compiler?

Paul Vick — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 11:33:00 GMT

Interested in working for Microsoft? Want to build a compiler? Want to work on the coolest programming language ever? The Visual Basic compiler development lead position is open and we’re looking for someone with the right stuff to fill it:

Microsoft Visual Basic is used by millions of developers worldwide, and is widely acclaimed for both its power and ease-of-use. As the next Development Lead of the Visual Basic Compiler and Editor team, you will be the guiding hand behind the development of the next version of Visual Basic's powerful programming language. Data/Language integration -LINQ-, advanced IntelliSense and other editor features, and an enhanced runtime library are just a few of the exciting features that you will be driving as you lead a team of highly motivated and experienced engineers. As Dev Lead, your responsibilities will include:
- Contributing to planning new compiler and editor features
- Coordinating feature work with leads on other teams both internal and external to Visual Basic
- Managing compiler team feature work
- Mentoring your team in their careers, including dev leads reporting to your position
- Following up with customers to ensure we deliver the best Visual Basic product ever
This is a “manager of managers” position, and prior experience as a development lead is a requirement. The ideal candidate will be skilled in leadership, technology, and collaboration, and will have a history of high management review scores. Qualifications include a BS in CS/EE -or equivalent-, a minimum of 3 years as a development lead, and 7 or more years of software engineering experience overall. Shipping experience and deep knowledge of compiler, debugger, and editor technologies are a must.

Here’s a link to the job on the Microsoft career site. If you’ve got the qualifications, this is a great job with a great bunch of people. And you really can take my word for it, since it used to be my job!

Lang .NET 2006

Paul Vick — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 19:10:00 GMT

Erik Meijer has posted an announcement for Lang .NET 2006, a Microsoft-sponsored language conference, over on Lambda the Ultimate that I thought I would point out to any readers who might be interested. A bit of the announcement:

Lang .NET 2006 is a forum for discussion of programming languages, managed execution environments, compilers, multi-language libraries, and integrated development environments. It provides an excellent opportunity for programming language implementers and researchers from both industry and academia to meet and share their knowledge, experience, and suggestions for future research and development in the area of programming languages.

Lang.NET 2006 will be held from August 1-3 at Microsoft, and Erik has assured me that he is going to press me in to service as a speaker, so be warned… Actually, we’ve got more than a few interesting non-LINQ things in the pipeline that maybe we’ll be able to talk more about by then. (Here’s hoping.) So hope to see you all there!