Author Archives: paulvick

Giving in…

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Of course, some of the hardest parts of being a parent is giving up, giving in and admitting that you’re no longer the freewheeling couple that you once were. Bit by bit, kids chip away at any pretensions you might have of remaining young and/or cool. Thankfully, in my case that isn’t really giving up all that much–I mean, I was never really cool, so it’s not that much of a loss for me. My wife, on the other hand, was quite a bit cooler than me, and so she’s taking it a bit harder. Case in point–after much resistance, my wife admitted that a minivan would be a lot easier to get the kids in and out of than her little purple car. So she caved and now we have a shiny new red Toyota Sienna sitting out front. She hates to drive it, but already we’ve been putting it to good use…

On the plus side, instead of going directly through a dealership this time, friends recommended we use The Amazing Autowoman. Since Heidi is a buyer’s agent (i.e. works for you instead of the dealer), she really focuses on making the buying experience the most painless process possible. I’ve always hated the fact that when you go to buy a car you always end up with overpriced options that you don’t want because “that’s what’s available.” We went looking around the local dealerships to see if they had exactly what we wanted, and none of them did–so, of course, they pushed us to buy something with a different color or thousands more in options. When we called Heidi, we told her exactly what we wanted, she ordered it and we got it for an excellent price! (In fact, what we wanted was the base level of one of the models with NO options. When we got the car, we had to go and buy floor mats because that’s usually one of those options the dealership slips in there and charges you extra for. Definitely cheaper to go to Wal-mart!) If anyone is looking for a car, I defintely recommend checking her out!

Unforuntately, there wasn’t much she could do for my wife. At least we decided to keep her old little purple car so she can zip around when she’s just on her own and pretend…

Check out Project Jasper…

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One of the other announcements from MIX was “Project Jasper,” which is (in the words of the guys who wrote it):

[…] a set of components aimed at fulfilling the need for a rapid and iterative development experience for data. With Jasper, you are able to just point at a database and immediately begin coding against its data using intuitive, domain-specific data classes. No configuration and no source code generation are required. Jasper works with existing application frameworks (including ASP.NET, WinForms, and WPF) and existing, real-world databases.

One of the ways that Jasper does it’s “point and code” magic is through dynamic generation of entity types based on the shape of the database it’s pointed at. Since the types are dynamically generated, you can only do late binding against them, so VB is the primary language that Jasper works against in Visual Studio. This would also be a perfect scenario for dynamic interfaces, a feature that was slated for Orcas but did not make it (more on that soon), sadly.

I’d encourage anyone interested to check out the announcement and the initial CTP!

After MIX, how many Visual Basic languages are there?

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One. Just one. VBx is the next version of Visual Basic, not a new version of Visual Basic.

Part of the confusion stems from the fact that there are TWO ways you can use Visual Basic in Silverlight, and one uses Orcas and one uses VBx. So let me see if I can clarify a little bit…

As everyone should be aware now, Silverlight is a cross-platform version of the CLR. This means that Silverlight, with some limitations, can run any compiled IL application or library that the desktop CLR can run. This also means that (again, with some limitations) Visual Basic applications or libraries that have been compiled into IL on the desktop can be downloaded and run on Silverlight. If you go and read Joe’s VB on Silverlight entry, he points you to how you can do this today–build a VB application or library using Orcas Beta 1 and then run it on Silverlight.

You’ll notice that what you have to do in this scenario, though, is compile your application or library on the desktop and then run it in Silverlight. You can’t take your application or library in source code form, send it to Silverlight and have it compiled on demand within Silverlight itself, because the Orcas Visual Basic compiler isn’t a part of Silverlight. So, for example, if I was to embed a Silverlight application in a web page viewable on the Mac, I have to build my libraries ahead of time and deploy them to the web server to be downloaded when someone hits the page.

What John and Jim demoed, and what the DLR enables, however, is a second scenario. Because the DLR is managed code, it can be run directly on Silverlight. This means that you can actually get a running instance of a DLR language within Silverlight itself. So instead of having to compile an application or library before you can use it in Silverlight, you can simply include the code as a part of the Silverlight application, and the code can be compiled by the DLR language on the fly. This enables the traditional style of client-side applications that you see in AJAX or other libraries. Instead of compiling the library ahead of time, you simply download the client code to the browser when it hits the page, and the code will be compiled and run within the browser in real time.

This is where VBx, the next version of Visual Basic, comes in. Part of VBx is a hostable managed component (written in Visual Basic, no less!) built on top of the DLR. Since Silverlight can host DLR languages, this enables you to send Visual Basic code to a Silverlight instance and have it dynamically compiled and run. So when the Mac hits your webpage, you don’t have to send a binary at all, you can send just source code. When you want to modify your application, you don’t rebuild, you just modify the source code sent to the browser and refresh the page and there you are!

The important thing to keep in mind is that there is still only ONE Visual Basic language but once VBx arrives you’ll have more than one way of getting to it. You’ll still be able to compile code into the traditional .DLL or .EXE, but you’ll also have the option of compiling and running the code on the fly, within a running instance of the CLR. That’s where things are likely to get interesting…

What the heck is "VBx"?

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There was a semi-announcement as a part of the Silverlight 1.1 discussion at MIX07 yesterday that people might be wondering about.

If you check out the Silverlight poster that Brad posted a pointer to, you’ll see that on the right hand side under the box that says Framework Languages, there are TWO listings for Visual Basic. First, there’s “Visual Basic” and then down at the bottom there’s a “VBx” with a little icon “Soon.” Then, if you look at Jim Hugunin’s blog entry on the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), you’ll see that he says (emphasis mine):

We’re initially building four languages on top of the DLR – Python, JavaScript (EcmaScript 3.0), Visual Basic and Ruby. We shipped today both Python and JavaScript as part of the Silverlight 1.1alpha1 release today. John Lam and I will be demoing all four languages, including VB and Ruby, working together during our talk tomorrow at 11:45.

And then if you go on to Jason Zander’s blog entry on .NET Framework support in Silverlight, he says (again, emphasis mine):

With the new DLR, we have support for IronPython, IronRuby, Javascript, and the new dynamic VBx compiler.

And, finally, you can go to Amanda Silver’s entry on what the MIX07 announcements mean for the VB developer to get a few more hints.

So, what does this all mean, exactly? What is this “VBx” thing? What are we up to?

Well, as I’ve been hinting at for a while now, there’s been something I’ve been working on quite a lot in recent months that I couldn’t talk about. With our announcements at MIX07, though, I can now take a bit of the wraps off. “VBx” is our current (subject to change) codename for the next major version of Visual Basic. (The “x” is supposed to signify the Roman numeral X, or 10, since the next major version of Visual Basic is going to be 10.0. The “x” really should be capitalized, but some people were worried there’d be confusion with the old VBX controls. Not that the search engines are really going to draw a distinction. Like VB itself, they’re mostly case insensitive.)

Now, at this early stage of the game, the full shape of the next version is sketchy at best. We’re not done with Orcas by any stretch of the imagination. We haven’t even started the formal planning for process for anything beyond Orcas yet. However, there are several features that we are clear, even at this early stage of the game, that we are going to want to support in the post-Orcas timeframe:

  • Visual Basic should become a hostable language that can be easily used to do application scripting, akin to what you could do with VBScript and VBA. Furthermore, this hostable language engine should be fully portable to all platforms supported by the CLR, including all platforms supported by Silverlight (such as client-side scripting in the browser on a Mac…).
  • The performance of dynamic binding (a.k.a. late binding) should be as close to static binding as humanly possible.
  • Dynamic method and type generation should be fully supported and consumable in the language.
  • Visual Basic should fully support a REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop). This means taking the support we already have for a REPL in the immediate window in VS and both extending it to the full language and adding the ability to host the REPL outside of Visual Studio.

If you look at this feature list, much of it is congruent with the mission of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). Consequently, we’ve been working very closely with the DLR team to start prototyping many of these features in Visual Basic. If you were at the MVP summit or went to Jim and John Lam’s talk at MIX yesterday, you’ll have seen this prototype–which, again, we’re calling “VBx” for the moment–in action. Amanda and I will be working on some screencasts and other stuff to show this to the world in the near future, but it is, in essence, the fusion of the Visual Basic language services and the DLR. This gives us many of the features listed above, and more. (For example, because VBx is built on top of the DLR, it automatically interoperates with any other dynamic language built on the DLR. So VBx code can interact seamlessly with libraries written in Python, Javascript, or Ruby, and those languages can interact seamlessly with code compiled by VBx.)

As excited as we are about VBx, it is, unfortunately, not part of the Silverlight 1.1alpha1 released yesterday. Although we have a significant amount of functionality already implemented there is still more work to be done to bring the VBx language support up to the level that we feel is necessary for a productive community preview. Our plans are to have a community preview out later this year, and to talk much more detail about VBx at PDC07. In the meantime, though, we will be discussing VBx here on my blog and on the VB team blog, so keep your eyes peeled!

Beta 1 of Orcas is out (for those domiciled under igneous formations…)!

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My +1 link postings are always the last ones in to the pool, but in case you haven’t seen it elsewhere, Beta 1 of Visual Studio Orcas is now available for download! This has a large majority of the Orcas features for VB in it, although there are still some features that will be coming in post-Beta1 (lambdas, nullable types, etc.) because of the way the schedule came together. (You can find more details about new features in Beta1, such as “Intellisense everywhere” on our team blog.)

I’ve been writing a LOT of Visual Basic code in the past couple of months, and this is making me excited to work towards getting off of VB 2005 and on to Orcas…

Check it out!

A little belated crow to eat on ‘Battlestar’…

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I just realized that I’ve been a little amiss in making amends for some unkind words I had for Battlestar Galatica a few years ago. Right after my wife and I stopped watching, apparently, the writers decided to get their act together and really amp up the quality of the series. Thankfully, my wife’s writing mentor’s son (how’s that for a chain of connection) does the music for the show, and so he managed, through his mom, to convince us to come back a take another look. Once the plot seemed to stop meandering and really ground itself in the present day struggles in our world, I think the whole show really came alive. It still tends to drag at points, but we’re back watching it and were genuinely bummed when the last season ended “until 2008.”

So let me just belatedly eat my words… (munch, munch) I guess maybe the Cylons do have some kind of a plan after all…

A gift of cheer…

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In my “five things you might not know about me” blog entry, I mentioned that one of the things that I missed about no longer being in the South was the absence of Cheerwine from my life. What is Cheerwine, you ask? Well, it’s a soda somewhat akin to cherry Coke, although with quite a distinctive flavor. The story I had always heard about it was that it was invented at a time (WWI, I believe) when there was rationing of sugar. The soda company was looking for a sweetener, and found that the only thing they could get a supply of was some cherry flavoring that was normally used for cough syrup. They put it in their cola and the rest is history!

I have no idea if this is true or not, and this may sound absolutely disgusting, but I certainly love it. Looking at www.cheerwine.com, it appears they’re based in Salisbury, NC, which would make sense since I usually had Cheerwine while visiting my grandparents who lived in Charlotte, just down the road. So there’s definitely a sentimental angle to it as well. For a little while, a local (Seattle) grocery story actually stocked Cheerwine in their “specialty” bottle section, but then it disappeared and I only have it when I come home.

However, Chris Williams, a VB MVP and all around great guy, read my blog entry, thought to himself “hey, I sell that in my store,” and decided to send me a six pack. So I’ve been very gratefully indulging in my nostalgic drink. Maybe I’ll head downtown and get some Krispy Kremes and then I’ll really feel like I’m back home…

What do I actually do…?

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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:

  1. I’ve been around a long time.
  2. I’m a developer (more or less).
  3. 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!