Do you like a big pile of source code? Well, there is an imperial buttload of source in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit . It's actually a 178 meg download, which is insane. Perhaps start your download now and get it in the morning when you get up. It's extremely well put together and I say Kudos to the folks that did it. They are better people than I. I like to explore it while watching TV myself and found myself looking through tonight. I checked my blog and while I thought I'd shared this with you before, Dear Reader, I hadn't. My bad, because it's pure gold . With C# and VB, natch. Here's an outline of what's inside. I've heard of folks setting up lunch-time study groups and going through...(read more)
I did a second .NET Framework features informal poll recently , and as with all .NET related polls the question comes up: How many PCs have the .NET Framework on it? If you're a company that is considering creating a client application using .NET (not Silverlight, but the .NET Framework) you'd probably like to know if your end-user needs to install something extra to use your app. So I started asking questions. We've said things here and there about the pervasiveness of the .NET Framework but I wanted to get the final word (at the time of this writing) and put it somewhere easy to fine. After some digging, here's what I've got: Well over 90% of the PCs in the world have some version of the .NET Framework installed. Over 65...(read more)
The folks in the .NET Framework Setup team have a favor to ask, and it's pretty cool info so I offered to help. Here's the deal. When .NET 4 releases, the .NET 4 Client Profile will be released as a recommended update on Windows Update (WU) for Vista and Windows 7. It'll be listed as optional on Windows XP. They need help testing the WU parts. You may have heard, but the .NET 4 Client Profile size is WAY smaller than before. There's been lots of cool improvements since the .NET 3.5 Client Profile . For example, on Window XP the download for .NET 4 Client is just ~28Mb for machines with no framework. .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Client Profile .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Web install only Local package and Web install. Only Windows...(read more)
While I (really) unplugged in December of 2009, you can access a nice calendar of all my 2009 posts (as well as other years) at this link . In 2008 I published a Greatest Hits post that I will keep updated, but here's a list of links to the posts I most enjoyed writing this last year. I hope you find some of them useful, and perhaps you missed one or two or you just started reading recently and this 2009 "Greatest Hits" Post will catch you up on the stuff I was thinking about this year. General Geekery Painful Reminder: Focus on Core Competencies (and Back Stuff Up) 10 Awesome Things I Remember About Computers FizzBin - The Technical Support Secret Handshake Paving my machine for a fresh 2009 - First-Pass Must-Haves Low Bandwidth...(read more)
August 12, 2010