Exploring Boston
I spent most of the afternoon wandering around Boston. Overall -- pretty nice. Here are some pictures.
The swan boats in the Public Gardens
Some office builds from the Boston Public Gardens
View of the downtown from the Charles River
House in Beacon Hill
Downtown shopping area
A church in Beacon Hill
Phone booths in Chinatown (complete with Chinese people!)
More Microsoft Updates
I guess that's good -- it's boring though. User Interfaces are the bain of my existence as a software engineer since so often I'm expected to design them (and I don't tend to do that well). The problem is that designers (graphic/layout designers, that is) are really the people to do this sort of job. There's sort of a breakdown between "architecture" of a UI and the layout, design, etc. Basically, it's really hard to write code without having the layout in place and it's hard to make a layout without the code working.
Anyway -- maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention but I didn't get many answers from that.
The next session I attended I really disliked. It was regarding Windows/Linux Integration. It was extremely high-level and was basically an advertisement for the speakers book ("...and in my book, you'll see how to do this"). Very annoying, very uninformed speaker. The worst part was that it basically said that that there were some technical differences that needed to be bridged to get Linux and Windows to play nicely but it didn't really address just what the advantages of each system were. There were some broad sweeping statements like "Linux isn't good with desktop applications" that were bandied about, but nothing of any real substance. The overall feeling was that you can get Linux and Windows to work, and please buy his book. Somewhat of a waste. This session doesn't even get it's own blog entry.
All for now,
Agile Development
A neat session this morning on Agile Development. While not pushing the "Microsoft Way" of doing Agile Development it was a thought-provoking session talking about the need to focus on the "ingredients" that make the Agile "recipe" work. Not terribly new or innovative (this stuff has been around for a while and I've had some exposure to it through Extreme Programming) but it really made me wish that we implemented it in some form. In the project that I'm working on right now, it's a difficult environment since we're spread out geographically and much of the development effort is performed in different places, in different time zones, by just a few developers. However, I do feel that it would be well worth it to pursue this (and actually implement this for the next phase of our project).
Some of the key "ingredients" include a heavy focus on communication within the group, a willingness to change as your environment changes, a focus on strict but simple rules and procedures for the software development lifecycle, and a focus on the customer. Like I said, it's not new, but it really does challenge the traditional software development process.
More session summaries as I have time,
Arrived in Boston
Well, I'm here at TechEd 2006 in Boston, MA and things are about to begin. It's been neat so far. Boston [seems] to be a pretty place. More details may confirm otherwise. Anyhow -- the break-out sessions will be beginning soon and I'll get a chance to get blasted by some Microsoft advertising while learning probably not that much. The food is good though. That's always important. Internet access is ubiqutious. They have wireless here all over and I have quite fast wired Internet access in my hotel room.
Let's see how this goes...
Boston trip
Well, I'm heading off Sunday evening to Boston for Microsoft's Evil TechEd 2006 Conference. It should be fun! I've been to Boston before with relatives but really briefly (I think a few baseball games and that's it). When I was a little kid, one of my favorite books was Make Way for Ducklings. The book takes place in Boston's Public Garden and so it will be neat to take a stroll through the area. Most likely I'll be traumatized as I see hippies begging for change and business people talking into their Bluetooth headsets instead of cute ducks and noble policemen. I believe the hotel is only a block away.
I'm also considering actually keeping a running commentary on my experiences. Posting daily! Maybe!
We'll see what happens...
