PDC and other Microsoft Related Stuff
A little summary what I found interesting:
- C# 4.0 adds dynamic typing to the language. The type ‘dynamic’ represent a dynamically typed object. All method-calls are dispatched at runtime and return again a dynamic type. If you assign dynamic-typed objects to static-typed objects it will convert that at runtime. The well-known DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) is used to implement this. This feature isn’t intended to replace the statically typed system, instead its made for interoperability with other languages like Python, Ruby or services like REST. Of course nothing is completed yet, but there’s no doubt that it will be in the final version. For more in information watch the talk of Anders Hejlsberg at Channel 9.
- Miguel de Icaza’s talk about Mono is also interesting. Mono has includes already the ‘compiler as a service’, so this opens the doors for creative solutions.
- Also a this wonderful discussion about the future of programming languages is fun to watch. But because it ‘philosophical’ nature, it doesn’t contain stuff which do matter for the average developer.
- Mark Russinovich talks about the kernel changes in Windows 7. Mostly the improvements are in the scheduler, memory-manger and in the usage of global locks. But those changes don’t have an huge impact on client-systems with only 2-4 CPU-cores. Also there are now ‘event-triggered-services’, to avoid running unnecessary services.
- Larry Osterman talks about the improvements in the audio-system in windows 7. Now there are different roles for different audio-devices. For example a Bluetooth-headset has the communication-role. So the normal speaker backs-off if there’s a call on the headset.
- Chaitanya Sareen gives an introduction to the Windows 7 desktop. I think the new taskbar is a real improvement. That the first time I’ve heard such words as ‘delight’ and ‘smile’ in a Microsoft presentation. Scary! But anyway, I’ll buy Windows 7 for sure.
There are tons of presentations from the PDC available on channel 9. Maybe I’ll post more presentations soon.