Nikoport

Microsoft has officialy released a new beta of Visual Studio 2007 (codename Orcas) as a part of the Community Technology Preview (CTP). In the past years, Microsoft has finally started more open process with the community on their development tools like Visual Studio. Being a regular Microsoft development tools user since Visual Studio 97, i am really excited to try out this new version, which includes .NET version 3.5, as well as much improved data management (with each version of Visual Studio, Microsoft improves this area greatly, in my opinion. Visual Studio 2005 made some very good steps with a better data-presentation separation). Another important change is ASP.NET Ajax integration, and if someone managed to miss all the Ajax buzz, then this is your chance to check it out. Every web developer, working on Windows, should check out the new Visual Studio 2007 beta at least to see if there are any improvements for better web standards handling, as well some very important fixes(there are billions of developers all around the world, crying for finally fixing the visual developer part).

Interesting is that beta1 of Visual Studio is not “feature complete”, which means that there are still some features, not integrated into this version, which is unusual, since normally “alpha” is a version with not all features available, while “beta” is a feature complete version with some functionalities having problems. Anyway, it does not really matter how they name this version, but Microsoft has hinted, that the second beta of Visual Studio, this time with all features available, will appear on MSDN until the end of this year.

If you do not have MSDN access, then you can just experiment with an Express Edition of the Visual Studio 2007, which is freely available for everyone.

I am still busy with a lot of web projects to find time to test it, as well as with PHP for Delphi, but as soon as i can, i am going to publish some kind of a review on both of the tools.

As weird as it could appear a couple of years ago, right now i think it is slowly becoming a possibility - PHP.NET. Microsoft is collaborating with Zend for creating a FastCGI module for a new IIS 7.0, and parallel they are developing iron python for .NET. Sure thing that it is still far from becoming a reality, but from the other side, microsoft has never managed to motivate the biggest part of the internet community development moving from PHP to some of their technologies and they’ve been trying a lot lately - like releasing community editions of the Visual Studio and SQL Server.

This week the world have seen the collaboration announcement between Novell and Microsoft, in which (as usual) Novell is going to pay about 40 million dollars to Microsoft. For me this all is a part of a bigger Microsoft’s plan for advancing on the web market. Thinking from the Microsoft’s point of view i would say, that it makes a lot of sense in implementing Php.NET, cause with a commercial solution some of the developers would chose to buy Microsoft products, especially those developers, who are already using Visual Studio products. Being a regular VS user, i confess that this could be an option for a lot of people i know from the developers area. This could help Microsoft, conquer the part of the market, which since the very beginning being ignoring opportunity to pay the fees to them…

The most important aspect is that PHP’s implementation for .NET is not something from the other world, as they have now managed to implement python and i know about some commercial adaptations of Cobol and Fortran, so PHP’s adaptation in every sense would make a reasonable solution for Microsoft, but would it be so reasonable for end developers and users ? How would Zend act in such situation, and what about Sun’s Java …

Sun has finally decided to open Java to the community - may be a concurrence from microsoft with .NET made them finally do it, may be even someone inside have finally realized, that it is the best way to help java grow, i don’t know, but i have no doubt at all that it is a good idea. “Free Range” as they have called this announcement, for which i have been waiting for a … ghm … let me see … a LOT of years … GNU General Public License (GPL) is the license which is being used by Sun, which is a very good solution, in my opinion. Both Java SE(JDK) and Java Micro Edition are released under it, when my favorite JEE is still being under Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), though sun is promising to move it under GPL as well.
But wait a second is Java really free, cause it seems improbable …

From Sun’s site:
Q:
Are you open sourcing the Java language or the Java SE platform specifications?
A:
We are not open sourcing the Java programming language, nor the platform APIs and specifications, which are governed by the JCP. We’re open sourcing Sun’s implementations of the Java SE and Java ME specifications.

No, java language is still a closed source (remember, microsoft is watching you), but Java’s implementation - JDK is going to be released under GPL, which will allow creation of alternative java implementations.

Having started working with java somewhere between 1997 and 1998 (yeap, the good old java 1 with AWT and the rest of the wagon), seeing one or two bettas of JAVA 2 with the swing, and then impatiently waiting each month for a newer versions, testing betas, writing applications, fixing the bugs … Java made a long journey with me during all those years, until 2005 when i have switched myself more to .NET. Right now i am looking to get back in touch with java and explore more of the stuff released recently … One thing i was really missing all those years was a reasonable hosting for JSP, maybe with all those announcements and the buzz, more hosting providers will open the doors to java, it is certainly deserves it.

and for the last … Open JDK … i am excited to see some alternative java implementations in the nearest future … This is a way to go …

It is still difficult to believe the speed and the adoptance of the 64-bit systems, especially in the world of Windows.

First of all, i have to confess, having the 32-bit windows system at home though my processor supports 64-bits. I mean there is no need to spend money on the system, which has so many problems with the current software. Yeap i am not just talking about the air, but the fact that i am facing each and every day on my job. I have “the luck” (with no alternative options) of using a Win2003 64-bit system at work, and let me say, that if i could, i would changed it for the good old 32-bit for sure. There way too many problems with programs written before such changes as the registry modifications of Wow64 and so on. I have such a big list of programs which are simply not compatible. Unfortunately for me as there are programs which i can avoid using (old GIMP versions and so on), there are a lot of internal programs and libraries which keep crashing the system and there is not much as i can do to correct them (no access or just a simple binary library to “use”).

Ok, i do respect the fact, that not a lot of developers are ready to spend the money on 64-bit Windows to get a monster, spending even more and more resources, but i am surprised to see so few professional (not home-brewed) applications being tested for the 64-bit - and it is the future, cause it is just a simple question of time, when intel and amd will decide to stop supporting 32-bits, not talking about Microsoft… The weirdest thing is the kind of difficulties one have to face when trying to have different .net applications running on .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0, i mean this is not a Longhorn(aka Vista), and there IS a need for support for it…

Anyway i hope to see more and more applications actually converting to the compatibility with the Windows 64-bit, 2 weeks ago finally a new version of the ITunes (that by everybody critisized 7.0) arrived, which finally allowed me to use the Itunes (the last 6.0x version even didnt allowed to proceed with the install process)…

Professional developers, its about time … =O)