Blake Niemyjski : C++, .Net

Got Posters?

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:26:00 GMT

Chris Bowen’s did a search last month for all posters available on Microsoft Downloads. This is what he found:

.NET 3.5 Namespaces Poster
The .NET Framework 3.5 Common Namespaces and Types Poster
Visual Basic 2008 Keybinding Poster
Printable wall poster containing list of useful keyboard shortcuts for Visual Basic 2008 developers
Visual C++ 2008 Keybinding Poster
List of keybindings for Visual C++ language within Visual Studio and Visual C++ Express 2008
Visual C# 2008 Poster
Wall chart showing useful keyboard shortcuts for Visual C# programming language
2007 Office System: Developer Posters
Download these posters to learn more about the new features and enhancement to the 2007 Microsoft Office System.
Windows Server 2008 Component Posters
Windows Server 2008 Component Posters, originally printed in the July 2007 issue of TechNet Magazine.
Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 (Ed: Make that 2.0) Developer Reference Poster
Microsoft Silverlight Developer Reference Poster
PnP Overview Poster
Patterns & Practices Overview Poster
Smart Client Poster
Patterns & Practices Smart Client Poster
Visual C# 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster
This poster contains the default keybindings for Visual C# 2005, and is available as a PDF download in either color or grayscale for you to print.
Visual Basic 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster
This poster contains the default key bindings for Visual Basic 2005, and is available as a PDF download in either color or grayscale for you to print.
Visual C++ 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster
This poster contains the default keybindings for Visual C++ 2005, and is available as a PDF download in either color or grayscale for you to print.

I also just did a search for myself and only came up with four results.

Microsoft to release FoxPro ‘Sedna’ as Shared Source

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 04:39:00 GMT

Mary Jo Foley whose currently in Seattle at the Microsoft MVP summit has learned that "Microsoft plans to release by the end of this summer the Foxpro "Sedna" bits as Shared Source on its CodePlex code-repository site". For the complete article check out the source.

View Source ( Microsoft to release FoxPro ‘Sedna’ as Shared Source )

Important Daylight Savings Time Update for Developers

Blake Niemyjski — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 08:19:00 GMT

A while back I received an email from Microsoft regarding a Daylight Saving Time (DST) update, which will take place via Windows Updates sometime soon. I highly recommend that everyone takes the time reads the below message even if this does not affect you, because it may help someone you know.

"Dear Valued Microsoft Customer,

In 2005, the United States government passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This act changes the start and end dates for Daylight Saving Time (DST) as of spring 2007. These changes may impact the way applications run. Microsoft is releasing an update for Windows through Microsoft Update that reflects these changes.

Developers who use the .NET Framework may find their applications affected if the application uses the time zone information for historical purposes or if they have derived custom classes from System.TimeZone to provide custom time zone information. The standard System.TimeZone class provides a managed wrapper for the underlying Windows Operating System time zone functions.
In addition, developers who use Visual C++ may find their applications affected if they use the CRT time functions, or the TZ environment variable. Microsoft is currently working on a fix for this issue and will post information about its availability on the Visual Studio Support page.
Most applications that use these affected classes will not need to be modified as this update will ensure that the correct data is provided seamlessly to the application. However, applications that use these classes or the underlying Windows API to perform historical time look-ups will need to be modified. For more information, see the FAQ that follows.
In most cases, developers who have extended the .NET Framework’s time zone support by creating custom time zone classes derived from System.TimeZone, or by direct access to the Win32 API, will not have to update their applications as long as the available updates to the operating system are applied. However, solutions that rely on private time zone data, or that retrieve system time zone information by accessing the registry directly, may need to be updated. Applications that deal with historical time zone data may also need to be updated.
Microsoft advises all developers who make use of time zone data to test their applications against this update to ensure that their applications function correctly.
For more information, see Preparing for daylight saving time changes in 2007 and KB928388: 2007 time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Further Assistance

Microsoft values your business. For more information visit http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007, or contact Microsoft for assistance. A list of phone numbers is located at http://support.microsoft.com. Microsoft Premier Customers may engage their Technical Account Manager directly.

Please DO NOT REPLY to this email as this is not a monitored inbox. If you have questions/inquiries please visit http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007

This e-mail is intended for distribution within the United States. Please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary for similar offerings outside the US.

Thank you,

Microsoft US Developer Team"

View ( Frequently Asked Questions )

Visual Studio 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Posters

Blake Niemyjski — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 09:10:00 GMT

I found these posters after exploring an interesting MSDN blog of a K-12 Computer Science Academic Relations Manager. The posters are nice and well worth spending the couple of seconds to download them.

Here are the download links for each language(s) shortcut reference poster

Visual Basic 2005
Visual C#
Visual C++

Source ( Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcut Posters )

10 Programming Languages everyone should learn.

Blake Niemyjski — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 18:12:00 GMT

I found this article over at eweek.com a few days ago and found it to be worthy of posting.

1. PHP

What it is: An open-source, interpretive, server-side, cross-platform, HTML scripting language, especially well-suited for Web development as it can be embedded into HTML pages.

Why you should learn it: It's particularly widely used. "High-speed scripting with caching, augmented with compiled code plug-ins (such as can be done with Perl and PHP) is where the future is. Building Web apps from scratch using C or COBOL is going the way of the dinosaur," said Duquaine.

Job availabilities: 1,152*

2. C#
What it is: A general-purpose, compiled, object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft as part of its .NET initiative, it evolved from C and C++

Why you should learn it: It's an essential part of the .Net framework. "Learning C#, which is just Java with a different name plate, is critical if you heavily use Microsoft," said Duquaine.

Job availabilities: 5,111

3. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
What it is: Though technically not a programming language, AJAX uses XHTML or HTML, JavaScript and XML to create interactive Web applications.

Why you should learn it: Ever since Google Maps put AJAX, well, on the map, the requests for AJAX-knowledgeable pros went through the roof. "The demand for AJAX knowledge is huge because it's so damned hard to learn," said Huckaby. Of note, Microsoft announced recently plans to release a tool named Atlas that will make AJAX easier to implement. "If Microsoft's Atlas tool is successful, it would bring the extreme complexity and annoyance of AJAX to the average worker," said Huckaby.

Job availabilities : 1,106

4. JavaScript
What it is: Not to be confused with Java, JavaScript is a an object-oriented, scripting programming language that runs in the Web browser on the client side. It's smaller than Java, with a simplified set of commands, easier to code and doesn't have to be compiled.

Why you should learn it: Embedded into HTML, it's used in millions of Web pages to validate forms, create cookies, detect browsers and improve the design. With its simplicity to learn as well as wide use, it's considered a great bang for your educational buck.

Job availabilities: 4,406

5. Perl
What it is: Perl is an open-source, cross-platform, server-side interpretive programming language used extensively to process text through CGI programs.

Why you should learn it: Perl's power in processing of piles of text has made it very popular and widely used to write Web server programs for a range of tasks. "Learning some form of scripting language, such as Perl or PHP is critical if you are doing Web apps," said Duquaine.

Job availabilities: 4,810

6. C
What it is: A standardized, general-purpose programming language, it's one of the most pervasive languages and the basis for several others (such as C++).

Why you should learn it: "Learning C is crucial. Once you learn C, making the jump to Java or C# is fairly easy, because a lot of the syntax is common. Also, a lot of C syntax is used in scripting languages," said Duquaine.

Job availabilities: 6,164, including all derivatives

7. Ruby and Ruby on Rails
What they are: Ruby is a dynamic, object-oriented, open-source programming language; Ruby on Rails is an open-source Web application framework written in Ruby that closely follows the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture.

Why you should learn it: With a focus on simplicity, productivity and letting the computers do the work, in a few years, its usage has spread quickly. As a bonus, many find it easy to learn.

Job availabilities : 210 and 54, respectively

8. Java
What it is: An object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s.

Why you should learn it: Hailed by many developers as a "beautiful" language, it is central to the non-.Net programming experience. "Learning Java is critical if you are non-Microsoft," said Duquaine.

Job availabilities: 14,408

9. Python
What it is: An interpreted, dynamically object-oriented, open-source programming language that utilizes automatic memory management.

Why you should learn it: Designed to be a highly readable, minimalist language, many say it has a sense of humor (spam and eggs, rather than foo and bar), Python is used extensively by Google as well as in academia because of its syntactic simplicity.

Job availabilities: 811

10. VB.Net (Visual Basic .Net)
What it is: An object-oriented language implemented on Microsoft's .Net framework.

Why you should learn it: Most argue that VB.Net is currently more popular than ever and one of the only "must-learns." "It is currently dominating in adoption and that is where all the work is," said Huckaby.

Job availabilities: 2,090

I'm hopeing that they write up a simular article in about a year. I would love to see if any avalon related technologys make it on this list. I'm pretty amazed that I already know five out of the ten langueages present in this list and am currently learning the 6th (C).