WinFX... Avalon, Indigo, WinFS. All wrapped up together. Fairly realistic game physics and dynamics. Networked multiplayer frenzies.

Lots of fun building the demo, and lots more fun to be had DMing on top of the best platform ever.

I have now completed a full work week at Microsoft.

And I freaking love it here. The environment, the people, the work. I think my biggest challenge moving forward is to remember that there is life outside of work... Nearly every day this week I ended up so involved in what I was doing that I ended up working between 14 and 16 hours. And I loved every moment of it!

If I wasn't explicit about it previously, I've joined the CLR BCL team as a Program Manager working for BradA. My focus will be primarily on API design and multithreading in WinFX. In particular, ensuring that developers can walk up to the programming model and be productive immediately, while at the same time providing the ability to create very powerful software.

For me, this is a dream come true. I'm able to focus on the big picture of how various pieces fit together (and in fact ensuring that they fit together nicely!), while at the same time having to understand the platform in fairly granular technical detail.

I'll have plenty of stuff to say in the coming weeks. If you have any feedback you'd like to provide, there are a number of channels with which to do so...

• Leave comments on this blog;
• Email my Microsoft email: johnduffNOSPAM at microsoft dot com (Note: my Microsoft email address should be changing shortly to joeduNOSPAM at microsoft dot com);
• Email my personal email: joeNOSPAM at bluebytesoftware dot com.

I've recently had a resurgence in my interests with regards to functional programming, and have decided that I want to dive deeper. More specifically, I'm looking to purchase a set of authoritative texts on the subject.

I'm moderately familiar Haskell and ML, and a bit more so with LISP (Scheme and Common). I've also toyed with F#, but only just enough to be dangerous. I'm more interested in the core fundamentals and theory of functional programming versus a specific language or how-to focus, although discussions on the historical evolution of languages is cool, too. Hardcore math and textbook style reading is welcome.

Any suggestions?

A couple weeks ago, I was amazed at my creativity and cleverness with regards to some Ruby-like iterator functionality - only to find out that most of it was already implemented in 2.0.

Krzysztof discusses these very improvements in a recent blog post.

Not only can I not find any GSM coverage (yes, I drove around in a 15 mile radius like a moron looking for some), but AT&T claims I don't even have an account with them! This is particularly odd because I ordered a plan, and did in fact receive a SIM card and a bunch of AT&T literature with my shipment... Who knows?! Not them.

And I just now realized that Amazon doesn't provide phone support! (This is good and bad. Good because it means I've never had the need to use it during any of my prior 30 orders, bad because I'm stuck sending an email into a black hole waiting for a response “within 24 hours.”)

At least the phone looks cool.

I just received my new Smartphone (Motorola MPx200) today.

And I also realized I don't have an AT&T GSM/GPRS signal from my apartment.

Which means I can't even register the thing and get my stinkin' phone number.

Bummer.

Via James Gosling, evidently the J2SE team is now publishing weekly builds of Tiger (J2SE v1.5). This is huge.

Although at this point the usefulness of such openness is fairly limited (Tiger is well past its initial public beta, and is currently in stabilization mode), this is a subtle - but nonetheless important - indication that Sun is learning a few lessons from Microsoft's continued focus on the development community. Mark Reinhold, Chief Engineer for J2SE, admits that their primary motivation is quality of the final release, in particular to "increase the level of external testing and thereby improve the quality of the final result." He also draws comparison to the "release early, release often" methodology adopted by most Open Source projects, although I don't find that this analogy travels very far.

What's interesting is that there is no mention of incorporating (or encouraging) community feedback earlier in project release cycles when it matters most. James does say that "if it works well, we'd like to continue in subsequent release cycles." It's not clear, however, what specifically this would entail. Still encouraging, nonetheless.

I firmly believe that - in general - the more involvement from the community, the better the end result. More feedback during the stabilization period will translate into a more stable product - one would hope - which benefits both Sun and the community. Similarly, incorporating community feedback into other areas of the product design would likely lend a hand to product richness and quality. I would bet there's a lot of learning to be had regarding the best means by which to build products collaboratively with the respective communities - both for Sun and Microsoft. I also wonder if the ability to master such a process will be a significant differentiating feature for development platforms down the road.

I think this is a great move by Sun, one which is slightly contradictory to their historical strangle hold on the Java development process, a view into which was previously only available via the JCP. I can't wait to see how this new policy matures.

The future is definitely a great place to be for developers.

This op-ed piece is required reading for anybody who cares about the future of Windows and the .NET Framework:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

I'll refrain from commenting until I've sufficiently digested and re-read the information.

As I mentioned earlier, we will be relocating from Massachusetts to Washington state very shortly.

And as the plans start to materialize, I have a growing concern over our wine collection. Truthfully, the collection is not that large (on the order of 100 bottles), but the average bottle cost is moderate (probably about $60)... That's about $6k in wine - a product that is very easy to destroy with improper shipping and handling. Especially if Mother Nature decides to conjur up any extreme weather during the move.

It's not just the cost of replacement that I'm worried about, but rather a combination of other factors too

• Some collector's vintages, such as 1999 Chateau Mouton Rothschild and Almaviva, 1999 Castello Banfi Excelsus and Summus, and a vast array of 1997 and 1999 Brunello di Montalcinos;
• Major sentimental value;
• Most likely, it'd be a “wait and see” game to find out which - if any - were ruined in the move... imagine the disappointment of uncorking a $300 bottle of wine only to find out that it's ruined;
• It's taken a lot of time and careful picking to build up what we have, with an eye for vintages that age well.

So, all of these factors together are making me consider specialty shipping. But, it's expensive.

Of course we could just drink them all before we move. :)

I'm currently enjoying a perfectly steeped China green tea, in particular an organic Chun Mee Dao Ming.

The dry leaf appears and has an aroma that indicates a smokiness, but this quality doesn't transfer very directly to the cup. In fact, the liquor is very smooth and wonderfully flavorful with a great full mouth feel. It has a slightly tangy flavor in there towards the finish, almost peachy but not quite fully developed. If this fruitiness had asserted itself a little bit more, I'd have fallen in love.

Still a keeper in my book.