Philip Wolfe - Just the idea guy

Do you want to get involved with Microsoft exams?

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:00:00 GMT

http://www.studiob.com/jobs.cfm#.NET%20Certification%20exams%20-%20Alpha%20Reviewers%20Needed

About Me: My Favorite Notepad Replacement

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:50:00 GMT

I am quite fond of Notepad2 with the enhancements found at this site. It is lightweight and fast. It doesn't try to do to much and just enough that it will be an instant favorite. I recommend using the installer as it will replace calls to your current Notepad so that Notepad2 is launched.

About Me: My Favorite File Sync Tool

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:45:00 GMT

I am quite fond of Allway Sync. Check them out at http://www.allwaysync.com. I would however recommend version 6.1.6. I think this is the last version before an annoying message or limitation about the number of bytes it can/will sync. File Hippo can't even help out on this one. Google or ask around for it.

State Machines in WWF 4

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:30:00 GMT

This post is long overdue but I couldn't believe that State Machine workflows aren't a first class citizen in .NET 4.0. This revelation came after reading a few articles last year. They tried to make it seem OK and that this was a good decision. They are wrong. At Tech Ed in LA I was able to speak to several product team members, industry thought leaders, and program managers in the connected systems teams. After explaining that a State Machine is the best design for processes that are similar to "application processing" like a car loan or life insurance where the process takes from 1 day to 2 weeks or more, they all agreed that Microsoft's decision wasn't right. They should have brought the State Machine along before creating the Flowchart Workflow. Some suggested a design with a Pick Activity that would loop and have a leg for each state. Again, a bad upgrade scenario for customers.

Along with that major complaint, I couldn't believe that they switched completely from DependencyPropertys to passing arguments to activities. I don't agree with this decision either. I will agree that DependencyPropertys are hard to understand at first, but in the end they are the best design for workflows. In my opinion it seems that the team working on this version of workflow didn't understand the previous version and decided to rewrite it. Some at Tech Ed said that this isn't true. The team did understand it but need to make this huge change because this is where Microsoft wants to be going forward. Thanks for the terrible upgrade scenarios for the early adopters!

Regardless, WWF 3 will still work side by side with version 4 and VS10 supports v3 in the designer! Win for us even though the designer pretty much sucks. For now our team will stick with v3 because it is the right design and we will continue to enhance it with new activities and possibly an open source designer.

I am very excited for some upcoming posts. I would like to share with everyone some cool activities we are using as well as a design pattern and best practice for using a State Machine Workflow. It allows the State Machine to call Sequence workflows synchronously. It will also show a best practice for WCF hosting without Microsoft's WCF activities (which, also in my opinion, stink because they tie you to a communication technology).

The original Green Company

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:01:00 GMT

Around Christmas I was cleaning up our basement and had some stuff to take to Goodwill and found out that Best Buy would take 2 computer items per person per day to recycle. As I was dropping off the stuff at Goodwill, they asked if I was donating the computers. Bewildered, I was surprised that they took them because I had tried to donate one several years back. They said that they have been accepting them for a year now and the parts are sent to a central location where they are turned into working computers again.

So...don't destroy or throw away your old equipment, donate it to Goodwill.

Reminders to keep my mouth shut...

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

While studying up on the history of C# on wikipedia and reading the C# spec, I stumbled upon some criticism of C# and the .NET framework. Have a read of these articles from two high ups from the company formerly known as Sun and take note of the date and their tiny understanding of what they are criticizing. The dates are Jan and Feb of 2002. .NET came out on Feb 14, 2002. They are putting down .NET for allowing unsafe code and for not being reliable or productive. For one you can't compare ActiveX to .NET and I don't think you have any room to talk about productivity. Thanks guys for the reminder to keep my mouth shut when I am just trying to put something down.

http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-831385.html
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082-817522.html

(from the James Gosling blog http://blogs.sun.com/jag/)

Annoyed by a button

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Ever since I purchased my Shop Vac brand shop vac, I have thought that their on/off button design is terrible. There are two independent buttons that travel up and down to turn the unit on and off. After the first few uses, the on and off buttons rub along the plastic cover and begin to stick. Sometimes the unit doesn't turn on or off because of the friction created by the poor design. The design is so bad I called the company to complain and they thanked me for my feedback. I would not recommend this product until it is changed.