#2782

Speaking Today at Much Ado About Agile

Ade Miller — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:00:00 +0000

I’m speaking at Much Ado About Agile 2009 in Vancouver today. You can find the deck here.

I’ve given versions of this talk before to various groups and a lot of details are covered in the white paper I wrote last year. The white paper covers most of the content from the talk in more detail can be downloaded from MSDN. Since writing it I’ve also written a series of blog posts on some of the new ideas we’ve discussed since.

Distributed Agile Development at Microsoft patterns & practices (MSDN paper)

Distributed Agile Development at Microsoft Updated (blog updates)

I’ll probably be updating this post this evening to add links based on questions and feedback I get during the talk. At some point I’m hoping to go back and have time to do a second version of the paper too.

PDC 2009: What’s Happening at the Patterns Workshop

Ade Miller — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:43:36 +0000

We’ve been busy working hard on our decks for the PDC Patterns of Parallel Programming workshop. You can see the preliminary agenda in the slide below. As you can see we’re planning to have plenty of time for questions and hope to cover a lot of ground.

One of my goals for the workshop is to get feedback from attendees as to what their biggest challenges are around parallel computing and what we can do to help. Herb Sutter—who’s speaking at the workshop—has a short poll on concurrency. If your attending the workshop you can also fill out the workshop survey.

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229P7LCF47G

Looking forward to talking to people in LA in a couple of weeks. Hope to see lots of you there!

There’s still time to register for PDC and get a $300 discount if you sign up before the end of October.

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Post tags: Parallel Computing, Pattern, PDC 2009

Windows 7 RTM on the Samsung NC10

Ade Miller — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Now Windows 7 has finally shipped I thought I’d update my series of posts on getting Windows 7 RTM (Release to Manufacture) up and running on the Samsung NC10.

So here we go… How to get Windows 7 running on the NC10…

After installing Windows 7 Enterprise and running Windows Update I installed the following drivers and applications. Several of these are newer versions that the ones I used in my Windows 7 RC post.

Update! Samsung have released some NC10 drivers for Windows 7. I’ve updated the list below to reflect the latest versions.

Thanks to Jonas and Nick Rich for pointing out the newer drivers from Samsung and Synaptics. Post comments here if you have feedback or further tips on getting Windows 7 on the NC10.

Device drivers and applications

Easy Display Manager 4.0.0.2 (from Samsung’s Windows 7 drivers) – Installs the hotkeys for sound volume and screen brightness.

Easy Battery Manager 3.0.3.5 (from Samsung’s Windows 7 drivers) – This installs the “Samsung Optimized” power plan and sets it as the default.

MS Hotfix Common Win7 1.0.0.3 (from Samsung’s Windows 7 drivers) – Hotfixes for KB974204 and KB974719 and some other things. Windows Update may cover this for you automatically.

There are some other tools/applications for the NC10 on Samsung’s site but I’ve not installed these yet.

Synaptics Touchpad v14.0.6.0 Vista x86/64 – This version has a built in two finger scrolling feature so no need to install any additional scrolling tools.

Realtek HD sound drivers for Vista,Windows 7 R2.33 – Needed to get the microphone working

Play Camera 1.0.0.31 – Camera application (optional).

Why am I using Windows 7 Enterprise? Firstly because I use this netbook at work and Microsoft’s IT group support this version (I need a version which will be able to join a domain). Secondly because I’ve not had any issues running the higher end versions of Windows 7 on the NC10. Obviously I could have opted for Home or even Starter if I wanted to for just home use.

Have fun and as usual post comments here. For previous posts there’s been lots of good feedback and people have got their issues worked out.

p&p Summit 2009: Developing for Multi-Core

Ade Miller — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:17:58 +0000

The p&p Summit is in full swing this week in Redmond. Today I’ll be talking about Distributed agile Development and thinking about how to make the most of multi-core hardware. I was up preparing a pre-talk video last night. If I can shrink it small enough I’ll post it on YouTube.

Here’s a short video Keith took a few weeks back

Ade Miller on Developing for Multi-Core Computers

If you’ve missed the Summit then there’s still time to register for the Patterns of Parallel Programming workshop at PDC. We’ll be getting into a whole lot more detail than my fifteen—yes, that’s one five—minute session at the Summit will allow!

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Post tags: p&p, p&p Summit 2009, Parallel Computing

PDC 2009: Patterns of Parallel Programming Survey

Ade Miller — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Coming to the Patterns of Parallel Programming workshop at PDC this year? Just thinking about it? We’ve put together a very short survey to try and gauge the audience and try and tailor our content.

If you have two or three minutes, because that’s all it takes, fill in the survey…

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229P7LCF47G

Thanks!

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Post tags: Parallel Computing, Patterns, PDC 2009

Agile Vancouver – Much Ado About Agile IV

Ade Miller — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I speaking on “Distributed Agile Development” at Much Ado About Agile IV on Tuesday November 5th. Registration is now open and costs $190-350 CDN.

My last conference in Vancouver was ALT.NET Canada in June. It was a blast, I learnt a lot and got to talk to some great people. So I’m looking forward to getting back to Vancouver again. I guess I’ll also get to find out if heavy drinking is an ALT.NET thing or a Vancouver thing.

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Post tags: agile, Distributed teams, Events, Vancouver

N-Body Modeling Pages Online

Ade Miller — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:53:03 +0000

So I finally got around to putting some pages up about n-body modeling (link in nav bar above).

Even if you’re not into numerical simulations, physics or any of that stuff some of the mixed language aspects of the code might be of interest. I’m not really a C# guy or firmly in the C++ camp. It’s the right tool for the right job.

Contrary to popular belief if you’re a vaguely reasonable C++ programmer (or even a pretty poor one, like me) then wrapping native code in C++/CLI so it can be used from managed code isn’t that hard.

Since the first couple of posts on this I’ve also added some F#. More on that and the CUDA implementation(s) sometime in the future.

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Post tags: Mixed languages, NBody.net, Parallel Computing

PDC 2009: Patterns of Parallel Programming Facebook page

Ade Miller — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:53:00 +0000

I’ve created a Patterns of Parallel Programming Facebook page…

We’ll be posting updates to this page in the next couple of months before PDC. If you’re planning on attending the workshop itself or just PDC then sign up. I’d really like to get some ideas as to what people are interested in hearing the most about at the PDC workshop.

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Post tags: Parallel Computing, Patterns, PDC 2009

PDC 2009: Patterns of Parallel Programming Resources

Ade Miller — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:27:00 +0000

A while back I wrote about Parallel Computing: The Old new Thing. One of the things p&p is doing to help developers be successful in this space is to talk about the underlying patterns. We’re running a workshop at PDC as a first step in this effort.

The preCon sessions aren’t videoed for later viewing online so if you miss the session in November you can’t catch up on it later.

Register before October 13th and save $300. Spend the money you saved on a PreCon workshop registration!

But… If you really can’t attend here are some pointers to some of the source material I’ll be basing my talk on.

(...)
Read the rest of PDC 2009: Patterns of Parallel Programming Resources (293 words)

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Post tags: Parallel Computing, Patterns, PDC 2009

Gotchas: Adding Attributes to Properties on Interfaces in F#

Ade Miller — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:49:00 +0000

I ran into a couple of issues when writing an F# class to be consumed by C#. Specifically when it came to adding attributes to a property declared on an interface. You would expect the following code to decorate the SofteningLength property with the Dependency and DefaultValue attributes:

#light
  
namespace NBody.DomainModel.Integrators
  
open System
open System.ComponentModel
open NBody.DomainModel
open Microsoft.Practices.Unity
  
["Forward Euler (F#)")>]
type public ForwardEulerFSharpIntegrator() = class 
  let mutable softeningLength = 0.0
  let mutable isInitialized = false 
  
  // IIntegrate implementation
    
  interface IIntegrate with 
      
    ["SofteningLength")>]
    []
    member public this.SofteningLength 
      with get() = softeningLength 
      and set(value) = softeningLength <- value
    
    member public this.Initialize(bodies) = 
      isInitialized <- true
  
    member public this.Integrate(dT, (bodies:Body[])) = 
      if not isInitialized then raise (InvalidOperationException("inner"))    
        
  end
end

If it all worked I wouldn’t be writing this post. Turns out this is a bug in the F# May 2009 CTP (and probably Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 & 2).

No attributes means that my code breaks are runtime. The Unity dependency injection container my application uses cannot create the object correctly as it doesn’t see the SofteningLength property as a dependency and other code I wrote to read the default value also fails to find the attribute. Looking at the IL or C# disassembly in Reflector shows that the attributes were not generated.

(...)
Read the rest of Gotchas: Adding Attributes to Properties on Interfaces in F# (325 words)

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Post tags: C#, F#, Gotchas, Mixed languages, Unity