Scott Densmore

Hilos and Unit Testing in C++

Jason Zander's blog post on Unit Testing mentioned our Hilo project doing unit testing for Metro Applications in C++.

My Favorite Features: Unit Testing Enhancements in Visual Studio 11 

If you are really interested in this, download the code and check it out. We have to do some tricks to test Asyc methods, but since everything is async these days, you will probably find it useful.

If you have any feedback, leave it on the site so we can put this into future releases.

Enjoy!

Hilo, C++, and PPL

We are making heavy use of the Parallel Programming Library in Native Code. I really love this. After our PPL books from last year, I have really been interested in this. One of our awesome team members, Thomas Petchel, has written up some intro material on our code displaying this. 

Enjoy

Another Hilo Release

We have done some major work on Hilo to get things in better shape. Right now we are waiting on the next release of Windows 8 and Visual Studio coming soon to make the final push before we call this done before RTM. Please go check out the code / docs and give us some feedback!

Enjoy!

Simple Capped Exponential Back-Off for Queues

Really cool post on Windows Azure Queues. This is something that would be easy to replace in our guidance on Windows Azure.

Simple Capped Exponential Back-Off for Queues: "

Recently Steve Marx and I spent a few hours working on a best practices document for Windows Azure. As expected, this was a fun and educational experience – plenty of goofing around, but also some really good discussion on things to think about when building applications for Windows Azure. One of the items we discussed is a better approach for sleeping inside the Worker Role when pulling from queues. Rather than defaulting to a retry every 10 seconds we decided that the best approach is to exponentially back-off on your queue reads while capping it with an upper bound. "

(Via Wade Wegner.)

C9 Live: Tuesday - Patterns and Practices Symposium

I'll be there!

C9 Live: Tuesday - Patterns and Practices Symposium: "

On Tuesday, April 24, well host the first ever patterns & practices Symposium online on Channel 9! Microsoft patterns & practices symposiums are held regularly in the U.S. and abroad, with top speakers on current topics. Most of the speakers are from the Microsoft patterns & practices (p&p) team. The event is aimed primarily at software architects, developers, and technical managers. Patterns & practices develops applied engineering guidelines to help software developers and architects build great solutions on the Microsoft platform.

The April 24th online p&p symposium program 2012 will include keynote sessions and technical sessions focusing on building scalable applications in Azure, mobile development, node.js, CQRS, .NET Gadgeteer and Micro Framework, and a general overview of p&p roadmap.

You can watch starting at 10:00 AM PST right here on Channel 9.

"

(Via Channel 9.)

Feeding My Need to Experiment

I was reading Alex Homer's blog this morning (shame on you if you are not reading it), and it got me thinking: Do I still like to experiment?

In his latest post, he talks about the need to experiment and what people are doing today. I agree with him and it got me thinking of what I do these days to experiment. Mostly it comes down to languages and devices which I have been doing this most of my life. Lately it has been Windows 8 using C++ and XAML.

I know many people have nightmares about C++, but with C++'11 and the new modern COM (WinRT), things are much better (and fun). We are working on a new project (Hilo) that is all about building a Metro app with C++. This is another chapter in the original Hilo project that was built for Windows 7.

I will be talking more about it as we get closer. We are getting ready to have a release on CodePlex.

Enjoy!

Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure Release

It always takes a while for your project to go live on MSDN but it is alive… ALIVE!  We really put a lot of effort into this one and is the last in the series. You should go check it out.

I have spent the past couple of years knee deep with Windows Azure and it has been awesome.  I can't believe what we were able to accomplish:

• Moving Applications to the Cloud, 2nd Edition
• Developing Applications for the Cloud, 2nd Edition
• Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure
• A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control (2nd Edition)

Working on our new project is completely new! Will let you know more later!

Your own lightweight & robust STS in Windows Azure

The guys at thinktecture have come up with a cool way for you to have your own STS in your application that is simple and lightweight.  These guys review our Claims Identity Guide and I can say these guys know Identity. Go download yourself a copy and get your identity on!

Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure RC

This is the 3rd in our series of Windows Azure Guidance.  This one is our release candidate and we should be done this week. There is a lot of post production to get the book done and onto MSDN, yet it will not be to much longer. While you wait, give the RC a whirl.

Enjoy!

Style Cop: The Effective Way

We use Style Cop to keep everyone honost  on our projects. It make it easy and integrates pretty well with ReSharper. I have never stopped to write up how we do this, but Geoff Cox from SouthWorks does a pretty good job here. Treat it like a new project… start from a blank slate.