Kosher

You might think that C++ / CLI would only be used by a few developers but I know that there are people at major film studios (I can't say the names) that would love to use C++ / CLI and .NET for applications on linux.  Both proprietary and commercial products in film are running at the core of a linux production pipeline and windows developers today are enjoying the interoperability that C++/CLI brings to these applications.

That's the key differentiator between ****BZZZZZ!  lol... classic.

Bust out the hard hat Mike.  We know you want to get all up in this video with your coding skillz.  Would love to see some intense sessions on cool new stuff.  Maybe some topics on how mathematics and how it plays a key role in some of the technologies at MS.  Now that would be geeky!  Maybe some physics stuff too.

Yes yes...  I never said the interview was bad or even that the idea was bad.  I was just pointing out that the library does not exist yet.  Sort of like counting your chickens before they hatch, something we all know can cause quite a bit of shoot-self-in-foot action.

My whole intention was to put my code out there and ask what the difference is between their interop and mine, if any.  I was a bit excited to see that there will be some new marshaling classes but was let down when they said "only strings are supported" since that's probably the most trivial aspect.

I really look forward to having a marshaling library that allows for fast marshaling between my native and managed types, without having to focus on it too much.

Good interview and nice handwriting too.

Thanks!

BryanF wrote:

I think you're being a bit myopic. Developers should have considerably fewer headaches as a result of all the technologies she talked about. Certainly the updated control library, in particular, will be welcomed.

I thought it was a good interview myself. Additionally, I have to say she has some of the nicest whiteboard handwriting I've seen.

Only support for strings?  Uhm, that's like saying "Hey, we have this great marshaling library but it only supports strings".  LOL

That's not really a library but more like a code snippet.  Don't get me all excited about interop then give me something so trivial.  Is something wrong with the code below?

Utils::Utils(void)
{
}

const char* Utils::MarshalString( String ^ s )
{
   using namespace Runtime::InteropServices;
   const char* chars = (const char*)   (Marshal::StringToHGlobalAnsi(s)).ToPointer();
   return chars;
}

tcp::endpoint Utils::MarshalEndPoint( System::Net::IPEndPoint ^endpoint )
{
   return tcp::endpoint(Utils::MarshalAddress(endpoint->Address), endpoint->Port);
}

boost::filesystem::path Utils::MarshalFileInfo(System::String ^fullPath)
{
   return boost::filesystem::path(Utils::MarshalString(fullPath));
}

System::Collections::Generic::List<float>^ Utils::MarshalFloatVector(std::vector<float>& data)
{
   System::Collections::Generic::List<float>^ items = gcnew System::Collections::Generic::List<float>;
   for(int i = 0; i < data.size(); i++)
      items->Add(data[i]);
   return items;
}

I just released the first beta of a Maya To XAML converter.  Right now it only exports the meshes in the scene.  I should have materials, lights, and animation exporting soon.

The download is at:

http://www.thomasgoddard.com/

or

http://spaces.msn.com/members/thomasgoddard/Blog/cns!1p--mKxHOrH2gfcvubjasyAg!144.entry?owner=1

Regards,
Thomas Goddard

Yeah it totally reminds me of the good old days when we used to work with flash for the client ui and create asp pages that output XML.

Now we have this amazing designer tool, my designer friends are going nuts, and a great data store (WinFS)...

So many people pour their lives into their work and now we have the tools that not only let us express our true talents but the platform is huge!

Kudos to the team at MS for making a sick implementation of what so many envisioned but juts couldn't do.

This gave me some motivation to create an article on how to export Alias Maya models to direct (.x) files and use them in your avalon UI.  Just wish I had the Sparkle editor so I could really crang out some results

Kosher,
ThomasGoddard.com

TimP, yours is the best. You make use of the best performing C# implementation by using the native methods in the .net framework and the least lines of code. Just MHO Cheers, Kosher MCSD/MCAD .net

RSS Bleh!!  Come on now... All this buzz about an XML format that 1 in 100 people include a schema.  It's just a bunch of raw XML basically.

What ever happened to this idea that strongly typed datasets over web services would allow people to consume and use schemas (like WinFS).  RSS is not a low level thing, nor is it object oriented.  You call a URL and get a calendar back but what about paging, sorting, data integrity (strong typing with schemas[int,string,bool,etc.]), and security.

What about posting data?  Our calendars are always read only? Our friends list is always read only?  Or do we just go ahead and send an untyped RSS data structure back to some aspx page?  This is the slop that I can't stand.

Peer to peer is great but peer to peer can also incorporate schemas to share not only the binary data but the types that are transported between the consumers and senders.  There is so much potential out there with WinFS.  Lets not get all side tracked with RSS and the fact that the community of non object oriented developers enjoy consuming "items" because they're so "easy".  I think RSS is a great add on but to me, it's just another XML structure that allows people, that don't understand what strongly typed objects give you, to create user interfaces that just display data.  Anyone can create a wrapper for windows media player .

Another problem is the fact that outlook, Active Directory, Exchange server, WINS, DNS, and many other products run on old Microsoft Access databases.  The APIs to these things are incomplete, antiquated, and very difficult to use.  You also get data corruption from these things.  Once WinFS is out, we'll see these critical windows services moving into SQL Server 2005 express or some ambiguous flavor that comes with the install of the application.  Then we'll need a way to expose the schemas for these services and applications so that we can consume, send data, and communicate with the APIs.

I will be much more impressed when WinFS releases their library of schemas that work with all of the windows applications and later other languages start adopting XSD.  Then you RSS monkeys can go and create all of your own classes in whatever language you want and I'll be over here autogenerating my classes and DataSets with prebuilt schemas. That's when we're off to the races folks!

T



 

I have to say, I don't like RSS.  RSS is like that XML document that you get that has all kinds of formatting issues, (I need to watch my language) just nested all over the place, and your boss says "Here now make this work in our application"...I liked when Microsoft had the webservices vision of everything, not this RSS vision of everything.  What RSS fails to address is the ability to post data as well as retrieve.  It assumes all data is shared and that nothing is typed.  **sigh**I guess I enjoy the intellisense in vs.net a little too much.  When the world is an item and nothing is typed, things start to get messy.  No data integrity, no reusable schemas, everything is just, whatever.Oh well... I guess we can all start using VB again and working in untyped languages.  And start doing XSLTs for a living.T