I agree that what this so called junior, or other business unit dev did was wrong, but I also wished that MS were more open with their code bases! Would be great to see what the evolution of the kernel would be like if it were open

1. Why did they choose the NUGET mechanism for the ImmutableCollections feature. Is this something we should expect going forward for other features from them

2. What made them choose using NUGET over VISUAL STUDIO EXTENSIONS.

3. What is the next step from this preview, or more importantly how do they envision the roadmap for these NUGET delivered features...

4. How do these features finally make there way into .NET framework?

5 hours ago, BitFlipper wrote

I'm not familiar with Redhawk but I assume you mean "Reverse P/Invoke"? If so, yes the .Net framework supports being called from C. Unfortunately this functionality is not plumbed all the way through to say, C#. Ideally there should be a "DllExport" attribute that allows a .Net assembly to have that method exported and be able to be called purely from C (while initializing the .Net framework during the 1st C call).

This is a primer to the fabled 'Redhawk'  ... its the future api of windows (or rather the base classes of windows)

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/System-Language-Runtime-or-Project-Redhawk-surfaces-in-Windows-8

This is awesome stuff ... simply awesome!!!

ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2005-135.pdf

Would love your input seeing as you know this stuff intimately (assuming you have time ofcourse as its 44 pages long)  BUT its a great read

Quote from the document

Singularity is a micro-kernel operating system that uses advances in programming languages and compilers to build lightweight, software-isolated processes, which provide code with protection and failure isolation at lower overhead than conventional, hardware supported processes. Singularity provides an isolation boundary by running verifiably safe programs and by preventing object pointers from passing between processes' object spaces.

SIPs, in turn, enable a new solution to the problem of code extension in systems and applications. In Singularity's model, extensions are not loaded into their parent process, but instead run in their own process and communicate over strongly typed channels. This model fixes some of the major problems with extensions, since in Singularity, they cannot directly access their parents' data or interfaces, and, if they fail, they can be easily terminated by killing their parents.

Singularity is above all a laboratory for exploring interactions among system architecture, programming languages, compilers, specification, and verification. Advances in each of these areas enable and reinforce advances in the others domains, which limits the benefit and impact of studying an area in isolation. Singularity is small and well structured, so it is possible to make changes that span the arbitrary boundaries between these domains. At the same time, it is large and realistic enough to demonstrate the practical advantages of new techniques.

Regardless I also know that Joe and his team is probably working on Midori and the SingularityOS project, that several millions of lines of managed code on a managed os.

Anyway I found some stats of Singularity, of how it improves across the board on certain OS system cycles ... Some of you may find it interesting :

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/The-Singularity-Project-with-results

Shows across the board Cycle reductions at the OS level for many systems within the SinguarlityOS.

I really want to see this Midori project's managed SingularityOS work (with dev platform) ... It really does sound exciting...

http://www.cs.rochester.edu/~sandhya/csc256/seminars/ryates_singularity.pdf

e.g. results

Software Isolated Process: Creation

============================

[Process create and start]

OS  - Cycles

Singularity - 353,000

freeBSD 5.3 - 1,030,000

Linux 2.6.11 (Red Hat FC4) - 719,000

Windows XP (SP2)  - 5,380,000

Software Isolated Process: Syscall

============================

[Minimum Kernel API Call]

OS - Cycles

Singularity - 91

freeBSD 5.3 - 878

Linux 2.6.11 (Red Hat FC4) - 437

Windows XP (SP2) - 627

etc. etc. (lots more stats in pdf above)

SHOW ME THIS "MANAGED" NIRVANA

http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/2012/10/31/BewareTheString.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/abhinaba/archive/2012/11/08/windows-phone-8-evolution-of-the-runtime-and-application-compatibility.aspx

http://www.google.com.au/patents?id=_ur_AQAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=directx&pg=PA19#v=onepage&q=directx&f=false

I've been screaming loud for the last several months of a world where XAML/ HTML/ DirectX and whatever UI framework comes can exist in the same render UI..

XAML/Dx, Silverlight/XNA has shown how its possible to make a great UX from the combination of two UI stacks..

In my opinion Html/Dx/Xaml combined would be killer, and if MS can deliver this I would be so happy!

http://www.google.com.au/patents?id=XJUeAgAAEBAJ&lpg=PA8&zoom=4&ots=FRdUDQtXUU&dq=directx&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=directx&f=false

Whats interesting is the mention of taking General Purpse languages (C/C++/C#/JavaScript etc) and spraying them with data parallel features ...

Added to this is mention of DirectX 12 etc.. I really hope we see all this in XBox vNext ...

She made some pretty impressive all encompasing quotes on future directions of GPU programming and programming in general that resonated with me.

She talked about in 2010 how D3D had reached a level of maturity and that they were at a juncture where new paradigms in coding and parallelism and possibly new languages would emmerge, even calling out possible semantic attribute based changes like we see in the above mentioned papers.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/TechWithTina/Corrinne-Yu-Principal-Engine-Architect-Halo-Team-Microsoft-Part-One

Its worth watching this video, she gets very excited and talks a million miles an hour BUT its worth listening to what she says, shes very very smart.

Im hoping that all this "unmentioned" work that these papers mention is being done in the graphics space and hopefully its in XBox vNext, maybe throwing in some midori ...

So checking out his research page seems like in the July 2012 there are 2 recent updates

1. Waiting for Godot: The Right Language Abstractions for Parallel Programming Should be Here Soon

2. Maine: A Library for Data Parallel Finite Automata

Seems like MS may have cracked how to deliver 'parallelism', it was hinted as far back as 2009/2010 and only now being realized (in felix's uncovered paper )

Interesting times ahead ...

Its interesting to re-watch that video with what we know now in WinRT WinJS as well as the recent papers felix found on parallelism etc.

Does anyone know if any of this research made it into WinJS and Chakra ? OR VS2012 ?

Would be interesting to get an interview with this team to see whats been happening in this space

 btw : this is the video i speak of : http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/E2E-Tracing-JIT-and-SPUR/

http://cqrsguide.com/doc:aggregate

BUT i find it very weird that MS are using HTML for the MAJORITY of the Bing/Live/Xbox apps (looking at 15+ MS made apps all of which are HTML and a very very small fraction is XAML/Dx) ... it's like theres an internal memo to build everything in HTML,

i seriously don't know why at least the Video/Music apps wernt XAML/Dx, to me that would sound like the perfect technologies to showcase a video/music app ...

currently the Music/Video apps are unimpressive apps that are frankly embarassing and MS could do so much better (ala XBOX dashboard) ...

Cloud Compilers, RedHawk, WinRT, Native, Managed, C# ... lots of great ideas and insights!!

http://code4k.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/going-native-20-future-of-winrt.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

So we get

1. Shared core

2. NT kernel

3. Desktop CLR

I wish MS would just tell us now, its not like they can change anything technically im guessing the architecture is backed now!

??

...please dont feel sorry for me... i actually feel sorry for you.. I'm a silverlight guy, that picked up WPF , and easily transitioned to XAML/C# in Win8.. Oh and now that I know XAML like the back of my hand I've been picking up C++/Cx and DirectX ...

Thanks to Silverlight teaching skills like MVVM/XAML and experiencing a design first approach, and with great tooling I'm pretty skilled up..

So please don't feel sorry for us Silverlight devs, we're doing just fine with our feet in both the old world and the new world ...

Thx for your concern ... xoxo