Discussions

4 hours ago, csinger wrote

I have been following the various news on the XBox One and I am pretty excited by what its future holds.  I think Build will be very interesting (here's hoping for an actual App store - getting a native Plex client would be awesome).

The one thing that I think is currently a big miss is the XBox 360 experience.  Because the XBox One doesn't have backwards compatibility, one needs to have both devices.  Well, that potentially means the need to keep around 2 Kinect devices which is a bit unwieldily.

So here is the "card" that I hope Microsoft hasn't shown.  I would love to see the 360 daisy chain with the XBox One.  I'd love to see that in fact they have two HDMI inputs but chose to keep one of them hidden for this unveiling.  I could see one going to a cable box and the other plus a USB connection to the 360.  Now you have a way for the XBox one to control the 360.  The Kinect could even pass through from the XBox One to the 360 over the USB interface.  Just a firmware update to the 360 and everything works.  With the new 360 styling it even looks like it could fit as a daughter device.

I think that would be a killer maneuver.

Anyways, one can dream can't they?

i like your thinking, but think it would be unlikely. I want to see if I can plug a PS4 into the HDMI in of the Xbox One and swap between PS4 games and XBox games

14 hours ago, vesuvius wrote

Yes it will be out just about a year after Visual Studio 2012.

No announcements from the C# Team or whether TypeScript will be a part of Visual Studio? What of Roslyn and the usual announcements for Client and Web based development stacks like WPF or ASP.NET? I feel things have changed direction at Microsoft in the last few months, but I can't quite figure out what it is.

They are saving the good stuff for BUILD. Although all the new TFS stuff has got me excited. (I'm a strange sort of geek )

This aspect of the Xbox One is the bit that has me most intrigued. Would love to hear more on C9 about the details. I've been a big fan of Dave Cutler since I read the book about the creation of Windows NT.

12 minutes ago, blowdart wrote

I'd rather like a watch which had my live tiles mirrored to it. And appointments.

Nothing more. I don't want to read emails, or reddit, just the time, appointments, and maybe the weather, plus unread emails to prompt me to go to my phone to check them.

Add Nike Sports Watch type functionality and I'd be interested.

The Wasp Factory is still one of my favourite books of all time. I've bought many copies for friends because it is such a great book.

Over the years, I've used a lot of code generation. Whether it be self-built tools or things like T4 or other third party products. I used to use CodeDom but that was sometimes more work than I wanted to do.

I use it because I'm the kind of programmer who doesn't enjoy doing all the typing. So if I have large table which needs to have data stored in it, i'll create the table and then auto generated the SQL Upsert script, the C# SQL access code and the POC.

I find that lots of code I write usually follows some kind of pattern, and if it uses a pattern then you can usually figure out a way for the code to be generated for you.

Of course, with things like Entity Framework then I don't need to use my own tools as much as EF do a lot of the boring stuff for me.

The code generation I use is usually a one off and I don't expect the tool to be able to cope with my manual changes. They are just "wizards" to get the boring boiler plate out of the way so I can get the app up and running and get on with the real business logic.

20 hours ago, kettch wrote

@Michael Butler: There's a comic book that explores the idea of a cloned Emperor and Luke briefly falling to the dark side.

Yeah. I read that one. Never enjoyed it. Always thought that the Clone Emperor storyline and Luke's flirt with the dark side kind of pissed over the actions and sacrifices of 'Return of the Jedi'.

I prefer the Tim Zahn and Mike Stackpole takes on post Jedi stories.

1 hour ago, Harlequin wrote

Well, we didn't actually see Darth Sidious die, he was just thrown over an edge...

Just before the Death Star was blown up. Even the Sith would struggle to survive both those things. Which is a shame because Ian McDiarmid was one of the greatest things about episodes 1-3 and number 6. Would we be happy if he'd cloned himself. Would seem like a cop out to me. 

I've bought several apps from the AppStore, mainly games but a few other apps including PushPod and UK Bus Checker. But there isn't really a lot of apps beyond the games that I've found the need for, or have been off by reviews or by how unprofessional they were.

Love to play a game of hide and seek in there. Or maybe a very long game of Laser Tag.