Channel 9 - Discussions by Tommy Lee

Coffeehouse - HONDA is playing with robots. Stupid!

Tommy Lee — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:57:20 GMT

I don't think this is stupid at all. Yes, there is a considerable investment in research for these robots, but I am sure they have thought through all the patent/trademark stuff that others are not where they will make a killing once robots become the norm.

I for one would totally dig having an affordable robot to take care of the mundane things in my life (e.g. get the newspaper, make coffee, clean the house, etc.).

Coffeehouse - Microsoft Placement, worth even applying?

Tommy Lee — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 17:39:09 GMT

Manip - do it! As a Microsoft employee, I did not have the 4.0 out of 4.0 grade average at University or a ton of computer experience before getting into the business; but I did have passion which Microsoft really appreciates. If you want something, always go for it. The only time that you don't want to do it is if you are just spamming interviews just to get in the door (typically this is a bad thing since the person doesn't want the job you are interviewing them for, but they just want to get the foot in to get into something else).

When I interview folks, I usually value passion (tempered with reality) over a grade point average.

So if you really want it, go for it! Good luck!

Coffeehouse - Did VS2005 Ship Too Early?

Tommy Lee — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 18:12:52 GMT

Born2Run wrote:

I find it very, very strange that big companies start developing business important applications using a beta product from Microsoft. You would think they would learn from the VS 2002 / VS 2003 fiasko

As an evangelist who works with early adopters, I can give some insight. One of the reasons is that they want an IDE for the newer .NET Framework. Typically this is the case for ASP.NET. They find the features compelling or makes their team more productive and VS2005 is the best tool to take advantage of developing for it. The second reason is "the technology aggressor". Who are these folks? These are the folks that during our recent tech downturn, instead of hibernating and laying off IT staff, they were using IT and Dev as an asset and taking advantage of new technology to help them build applications much faster. Then of course you have folks who love new technology and are always on the early adopter track.

Tomorrow at the launch, you will hear about the customers who are early adopters (they are a fraction of the adopters) of the .NET Framework 2.0 and VS2005. You will also be able to check out the apps they built at www.microsoft.com/casestudies.

Hope this gives some insight.

Coffeehouse - C9 needs more indepth technical videos...

Tommy Lee — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 17:06:09 GMT

Could the screencasts be an avenue for this? The screencasts allow you to get deep into code and the presenters could dive deeper into the why and how.

Coffeehouse - VS and SQL 2005 installed in a Virtural PC

Tommy Lee — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 17:02:17 GMT

nbknxf2 wrote:

I'm downloading VS, SQL, and Visio 2005 RTM. Has anyone installed these in a virtural pc? How is performance?

Also, can these be installed along side of VS 2003 and SQL 2000?

Thanks!

During our early adoption program around VS (I was specific to ASP.NET), we had many customers who were doing just that and the performance was pretty good if the machine was competent. They would do all their development in the VPC.

The biggest gotcha around perf appears to be hard disk speed. If you get a good disk, your perf will be fine.

Not sure on SQL Server, but VS2003 and VS2005 can co-exist together.

Coffeehouse - VS2005 SQL Server 2005 Install Order?

Tommy Lee — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 23:21:02 GMT

I like the concept of the developer server. Most folks usually install the framework bits along with the Framework SDK. What are the types of things you would look to do on a developer server?

Assumption is that you wouldn't do a install of Visual Studio, but maybe parts of it (such as the MSBuild tools) without the dev environment UI.

I would be interested in your thoughts.

Coffeehouse - Is today the day for VS2005 on MSDN?: Part 2

Tommy Lee — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 16:33:48 GMT

Dear Bill and Steve,

Project "Keyboard" has worked! Our call centers have received over 15 million requests for F5 keys and we have upgraded 98% of callers to our new line of keyboards.

But, I am very concerned that the niners have found out about our devious plot...

[6]

Coffeehouse - Microsoft Marketing Blogs ... it would be nice to see more of them!

Tommy Lee — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 16:23:02 GMT

Robert Scoble and Ben Riga are Evangelists (although some would say we are marketing too!).

Some other folks in Product Group Marketing in the Developer Division are:

Brian Goldfarb
Dan Fernandez
Jay Roxe
Brian Keller

All these guys are cool and if you met them, they would definitely not fit your stereotypical marketing guy.

Coffeehouse - Is today the day for VS2005 on MSDN?: Part 2

Tommy Lee — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 19:23:27 GMT

Typically, uninstaller issues were not smoothed out until beyond Beta 2. Now that Go Live licenses are available for production use of betas, there is more focus now on getting uninstallation of betas nailed.