(update: oh gawd, I’ve done it again – written a post that the Smalltalk devs are pointing at and laughing about how unecessarily difficult .NET is…)

I keep thinking about what a great issue this is. There are articles in here on topics that may seem daunting but are very clearly explained to enable anyone to get a start in these areas.

The introduction to Deborah Kurata’s article on generics is worth the price of admission alone. It is a two sentence explanation of generics that I could easily share with developers at any level.

“Generics allow you to use a variable to represent a desired data type, and thereby create very generic code (hence the name) that works with any data type.You define the data type for the generic variable at run time and the CLR substitutes that data type for the variable everywhere in the code that it is used; basically providing you with strongly typed generic code.”

Michele Leroux Bustamante has an article on WSE2 that is meant for normal people to understand and use.

There are articles on Code Access Security, Replication and Asynchronous programming. All topics that many developers won’t go near because of their complexity. All of these articles aim to enable these same people to use these technologies because there is no reason they shouldn’t be able to.

Code Magazine just gets’ better and better. Great job Markus, Rod et alia!!

Big congratulations to Werner, who has been researching distributed systems at Cornell University for many years. He just announced that he has accepted what sounds like a fascinating job at Amazon.

After 10 exciting years at Cornell I have decided that it is finally time to ‘eat my own dog food’; I will now be able to bring my ideas about building scalable and robust systems into practice in one of the most challenging environments in the industry. At the same time I will be able to work at Amazon on building strong research relations with academia and other research labs.

yup! Peter Provost – totally an architecture kinda guy, is joining the PAG group at Microsoft. This is the team responsible for patterns & Practices  and more.

Peter & his wife JUST had a baby 3 weeks ago so you can imagine what this means to move. I’ve already seen a few sniffly blogs from some Denver folks who are going to miss him.

He sounds excited so hearty congratulations!

Many people linked to Jeff Maurone’s blog post about the MS intern event at Bill Gates’ house (including myself). Mike Flasko, who was on the Imagine Cup Canada winning team was also there and has this to report about his experience.

Thom Robbins, the local D.E. for New England, has been putting together some awesome events. He is starting to coordinate a 2nd Code Camp and now he and Boston .NET User Group leader, Chris Pels, have put together an event for Oct. 6th that is styled after the cabanas at TechEd.

Steve has lots of new interesting information to share, just not about ASP.NET right now. His weblog is becoming a great resource for people who are headed to IRAQ. Michelle also puts incredible information there for families.

I cannot believe the temperatures he is reporting. The forecast there ranges from 95 to 130 degrees! 130 degrees!!!

http://blogs.ineta.org

Jeff Julian has spun off all of the INETA volunteer bloggers from Geekswithblogs.net onto the INETA website. This works in much the same was as the filter from weblogs.asp.net to blogs.msdn.com.

Since there were already a bunch of INETA related people on geekswithblogs.net you will find a host of bloggers already. This is not an INETA info only blog – it is the blogs of the INETA volunteers and of course, these are all super blogs. Bill Evjen is currently heading up the count with the most posts with Jeff and Amy Sorokas leading right behind!

If you are an INETA volunteer and would like a blog, just contact Jeff. The info is at the top of the blogs.ineta.org page.

I suppose hearing Jeff Richter give me a ribbing over the course of 3 days about using VB as my primary language for developing in .NET, was what inspired Charles Petzold to choose this, of all of his books, to send me as a thank you: “Programming in the Key of C#: A Primer for Aspiring Programmers”. Certainly I can learn a thing or two from it (and certainly Richter is agreeing vigourously!)

What I look forward to most with this book is Charles’ anectodes on the history of software development that is promised in the book description.

Oh, okay and to learning C# from the ground up!

Thom Robbins (MS New England) is putting together another Code Camp weekend. The first was a huge success. This one is scheduled for Oct. 16/17th in Waltham MA (outside of Boston).

He’s looking for speakers. It’s a really fun community event. Free to attendees. Meals are provided.

read more here

Rory Blyth is taking a job with Microsoft!