Developing For .NET

I think it’s awesome that the MIX10 presentations and keynotes are recorded and published for all the world to see.  While it obviously doesn’t replace the experience of being there, it certainly eases some of the pain a bit! 🙂

As part of the #NotAtMix crowd, I will be living vicariously through my Tweeps’ posts and the online sessions.  This post will be a repository of the must see videos from MIX.  I should be updating it several times this week, so be sure to check back once in a while for changes.

Day 1 Keynote

Odds are you already saw the Day 1 Keynote: I was fortunate enough to be able to watch it livecasted, and the excitement in the room was very evident at the time, largely by the Twitter traffic.

The big news, of course, is Windows Phone 7.  I’ve never been much of a phone guy: I did quite a bit of PDA and WM5 development when it was new, but it fell out of favor for me and my company.  Phone development just never appealed to me – until now.

I mean, seriously?  Silverlight on the Phone?  You mean I can use the same language and dev tools, not some weird subset?  Scott Guthrie said “This isn’t Silverlight Lite, this isn’t Silverlight Different: this is Silverlight.”  Oh, and in case you haven’t heard – the tools to develop WP7 are free, now and forever.

The implementation of this is mind blowing.  I already have a couple of apps planned for our line of business.  I can’t wait to get my hands on some real hardware. 

Understanding the MVVM Pattern

Laurent Bugnion of IdentityMine gave a stellar presentation on Model View ViewModel development.  I’ve been doing MVVM for a while now, at first unintentionally and more recently as the result of a formal effort, and I’m a big believer in separation of concerns.  My recent presentations typically include a little MVVM because I’m believing more and more that this should be one of the first things a new WPF or Silverlight developer learns. 

Overall, I’d say I’m pretty comfortable with MVVM … or so I thought!  I really got schooled today, and I loved every minute of it. I even learned a couple of things about Blend!  I’ll be watching this video more than once, and I suggest you do the same.