Hejlsberg’s Little Chuckle
I’m at the TechEd-Developers conference in Barcelona. In addition to just the enjoyment of being in Barcelona, I’ve enjoyed several things particularly:
- sessions on testing and continuous integration with Roy Osherove. These were lively and fun, and obviously he is an authority on the subject. His pre-conference sessions each ended with short songs. These should have been still shorter. But his advice on testing is spot on.
- an excellent presentation by one Brian Long on alternative debugging tools for .Net production debugging. Long is a sharp Briton with a delightful flair for erudite, witty language, but he also knows his way around WinDbg and SOS.dll.
- the TV monitors in the hallways, which feature a video on a repeat loop of hardly more than a minute or two, much of which is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer inflicting some marketing on innocent viewers. The combination of Ballmer’s slightly-too-wide-open eyes and the slightly-too-loud volume setting and the more-than-slightly-brainwashy marketing message, imparts a delightful 1984 feeling.
- Anders Hejlsberg’s sessions on the LINQ framework and other language extensions in C# 3.0. Hejlsberg has designed a major programming language (C#), yet he has neither a large beard nor long hair, and is socially capable and an excellent presenter. And LINQ is really, really cool (not many code demos inspire spontaneous applause). All this comes adorned with an agreeably slight Danish accent, and a frequent “hahah” that I will call Hejlsberg’s Little Chuckle.
I am dying to use LINQ, though I guess I won’t get to do that at work for a while. I do get to be agile though … and I don’t doubt I’ll continue to have occasion to use a debugger as well. So it’s only the Ballmer bit that’s pure, unadulterated entertainment.