Wednesday, May 28, 2003

Outlook Plugin for RSS Feeds Google Search It This looks pretty cool.  It is a plug-in for Outlook that allows you to get RSS feeds as posts into Outlook folders.  Pretty impressive based on what I have read about it.  There is also plug-in for posting to your weblog and this, presumably, would mean you have a spell checked and Wysiwyg editor as well so.... 9:56:03 PM   []    comment []

F#, the Language, Emerges from Microsoft Research Google Search It Over the past two weeks a new language has emerged out of Microsoft Research.  The language is called F# and it is a derivative of the functional programming language ML (kinda like Scheme).  Anyway, the language is certainly just in the research/alpha phase and it is unclear whether it would ever be productized but it is interesting none-the-less. As identified on the c2.com wiki, an ML based language essentially supports four key features: automatic TypeInference such that the compiler creates the types for you. mostly declarative syntax using PatternMatching GenericTypes (somewhat like C++'s templates) Parametrized modules, modules can take other modules as an argument Another interesting feature relates to its ability to perform data transformations.  In traditional procedural languages the process for transforming a collection of objects required iterating through the collection and performing an operation on each one.  In F# you would instead pass the collection of objects and the transformation (perhaps a collection of transformations) you wish to perform to a "MAP" function that would handle the transformation(s) on the entire collection in one swell foop. (See What's the Purpose of F#.) I think the emergence of this language from Microsoft is not as much because there is a need for a new language as the identification that there were no functional programming languages running on top of the .NET platform and in order to prove out that .NET truly could be language agnostic it would make sense to test that eve a functional programming language could be developed on top of the platform. For the vast majority of cases at Itron I believe F# can be ignored however there are some scenarios, such as perhaps the Universal Calculation Engine, that it could be quite relevant especially if transformations are defined at run time rather than compile time. 2:45:53 PM   []    comment []

Thinking Through Emotions Google Search It At times I have been accused of being more of a brain than a heart.  It was interesting to me, therefore, when I was asked how I felt about a really difficult issue in my life and I said I didn't know the answer yet because I hadn't thought through my emotions.  This is of course a typical response from a thinking (versus a feelings) oriented person but it really described well where I was at in wrestling with the particular issue.  What exactly does thinking through emotions mean, however?  Is this an oxymoron?  Is it possible to think through emotions and if one does do this do they end up in touch with the underlying emotions or instead simply control the emotions?  Whatever the answer, thinking through emotions is a pretty common occurrence for me so I am curious to know whether it helps me get more in touch with my feelings or not. 11:16:29 AM   []    comment []

C# Wrapper for Windows Installer Google Search It If you have used the .NET Installer tool that comes with Visual Studio.NET you probably know how pathetic it is.  This is nothing more than a managed wrapper to the underlying API but still it is useful if you want to work directly with the Windows Installer from managed code. 11:06:47 AM   []    comment []

The Future Of Visual Source Safe Google Search It Unfortunately I can't comment on the future of Visual Source Safe except to say that significant work is being done in this area.  If this MSDN chat is any indication, the demand is huge as the entire chat is essentially consumed with, "will the next version support..." type questions. 7:26:44 AM   []    comment []

Pathetic Progress Google Search It Well we haven't met in just under a month now to work on the Inductive Bible Study Software (eBible).  Tonight we got together and implemented the URI class.  This class can take a reference and convert it to a URI for where the passage can be downloaded off the Internet.  The progress over the past two months has truly been pathetic as we got side tracked with using the ICustomFormatter and IFormatProvider interfaces.  We won't be meeting for a month unless we make special arrangments because I (Mark) am traveling for the next month.  Next time we work on this, however, we should be at the point of writing a few verification tests and then being able to download the entire Bible. 12:25:59 AM   []    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Mark Michaelis.