1000 Developers Join at Portland Code Camp

Article
05/24/2010

Greetings from Portland Code Camp hosted at University of Portland in Portland, OR. More than 1000 developers have signed up.

I had the privilege of doing several talks throughout the day. And the number one question is where to get the decks. So here's a set of links to the resources so you can follow up. I also get to acknowledge the great work of my colleagues who helped create the original decks.

Parallel Development 101

One of the great features of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 has been the ability to support processing on machines with multiple cores. Both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 support 256 processors. Computers with that kind of processing power aren’t available at commodity prices. Yet you probably have a 64-bit computer with dual cores and many with quad cores.

In order to take advantage of all those processors, you need the ability to write parallel code and to debug that code. And in the past, writing threads has been challenging.

Visual Studio 2010 brings it all to life. You can download a Visual Studio 2010 trial version.

I’ve put together three screencasts on Channel 9 that show how you can use new features in .NET Framework 4 to take advantage of multi-core processors.

In Part 1 of the series, we show why you care about multiple processors and how it can effect the performance in your application. See How to Parallelize Your Application - Part 1 Why Do It?
In Part 2 we compare the new Tasks feature in .NET with threads. See How to Parallelize Your Application - Part 2 Theads v Tasks
In Part 3 we show three ways of using the parallel features to enable your application for multi-core processors. See How to Parallelize Your Application - Part 3 Using Tasks

For more information and to see the code used in the video, see How to Get Started with Multi-Core: Parallel Processing You Can Use. See also, Justin Etheredge's posting .NET 4.0 and System.Threading.Tasks for detail look at how to use Tasks in your applications.

On MSDN, see System.Threading.Tasks namespace.

Patterns of Windows Azure Applications

There are key patterns in developing or migrating your software to Windows Azure. And there are good reasons for doing so. There are four main patterns.

Using the Cloud for Scale
Using the cloud for multi tenancy
Using the cloud for compute
Using the cloud for (infinite) storage
Using the cloud for communications

I made great use of Simon Guest's slide presentation. You can find the slides here: Patterns For Moving To The Cloud.

Stefan Tilkov put together a great set of notes on the talk QCon SF 2009: Simon Guest, Patterns of Cloud Computing.

Get started with Windows Azure at the Channel 9 Learning Center. You'll also find a link to the latest Windows Azure Developer Training Kit.

SQL Azure 101

I generously borrowed from David Robinson's presentation at the Windows Azure Firestarter. You can see his presentation on Channel 9 Windows Azure FireStarter: SQL Azure with David Robinson.

The key takeaways are that you use the same tools and skills in getting your application to run in the cloud as you do to run on premises.

Learn more about SQL Azure on MSDN.

Front Runner

If you're working on a software project that uses Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows Azure, SQL Azure, join Front Runner. Front Runner provides you with phone and online tech support. Front Runner offers ISVs additional marketing support.

Join at https://msdev.com/frontrunner

ISV Videos on Windows Azure

See how other software companies are getting their applications up on Windows Azure: