Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

...this week's Guardian Technology section contains a piece written on a dining table here in Seattle on Microsoft's new Express family of developer tools.

"Developers, developers, developers ..." People laughed at his gyrations but Microsoft's Steve Ballmer was right on the button with his famous proclamation in 2001. Microsoft needs developers in order to be successful. It is not just its own armies of coders in Redmond and around the world, it is also the many millions who write Windows applications, from commercial tools to open source applications. Without software, Windows would be nothing. Software needs developers, and developers need tools to write code.

I've not just been writing about these tools, I've also been cutting code with them.

I've been using Visual Web Developer 2005 Express for a series of tutorials I'm working on for Web Developer - and was able to build two database driven web applications in less than 3 days (including learning ASP.NET 2.0 from scratch). If you're planning on learning .NET, or need to roll out a development environment quickly, you'll find the Visual Studio Express toolset rather useful - and surprisingly powerful.

This trip's obligatory media tie-in visit took us to Snoqualmie Falls, best known from the credits sequence of the excellent "Twin Peaks".

No Julee Cruise soundtrack or cherry pie (however I'd eaten a damn fine cherry pie at the Wildberry Cafe just outside Mount Rainier National Park yesterday...).

Just remember: The Owls Are Not What They Seem.

With regards to media tie ins, marypcb points out "that whole Frasier thing". Ooops. My bad.

"Goodnight and good mental health!"