I arrived at Building 5, the building where the CodePlex team works, at around 1:00 PM. Within a few minutes of my arrival, Ms. Ford met me down in the lobby and took me up to the CodePlex office.

The office was different that most of the offices I visited throughout the day. The developers all sat in a common area, writing code in stations that had two keyboards. Ms. Ford explained that this was their unique version of “pair programming”, where two developers write code and do near real-time code reviews. This plays into their own version of the Agile release cycle.

You may be asking: What is Agile? Well, the common release cycle for a product is know as Waterfall. This is a more traditional cycle, where the product goes from specification, to implementation, testing, release, and finally maintenance. Agile is a lot more rapid than Waterfall. Agile, on the other hand, is a three week release cycle. The first two weeks of any Agile cycle are spent developing new features for the product, with a third week spent on fixing bugs from previous releases and tightening the features for the latest release. After they deploy, they start over again, figuring out what to do for the next release.

After that, Ms. Ford shared some interesting facts about CodePlex. CodePlex is home to roughly 13,000 projects, with a total of 200+ Million Lines of Code, with 100-150 projects being added weekly. They’ve recently added support for Mercurial based projects, which was seen as a huge addition to the site.

Ms. Ford also shared some interesting facts about her career at Microsoft. She attended college at the Mississippi State University, where she was a member of ACM. While in college, she refused to think of herself as ever working at Microsoft, hating the idea of “becoming a code monkey” for Microsoft. And now she’s been a key part of one of Microsoft’s best open source initiatives, and continues to contribute to the Microsoft community with her new role in the company.

I had a great time talking with Ms. Ford, and I highly recommend you read her blog and follow her on Twitter as she continues her career, moving in to DPE for a new exciting career experience.

Until next time, thanks for reading
Patrick Godwin

First, a little background about Frank Arrigo. He’s been an employee for Microsoft since 1991, and has had a substantial role in community relations since then. He’s essentially a social media whiz, having blogged since before I was born. As he put it, he was “blogging before it was called blogging”.

At the beginning of the meeting, Mr. Arrigo asked us each a very interesting question: What do you think of when you think about Microsoft? A truly interesting question. What is the Microsoft experience? I hadn’t given it much thought before that moment, so it caught me off guard. Each of us brought a unique answer, like Joe Osborne’s answer: he pictured Microsoft as a sort of behemoth Pentagon-esque building. Some of us thought of the developer culture, while others pictured a typical corporate environment with cubicles and white collar shirts.

This discussion allowed the conversation to move towards what it means to be a blogger. What is a bloggers job within a corporation. That brought us back to a point raised earlier: blogging allows employees to show that they aren’t drones, brainwashed to do what Mr. Ballmer commands. Microsoft isn’t some sort of machine, hell bent on the complete domination of the world. It’s a living, thriving community of developers, businessmen, and other professionals. And we use our blogs to convey that back to the people who are interested in the topic. That’s why we see blog posts about personal issues, family, and vacations. It show’s that developers are in fact human, and do have lives outside of work.

He then presented us with some interesting facts: roughly 5,000 to 10,000 Microsoft employees write on a blog. Wow. That’s a lot of articles. But how does this help the User? What do they gain from reading about the experiences of these employees? Simple: connections. Around 2000-2001, Mr. Arrigo realized that maintaining a blog with an active community allows users and developers to network, creating an environment in which developers could receive feedback, share knowledge, and build professional relationships that would provide jobs down the line.

Mr. Arrigo was also an early adopter of Twitter. This allowed him to take his networking abilities to a whole new level. Rather then relying on traditional forms of communication like email and blog comments, he could interact with his readers in real time. This allows a higher quality of feedback and a way to extend topics beyond the blog. This essentially transformed blogs, making them living discussion prompts rather than static editorials.

We concluded are meeting with a simple idea: Blog smart. Talk about topics you would want people to read and not be ashamed about. Don’t write incoherent rants, don’t write foolish stories about how trashed you were last weekend. Blogs are a powerful tool, they can either make or break your career depending on how you present yourself online.

I just want to conclude by thanking Mr. Arrigo for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to us. It was a great experience, and I thank you for all of the useful information about social media.

Next I plan on writing a post about my meeting with CodePlex’s Sara Ford. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading,
Patrick Godwin

I flew out of Detroit Meto Airport at 3:45PM on Wednesday the 27th, which went surprisingly well. Sure there was one hiccup with baggage checking, but the travel agency, Henry V, got it taken care of right away. Thanks Johanna! The flight was a 5 hour non stop fight to Seattle, with great service and some decent space due to cancellations. I arrived at Seattle-Tacoma around 5:30PM PST, roughly 8:30 my time. Met the town car driver at Baggage Claim. Next we had to wait for Ashley Myer, the Imagine Cup Insider. Turns out, she was on the same flight as me. After finding Ashley, the driver took us to the Marriot hotel in Redmond Town Center. I walk up to my room, having already been checked in by Microsoft, and begin to unpack my stuff. I find a bag full of Swag and what not waiting for me in the room, something I found very cool. Then I log onto Twitter to announce my arrival in Seattle, only to find that Joe Osborne, the Expression Studio insider, is up for some dinner. So Ashley, Joe, and I head off to a nice Chinese restaurant in Redmond Town Center and have a very nice dinner. Once we were done eating, we head back to the hotel to get ready for the busy day ahead of us.

The next day I wake up at 5:45AM, an hour and fifteen minutes earlier than I had planned. Slightly annoyed by my childish excitement, I boot up my laptop and play some games to kill time. 7:45AM rolls around, and I head down to the lobby to wait for our ride to the Redmond Microsoft Campus. About ten minutes before our departure, the rest of the insiders make their way down. I reunite with Ashley and Joe, and I am introduced to the three other insiders, Tom Ziegmann, Jeremy Bray, and Ryan Bucinell. At 8:00AM, Jessica Anderson, the business manager for the Student Insider program, arrives to make sure we are all ready to leave. With that, we all pile into the cars and head off to campus.

We arrive at building 99, the Microsoft Research Building, where we met Hilary Pike, the other lady in charge of the Student Insider program. We then received our itinerary for the day. Each of us would be meeting with different developers and project managers across the campus. But before we went off to do our interviews, we had a meeting with Microsoft’s Frank Arrigo, an Australian blogger with a wealth of information to share. After meeting with him, we had some formalities to go over, and then lunch at The Commons with a few different developers on the Visual Studio team.
After our delicious lunch, we all went our separate ways for the afternoon. My first destination was building five, where I met with Sara Ford of CodePlex.com. I’d been following Sara for the better part of a year via twitter, fascinated by the inner workings of CodePlex, so being able to meet with her was a very exciting opportunity. I then jumped on a Microsoft Shuttle and headed over to building 41, where Ryan, the Visual Studio insider, and I met with Jared Parsons, a developer on the Visual Studio team who focuses primarily on the Visual Basic language. I’ve always had an interest in language and compiler theory, so meeting one of the guys who works on the language I started programming in was a great learning experience. We had a great hour long conversation with him, and then we jumped back on the shuttle.

Now Ryan and I had to make our way back to building five. Why was I going back to building five? Well, we had a meeting with Scott Hanselman. That’s right, Scott Hanselman. For those of you who don’t know, Scott is an influential man within Microsoft, having a very strong following on Twitter he has many resources and is very hard to meet. He happened to be in Redmond at the time, and we were lucky enough to grab an hour of his time.

After our nice meeting with Scott, I was shipped off to building 36 for a meeting with Karen Cheng, the program manager for Microsoft Excel. She gave me quite a bit of insight as to what the work environment is like around campus, and what it’s like to be a new employee, herself only working there for roughly six months.

After that meeting I went back over to building 99 to regroup with the team. Having all met up, we piled into the shuttle and went over to Joey’s restaurant in downtown Seattle, where we met Clint Rutkas. Now, Clint is a very interesting individual, and anyone who follows him on twitter would know this. He’s in charge of the website Coding4Fun and is also a member of the Channel 9 team. We had a great time out that night and while we didn’t get to see the Space Needle, seeing Clint fall twice while trying to get up was a fine substitute.After a good night sleep, I was awake again at 7:00AM the next day, ready for another exciting adventure around the campus. We went from the Marriot to Microsoft’s building in Lincoln Square, a truly breath taking skyscraper. We met Jessica in the lobby and made our way up to the top floor for breakfast. We were joined by Scott Davidson and Mark Hindsbo, higher ups in the Marketing Department at Microsoft. Now these two are wicked smart. We had a good 45 minute conversation with them, and it was a very engaging conversation. Unfortunately, we had to cut that conversation short for more meetings. Fortunately, we had meetings with more amazing individuals.

Ryan and I met with Jon Williams, the man overseeing the launch of Visual Studio 2010. He talked to us for a good 45 minutes about what to expect in Visual Studio 2010, and what it’s like coordinating a worldwide launch for a flagship product. We left him to go down the hallway for a sort of focus group with Jodi Ellias, one of ladies responsible for helping Jessica and Hilary start the Student Insider program. We discussed Microsoft’s new Tech Student initiative, and what we as students think would help draw people to the new Tech Students website.

After that meeting, we were transported back to the Redmond campus for a meeting with Michael Klucher, the Program Manager for the XNA Community Games Team. I was thrilled to meet someone within the XNA team, as I have been a fan of the XNA Framework for the past two or three years. Being able to meet with him and discuss different aspects of the XNA framework was a fantastic experience, and to finish it off, the XNA team gave each of the Insiders a nice 4GB Zune with the XNA Logo on it.

Again we had lunch at The Commons with a guy from MSIT and a developer on the SQL team. We had a nice conversation with them, and then made our way back to building 99 to regroup, think, and discuss what to do as insiders from there. After completing our work session, we all got into a shuttle and went back to Redmond Town Center to interview the developers on the 1 vs. 100 team. Ryan and I had another interview together, where we met with Jim Geist, the main architect and one of the lead coders for the 1 vs. 100 game. We learned a lot about how the game was designed, how the game is maintained, and how questions are added. It was a very cool experience, and one I am very grateful for.

After our meetings with that team, we went back to main campus for some time at the Company Store. Now I don’t usually enjoy shopping, but this time was an exception. I bought myself a good amount of Microsoft merchandise, and then got to check out the visitor center, which had some neat computers and displays. After that, we met up with Clint Rutkas again and all hurried off to Microsoft Studios for a live broadcast of 1 vs. 100 on XBox Live.

Seeing studio and all the behind the scenes work of 1 vs. 100 was very cool. We met with Chris Cashman, and the rest of the production team and had pizza before they went live. After going live, we got to play along in the studio, watch exactly how it works, and spend time with Chris in the booth. I actually got to give a shout-out to Michigan in front of 33,000 people. The broadcast finished, and we finished out time at that studio with a tour of the film studios.

After our time at the 1 vs. 100 studio was finished, we all gathered in the lobby of Microsoft studios for our official good bye. It was a nice moment, where we all said our Good Byes and Thank You’s. After that, Clint had us all put our hands in for a sort of “1-2-3 STUDENT INSIDERS!” kind of chant, which ended up becoming a “Student Partners” chant, mainly because Clint couldn’t keep it straight. Hilarity ensued, and we all got in the shuttle and went back to the Marriot. I said good bye to the other insiders, and went up to bed for the night.

In the end, I had a fantastic experience at Redmond. I met so many interesting and intelligent individuals. I learned a lot about the different technologies being worked on at Microsoft, as well as what life is like at the campus. In the following posts I will break down this experience even more, describing each interview more in depth.I just want to conclude by saying a huge thank you to Hilary and Jessica. You two showed me an amazing time, and I look forward to working with you two over the next six months. I would also like to thank Joe, Ashley, Jeremy, Tom, and Ryan. We had a good time, and I look forward to collaborating with each of you during the course of this program. Well that’s all for now, stay tuned for more details.

Thanks for reading,
Patrick Godwin

The Student Insider Program is brand spanking new, and is being run by Hilary Pike and Jessica Anderson. I’m very excited to work with them over the next six months, and I feel that this will be a great experience for all parties involved.

One thing I must stress, though, is this new Student Insider position will in no way sway the opinion’s posted on this blog. I will remain objective, and always talk about the good and bad parts of each product I am asked to review.

And that’s about that. I’ll have more information at the end of the month, after I meet with the rest of the Student Insiders at Microsoft’s Redmond campus. Until then, expect me to update content more frequently. In my next few blog posts, I’ll be outlining how students at both the High School and University level can gain access to free, educational use, software.

Until then,
Patrick Godwin

I really must apologize for my not updating. I’m sure i could come up with plenty of excuses, but where would that get us? So instead, I’m going to give a brief update as to what is going on.

First and foremost: Happy New Year! 2009 was an interesting and hectic year. We saw history made when Barrack Obama was inaugurated as the first African American president. We had quite a few notable celebrities pass away this year, which got more news time then most issues.
It was also a very good year for social media. Since I joined Twitter, I saw many of my friends from school joining. I’ve also seen many people joining, Facebook. What this has taught me: Social Networking is here to stay.
It was also an exciting year for technology. This year we saw Microsoft announce Project Natal, release Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and 2, and the Zune HD. I was very excited to see these technologies released, and I can safely say I’ve gotten to play with all except Project Natal.
But 2009 had it’s low points. Most notable: the economy. It’s been a hard couple of years, and there is more to come. But we will get through it.
Now, seeing as it is 2010, I should make a New Years resolution, no? Well, I think I can make two very simple resolutions: Blog more, and write more code. Like I said, I could create multiple excuses as to why I have not done either of these lately, but where would that get me? So instead, I’m just going to work harder at it.

In closing, I’d like to give shout-outs to people online.

• LittleKuriboh: You are awesome. You created a YouTube sensation, and have always brought a smile to my face. I wish you the best in the new year, and once again congratulate you on your Open Web Award.
• Kelson Thomas: You always spark interesting conversation, be it on Twitter, in class, or over IM. You’ve made 2009 a hoot and a half.
• Eric Hawtin: You’ve been just as entertaining as Kelson. You always keep Twitter alive and provide good (well not always) input to our conversations, and I thank you for that.
• Microsoft: We saw this coming. They had a great year in releases, and I look forward to seeing what they will do in 2010.
• Alfred Thompson: You always have interesting resources for students, and you always write interesting blog posts. You’ve had me scratching my chin more then once. I thank you, and wish you the best in 2010

I could go on for hours, listing the people who made 2009 a good year, but I won’t, as that would take up a few pages.

In closing, I’d like to thank everyone for an awesome year, and I am excited to work with you all in 2010. You’ve all been great, and I am keeping my head high for the next 365 days.

Thanks for reading,
Patrick Godwin

I don’t know about the majority of programmers out there, but I find myself writing sloppy code while working in a managed language. I’m not saying that I break all rules of style or flow, but I’m not as careful as I usually am. Let’s say we’re writing a function in C++ that calls a simple integer type function. The rule of thumb would be to check what it returns, and based on predetermined conditions, handle any errors that may arise. A pattern I’ve noticed, mainly with C# programming, is a total disregard for exception handling. And even if the exception is handled, it isn’t handled well. Last time I checked, “Throw Exceptio” was not a smart way to handle errors.

I’m sure there are many other examples of Managed Programming leading to lazy programming. This is only the most obvious one I’ve delt wtih. What issues have you had with managed languages? Please write about them in the comments, get the conversation going.
Thanks for reading,
Patrick Godwin

Note: I’m very sorry for the short length of this post. The quality of this post is also extremely bad, and does a poor job of articulating my thoughts on the subject. Mea culpa.

VB.NET: I love this language and I would recommend it to anyone starting programming. I learned how to program in Visual Basic 2005 and I can safely say it is one of the easiest languages I have ever used. The syntax reads in an easy, clear way. You don’t have to worry about silly semi-colons or curly braces. Building a User Interface is simple with the Visual Studio WinForm designer. The inclusion of the .NET Framework in Visual Basic has given some great resources to this already great language. The only downside to VB.NET is the dependence on the .Net Framework/Mono Runtime. While this is possibly one of the greatest features in the language, it takes away a lot of the power you see in an unmanaged language. Not to much of an issue, but still a con.

C#: C# is another great language that I would recommend C# to someone who has some prior experience. While the syntax and program design can be annoying at times, it is a very powerful language. While sharing the same advantages as VB.NET, it also has integration with the XNA Framework. This is by far the best managed Graphics API available. With it’s support for Windows, XBox 360, and the Zune it destroys every feature available in Managed DirectX. The biggest issue with C# is, again, it’s dependence on the .Net Framework/Mono Runtime and it’s slightly annoying program design.

C++/C: This is the language I always suggest when I am asked that question. While it is one of the hardest languages to learn, it is the best. I feel that learning a good, unmanaged language gives you a proper idea of independent programming. You aren’t relient on a managed environment, like in the .Net and Java languages, which means you have to manage your own memory. This teaches developers safe coding practices and helps them develop clean code. Once you have a good hold on the language, the object oriented concepts should be studied. This is when C++ becomes a true powerhouse. This allows you to develop complex applications or even great game engines. Once you have C++ under your belt, most other languages should come quite easily.

Python: A very powerful scripting language. You can accomplish many tasks in Python with relative ease, given it’s large, supportive user base. The only issue with Python is it’s annoying syntax. I swear I have so much trouble reading Python code for education. In a language like Python it can be hard to enforce good style, which is a big minus for the language.

Java: What can I say about Java? It has to be one of the worst languages I have ever TRIED to learn. I want to know who the genius was that, while writing the AP Computer Science Curriculum, thought “Well, we assume that these students have very little, if any, prior programming experience. What language should we choose? I know! Java!”. Whoever this man, or group of men, was, he screwed up big time. Why choose a language that has an annoying syntax and no advantages over the .Net Framework and force students to learn it for what should already be a tough class. While it is managed like the .Net languages, the Java Runtime Environment is receiving updates ALL the time. What are they constantly changing? Honestly, if you program in Java you have the patience of a saint. It takes real skill to tame this monstrosity of a language.

Now there are many more languages thant those I have covered here. MANY more. But these are the languages that have seen the most attention in recent years, and these are the languages I have used. I’ll always suggest C++ and then VB.NET for a beginner, but you should take everyone’s suggestion as just that, a suggestion. Read some tutorials, try each language, form your own opinions. Whatever you find the easiest and cleanest should be the language you chose.

Thanks for reading,
Patrick Godwin

Edit: Forgot to mention Mono when talking about the .Net Languages. Edited for clarity.

I’ve seen this first hand in Port Huron Area Schools. Don’t get me wrong, I love my programming classes. But there is no set curriculum for our District’s Computer Programming Class. How can a Computer Programming class exist without a curriculum. This forces the teacher to teach what the majority will understand the best while the more advanced students have to focus on their own skills. That isn’t a huge problem, but there should still be some sort of guidelines for teaching the class.

Another issue I’ve noticed with our Computer Science curriculum is the definition of a Computer Science class. When did a Computer Applications class become a Computer Science class. One of the Counselors at Port Huron Northern has gone around telling students that “It looks good to have a Computer Science class on your Transcript. I suggest you take Computer Applications”. Last time I checked “This is how you use Microsoft Powerpoint” was not acceptable as a Computer Science class.

Now I’m sure this is not the same around the country, but this is the main issue I’ve noticed. I also think, from glancing at the AP Computer Science course outline, we’re teaching the wrong things in introductory Computer Programming classes. Style is something that should be emphasized from day one. Button1 or Div1 are never acceptable if you ask me. They then spend the first few weeks of a class going over the introduction to a language, then move on to working on projects. In reality, they should begin by teaching theory. Students should learn how a program flows rather then jumping head first into a programming language. I learned this the hard way when I decided to pick up VB.NET as my first language. I made multiple design mistakes, spent many hours browsing MSDN for guidance, and used silly variable names like Button1 or TextBox2. If only I had understood good style or even the basic concepts of If/Then, For/While Loops, and Switch Statements.

According to the AP Computer Science curriculum, the first part of the course should be spent teaching Object Oriented Programming. This I support. But on closer examination, they recommend introducing Object Oriented Programming. This is ridiculous. If the student has taken a pre-AP Computer Science class, they should be introduced to the basic concepts of Object Oriented Design. If half the class is spent teaching a concept, then the second half is spent teaching the concepts in a language like Java, there is something wrong with that class.

Now these are just my thoughts, but I’m sure many people agree with me. Anyone else have an opinion on this? Your thoughts and comments are always welcome.

Thanks for reading,
Patrick Godwin

That said, I have some housecleaning issues I need to address:

1. Lack of FTP Access: This one is really no one’s fault. My boss (who is hosting this on his BlueHost Server) is currently having issues with FTP accounts. Some business about a customer uploading illegal software to his share of the server without anyone knowing. No big problem, should be solved in a few days.
2. WordPress: I’m not a huge fan of Wordpress. Rather, I prefer having my own software running on a server. Wordpress is great, don’t get me wrong. But it dominates my website and uses up one of my bosses limited SQL Databases. I’m looking to develop an alternative Blogging/CMS system. Should be a good chance for me to hone my PHP Coding skills.
3. Boring WordPress Theme: This relates directly to number one. I already have a theme chosen, but no ability to upload it to my server. This will be solved when I get my FTP account later this week.

That said, I am looking forward to being able to share my thoughts on certain subjects, mostly related to technology, and have a venue for displaying my work. I’m always learning about new technologies and working on advancing myself as a programmer.

First up: xOS. A while back I was reading up on Operating System development, and I came across the site OSDev.org, a website dedicated to discussing Operating System development and Theory. This website led me to BrokenThorn Entertainment, which has an excellent series of tutorials on Operating System development within the Visual Studio 2005/2008 IDE. Following this tutorial has allowed me to develop a basic kernal:

The interesting thing about this tutorial is the usage of MS Visual C++ as a platform. It covers the needed runtime programming to use this runtime, which allows the developer to set up a very clean Object Oriented kernal. The ability to create classes that function at such a low level in about 14 tutorials is amazing. They also help you create a nice DebugPrintf(); function that allows you to output text to the screen without a major source code change. Nothing too incredible impressive, but convenient. A simple change from:

DebugPrintf(“Hello world. This is xOS Build 1.”);

To:

DebugPrintf(“Hello world. This is xOS Build 1.\n\nIsn’t that cool?”);

Produces:

Operating System is one interesting subject.

Another skill I am beginning to learn is 3D Modelling. So far I’ve only ripped models from known video games for the purpose of applying a Bone/Skin system to the mesh. I started with Kingdom Heart’s Sora:

A rather cool model if you ask me. I used the tool 3DRipperDX to rip the model and it’s textures from a Kingdom Hearts Model Viewer. I had to use Windows XP due to Windows Vista/Windows 7’s DirectX 9 Emulation. Note to people using 3DRipperDX: Until the application has proper Vista/7 support, stick with XP. The models I’ve ripped have been nothing but garbage. Anyways, I then used 3D Studio Max 9 to import the .3DR file for editing. I followed a tutorial for model rigging based on Garry’s Mod Ragdoll Creation. I spent about a half an hour rigging a basic skeleton with no finger posing to this model. The output didn’t turn out GREAT, but it was okay for my first attempt at Skeleton Rigging:

This render doesn’t show the major issues with my rig. But the next one should do the job:

That’s better. There is one obvious problem with this render. The vertices aren’t weighed properly. We see the hair being influenced by Sora’s Arms, and that simply won’t do. I couldn’t get an accurate render of the feet, which is unfortunate because that is where the weirdest/most annoying issue resides. The vertices are assigned to a bone on the opposite leg, causing weird issues with moving the feet. Should be a rather easy fix, providing I can get Max 9 installed on Windows 7 (Cannot find my DVD with the installer)

Well, that is about all I have to say tonight. Stay posted to this site for further updates. Comments are appreciated and encouraged.  Thanks for reading.

Yours,
Patrick Godwin

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