The joys of SQL

Verity Stob on SQL: here

(I think if you use your favourite search engine you'll find quotes from my database course where I have less than complementary things to say about SQL! These quotes were taken without my knowledge by the students in the audience.)

Shipped!

Yesterday, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2010 (in particularly nice boxes!). I just finished installing it on all my machines - I recommend you do too:-) Amongst many features, you get a nice improvement to C#: dynamic types (as detailed in our forthcoming ECOOP 2010 paper). You also get a whole new language: Visual F#. Congratulations to Don Syme for probably the biggest tech transfer out of our research lab.

(Unlike other companies, Microsoft clearly loves multiple programming languages!)

Design matters!

Please, somebody, start marketing this!

Congratulations Chuck!

MSR's Chuck Thacker has just been awarded the 2009 ACM Turing Award - which is the "Nobel Prize" for Computer Science. This is richly deserved - Chuck essentially built the first machine that we would recognize as a PC (The Xerox Alto) and the first Tablet PC, and many other contributions besides. A worthy winner (and the fourth recipient from MSR!).

Bummer

HD2 Not getting Windows Phone 7 Series OS - Official

Project Natal

I've been surprised to meet up with people recently who haven't heard about Project Natal. Err...guys...this is like the coolest thing ever!! [Even better is that some of the key technology comes from our lab!]

I just found out that we have a nice webpage full of cool videos here. Once this comes out, it's time to buy an XBox!

F# milestone

I've blogged earlier about important F# milestones. Here's another one. I went to make a mug of peppermint tea this afternoon, and it seems that F# has reached the important milestone of Mug Manufacture. Whoo! Congrats Don and co!