While not nearly as extensive as Christophe Nasarre's 3-part look at MSBuild (part 1, part 2 and part 3), Klaus Aschenbrenner has provided a nice 3-page overview of MSBuild, including the major elements, a "hello world" .proj file and even a quick look at building custom tasks.

In his piece Software Practitioner Triad (I know it’s old, but I just got pointed to it by Phil Weber), Alan Cooper points out three different folks needed to design and build software:

• Architect: responsible for determining who the user is, what he or she is trying to accomplish, and what behavior the software must exhibit to satisfy these human goals.
• Engineer: technical problem solving via experimentation, not fettered with the demands of producing release code.
• Programmer: producing a shippable product, consisting mostly of protective code that rarely—if ever—executes, but is dedicated to supporting obscure edge cases, platform idiosyncrasies, and error conditions.

I’ve done all three, but am happiest with architect and engineer. Where are you in your current job? Where do you want to be?

A friend of mine IM’d me just a few moments ago and asked, “When you’re sitting in front of a code editor and you have no motivation, what do you do?”

I hereby dub this “programmer’s block” and since I’ve never had it (which I’m just now realizing is pretty weird), I wondering if you can offer my friend some advice. Thanks!

I really love Mitch’s idea for a “Builder” in the Visual Studio Code View:

There are tons of hidden strings in code that would benefit from such a thing, e.g. data provider-specific connection and query strings, and I’d gladly rebuild my FormatDesigner as a Builder. I wonder if the VSIP SDK is powerful enough to implement it…

Have you got opinions about how information is arranged on MSDN? Do you have issues with the Table of Contents? Are you just looking for some way to fight back against the machine? If so, check out Paula Land’s blog.

Paula is MSDN’s Chief Information Architect and she’s provided a sneak peak at MSDN’s new TOC. If you’ve got comments, now’s the time.

Here. Whoa. I guess there was some pent up demand for the Applied XML Dev.Conf., because after a weekend of registrations, we're already 1/3rd full. Don’t wait to register.

Here.

Remember that feeling you got when you first learned that your Mom read your web site? Yikes!

Here.

Every year it gets harder to pick speakers for the DevCon. This year, I had 4x the number of submissions for which I had available slots. So, while it’s hard for me to pick, it makes for a fabulous line up for attendees:

For speakers, we’ve got keynotes from Tim Bray (co-inventor of XML) and Tim Ewald. We’ve also got Don Box, Sam Ruby, Jeff Barr (of Amazon.com), Keith Brown, Scott Hanselman, Chris Anderson, Doug Purdy, Ted Neward, Rich Salz and more.

For subjects, we’ll hear about the present and future of the blogging community, how MSDN plans to expose it’s huge store of content via web services, Schematron, XSLT2, web services versioning, how 3rd parties are making use of Amazon.com’s services for profit and how the Navy is using XML to test their missile systems.

For venue, we’ve got the site of my first technical talk ever, Skamania Lodge, a beautiful resort just 40 minutes from the Portland Int’l Airport. And since the conference is Wed-Thu (10/20-21), bring the family and extend your stay over the weekend!

All of the previous 4 DevCons have sold out, so you should register quickly (and don’t forget to make your hotel reservations, too)!

For all the conference and hotel details, click here.