The Southern Maryland GiveCamp version 2014 will take place during the last weekend of this month (March 28th – 30th). Ten non-profits will get an IT make-over!
We’re sponsoring the GiveCamp again this year and wish all the volunteers and participating NPO’s a great event!
During the last SoCal Code Camp, we had a drawing to give away a Leap Motion Controller. We’re proud to announce that the winner is Darryl Hawkins from Lake Forest, CA!
Darryl has been developing software for almost 30 years, having started in the game industry in 1986 with the Commodore 64. Subsequent console development included the Super Nintendo, Sega Saturn, Playstation, Wii, XBox 360 and PS3.
He is currently working as a software engineer, developing web applications using ASP.NET MVC. He also runs an independent game development studio called OmniHawk, developing games for PC, mobile, and next-gen consoles. His most recent game is called Drone Military, available for Android and Windows 8 mobile devices.
Congratulations, Darryl! We’re all looking forward to you implementing the Leap Motion Controller into your next game!
If you missed our hangout last week with Microsoft Regional Director, author, and Dev trend setter, John Papa, you can see it in all its glory right here, right now.
You don’t want to miss the demo and all the other great info laid out for you by Mr. Papa and our own Michael Ossou in this jam-packed hour.
What are you waiting for?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx6boQwPfCw&rel=0
On February 11th, Michael Ossou, developer, evangelist, regular contributor to this blog, and all-around good guy, is giving a presentation to the Inland Empire .NET User’s Group.
We have sponsored the group for a while now, but this is the first time we’re giving a presentation. The title of the presentation is: Obama, JQuery, & ASP.NET SignalR: Getting Started with the Real-Time Web.
It features an application Michael built that mimics approval dials (those dial devices handed out to focus groups during election debates) that runs in a browser. If you’re part of the Inland Empire group or in the area, we’d love to meet you!
Time: Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2014 @ 6:30pm
Location: National University, 804 East Brier Drive, San Bernardino, CA 92408-2815
Most of you are probably familiar with Team Foundation Server (TFS), Microsoft’s Application Lifecycle Management product that we offer as a hosted service. You can use TFS to manage work item, track bugs, automate builds and, of course, version control.
We get a lot of questions around here about Visual Studio Online (formerly Team Foundation Service) and how it’s different than the TFS service we offer. This article will try to shed some light on those questions.
Let’s start with getting the names straight. First, there is the original “Team Foundation Server” (TFS). This is software you can install on a server in your own network. You and your team can then hook up Visual Studio to that server and use TFS. You have to buy the software, buy licenses for users and use your own server.
Next came the hosted version of TFS, which is what we offer. We have TFS on our web server, you pay us a small per-user fee to use it. You can get up and running quickly, without performing installation or maintenance. And the service is available online. You just need Visual Studio installed on your computer and an internet connection.
Then came “Team Foundation Service,” a TFS-like product offered directly by Microsoft. You pay them to hook up Visual Studio to their Azure-based online server.
Finally, Microsoft changed the name of Team Foundation Service to “Visual Studio Online”.
I will just compare the hosted version of TFS (the product we offer) to Visual Studio Online (VS Online).
The core functions of TFS and VS Online are the same. In fact, they are essentially the same product on different update cycles and frequencies. You can use them both to track bugs, manage work items, control different versions of your source code – all the things a good ALM product should do.
What’s fundamentally different is how new versions of each get to market.
TFS has distinct versions: 2010, 2012 and the new 2013. This is like most other Microsoft software, e.g. Office, Visual Studio, Windows OS. When a new version comes out, you can choose whether or not you want to upgrade (like choosing to stay on Windows 7 instead of moving to Windows 8).
VS Online does not have versions. There is no VS Online 2010 or VS Online 2013. Instead, VS Online is a constantly evolving service that’s continually being updated.
Currently, Microsoft releases a new sprint (update) for VS Online every 3 weeks. Adoption is not optional. Sprints are released on the entire platform, along with a news article explaining the changes. You can see history of the changes here.
The history is long. There are a lot of changes, big and small, superficial and architectural. Things get added, removed, returned, renamed and rearranged (heck, they even changed the name!). In fact, they released a new sprint while I was writing this article. So, if you’re going to be on VS Online, you’ll want to bookmark that page and keep up with all the changes as they happen. And not only you – your entire team will have to keep up, too.
It’s all part of Microsoft’s Agile philosophy, build–measure–learn.
Who are they measuring and learning from? While the VS Online team does do some dogfooding, they primarily rely on their users, through observations and direct feedback. In a sense, users are pioneers blazing the ALM frontier. Or maybe just lab rats? Remember this video from Microsoft taking shots against Google Docs?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QI4KmlcQr4&rel=0
(Note that Microsoft has removed that video from their YouTube channel.)
Most of the time, Microsoft is adding new features and making the service better by giving you more tools, better ways to manage your project and collaborate with your team. Last year they added, among other features, Git support, charts, and team rooms.
But sometimes a new release will introduce a new bug, or just downright break something. Like with Sprint #45. Or with the Nov. 13, 2013 release.
I’ll be honest. Most of that is over my head. It’s a complex service sitting on top of a complex service (Azure) that changing all the time and it takes weeks for the smartest people in the world to figure out what’s wrong.
But you want more tools, better project management and collaboration, right? Well, you get that with TFS, too! See, the features on VS Online eventually get bundled up and released in new versions of TFS. Take a look at this chart. The third column (Server) lets you know what version of TFS that feature was released to.
So to me, with TFS, you’re getting the best of both worlds. You don’t have to suffer bugs, because they’re usually worked out by the time a new version is released. New features aren’t missing important components. You get a more stable, more mature product with TFS. And you’re not forced to adopt new versions. If you’re happy with TFS 2012 and would rather concentrate on your code than learn new software, you can stay with TFS 2012. If and/or when you want some of the new features that came out with TFS 2013, you can choose to upgrade – on your own schedule.
If you’re having a tough time deciding, let me share what I’ve gathered from the feedback we get. People who prefer VS Online are willing to tolerate bleeding edge hiccups. Many of them are motivated by an interested in ALM itself, as a subject of study, and want to keep abreast of the changes Microsoft makes as they make them.
The people who prefer TFS tend to be in mature developer teams; and in teams that maybe that don’t have the luxury to schedule a training session every 3 weeks. These are usually people who need something they are familiar with and confident in.
If you have any questions or comments, let us know!
I usually don’t do ‘lists’ – well unless it’s an IList<T> – but that’s another story. The purpose of this list is for me to share with you 3 things from this month that I feel you really should take the time to be aware of, read, or watch.
In no particular order:
1 – MVC 5.1, WebAPI 2.1, & Web Pages 3.1 were released. You can see the full details in the link, but MongoDB guys will be happy to hear about the BSON media-type formatter in WebAPI 2.1.
2 – Visual Studio Update 1 was released. This is primarily related to bug fixes. Word on the street is that an upcoming Update 2 will contain some new features. If you are planning to to use MVC 5.1 however, make sure to perform this update as it’s needed for the Razor views. There are also reports that this update can take a really long time. So it’s probably best to run it when your done working.
3 – The ng-conf Conference videos have been made available on YouTube. Those who are new to AngularJS, can watch Dan Wahlin’s intro with me here or his ‘AngularJS Fundamentals In 60-ish Minutes’ video here.
While some website hosting companies may claim that they host many sites for web developers, DiscountASP.NET has always maintained a large majority of developers in our customer base.
This post is based on our customer survey conducted in October 2013 and focuses on our U.S.-based customers. For the survey, we received a total of 644 responses, representing about 5% of total U.S. clients.
In the survey, we asked our customers to best describe their web development skill level and select from five options, including “I’m an advanced web designer/developer,” “I’m an intermediate web designer/developer,” “I’m a beginner web designer/developer,” “I’m the owner of this hosting account and I have others who develop my web site,” and “Other.”
The results showed that of 76% of our customers in the US are intermediate to advanced web designers/developers. Eight percent of our customers described themselves as beginner web developers. The remaining 15% identified themselves as the owner of the hosting account and 1% answered with the “other” option.
When we segment our U.S. customers by their web development skill level and hosting age, we find that a higher percentage of our younger customers tend to be advanced developers. The survey results show that 43% of the customers who have been with us for five years or more described themselves as advanced developers, compared to 58% of customers who opened an account with us in 2012.
The study found that the majority of recently acquired customers are advanced web developers. This result also supports some of our previous findings where we observed that our recently acquired customers intend to spend more time focusing on developing mobile applications for example.
It is great to see that all of our efforts to stay on top of new technologies as they are released is attracting developers to DiscountASP.NET.
Last year we launched Shared TFS 2013 hosting, and today we are announcing that Managed TFS 2013 Hosting is available in our U.S. and U.K.-based data centers.
Managed TFS is our premium TFS hosting solution; your own instance of Team Foundation Server on a dedicated VM all to yourself. No sharing involved. Because you’re on your own server, we can offer server-side customization that is not available with shared TFS – for example, we can install special software on the server for you. More information on hosted TFS features here.
For our Managed TFS 2013 service we offer both the TFS Basic and TFS Full configurations. TFS Basic includes source control and work item tracking (our Shared TFS Hosting service is TFS Basic). The TFS Full option adds SharePoint and Reporting.
If you are interested a Managed TFS Hosting solution, please contact us for a quote.
If you are considering a Managed TFS solution but are not 100% sure if it’s right for you or your team, you can always try the 30 day free offer for our Shared TFS hosting solution (for up to 5 users) and test it to see if the hosted TFS ALM system works for you before you commit to a managed TFS solution.