Monday, July 23, 2007

Morning Coffee 104

• I'm presenting at a an internal training conference today and tomorrow, so my Morning Coffee roundup posts will be lighter than usual. On the other hand, I'm taking a bus downtown to the convention center, so I might write something more substantial on the way there and back. Or maybe I'll just read.
• My wife's blogging will also be light, because she's got her nose buried in a book. If I do read something to or from the conference, it's not that book because she won't let me near it until she's done! :)
• Speaking of "that book", Werner Vogel drops a few details about how well Amazon handled 1.3 million pre-orders that were delivered on Saturday (including our copy).
• First drop of IronRuby is available. For now, you can get it from John Lam's blog. Unlike IronPython, IronRuby will be hosted at RubyForge, not CodePlex, but the site isn't set up yet. Other big news is that the IronRuby team will be accepting external contributions. Are these encouraging signs to the Ruby community?
• More MS Research goodness: a new drop of Spec# is available. I've written about Spec# before, but haven't had the time to dig into it. (via Larkware)
• Scott Hanselman takes the red pill. Congrats!
• Speaking of Scott, he forwards on advice to remove a programmatic crutch. Good advice. Not to go all Petzold on Visual Studio, but I would guess the IDE is the biggest crutch out there. As for giving up compulsively checking email, if that's a goal Scott, I think you might have joined the wrong company...