For those who are interested, I just uploaded a bunch of changes to the PowerShell Scripts folder on my SkyDrive. Feel free to download them and use them as you need.

• find-to-set-alias – Brad Wilson enhanced this function significantly and broke it out into it’s own script. I had a small issue with his version where the folder search may only return a single value, so you can’t treat it like collection. My version wraps that command in @(…) so that you can always treat it like a collection.
• find-in-path – searches all the folders in your path for a given file name (wildcards supported. Very useful for “where is this app actually installed” kind of debugging.
• get-git-branch – returns the current git branch of a given folder. Got the idea for this originally from Ivan Porto Carrero.
• prompt – my powershell prompt. Pretty basic, but it now shows current git branch.
• elevate-process – create a new PowerShell window or run an app as an administrator. I alias this to su on my machine. I recently reworked the “run an app” part of this script, so it will search the current folder and then the path to run the app you specify.
• _profile – this is my main profile script, which I share across multiple machines via Mesh. I reworked all my alias setting to use the new find-to-set-alias and moved setting the color of the command window to the top of the script.

Update: I just updated elevate-process again, adding a special clause to handle .bat and .cmd files. cmd.exe seems to ignore the working directory setting, so if your batch file relies on being run from the folder it’s in, it’ll break with elevate-process. That’s annoying. So if you elevate a batch file, the script runs cmd.exe directly and executes the specified batch file after first changing to the current directory. Ugly, but it seems to work.

FYI, anyone using ipydbg, devhawk_ipy or Pygments for WL Writer can now submit issues, bugs and feature requests other the associated GitHub project page. Head to the associated GitHub project page and click the “Issues” tab at the top. There’s a short video of introducing the GitHub Issues feature you can check out.

BTW, thanks to defunkt @ GitHub for the ipydbg shoutout.

In case you’re job hunting, the VB team has a position open for a dev lead:

The Visual Basic team has a long history of delivering great value to our customers, and we are continuing that in the Dev10 release of Visual Studio. We’re looking for a Development Lead to help guide these efforts as well as shape future versions of the compiler.

The Visual Studio Languages group (VSL) develops VB, C#, F#, IronPython and IronRuby. As a member of this product unit, you’ll have the opportunity to work with others developing compilers and IDEs targeting the .NET runtime. You’ll benefit from their experience and contribute best practices and methodologies of your own. In VSL, developers work closely with their QA team, and we are committed to delivering the best value for our customers at very high quality.

As a Development Lead on the Visual Basic compiler, you’ll be the hand at the tiller of VB.NET compiler development. Specifically, you will:

• Manage the day-to-day duties of the compiler and runtime development team, ensuring on-schedule delivery of high quality components.
• Help chart the direction the compiler team takes by prioritizing efforts in coordination with your counterparts in QA and PM.
• Contribute to the design of the Visual Basic programming language.
• Mentor your team of developers to continue their career growth.
• Help shape the engineering environment and procedures in Visual Studio Languages.
• Work closely with the IDE team to help them provide a top notch editing and debugging experience.

To be successful, you’ll need the following:

• A demonstrated aptitude for managing a team of high-caliber developers.
• Excellent communication, collaboration and negotiation skills and the ability to drive open issues to closure.
• Strong architectural sense and a working knowledge of the fundamentals of compiler design.
• Passion for delivering customer solutions and quality software in general.
• Working knowledge of the managed runtime environment is a strong plus.

We’re now accepting registrations and talk proposals for the 2009 Lang.NET Symposium, which will be held on the Microsoft campus April 14th-16th.

For those who aren’t familiar with this event, the Lang.NET Symposium is an opportunity for programming language designers and researchers from industry and academia to get together and basically geek out for two and a half days. And it’s not just Microsoft language wonks like Anders Hejlsberg or platform wonks like Don Box. For example, last year we had Dan Ingalls from Sun, Gilad Bracha from Cadence, John Rose from OpenJDK and Wez Furlong from the PHP Project among many others.

If you’re curious about the kind of talks we typically have at Lang.NET, the talks from 2006 and 2008 are available online.

I’ve attended both previous Lang.NET Symposiums and spoke at last year’s event, but this will be my first as a part of the team driving the event itself. We’ve expanded a little this year, though we’re still a small conference so the signal-to-noise ratio should still be very high. We barely fit in the Platform Lab last year, so we moved this year’s event to Microsoft Research’s sweet new building #99.

This year, we’re very excited to be joined at the hip with Chris Sells’ DSL Developers Conference. Those guys over in CSD are working on some cool language stuff of their own, so it just made sense to hold the two events in the same space, one right after the other. Note, registration for each event is separate. You’re welcome to attend both – we’d love it if you did – just make sure you register for both.

As in the past, there is no cost to attend Lang.NET. You get yourself here and find place to stay and we’ll take care of the content, meals and beers in the evening. Just make sure you let us know you’re coming and what, if anything, you’re interested in getting up and talking about by registering at the Lang.NET Symposium website.

As I’ve written before, I originally got the programming bug from a desire to build my own text adventure games. with significant influence from my dad. Now that I’m a father myself, I want my kids to have a similar opportunity, even if they never choose to go into the “family business”.

Of course, the technology has moved on significantly since the days of “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike”. At CES yesterday, Microsoft announced Kodu which I’ve written about before under it’s original name Boku. Kodu came out of Microsoft Research as a tool for teaching kids how to program. The programming language is very visual and iconic and you use the Xbox controller exclusively for all input. Here’s a screenshot:

To demo Kodu at CES, Robbie Bach brought a 12 year old girl named Sparrow up on stage to demo. I showed the video to my kids this morning and they went gaga for it. They’re a little young – Patrick turns 6 next month and Riley turns 4 later this year – but I think they’ll be able to get the hang of it (with a little help from dad). Below is the video of the CES demo, and there are more Kodu videos at On10 (Matthew MacLaurin on Kodu and Watch Kodu in Action).

Personally, I think this is brilliant. I have been eagerly waiting a change to play this with my kids for over a year, so I’m very excited that they’re bringing this to market. Seriously, Halo Wars just got bumped to the #2 slot on my “Most Anticipated Xbox Games of 2009” list.

I’m most interested in how these creations will be shared online. I couldn’t find any details, but Robbie specifically said “And on Xbox Live they can distribute and share those finished games with other people.” Will there be a charge? (“normal” Community Games cost between $2.50 and $10 a pop) How will parental controls affect shared Kodu games? I guess those details will come closer to release.