Big news in DevHawk land: I’ll be taking on a new role in the Windows division after I come back from TechEd Europe (plus a week vacation visiting my bro-in-law in Germany after TechEd).

You guys have heard of Windows, right? They just released a new version recently you might be aware of…Actually, I hear it was your idea!

Seriously, I am stoked to be joining the Windows team. I can’t say much about the new job beyond a) it’s in Windows Client (as opposed to Windows Server) and b) I’m working on a team that’s focused on the Windows developer experience. The Windows team is deep in what you might call “building on teh awesome that is Windows 7” but that they simply call “planning”, so sorry if specifics are kinda sparse. I’ll be back working for Mahesh Prakriya, who originally hired me into my current role on the IronPython team. Someday I might tell you the Mahesh PyCon Lego Story, but for now I’ll just say I was great working for Mahesh the first time and I think this time is going to be even better.

Working on Windows…focused on developer experience…for Mahesh – It’s like the perfect storm of work geekdom for me.

Of course, starting a new job means my time on the IronPython team is coming to an end. As excited as I am about this new opportunity in the Windows division, I’m a little sad to be leaving Developer Division and the IronPython team. I’ve joked with audiences that I care about Python because Microsoft pays me to care about Python, but that’s not completely true. Python is a fantastic language and IronPython’s combination of Python + .NET is hard to beat in my opinion. IronPython has made significant progress while I’ve been here the last eighteen months – two major releases (well, 2.6 is almost done), redisting the Python standard library, Visual Studio 2010 compat – but there’s still much for IronPython to accomplish. And of course, leaving behind such great teammates like Dino, Dave, Jim and Jimmy is ALWAYS hard.

The Windows team is somewhat tighter lipped than the totally transparent approach we use in IronPython. Not to worry, my evangelism skills were part of the reason I got the job so you’ll be hearing plenty from me soon enough. However, my posting here will be kinda sparse until I get my bearings over there. Until then, I’m sure that you will be absolutely fascinated by non-work-related-but-still-sometimes-geeky minutia I post on Twitter.

Today was the Presentation Idol competition I blogged about a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t win – but believe me when I say I was up against some serious competition. I think I was about in the middle of the pack – better than some but clearly not as good as others.

Since I made a big deal about asking for people ideas on how to present my topic of choice – external contributions to Microsoft Open Source projects – I decided I’d post my deck and my script. Yes, I said script. Usually, I don’t script what I’m going to say word for word like this. But with only three and a half minutes to present, I thought I’d be as precise as possible. You’ll notice some lines near the end are in italics – those are ones I planned on cutting if I was in danger of going over the time limit.

Feedback, as usual, is most welcome.

Hello, my name is Harry Pierson. I’m a program manager in the Visual Studio Languages group and I’m here to talk about what I would most like to do to improve Microsoft.

At Microsoft, we care an awful lot about the software ecosystem. Searching for the word “ecosystem” on Microsoft.com returns nearly eight thousand results. We talk about the ecosystem in our marketing and in our press releases.

In 2007, we commissioned a study of the global economic impact of the Microsoft ecosystem. In a word, it’s massive. It’s responsible for nearly 15 million jobs and drives over half a trillion dollars a year in tax revenue worldwide.

No wonder we care about the ecosystem so much.

But clearly, we’re not the only ones who care. Microsoft represents a fairly small percentage of the overall ecosystem. We earn just over 11% of the total revenue and account for half of one percent of the total employment within the ecosystem.

That means there are an awfully large number of people with a vested interest in the continuing success of the Microsoft platform.

With this vast ecosystem in mind, I want to talk about Open Source. Microsoft and Open Source are often portrayed as enemies. But in DevDiv, we have several high profile Open Source projects. I work on IronPython, which has been Open Source for over four years. More recently, the ASP.NET and Extensibility Framework teams have decided to release some projects as Open Source.

I believe we should have more Open Source projects at Microsoft. But more importantly, I feel that we need to go beyond the textbook definition of Open Source. Our Open Source projects are typically closed to external contributions. But for the ecosystem at large, Open Source isn’t just about the availability and distribution terms of the source code. It also implies a collaborative development model - parties working together across organizational boundaries, contributing directly to projects in question.

The thing I would most like to change about Microsoft would be to let members of our ecosystem contribute code to our Open Source projects.

I can tell you from personal experience, there are members of the IronPython community who would leap at the opportunity to contribute code. And their engineering prowess and real world would benefit the IronPython project tremendously. But the legal process for getting permission to take contributions is onerous. Worse, the legal stigma attached to code that isn’t 100% pure Microsoft intellectual property makes it nearly impossible for any other group inside Microsoft to build on it.

I realize the onerous legal process is there for a reason: to protect Microsoft’s interests. But improving IronPython and Open Source projects like it isn’t just in Microsoft’s best interest; it’s in the best interest of our ecosystem as well. We need a legal framework that protects Microsoft while allowing for code contributions. Developing such a framework will be a challenge. But competitors like Sun, Google and IBM have already demonstrated that it’s not insurmountable.

Half a trillion dollars annually. 15 Million jobs. 42% of the IT workforce. The Microsoft ecosystem is the envy of the industry. And Microsoft is in a unique position to harness the collective experience and engineering prowess of that ecosystem while simultaneously dispelling the myth that we are an enemy of Open Source.

It’s time we make this change.

Thank you very much.

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’ve hired a few people around here recently (including me obviously). However, if you have a burning desire to work on IronPython (or IronRuby) and Visual Studio, we’re still hiring:

An important aspect of developing these dynamic languages [aka IronPython and IronRuby] is providing support in the Visual Studio IDE. This includes editing features (color-coding of source code, intellisense, go-to-definition, refactoring, etc), debugging features (breakpoints, data tool tips, etc), ensuring a language-specific look-and-feel (interactive console, etc), and integration into the Visual Studio project system. It includes integration with the various designers like the WPF designer via CodeDOM, and development of project templates for various scenarios (Silverlight 2 app, WPF app, ASP.Net website, VSTT unit tests, etc). We also want to integrate with Visual Studio technologies like profiling and code coverage. Your job will be to ensure that developers using dynamic languages built on top of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) have the best development environment in Visual Studio.

We’re looking for a talented developer with exceptional programming ability and a passion for dynamic languages. Experience in these areas is a bonus though not strictly required: building developer tools like editors and debuggers, compiler implementation, reflection, dynamic languages, VM implementation, performance measurement and/or optimization, C#. Applicants should have a BS/MS in computer science or equivalent, and three or more years of industry experience.

• Another nice thing about the new job: I’m working in the vicinity of some good friends. I was over in building 42 yesterday and made it a point to stop by Pat Helland's office yesterday and spend an hour or so chatting about the new gig. Pat is down the hall from David Hill, whom I worked with on Architecture Strategy. Back in my building, we’re down the hall from the VSX folks including my friends Ken Levy and Gareth Jones. I’m sure there are more folks I know around, but hey it’s only my second week!
• I’m a big fan of Carbonite, which I use to back up all the digital media on my home computer. With two little kids, we have lots of digital photos as you might imagine . However, one thing that bugs me about Carbonite is that it doesn’t back up video files by default, you have to go in on a folder by folder basis and select “‘Back up Video files in this folder” from the context menu. Given how much trouble this “feature” has given me, I imagine less techie folks don’t even realize their video files aren’t getting backed up. However, I will say the latest version of the Carbonite Software at least makes it easy to find files that aren’t backed up. A quick sweep revealed around a dozen folders that had un-backed-up video files in them, which I promptly fixed.
• The big news yesterday was the new Google App Engine, which looks to give you access to virtualized infrastructure that sounds similar to what GOOG is rumored to use internally. I like Dave Winer’s comment that this enables “shrinkwrap net apps that scale that can be deployed by civillians.” Given Google’s history w/ Python – Python’s BDFL Guido van Rossum works there – it’s no surprise that Google App Engine (GAE?) runs on Python, though apparently they “look forward to supporting more languages in the future”. I’m guessing “more languages” == Ruby, maybe Erlang too.
• I wonder if/how Google App Engine will affect Ruby on Rails momentum? If there’s a significant lag before App Engine supports Ruby, will that drive developers to Python web stacks like Django? (Django is included in “the box” with App Engine)?@ PyCon, I was surprised at the intra-language animosity I observed. I wonder how many Python developers are secretly hoping Google never ships Ruby support. I highly doubt Google would do that – they want to tap the exploding RoR market like everyone else – but I’d bet it would really take the wind out of Rails’ sails if they did.
• Today’s Michael Foord Link: Embedding IronPython 2, Examples of the DLR Hosting API. You can read the DLR Hosting spec, but it’s pretty out of date so Michael’s article helps fill in some of the gaps.
• Looks like PowerShell has gotten the open source community treatment in a project called Pash. While I’m sure others are excited about PS on Linux or Mac, I’m excited to see PS running on Compact Framework. I wonder if it would work with XNA?
• Speaking of XNA, XNA Console is a new CodePlex project that provides an IPy console to manipulate your XNA based game on the fly. Python is no stranger to game development – Civ IV for example provided mod capabilities via python. Alas, the compact framework can’t run IPy today, so neither can XNA on Xbox. But wouldn’t it be cool to hack your game in IPy running on a 360 using the messenger kit? (via IPy URLs)
• Bart De Smet gets functional, writing type switch and pattern matching in C# 3.0. I guess it works, but it sure is ugly. Why not just use F# and be done with it?
• Soma announces that the VC++ Feature Pack has shipped. Somewhere, I assume, there is much (some?) rejoicing.