• 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…

• My Virtual TechEd Session What is Project Rome? got posted. It’s only 8 minutes long, so as you might expect it’s fairly high level. Thanks to Jon Flanders for handling interview duty.
• QUT’s Garden Point Ruby.NET compiler is now the Ruby.NET open source project.
• The NHL is partnering with NeuLion to provide IPTV services for NHL team websites. They piloted with the Islanders last season. Wouldn’t it be cool to get my favorite team’s IPTV channel on my Xbox 360?
• Speaking of Hockey,
  
  I like this new NHL 08 trailer. It’s about Reebok’s new uniform system, so it focuses on the teams with new uniforms, including the Caps. It does feature marquee players from rival teams like Sidney Crosby and Eric Staal (who is the cover athlete) heavily. But any video featuring Ovechkin’s stick handling, Semin scoring and Crosby falling to the ice is OK in my book.
• Speaking of Video Games, the XNA Dream-Build-Play contest is over. You can see and download some of the submitted games over on Ziggyware. Some of them look awesome. (via Michael Klucher)
• I said on Wednesday that it was a slow week. It may be, but I’ve also been less than motivated on pretty much all geek fronts this week. Not sure why.

Nick Malik asked “what is the Rails “answer” on the Microsoft platform? If we don’t install Ruby, do we use Rails on JS or is there a Rails version we may want to put up ourselves?” I guess it depends, what is the Rails “question”?

On the one hand, the question could be “What’s the best way to run Rails on Windows?” I think the short answer to that is IronRuby. In the wake of the IronRuby announcement, John Lam wrote that “Nobody would take our implementation seriously if it doesn’t run Rails.” Somepeople question the DLR’s teams ability to ship a compatible version of Ruby without looking at the source, but my money is on the DLR team. (Of course it is, I’m a kool-aid drinker!)

BTW, I don’t think having a JavaScript port of Rails (JailS?) is much of a help for the Microsoft platform. I’m not sure if Steve Yegge’s JavaScript Rails port would run on JScript.NET, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I would expect you need either the old Active Scripting JScript or the new Managed JScript (aka the DLR based version of JavaScript). Of course, IronRuby runs on DLR as well so why wouldn’t you just run Rails on IronRuby instead of the JavaScript port of Rails on Managed JScript?

(Side note – why isn’t the new JScript engine called IronJavaScript? Wouldn’t that be cooler than Managed JScript? Don’t they know “Iron” is the new “#”?)

On the other hand, maybe the question is “can ASP.NET evolve to be more Rails-esque?” I think it’s starting to, slowly. Rails at it’s core is a Model View Controller web app pattern (aka Action Pack) combined with an Active Record data access pattern (aka Rails’ Active Record). Certainly, nothing stops you from using a similar approach with ASP.NET. The Castle Project has an ASP.NET implementation of MVC (aka MonoRail) and Active Record (also called Active Record). But I assume Nick’s more interested in what ships natively in the platform to compare to Rails.

On the data access side, I think LINQ to SQL is a a compelling alternative to the various Active Record implementations. It’s not an implementation of the Active Record pattern, it looks more like a Table Data Gateway patten. Also, it’s not DRY like Rails Active Record, but I think that’s more of a function of dynamic vs. static languages. Castle Active Record isn’t DRY either. But once you get the hang of the slightly funky syntax (the from clause is first so you can get intellisense) I find LINQ very easy to use. Certainly, building Query Objects is a snap.

On the web app framework side, the story isn’t so pretty. The agile folks like MVC because it’s easier to test (among other reasons – see update below). Apparently, there’s an ASP.NET MVC framework that’s “in the works”, but AFAIK no one has seen or heard anything about it since the MVP summit. Jeffrey Palermo was impressed with what he saw, but I guess everyone else has to reserve judgement until it gets a little more public.

Actually, I don’t think it’s an either-or question, it’s both. In order to be the Common Language Runtime, I think it needs to support common dynamic languages like Ruby, Python and JavaScript natively. And, in order to be the best platform, I think the .NET Framework in general and ASP.NET in particular need to support multiple approaches to meet the needs of different developers.

Update: in the comments, Jeffrey Palermo points out that he likes MVC “mostly because it separates concerns of controlling screen and rendering the screen. It makes the application more maintainable and keeps the code easily changeable.” Point taken. I didn’t mean to imply that testability was the only virtue of MVC.

• By most accounts, the Capitals had a good draft this weekend. They started the day with ten picks across the seven rounds. The ended the day with ten prospects as well as three extra picks next year, including two second rounders. According to the GM George McPhee (aka GMGM), next year’s is “supposed to be a terrific draft” which is probably true but what you always say when you trade down for future picks. On the other hand, if the guys you want are available further down, why not stock up on the future picks?
• John Lam reports on Steve Yegge’s Rails port to JavaScript that he saw at Foo Camp. Google (aka Steve’s employer) wasn’t interested in adopting Ruby or Rails since they already use C++, Java, JavaScript and Python. So Steve ported Rails to JavaScript. Wow. However, it does beg the question which is more valuable, Ruby or Rails? If you could have just one or the other, which would you choose?
• Speaking of dynamic languages, Powershell Community Extensions v1.1 is out. I want to check out the new Elevate function. Currently, I’m using the Script Elevation PowerToys, but I would rather have a pure PS solution. (via Powershell Team Blog)
• I always know it’s a slow day when I decide to check TechMeme while writing my Morning Coffee post. Usually, I get plenty to write about from just my news reading. However, right now, even TechMeme seems mostly uninteresting. Only thing remotely interesting to me is Samsung’s new 64GB solid state drive.

I’ve got over 500 unread news posts and 200 emails in my inbox to process. So this is nowhere near comprehensive.

• Clarius released the June 07 CTP of their Software Factory Toolkit. Big new feature in this drop is T4 Text Template editor that has syntax highlighting and eventually intellisense. They also released the May 07 CTP of VSSDK Assist, previously known as VSIP Factory. Haven’t played with either yet, but it seems like a good time to be a tool builder.
• PowerShell hits a million downloads in six months. No surprise there, IT’S FRAKING AWESOME. Jeff Snover details seven MSFT products using PS, promising many more that he can’t talk about. See earlier comment about being fraking awesome.
• Speaking of PS, I don’t “get” Server Core because it doesn’t support managed code. So no PS for Server Core. They announced @ TechEd that Server Core will support IIS 7, but since there’s no CLR you can’t run ASP.NET. As far as I’m concerned, no PS and no ASP.NET is below the minimum threshold of usefulness. I realize it’s technical limitation related to the current factoring of the .NET Framework and I assume some team somewhere in Redmond is working on fixing it. But what’s the point of releasing Server Core in the meantime?
• QUT releases version 0.8 of their Ruby.NET compiler. Given that the IronRuby guys bootstrapped by licensing the Ruby.NET compiler, I wonder how these two projects will evolve side by side.
• Speaking of Ruby, JRuby has gone 1.0. Congrats!
• At TechEd, I saw my friend Steve Jones from Capgemini, and it’s not this Steve Jones. Woops. But CRUD is still CRAP.
• Pat Helland breaks Scott Hanselman’s Rule #2 and details how he “lost a Megan“.
• My ex-teammate David Hill has been busy with Acropolis. If you are even the slightest bit interested in this technology, you should be reading his blog.
• Microsoft acquired a company called Stratature last week. I don’t typically track MSFT acquisition news + it was lost in the noise of TechEd. But Roger Wolter thinks it’s a great move and that Stratature’s Master Data Management hub product is one of the best. Given the importance of MDM in SOA, I think I need to go learn more about this product.