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.

• Big news for IronRuby out of OSCON. John and Jim have the details. Congrats to the IronRuby folks on reaching these milestones and paving the way for others (i.e. IPy) to follow some of the same paths.
• One of those OSCON announcements, is a project my teammate Jimmy Schementi has been working on: Silverline, which “let’s you write Rails code that can run on the client“.
• Shri Borde – the dev manager for IPy, IRuby and F# – tackles a tricky subject of static compilation of dynamic Python code. This came up on the mailing list recently as one of the outstanding requests for IPy to do is support custom attributes, which requires static compilation. Shri lays out some of the big issues with this approach. However, the community has been fairly clear on this, so it’s obviously something we need to look at.
• I met someone from MS Research at the MS Product Fair who pointed me to the Institute for Personal Robots in Education, a joint effort between Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College and sponsored by Microsoft Research. Their Myro software (myro == my robot) is written in CPython, but there’s an effort underway (aka Miro 3.0) to build a .NET version that uses IronPython. Must investigate.
• Seshadri shows how easy it is to extend C# types in IronPython. It’s also shows how simple it is to host DLR code in your app – it’s like 6 lines of code!
• Early reviews of IronPython in Action are good.
• If you want to run an IronPython IDE in your browser with Silverlight, check out SilverShell from Dan Eloff.
• The XNA team has announced their business plans for community games. Basically, you set a price point between 200 and 800 points (aka between $2.50 and $10) and receive a “baseline” of 70% of the revenue the game generates. More details are available in the FAQ. This is pretty excited. I’d like to build some co-op kids games.
• Speaking of XNA, Caligari is now offering TrueSpace 7.6 for free . David Weller and Glenn Wilson provide an XNA viewpoint on the announcement, Chris Pendleton shows how to upload your models to VirtualEarth.
• Congrats to the CodePlex team on their latest drop, which features that a cool new feature – Mailing Lists! IronPython has had a Mailman mailing list for years, so I’m not sure we’ll use this feature on IPy, but I’ll investigate it
• Two PDC notes: First, Rick Rashid – VP of MS Research – will be delivering a PDC keynote. Second, the PDC team has put up a video podcast on Producing a Ginormous Conference in 10 Minutes or Less! It’s the “inaugural episode” so watch for more Countdown to PDC video podcast episodes in the future.
• I recently discovered Chris Smith’s F# blog. He’s got recent posts on Mastering F# Lists and Guidelines for Readable F# code. For the F# novice, check out his F# in 20 Minutes posts (part one, part two)
• Pat Helland is moving to the SQL team. Good luck Pat!
• I like Nick Malik’s formal definition of use cases, but I can’t help be reminded of Charlie Alfred’s Value-Driven Architecture article in Architecture Journal 5 where he said use cases were “easy to teach and explain” but that “if simplicity were the only goal that counted, we’d all still be walking or riding horses to get from one place to another.”

• Big news since my last Morning Coffee post was the announcement of Live Mesh. I’ve been running it for about a month, and I’m really digging it. Make sure you check out the team blog and watch the developer tour video (be on the lookout for IPy about half way thru the video)

ALT.NET

• I had a great time @ the ALT.NET open space conference last weekend. I was somewhat distracted on Saturday as due to a family communication mixup, I had to bring my son Patrick with me. Jeffrey Palermo shot a cute video of him (3 minutes in) where he explains that he’s at the conference “to be with my dad”. Having a five year old is a little distracting, but everyone was amazingly cool with having him around. When he gets a little older I have no doubt he’ll be attending conferences and leading open sessions.
• I did a session on F#, but it felt kinda all over the place. I hadn’t touched F# in a few months and it showed IMO. Matt Podwysocki was there to help keep the session from devolving into mass chaos. Thanks Matt.
• My favorite session of the conference was Scott Hanselman’s “Are We Innovating?” talk, which I think originated from a question I asked him: There are many examples of large OSS projects in other dev communities that get ported to .NET (NHibernate, NAnt, MonoRail, etc). Can you name one that’s gone the other way? I can’t.
• I took Matt’s advice and joined the local ALT.NET Seattle group.

DyLang Stuff

• Martin Maly posts about how dynamic method dispatches are cached in three different layers by the DLR. You shouldn’t care about this stuff if you’re a DLR language user, but you will certainly care about it if you’re a DLR language builder.
• I’m really excited to see Phil Haack (whom I met F2F @ ALT.NET) is experimenting with IronRuby & ASP.NET MVC. True, I’d rather it was IPy, but his Routes.LoadFromRuby would work with Python with very little code change.
• Note to self, take a deeper look at Twining, the IPy database DSL by David Seruyange.
• Daily Michael Foord – Ironclad 0.2 Released. Ironclad is a project to implement Python’s C extension API in C# so that IronPython could load standard Python C modules like SciPy and NumPy. So far, they’re able to load the bz2 module.

Other Stuff

• Congrats to Brad and Jim for shipping xUnit.net 1.0.
• Everyone seems to be jumping on the functional C# coding bandwagon. Bart De Smet’s series on pattern matching in C# is currently at eight posts. Now Luca Bolognese is in on the action, with three posts so far on functional code in C#. I like how Luca keeps writing that the C# syntax is “not terrible” for functional programming. Again, why suffer thru the “not terrible” syntax when you could be using F# instead? (via Charlie Calvert)
• I need to take a look at VLinq. Charlie and Scott Hanselman both mentioned it recently.
• I would like to have been in the conversation with Ted Neward, Neal Ford, Venkat Subramaniam, Don Box and Amanda Silver.
• I haven’t had any time to play with XNA of late, which means the great list of GDC videos Dave Weller posted on the XNA team blog will remain beyond my ability to invest time for now.
• There’s a new drop of Spec# from MS Research. IronRuby is using Spec# heavily as I recall.

• 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.

Shortly after posting today’s morning coffee, I notice two “blogging advisories” in my inbox from the XNA team. They’re announcing two things: XNA Game Studio 3.0 and Xbox LIVE Community Games.

Given that there was an XNA Game Studio 1.0 and 2.0, news that there will be a 3.0 version releasing this holiday season isn’t what veteran bloggers like myself call “a surprise”. However, the news that XNA GS 3.0 is going to support development of Zune based games was quite a surprise. Rumors of a Microsoft hand held gaming device crop up every few months, but there’s never been any substance to them. The Zune isn’t really a handheld gaming device like the DS or PSP – the FAQ points out that it will take “creative thinking” to build a game for a device with a 240×320 display that’s designed for one hand use. Furthermore, Cesar “Zune Insider” Menendez points out that “Zune is a wireless music and video player first and foremost”.

Still, it’s pretty cool to think about what a Zune based game experience would be like. So far we know it’ll be 2D only and it have full access to any non-DRM music on the device. Also, it will be social – Zune XNA games will support wireless multiplayer with up to 8 players, though it doesn’t support cross-platform networking with Xbox and Windows. I can’t wait to see what the community does with this capability. I’ll definitely be getting a Zune now.

As for the Xbox LIVE Community Games, it’s something the XNA folks have been hinting at since last year. This is the announcement the XNA folks have been building towards since day one when they called XNA the “YouTube for videogames“. Very much unlike the retail or arcade Xbox channels, Community Games will be peer-reviewed by XNA Creators Club community members instead of Microsoft (though unsurprisingly, MS “reserves the right to reactively take down a game without prior notification”). You’ll even be able to sell your games, though details on that won’t be available until later in the year.

Like XNA GS 3.0, Community Games will be available “during the holiday 2008 season.” However, for the next month, Microsoft is offering a preview of Community Games, offering seven community developed games for free, including last year’s DreamBuildPlay co-winner “The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai“. I can’t wait to get home and try them out.

IMO, this is a huge announcement. But what’s most impressive to me is how much they’ve accomplished in a fairly short time. XNA was only announced two and a half years ago. That’s amazing progress for a pretty small team. I can’t wait to see what they do next.