I got an opportunity to attend the LA C# User Group tonight, and listen to Mike Vincent speak on this subject. I'm familiar with the concepts and capabilities of dynamic languages, but looked forward to getting my questions answered.

The behaviors of a dynamic language include several cool behaviors:

• Extend the program by adding new code
• Extend objects and definitions
• Modify the type system

The downside:

• No compiler safety net
• IDE maturity such as Intellisence
• TDD becomes very important

The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) adds a set of services on top of the CLR to support dynamic languages. It will be distributed with Silverlight, IronPython, and IronRuby. Here's a cool graphic Scott Hanselman posted last year that explains the roadmap past, present, and future:

Other notes:

• The Silverlight CLR 2.0 won't support CodeDOM, so the need for a dynamic language really becomes evident.
• Django is a high-level framework for Python comparable to Ruby on Rails, and at PyCon 2008 (March 2008) Microsoft demonstrated Django's use on Iron Python
• John Lam demonstrated Ruby on Rails running on IronRuby at RailsConf (May 2008)

On a side note, one of the attendees told me about the Google App Engine, allowing you to run your application on Google's infrastructure.

You can download Mike's presentation here.

Elegant Code is hosting an Open Spaces session.  An Open Spaces session is a discussion where the attendees generate the topics. There will be no presentation, no lecture, no PowerPoint slides, etc.  The main point of this is a discussion were all the attendees can grow and learn from each other. The topics for discussion will be created by the group. The discussion will be facilitated, but just to keep the conversation going, not to drive it in any direction.

The first one will be held on June 3rd, at the Casa Mexico Restaurant in the Hyde Park section of Boise.  They offer beer and wine in addition to the great "South of the Border" food.

If you would like to attend, please RSVP at scott.schimanski@gmail.com.

Location

Casa Mexico Restaurant  1605 N. 13th St. (Hyde Park), Boise, Idaho (Downstairs in the brick building)

When

Tuesday evening, June 3rd, 6:30-8:30.

We all know the sedentary lifestyle of your classic IT person can lead to ... shall we say ... bloat. I regularly joke that the only thing bigger than your typical (Unix) system administrator is his beard. I jest.

Anyway, we do what we can to avoid the bloat, including running (literally) some form of carbon-based defrag on a regular basis, to compact that extra space.

... and it may be working across the industry.

Here's my evidence.

When registering for a Microsoft developer event in 2005, notice the shirt sizes go to 6XL ...

But, for this year's Tech-Ed Developer conference, only 4XL ...

I'm going to assume that Microsoft has leveraged the cool data-mining features in SQL Server to determine that 5XL and 6XL sizes are vanishing.

Last week I had a chance to meet some of the brains behind gridGISTICS - a .NET development company in Atlanta that gets it. Not only are they up to speed on the latest .NET 3.x technologies, but they have some killer products as well.

The one that struck me as the coolest was their Aware Server product, which is a grid-computing based deployment and management environment. In other words, the missing pieces to Team Foundation Server's build and (ahem) deploy automation. Packaging up applications by system and version into manifests, these binaries can be automatically deployed, registered, launched, and monitored by various Aware Agents installed around a company's environment. From the development side, they provide many Visual Studio 2008 templates and add-ins to help generate Aware-compatible applications very quickly.

Follow their story here.

In addition to adding support for the .NET Framework, Microsoft is taking the next version of Silverlight farther by adding a comprehensive control model, powerful skinning and “theming,” data binding, and over 20 controls in the box. To better capture the scope of the feature set for the next version of Silverlight, Microsoft will rename Silverlight 1.1 to Silverlight 2.0.  Microsoft will also commit to delivering a Silverlight 2.0 Beta with a Go-Live license in Q1 2008.

As for customer evidence, the NBA began engaging with Microsoft to deliver key interactive applications on NBA.com deploying Silverlight.  By utilizing Silverlight, the NBA will be able to further broaden the scope of its online experience across video and photos. From a broader Web development perspective, Microsoft will also release a preview of the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions in early December. Key features of the preview include MVC, Dynamic Data Controls and REST Services. Silverlight and ASP.NET are core technologies enabling better user experiences on the desktop, Web and beyond. Microsoft’s user experience approach is part of the broader Microsoft Application Platform strategy, formed with the goal of helping customers realize the benefits from more dynamic applications.

For more information on Thursday, please check out Scott Guthrie’s blog, Jesse Liberty’s blog, and the Silverlight homepage.

Also, feel free to check out the new Microsoft Download Center Beta, now powered by Microsoft Silverlight.