Scott Hanselman

Great show, but I was also hoping for some insights on internationalisation for WPF apps, especially given your babysmash application.

One of my team has recently spent some time working on internationalisation in a WPF app and found it an interesting experience, where WPF supports things well, but actually creating the internationalised text involved jumping through a few hoops, using the locbaml tool and making a custom tool to make things easier.

Nick

Nice podcast. Scott, it is great to hear you talking about Amharic.

Hey Scott,

Really impressed by your knowledge about Indian languages. Your pronunciation is perfect.

By the way I work for the same company as you do but not as FT.

Keep up the good work!!!

Thanks,
Yash

I am a big fan of yours and have been listening and reading your content for quite a while (seems like years).
There are a handful of bloggers that I follow closely and you are one of them.

I have however found recently that you have been covering topics that I am finding more difficult to connect with. I became a big fan during the times when you were blogging about day to day technical topics (i.e. taking current Microsoft technologies and tools and applying them 'today' into production environments).

I am a big fan of new Microsoft technologies and like most active developers are trying to keep up with the flood of new technologies and techniques. So many blogs and even magazines now are way ahead of the current 'active/employed' developer. So many of us are the arena of trying to stay productive while adding new concepts and technologies bit by bit. A large group of developers I believe are working on evolving existing business applications that have been in the company for a few years.

I find that your content is so much more valuable when I can connect to it and learn and become productive as a direct result. If at all possible discuss/talk about things we can apply today and provide a perspective on the technologies that you feel will be around. This type of talk/discussions will really help us navigate the new stuff coming out and help us focus on things that you feel is or will be core skills.

thanks again and feel free to let me know if i can help at all

- david

Thanks for the honest opinion David. Interesting perspective...can you give me more idea of technologies you're referring too? Everything I talk about on the blog I try to put in the real world. OpenID, for example, or WPF. I implemented OpenID on this blog, and BabySmash.com is live. MVC has a golive license. I totally hear and understand what you're saying, but I guess I'm not seeing which totally future facing tech I'm covering that can't be used today. Can you expand?

Normally, I like your podcasts a lot and can follow them.

This time, however, you and Michael lost me a couple of times:
- Around 17:23, when Michael is talking about parentheses in arabic, you suggest specific arabic cultures, but Michael moves on to "something that's actually on the list" -- Chinese.
- Starting 22:10, you ask for the difference between a Language Interface Pack and an MUI. I think that question is never answered.

In both cases, I could guess the general meaning, but expected more specific (help-type) answers. Often your podcasts are really "educational" in a good way, but here things became too anecdotal for my taste.

I would have loved a discussion on why we cannot just get *all* languages that Microsoft supports supplied out of the box for Windows and *Office*. Individual Language Packs for individual users annoy IT, and the Office Multi-Language Pack 2007 is pretty expensive (at $160 it can't be deployed to a whole organization). On the Microsoft side, the cost is in *developing* language support, not in distributing it. I bet the revenue lost would be less then $10M. (Plus, a lot of money seems to go into explaining all the language packs and making sales channels support them).

Let me try to clarify and better define my comments. I recognize that I really need to give you some perspective so that you can put into context. My current position has been a senior developer in a large company for many years. These are only my perspectives and I realize I cannot even grasp the breadth of your subscribers.

Developers and technologies can be ahead of the wave, riding the wave or behind further in the wake (sorry for the analogy)

Ahead of the wave: there are plenty of webcasts, podcasts, blogs entries and magazine articles covering technologies ahead of the wave. These are very important and valuable. These try to give us the concepts and the directions 1.5 to 3 years out. Often there are Beta's and other downloads available for individuals in support. I agree that your content is not within this category.

Riding the wave: these are the topics that have been recently released (version 1's) but have very little penetration into the developer community in any sort of production environment. These topics are easily still 9-18 months out from any actual implementation on a project but can be seen as sparks in eyes of developers.

In the wake: I believe this is where the largest population of developers reside. Individuals here are dealing with existing applications that have been in production between 1.5-3 years. Individuals here are including new features and evolving existing applications due to changing business processes and customers needs. While working with business process owners and automating existing processes developers in this area gain a high level of confidence to deliver solid solutions. Developers can provide solid deadlines and raise the confidence of the business managers on the back of technology. Mind you, I think the development teams in this area are quite small 1-6 but in terms of actual population I believe this is a very large group. This is only my perspective and there is certainly room for discussion and my education within this statement.

Now when you cross the above analogy with the plethora of technologies available today you end up with large gaps. In the past (from my perspective) your content helped fill this gap. This gap is the one between 'on the wave' and 'in the wake'.

This gap helps developers in camp 3 while discussing topics in camp 2 and helps establish the road for individuals to get from camp 3 to camp 2. Slightly different in terms of type of technology but take for example the great success of your Tools List. This fell solidly in camp 3 (things that people can pick up and apply today in the production environment while some a little head of the knowledge of some developers). Yes, I realize that camp 3 is not the sexiest however it is the camp most neglected in terms of published information.
Individual developers just don't have enough time to learn all the pitfalls and any content that can help us learn and apply in existing applications or in the next release is of great value.

I have often found that MSDN magazines 18 months old have value. I often keep a bundle of them in the car so that I have material to read while waiting for someone/something. Amazingly, they are topics are very good however I often get odd shivers that I am reading something 18 months old.

Please don't get me wrong. I am a huge fan and advocate of number of new technologies (I can't get enough SL or Entity Framework). In my spare time I love to learn and grow in an effort to stay abreast but I also realize that I probably won't be able to apply for 1-2 years as I get paid for living in camp 3.

I hope this helps provide some sort of context for my comments.

Great podcast! I loved your quote at the end - the best revenge is to live well!

@David .... Being someone who also "gets paid for living in camp 3" I wanted to thank you for making an effort to clearly state some of what i believe to be the feelings of many "in the wake" developers. We try our best to move as fast as the technology but there are so many instances where that simply is not an option.

I would personally love to make use of functional programming languages like F# and Ruby or Boo or IronRuby, but its the simple fact that while i could write code in them , the second i submit to source control I am now the only person who can maintain them. This is only one anecdotal example of getting paid to live in camp 3.

I don't have too much else to offer and you have done a wonderful job of clearly explaining the position.

@Scott Thank you for your openness and interest in the opinions of your readers. especially in this case. As always well done... I can honestly still say I wouldn't be where I am today without information I have gained from not only your podcast but your blog.

Ang3lfir3 - Thanks, that's very kind!