Scott Hanselman

I'm running the Windows 7 RC and I'm the Windows Virtual PC Beta along with Virtual Windows XP (a separate download). If you have an application that won't run in Windows 7 by default (they're out there) then you have two choices, aside from getting a version that does work.

First Try: Compatibility Mode

You have two choices with Compatibility Mode. You can always just right click on the program's Icon and click Compatibility Mode, and "lie" to the program about what version of Windows this is. This isn't just a version fib, it also patches up APIs and generally makes things friendly for your old application.

Alternatively, you can type in "Compatibility" in your Start Menu and select "Run Programs made for previous version of Windows. This will start a troubleshooter that will help you select your app and figure out what it needs.

You walk through a Wizard, explaining what worked before (different OS, etc) and it'll suggest what it can do about it.

Second Try: Seamless "Virtual XP Mode"

People who know what Virtualization usually assume this means that they'll need to run a Windows XP VM (which they do) and it'll be a hassle (which it isn't) as they'll have a "window of an OS inside their OS."

Here's the process, once you've installed Windows Virtual PC and Virtual XP. Run Virtual XP from the Start Menu, or from your "Virtual Machines" folder.

Once it's started, install the old application you want. I'm going to install FileZilla, an FTP client.

NOTE: There's NOTHING wrong with FileZilla under Windows7. This is JUST an example.

Select "for all users of this computer" during the installation, as you want the icon published to the "All Users" part of the Start Menu. If you don't have this option, you can always move the icon later.

Now, shut down the Virtual XP machine by clicking the close icon. It will hibernate.

Notice in your Windows 7 Start Menu that FileZilla (or whatever) has appeared...it's in the Windows 7 Start Menu.

Run FileZIlla it from here, like you would any other program. You can, of course, even pin it to the Windows 7 Taskbar. When you run it, there may be a moment where you'll see 'Initializing Virtual Environment, and you might see this dialog:

Here you can decide to run the App or the Machine. I'll run the App. After I start running Apps, I'll not see this dialog again, unless I start the Machine again directly.

Here's FileZilla running from inside the Windows XP VM. It looks like Windows XP (notice the Crayola Colors) but the Windows 7 Task Manager is running over the top of it.

You can see the Virtual PC Host Process in the task manager. There's also a "Virtual PC Application Launcher" that you might see.

If I hover over the icon in the Windows 7 Taskbar, it says "remote."

You'll even see Tray Notifications from the Virtual XP machine (like Security Center, etc) published to the "host" tray. (Yes, I know it's not officially called the tray, but it is de facto "The Tray.")

You can even "publish" Internet Explorer 6, by copying its icon to the All Users Start Menu. I right-clicked on the Start Menu from within Virtual XP and clicked "Open All Users", then right-dragged the Internet Explorer icon to the All Users Start Menu. Now IE6 is a choice:

...and I have an unholy alliance between IE6 and IE8, as you can see them both running here on my Win7 machine:

It's also worth pointing out that this trick works with Vista Virtual Machines as well. So, while Windows 7 (I hear) is profoundly compatible with Windows Vista (basically everything works) you can still run a Vista SP1+ VM and have "Seamless Apps" jump out of it by making sure the right integration features are enabled. I tried this running Visual Studio 2003 under Vista and Visual Studio 2002 under XP, then publishing them both so I could work on them seamlessly under Win 7.

This is all stuff you can do NOW, so go have fun.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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NOTE: This is some advanced stuff and you may lose a finger. No warranty express or implied. There's always workarounds somewhere on the 'tubes, but this stuff works only in Win7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. Be afraid.

I use a lot of Virtual Machines. I've used VMWare, VirtualBox, HyperV and Virtual PC. Recently, since all my machines have been updated to Windows 7 RC, I've downloaded Windows Virtual PC so I could use "Virtual XP." I've got a lot of VHD (Virtual Hard Drive Files) around now.

You can see here where I've got a VM called "Dev10onVista" because I can use not just Windows XP, but also Vista. However, it's still a VM and it's slower than I'd like.

Dan has a great post on the pros and cons of Virtualization vs. Dual Booting. He points out:

• Multiboot:
  • Good performance (runs natively on the machine, no extra abstraction layers)
  • Good hardware integration (everything that is built into or attached to the machine is visible to the running OS)
  • Clunky setup (different boot loaders overwriting each other, partitions cannot easily be resized or moved around)
• Virtualisation
  • Very flexible (only takes up as much hard disk space as the solution requires)
  • Can run virtually any Operating System
  • Non-Optimal performance (running piggyback off another Operating System, consuming resource in both)
  • Marginal hardware integration (all major system components are virtual only; depending on the virtualisation solution, SOME components might be surfaced inside the virtual machine)

This is right on. I'm always afraid to multi-boot, concerned that one OS will some how make one of the others angry, as they are all sharing disks.

I'm just not willing to install VS2010 Beta 1 on bare hardware just now, as I know I'll want to put the Next Beta on a clean machine. I *could* sacrifice an extra machine, but I'd rather use the main machine I always use. I want less virtual, more machine.

Mounting/Attaching VHDs like Hard Drives

With Windows 7 I can mount VHD and use them like regular hard drives. Just type in "Disk Management" from your start menu. From the Action menu I can select "Create VHD" or "Attach VHD." Below I'd just attached a 7 GIG VHD file that thinks it's a 40 gig hard drive. Notice that the disk icon is blue. This is a really convenient way to just "pass a hard drive around as a file" as well as a nice way to get files on and off VMs that aren't running.

The best part is that I can make one of these during Windows 7 setup (NOTE: This is advanced and may hurt you, your computer, or your cat.) and install Win7 directly to it.

Install Windows 7 to a new, fresh VHD

Assuming you already have a Windows 7 installation, you can boot off the Windows 7 DVD, and when it gets to "Install Now" click "Repair Your Computer." Don't select an installation, then select Command Prompt. (You can also press Shift-F10) to open a command prompt.

From the Command Prompt, run "diskpart."

Make a new VHD on an internal fixed disk:

create vdisk file="C:\win7\win7.vhd" type=expandable maximum=50000

This will make an expandable VHD with a 50Gig max, for example. Now select it and attach/mount it:

select vdisk file="c:\win7\win7.vhd"
attach vdisk

Type "exit" and go back to the setup window and install Win7. Make sure you select the correct disk - the new virtual one!

Setting up your Windows Boot Menu to boot to an Existing VHD

If you have an existing Win 7 VHD already, or perhaps you've taking your Windows 7 installation Disc and "syspreped" a VHD image. Now, from an Administrator Command Prompt, you need to tell the Windows Boot Manager that there's another option. You go:

C:\>bcdedit /copy {current} /d "My New VHD Option"

This will return a GUID. Select it using the Mark command by right-clicking in the Command Prompt and copy it to the clipboard.

Now, using that {guid}, type these commands:

C:\>bcdedit /set {guid} device vhd=[driveletter:]\<directory>\<vhd filename>
C:\>bcdedit /set {guid} osdevice vhd=[driverletter:]\<directory>\<vhd filename>
C:\>bcdedit /set {guid} detecthal on

See the [driveletter:] stuff in brackets? It's NOT obvious, but you need to include those, so:

bcdedit /set {guid} device vhd=[C:]\win7\win7.vhd

You can confirm it's setup with bcdedit /v:. You'll see something like this. The interesting part is at the bottom.

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device                  partition=C:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default                 {34433bb7-628f-11dc-a941-001a6bcd5d3a}
resumeobject            {34433bb8-628f-11dc-a941-001a6bcd5d3a}
displayorder            {34433bb7-628f-11dc-a941-001a6bcd5d3a}
                        {280ffa1e-f8a9-11dd-b0a9-001c26fdc6b4}
toolsdisplayorder       {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout                 30
custom:45000001         1

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {34433bb7-628f-11dc-a941-001a6bcd5d3a}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
recoverysequence        {280ffa1b-f8a9-11dd-b0a9-001c26fdc6b4}
recoveryenabled         Yes
testsigning             Yes
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {34433bb8-628f-11dc-a941-001a6bcd5d3a}
nx                      OptIn
custom:42000002         \system32\winload.exe
custom:45000001         2
custom:47000005         301989892
                        3

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {280ffa1e-f8a9-11dd-b0a9-001c26fdc6b4}
device                  vhd=[C:]\VMs\Win7\Win7.vhd,locate=custom:12000002
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Win 7 VHD - Dev10
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
recoverysequence        {280ffa1b-f8a9-11dd-b0a9-001c26fdc6b4}
recoveryenabled         Yes
testsigning             Yes
osdevice                vhd=[C:]\VMs\Win7\Win7.vhd,locate=custom:22000002
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {34433bb8-628f-11dc-a941-001a6bcd5d3a}
nx                      OptIn
detecthal               Yes
custom:42000002         \system32\winload.exe
custom:45000001         2
custom:47000005         301989892
                        3

If it doesn't work, you can always run bcdedit /delete {guid} /cleanup and try again.

Here's what my Boot Manager (pressing F8 when I start up my machine) looks like now:

Now, I can boot up with my VHD mounted. Am I running a Virtual machine? No. I'm running Windows, on the hardware, with only the DISK Virtualized. I don't work for that team, but I'm guessing I'm losing 3-5% (that number came out of my butt) on the disk side - and nothing anywhere else. How do I know? Well, Windows Experience is smart enough to keep me from checking (although I could use another disk tester tool, but I'll leave that as an exercise to the Reader.).

I notice that Disk Management still gives me access to my was-C: drive, even though the VHD is now my C. My hardware C: drive got moved down, and it's E: now. Nice than I can still see it!

What does the Device Manager say? It says the Msft Virtual Disk SCSI Disk Drive is there! That's the only "virtual" thing going on here. Notice I've still got my actual Video Drivers (running multiple monitors across multiple display drivers). All my stuff is there, because I've got, forgive me, less virtual and more machine. 

Hey, are those my four processors and my 8 gigs or RAM? Ah, yes, they are.

Love it. I'm going to use the hell out of it.

A few caveats. One, I haven't figured out how boot off a VHD that is on USB or External Drive. I'm looking into it. It may be because there's no drive letter assigned yet, or that I'm an idiot. We'll see. Second, doing this makes your VHD less portable, because if you move it inside Virtual PC or to another machine, all the devices will freak out and try to reinstall (or maybe just not work) so be aware of that.

That said, I'm running Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 without fear on my awesome hardware with hardware-speeds. Shiny.

Related Links

• Using DISM if your VHD won't boot because of a storage driver requirement
• Video on Channel 9 - Boot from VHD
• Video with Mark Russinovich on Booting from VHD

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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It's getting considerably easier to create and distribute Visual Studio Extensions.  With Visual Studio 2008, you can find extensions at the Visual Studio Gallery. There's also a very good VSX (Visual Studio Extensibility) Developer Center on MSDN that has a ridiculous amount of information on how to extend VS, and there are LOTS of great VS 2008 add-ins. The documentation is really well fleshed-out. It also includes info on the little-known, but totally awesome "VS Shell," but that's another post.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 shows some new and interesting was to extend VS. One nice way to say it is "moving beyond add-ins." One example is that the Editor in VS2010 uses MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) at its heart. It also uses Immutable Text Snapshots that make accessing the buffer from other threads easier. I talked to Noah Richards, one of the devs on the editor, in a recent episode of my podcast.

Terry Clancy points out how much easier it is. Seriously, the post is of epic length, check it out.

For the Visual Studio 2010 Shell, we’ve made targeted investments to the developer experience:

· No more complicated load keys! - Developers are no longer required to procure a Package Load Key (PLK) or a Shell Load Key (SLK) to develop Visual Studio 2010 Shell applications!

· No requirement for Registry. Packages can now be installed without requiring developers to update configuration settings in the Windows registry.  In many cases, this means that packages can now be x-copy deployed.

· Easier, more robust deployment – The redistributable shell installers have been updated to support Windows Installer source caching features, thus is during a repair, user’s won’t be required to point MSI to the original installation file or media.

· Improved SDK tooling – New templates have been added to make it easier to get started with the Visual Studio Shell, and create common types of extensions.  For Visual Studio Shell (Isolated Mode) developers, we’ve significantly improved performance of our F5 Debugging experience.

So what does a VS2010 extension look like?

Installing a VS2010 Extension with the Online Gallery and Extension Manager

Doing my talk on .NET 4 at TechEd this year, I got to use a new extension from the folks at Clarius Consulting called the Demo Dashboard. The idea is that while you're giving a talk at a conference like TechEd, the audience is using Twitter and a hash-tag that you set (I used #scottha) to give you real time feedback on your presentation. They can tell you if you're doing a good job, if your fonts are the right size, your speed, and they'll also give you a headcount of twitter users in your talk.

The code for the Demo Dashboard is up at Codeplex under Ms-PL while the extension itself is at the VS Gallery. It's actually a VS extension WITH extensions of it's own!

The plugin integrates with the Editor and hangs around (it can be collapsed) while you're giving your talk. For my talk, I used a debug build and just dropped it into the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Components folder.

However, you can just go to the Extensions Manager and download it directly into Visual Studio:

If you download it manually from a website like the Visuals Studio Gallery, you'll notice the VSIX extension is associated with Visual Studio:

You'll be warned that 'VSLauncher' is trying to run something, and if you accept it, the VSIXInstaller will do its thing. It's easier to just do it from inside the Extension Manager in Visual Studio.

The Demo Dashboard is entirely written in managed code and is actually a WPF app. Notice in this screenshot of the main XAML file that the plugin is actually running inside the WPF editor at the bottom of the split-screen view.

They Demo Dashboard folks created a whole sub-plugin model you can use to extend this dashboard for your own conference. Using MEF (now built into .NET 4), they're pulling in a Twitter Service, and having Widget DLLs provide one or more widgets.

namespace CoolnessWidget
{
    [Export(typeof(IWidgetProvider))]
    [Widget(Name = "Cool Widget", After = "Font Size Widget")]
    internal class CoolWidgetProvider : IWidgetProvider
    {
        IEnumerable<IWidget> IWidgetProvider.GetWidgets(Context context)
        {
            // creates an instance of our widget providing it the core context and twitter service to work with
            CoolWidget widget = new CoolWidget(context, this.TwitterService);
            return new List<IWidget> { widget };
        }

        [Import]
        private TwitterService TwitterService { get; set; }
    }
}

There's a lot of great examples in the code on clever ways to use MEF to make consumption of services easier by plugins. The WidgetManager class brings together a bunch or "hard to deal with" classes, then Exports them via MEF to make consumption easier by other classes and plugins downstream.

I think, however that it could be even MEFier. Remember, it's Ms-PL, and a CodePlex project, and there's a lot of TODO:'s marked in the comments, do we're free to change and improve the code. Go check it out.

Related Links

• Demo Dashboard on Codeplex
• Visual Studio Gallery
• MSDN Docs - Extending the Visual Studio Environment
• Learn How to Extend Visual Studio
• Quan To's VS Extensibility Blog
• VS 2010 Card Game Starter Kit
• Wiki Classifier
• Terry Clancy on VSIP and VS2010

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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UPDATE: There is a new modern open source alternative to Fusion Log Viewer called Fusion you should check out!

It's time to remind people about Fusion. Mostly because I don't see as many people using it as should. I mentioned it as long as six (!) years ago and it's still useful. I used it just this week with .NET 4.

Sometimes when an assembly doesn't load, there's still a sense/feeling that "something in the black box has broken." For some folks, the black box is larger and obscures more, than for others. My point is, if you know where to look, there is no box at all.

When it comes to assemblies there's three "times" to know about:

• Binding before it happens - What do you want?
  • ILDASM or Reflector will tell you what your assembly wants (what it was compiled against)
• Binding as it happens - Where does it look?
  • Fusion (the Assembly Binding Log Viewer) will show you all assembly binds if you set the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion\ForceLog registry value to 1
• Binding after it happens - What did you get?
  • Process Explorer will tell you what DLL (assembly) is loaded in memory and from where it came.

Here's an example of how a tiny bit of digging saved me hours of confusion recently when I hit an unusual edge case. I was doing a build of sample that was showing C# interop-ing with IronPython, but I was using a daily build of .NET 4 and a random build of IronPython.

I made a mistake and had some really old DLLs floating around that I shouldn't have had. My symptom was a FileNotFoundException for the file "System.Dynamic.dll." I KNEW it was in the GAC (Global Assembly Cache) and I could SEE it as a reference DLL in my directory. Can't find the file? Dude, it's right there!

Turning on Fusion Logging

You probably have a tool to help on your development system already. Type "Fusion" in the Start Menu. The Assembly Binding Log Viewer, or "Fusion Log Viewer" will tell the CLR to load assembling binding/loading activities to a folder, then let you see them.

Be sure to run it as Administrator if you want to change the Settings, otherwise they'll be grayed out.

Alternatively, just set the Registry keys your self. (I just memorized them, as I set them all the time.) Set HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion\ForceLog registry value to 1 and HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion\LogPath registry value to C:\FusionLogs or some path that exists.

Personally, I leave this on all the time on my dev machines (there's a small speed hit) and just clean the folder out every once in a while.

Solving My Binding Problem

Once I turned on Fusion Logging I could immediately see a failure in my folder:

The operation failed.
Bind result: hr = 0x80070002. The system cannot find the file specified. 

Assembly manager loaded from:  C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.xxxxx\clr.dll
Running under executable  C:\Users\Scott\Desktop\TechEd09\FX4\Demo 5 - DLR\Two.IronPythonInterop\bin\Debug\Two.IronPythonInterop.exe
--- A detailed error log follows. 

=== Pre-bind state information ===
LOG: User = HANSELMAN-DEV10\Scott
LOG: DisplayName = System.Dynamic, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089
LOG: Appbase = file:///C:/Users/Scott/Desktop/TechEd09/FX4/Demo 5 - DLR/Two.IronPythonInterop/bin/Debug/
LOG: Initial PrivatePath = NULL
LOG: Dynamic Base = NULL
LOG: Cache Base = NULL
LOG: AppName = Two.IronPythonInterop.exe
Calling assembly : IronPython, Version=2.6.0.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35.
===
LOG: This bind starts in default load context.
LOG: No application configuration file found.
LOG: Using host configuration file: 
LOG: Using machine configuration file from C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.xxxxx\config\machine.config.
LOG: Post-policy reference: System.Dynamic, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089
LOG: GAC Lookup was unsuccessful.
LOG: Attempting download of new URL file:///C:/Users/Scott/Desktop/TechEd09/FX4/Demo 5 - DLR/Two.IronPythonInterop/bin/Debug/System.Dynamic.DLL.
LOG: Attempting download of new URL file:///C:/Users/Scott/Desktop/TechEd09/FX4/Demo 5 - DLR/Two.IronPythonInterop/bin/Debug/System.Dynamic/System.Dynamic.DLL.
LOG: Attempting download of new URL file:///C:/Users/Scott/Desktop/TechEd09/FX4/Demo 5 - DLR/Two.IronPythonInterop/bin/Debug/System.Dynamic.EXE.
LOG: Attempting download of new URL file:///C:/Users/Scott/Desktop/TechEd09/FX4/Demo 5 - DLR/Two.IronPythonInterop/bin/Debug/System.Dynamic/System.Dynamic.EXE.
LOG: All probing URLs attempted and failed. 

You can see that it's looking all over for the file, first in the GAC< then all over the local folders before it gives up. Hm. Why isn't this working? I can see the file sitting right there.

Well, what's the public key token for this signed assembly? I can run "sn -T" on the file:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0>
sn -T System.Dynamic.dll 

Microsoft (R) .NET Framework Strong Name Utility  Version 4.0.xxxxx.1
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved. 

Public key token is b03f5f7f11d50a3a

Wha? What's b03whatever? That's not b77whatever like the one my app is looking for! Looks like my sample app had reference not only an old version of System.Dynamic, but one with a completely different public key. That's what I get for not cleaning out my obj directories between daily builds.

This could have been just by setting the registry keys and watching the c:\fusionlogs folder, but the Fusion Log Viewer makes the process more user-friendly.

If you're debugging version number mismatches or strong-name mismatches, Fusion will ALWAYS tell you what's really going on. There is no Black Box.

Related Links

• Detailing Failed Assembly Loads with the Assembly Binding Log Viewer ("The Fusion Logger")
• More on Assembly Binding, Strong Naming, the GAC, Publisher Policy and Dynamically Loaded Assemblies
• Gotcha in .NET Framework handling of Versions and Publisher Policies
• Be aware of your DLLs and who's loading them - know about assembly binding redirects
• Richard Grimes' most excellent .NET Fusion Workshop

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I've posted twice so far on .NET 4, first on ASP.NET 4, then on improvements in C# around dynamism and PIAs as well as the COM Binder. Now "dynamic."

So I asked this guy, what's up with the dynamic keyword, and what type was it exactly? I mean, C# isn't dynamic, right? He says:

"Oh, well it's statically-typed as a dynamic type."

Then my brain exploded and began to leak out my ears. Honestly, though, it took a second. Here's a good example from some of Ander's slides:

Calculator calc = GetCalculator();
int sum = calc.Add(10, 20);

That's the creation of an object, invokation of a method, and the collection of a return value. This is the exact same code, as the "var" type is figured out at compile time.

var calc = GetCalculator();
int sum = calc.Add(10, 20);

If you wanted to do the exact same thing, except with Reflection (like if it were some other class, maybe old-COM interop, or something where the compiler didn't know a priori that Add() was available, etc) you'd do this:

object calc = GetCalculator();
Type calcType = calc.GetType();
object res = calcType.InvokeMember("Add",
    BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null,
    new object[] { 10, 20 });
int sum = Convert.ToInt32(res);

It's pretty horrible to look at, of course. If the object is some dynamic thing (from any number of sources), we can do this:

dynamic calc = GetCalculator();
int sum = calc.Add(10, 20);

And get the dynamic method invocation and conversion of the return type. Basically it looks just like we're calling any other object.

Dynamism?

Here's the differences you see while coding. Hovering over the keyword gives me this nice tooltip.

When I hit the "." expecting intellisense to save me from my ignorance:

I'm told this is a dynamic expression that will be resolved at runtime.

Here's a C# program calling a method in a python (.py) file:

ScriptRuntime py = Python.CreateRuntime();
dynamic random = py.UseFile("random.py");

//Make an array of numbers
var items = Enumerable.Range(1, 7).ToArray();

random.shuffle(items);

Here we're passing in an array if ints (System.Int32[]) into the Python 'shuffle' method and it works just fine.

The DLR basically enables everyone to talk to everyone. That includes not just Python and Ruby, but Silverlight, Office/COM, and others.

What price REPL?

John Lam has a great post about his TechEd talk where he took a spin on a traditional REPL (READ-EVAL-PRINT-LOOP) using the DLR. He even allows switching back and forth between languages, which is odd/interesting.

John's even put the code for his REPL up on GitHub. Why is this interesting? Well...

He took his REPL and embedded it into an example Open Source app, specifically Witty, a WPF Twitter Client. Why he didn't use BabySmash is beyond me. ;) Check it out, as well as the source code diff for Witty on John's blog.

It'll be nice to have this kind of dynamic stuff just baked in and waiting for me to use it.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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