As I sat in the Silverlight session this morning in Vancouver, Washington for the Portland area's Code Camp I stumbled on some odd thoughts and questions.  The more I hear about Silverlight, XAML, and these other things that Microsoft is pushing the less I see this promised code once and start deploying to web or windows.

But then of course that was the promise of Java too, which sorta, kinda, in a way works right?  So where is the big picture these days from Microsoft?  Where are they heading with these tools?

Silverlight uses XAML and so does the Windows Presentation Foundation.  The XAML for Silverlight is however a subset of the XAML for the Windows Presentation Foundation. So "maybe" a WPF XAML file will work within a Silverlight application?  Something doesn't seem to be properly connected with this paradigm.

Instead of a resolution, these tools/foundations just seem to be providing band aids to minor incompatibilities Microsoft proprietary files and tools have with other applications.  Which is nice, but is in no way a real solution to the bigger picture.

...BUT...

as the class went on a major key item was brought up.  Silverlight is multi-browser, multi-OS compatible.  The stuff can run on any system.  So if one actually writes some managed code, compiles it into a dll, and executes it via Silverlight one can execute actual dlls on a Macintosh, Linux, or in Firefox or Safari.  Now that is actually powerful!

With this last covet, which took some time to point out, Silverlight really points out its value.  With .NET on the client, we now have a real programming model, debugging capabilities, and it's vastly faster than AJAX stuff.

In the end, back to my first point, it still seems like there is a large part of the Java paradigm here, except Microsoft actually has the power, market, and momentum now to push something like Java, except it is wrapped into the whole Silverlight/.NET/ASP/AJAX technology bundles.

Jason Mauer took a different approach to this particular session.  Instead of having a set outline he decided to just present off the cuff.  This approach created an interesting session atmosphere.

Right off he dived into creating various 3D objects, dealing with the vertexBuffer, and other various aspects of getting something drawn on screen via the XNA Game Studio.

One point brought up is the backwards or reversed x, y and depth coordinates of the graphics.  There has been a change between Direct X and XNA (even though there is a lot of wrapping going on) where the left right basis of the coordinates has changed.  The basis for this is XNA has done a fair job of dumbing down things from Direct X to simplify the actual Game Development process.

Other topics where covered, many being somewhat unknown by me, but interesting and understandable anyway.  I shutdown my note taking at this point out of intense curiosity in the various things Mr. Mauer was speaking about.  The rest of the session went well and we got to see some pretty cool code executed and generating cool 3d objects on screen.

...and the last tidbit that I didn't realize!

There is a $20 dongle for enabling the Xbox controllers on a PC.  I just have to go find this now!  :)

So I went to hit up my second session which is about XNA Development.  I caught the tail end of the Speech Server Session (Code Camp Link) by Mithun Dhar.  In hat short 10 minute tail end of that I must say I am very interested in the voice recognition, the Windows Workflow, and other features he was using within the Visual Studio IDE to build out the call/voice application.  Very quick, very smooth, and very useful for any company that wants to streamline the call in or other needs in that spectrum.  I'll be looking into this more in the near future.

With Erik Mork presenting the Silverlight or WPF/e presentation went well.  He provided good sample material and a nice overview of what Silverlight is, what problems it solves, and what could be done or should be done with Silverlight.

The major point, besides the cool examples, was that Silverlight is a XAML kick up from AJAX interfaces.  It provides browser compatible access to WMV Videos, MP3s, and other such media.  I have more comments about the whole notion of Silverlight in a subsequent entry I'm putting together.

The other major point that Erik brought up was the power that is brought via Silverlight by enabling managed code to be written and then executed at the client side.

A few other cool tidbits of Silverlight is LINQ, Web Services, XmlHttpRequest, the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime), and some other things here and there.

To summarize, my first session at Code Camp was interesting.  In addition this first session was a good overview and summary of Silverlight.