MEDC 2006: Day 2 - .NET CF 2.0 Perf

I just got out of a standing-room-only session on “.NET Compact Framework 2.0: Optimizing for Performance” given by Ryan Chapman.  50% excellent stuff, 50% stuff I already knew (but I wasn’t disappointed at all). Since 1) I was standing and 2) my laptop and device batteries were near exhaustion, I took no notes.

It was interesting to see some of the performance gains that one can glean with Generics vs boxing.  Very cool.. and helps to keep the GC in a slumber. Speaking of the GC, we also saw the .NET Compact Framework Remote Performance Monitor in action.  VERY, VERY, very cool.   We (.NET CF developers) have been waiting for this for a loooong time. The .NET CF RPM, if you don’t know, is new in .NET CF 2.0 SP1 (currently in beta) – read more about the SP1 beta here.

Speaking of tools and performance and features and such (hmm a lot of  ‘and’s).. I attended another MVP-only luncheon today that discussed some really cool things in the pipe. I’m really stoked at how close the .NET CF / Windows CE / Embedded teams get with their MVPs.  Impressive.  I’ve seen some other product teams at Microsoft have quite a different relationship with their MVPs.  Unfortunate – I hope they see the error of their ways.    We (MVPs) are helping to drive the direction of the tools and technologies coming out of Redmond and I’m really appreaciative and really stoked to be part of the process.

A number of the things I’ve seen so far this week – publicly and under NDA – further underscore the fact that Microsoft is (er, has) positioned Visual Studio as a platform.  If you are interested at all in extending VS2005, check out the VS SDK.