DevTeach Day 1

Today was my first day of the 2008 DevTeach/SQLTeach conference in Montréal.  There were preconference sessions yesterday, but I decided to pass on those.

I've been looking forward to this, since SQL Server 2008 was released recently.  I've not spent much time on SQL 2008 yet - I made a deliberate choice this time to avoid the CTPs.  I just don't have the time to waste studying features that might never make the release - not to mention working around bugs, etc. 

I did spend quite a bit of time with Reporting Services 2008 prior to the conference, so that I could present to the Fredericton .Net User's Group.  But everything else is new to me.

The first event of the day was the keynote by Ted Neward.  Ted was talking about the future of languages and why he thinks we are going to go through an explosion of new languages in the near future.  I particularly enjoyed the part about the disconnect between Computer Science and the practical software development world.  When he asked how many in the room had a Computer Science degree, half the room raised their hands.  When he asked how many had used any of that knowledge in the last month, nobody.  Over the last year - one lonely hand.

I have made the point that Computer Science is not about the craft of software development.  Physics is not about building bridges and Mathematics is not the study of accounting.  This informal survey in the room today certainly confirms that.

My favorite session of the day was Rushabh Mehta's session on Analysis Services 2008.  I've personally done some testing with 2005, but I have nothing in production yet.  I ran into a few roadblocks that really slowed things down for me.  I saw a few things in the demo today that I'm excited to try out, and I think the built in best practices guidance will be a big help.