What I Learned Today - Mono is getting to be faster then .NET in some areas

Today I learned that Mono might be worth taking another look at, as it is proving to be (at least in some cases) faster then the Microsoft .NET runtime. This is all according to this article, which is alleging that Mono may be overtaking .NET in some critical categories. So I've downloaded Mono and I'm going to see how well it plays with some of the chunks of code I've written for other projects.

I also learned how to include audio and video in Silverlight, by using the MediaElement object, but I have been having a heck of a time getting it to play nice when I add the media elements programatically, instead of coding them right into the XML. Still wrestling with that one, so it's not my official WILT.

What I Learned Today - Hello World in Silverlight

I have decided that I need to learn something new everyday in order to continue to progress as a developer and as a person. I will begin blogging about the new things that I am learning on a daily basis to track my progression and to act as a learning journal of sorts.

What I Learned Today: How to write a Hello World app for Silverlight.

I decided that I wanted to at least get a cursory introduction to Microsoft Silverlight Development, so I have started going through ScottGu's multipart Silverlight tutorial (which can be found here).

Overall Silverlight allows me to develop in the C# programming language using Visual Studio 2008 (which is a pretty slick development environment), so I was able to jump in with both feet and really start digging around. So far I have a Silverlight app with a button and a textblock and when I click on the button the textblock says "Hello World!". It's a first (lame) step, and I don't really know what I want to build as my first real project, so we'll see where it leads.

Well, there's my first What I Learned Today post. I have to say it feels good.

Do Good Practices Take The Fun Out Of Learning?

As I progress in my endeavor to learn Python I am faced with several challenges, foremost among them being a lack of time to devote to the task, shoot I've been walking through a Django tutorial for over a week now and I'm only halfway through! Another roadblock I am faced with is the fact that I am working with C# all day in an enterprise environment, so I can hardly sit down to write a simple Python script without the intense urge to first setup a multi tiered project for it and check it into source control. Once I do get my multi tiered project created, unit tests written (or at least started), and everything checked in, I usually "take a break" for a day or two before I sit down to the script again.

If I were a newbie to programming in general I think that Python would be much easier (and possibly more fun) to learn, because I wouldn't have the overhead of trying to do things "right", instead I would be focusing on just trying to get whatever script I have decided to write working the way I want it to. But knowledge once obtained cannot be unlearned, and as I have become more and more familiar with good design practices and patterns, I have seen many of the advantages to implementing them and for all of it's slowness, I think it's best to force myself to port my existing knowledge of good programming practices to any new languages that I learn.

I must say that in spite of the delays, I am still enjoying learning a new language and joining the culture behind it, in fact I am starting to feel like some sort of trend setter among some of my peers, mostly .NET die hards, who don't seem to be as open as I am to broadening their programming horizons. Hopefully I can convince them that this isn't just a fad for me, but that I'm in fact committed to becoming truly adapt and closely familiar with Python.