Khan has chosen the processing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processing_(programming_language) language and experience which is great.  Like Kodu, Robozzle, or Scratch, those really visual experiences are great for building intuition and capturing imagination.  So far, there's some interest - the drawing intro has already got them thinking.  (https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/intro-to-drawing/848372201) I'm excited to see what they come up with - they really just need enough sparks to get them going.

Old Basic Program I wrote as a young child.  I think I repeated the ever-so-humble program when text-to-speech started going as well. :)

10 PRINT "James rocks!!!"

20 GOTO 10

Those experiences where a tiny investment gives a sense of power, accomplishment and potential are critical - and a lot of fun to watch.

I didn’t start out programming that way – I got into programming because my Dad was too busy to start the games I wanted to play on a computer.  Funny how one things leads to another – I ended up learning how to start the games, then I wanted more games which meant I had to program them from books (basic on the TI, don’t remember the other languages).  And eventually we learned how to make the computer do stuff (little Tron games on an apple IIe that my Grandpa had, that kind of thing).  We had a lot of fun with it, and I was way ahead when I took my first programming class – so much so that I finished very early and spent the time playing various computer games (full circle :).  So I’m a big believer in teaching kids skills through games (more fun for you, too).

What games have you found that do this for programming?  What really easy programming experiences are out there?  I would love to hear what you’ve found, and recommend that you give Robozzle a try (and contribute more easy puzzles so kids have more puzzles before things get too tricky).

Here's a review from Windows IT Pro.  Of course, this isn't what I actually work on - I work on the Virtual Machine Manager.  Sadly, our product is still behind closed doors - I can't wait to get it out to customers.

To follow along until then, enjoy Rakesh's blog, which explains such decisions as Why we decided to manage VMWare.

Cheers,

James

I'm also hiring.  So if you're interested we have a number of interesting positions UI and non-UI related (as you might imagine :)). 

Here's a link to a UI programmer position, but please feel free to send me a message if you're interested.  And again, I'm hiring for non-UI positions as well - the link is just to show a little more information about the team and the direction that we're headed.   (We are a C# shop.)

If you're interested in hearing more, you can follow along on the team blog.

It also doesn't apply to all shell extensions.  There are many of them (probably some of them with HKCU extensibility) that haven't been moved to the policy system yet.  (So you should always register your shell extensions there, even if it doesn't seem to be necessary.)

(That said, it certainly does give you quite a few of them for very little work. On my system, it finds about 325/400 - about 80%.  Because of that, if you're thinking about turning on this policy consider the fact that you'll be disabling 1 in 5 shell extensions; will that generate more or less support calls?)

Fallthrough logic when loading context menu handlers (static verbs and then context menu handlers are collected from the following places):

(DO NOT USE THIS LOGIC IN YOUR CODE - it is a simplification of the real logic and it will change.  Instead, use IQueryAssociations or AssocQuery* for all these kinds of file association related things.)

1. HKCR\<ProgID>
2. HKCR\<.ext> (only if #1 does not exist)
3. HKCR\Unknown (only if #1 does not exist)
4. HKCR\SystemFileAssociations\<.ext>
5. HKCR\SystemFileAssociations\<PerceivedType>
6. HKCR\Folder (only used if the selected item has the SFGAO_FOLDER attribute, such as a folder, zip, cab, etc.)
7. HKCR\*
8. HKCR\AllFilesystemObjects

But there is a way!  You can register supplemental verbs associated with the SystemFileAssociations key.  Note that those keys (#4 and #5) are folded in regardless of the association having a progid registered.  In our example, that would be HKCR\SystemFileAssociations\.ogg\shellex\ContextMenuHandler

The important thing here is that you should never put the registration under HKCR\<.ext>(!) because you should either be putting it under your progid (#1), or in SystemFileAssociations (#4).  Why do we disable #2 and #3 in those cases?  If folks are interested, I'll talk more about that later - or feel free to guess. :)

(A quick comment about #5 - I think it is often misused.  Applications don't know how to handle very many perceived types (one exception is text).  How are you going to handle the "video" perceived type?  I guarantee that we'll come out with more codecs/container formats, etc.  Unless you can guarantee that you can handle everything that will map into the perceived type, don't register for it - instead register for the individual associations that you really can handle.)

This technique is used for a lot of other things besides context menu handlers.  It's also used for Property Handlers for Windows Search, Windows Imaging Component codecs, etc, etc, etc.

Cheers,
James

[Update: finished the sentence beginning "In our example, that would be..."]

Maybe you've already done the work to install these properly, but in some cases that can be quite complicated and I could see a lot of folks just accepting some minor bugs and moving on.

I'll start:

Protocol Handlers (https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266527.aspx) and Schema Extensions (https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms647576.aspx).  Both of these require custom actions to be installed correctly - and there's no standard for it so everyone is probably doing it themselves which is going to lead to some really inconsistent behavior.  None of that is going to help system stability at all.

Another one I came across recently was installing a shell folder that should appear on the desktop.  I added it to the desktop namespace but until the user refreshes the desktop it isn't going to appear.  You need to send a SHChangeNotify to get it to show up without user intervention.  Anyway, there's no standard action for that.  So unless you can accept a shortcut to the shell folder (which sends a notification), you'll want a CA there as well.  And there again, you want to send as minimal a notification as possible to avoid having the system reload everything when all that you needed is a new icon to show up.

File Associations:
This one is going to be a bit of a laundry list of issues, but I'll start off the first couple issues.

1. If previous handlers didn't register under openwith then your registration may blow away any record that they wanted to handle that file association.
2. If you register under a meta-type like TXTFile and then someone else claims .txt then you don't get invoked at all.
3. Man that thing is complicated.  Way, way complicated. (I'm still learning the subtleties - feel free to correct me if I miss a beat.)

So there's a start - let me know as you come across other issues.

Cheers,
James

We've been enjoying our summer, with lots of friends around and good weather.  We've got my sister-in-law staying with us while she gets her dental certification.  Our youngest probably doesn't even remember life before she came to live with us.  And for a few weeks we had a friend of mine from college crashing at our place for a bit while they worked out their housing situation.  (Because John's doing his residency and needs to be very close to a number of hospitals, he needed to be in a very narrow corridor and had trouble finding folks who wanted to rent to someone out-of-state when there were plently of applicants in-state.)  And the weather has been hot, but nice.

John is an eye surgeon and sees some pretty crazy stuff.  Every once in a while I'll pick up his texts and look at something I hope never happens to me and be glad that someone is helping those folks.  For example, the 4th of July had some obligatory fireworks mishaps.  His days are pretty different from mine - I'm a little jealous of how closely he gets to work with the people he's helping.  (I couldn't resist asking him if Scrubs had any parts that resembled reality - Apparently not. :) 

Anyway his kids are about the same age and they spent all their time together.  Now that John and crew are settled in their new house, we're looking forward to hitting some cool places around here with them.  It's a little limiting with small children (I have to wait before they're ready to go rock climbing with me :)), but I'm in no hurry for them to grow up.  If you have any recommendations for good 2-5 year old destinations, I'd love to hear them.

Cheers,
James

Fire up gpedit.msc and adjust this policy (pictured below):

Change it to be Elevate without prompting:

Of course, remember to turn it back when you're done! :)

Cheers,

James

[Update: how to do this without using gpedit.msc]

Run this command (from an elevated command prompt) to make UAC elevate without prompting:

reg ADD HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

When you're done, run this command (from an elevated command prompt) to set it back to the default:

reg ADD HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin /t REG_DWORD /d 2 /f

To tell WinDbg not to do it's whole-hog symbol search use this command:

.symopt+ 100

If you find yourself in a situation where you don't want to wait for the debugger to finish resolving symbols before issuing the command, you can just start windbg with the -snul parameter.  In some cases, the reason this is happening is some goofy breakpoint you set, or something in your watch window - it's not going away.  If you don't want to take the time to track it down, you can bail on the workspace by starting windbg with the -WX parameter, and saving whatever you put into the first one.

Here's what the documentation has to say on the topic:

SYMOPT_NO_UNQUALIFIED_LOADS
This symbol option disables the symbol handler's automatic loading of modules. When this option is set and the debugger attempts to match a symbol, it will only search modules [whose symbols] have already been loaded.
This option can be used as a defense against mistyping a symbol name. Normally, a mistyped symbol will cause the debugger to pause while it searches all unloaded symbol files. When this option is active, a mistyped symbol will not be found in the loaded modules, and then the search will terminate.
This option is off by default. It can be activated by using the -snul command-line option. Once the debugger is running, it can be turned on or off by using .symopt+0x100 or .symopt-0x100, respectively