Last week, the dotNED user group had a meeting at Class-A about Oslo and M. There was a pretty big crowd, which pleases me, since I think Oslo/M is going to be a big step forward in software development on the Windows platform. I hope all the attendees got a good overview on what Oslo and M actually is. Alex did a excellent job explaining in the first hour what Oslo/M is and also what it's not. The second hour he showed some demo's that demonstrated how we could write DSL's to convert structured text to structured data and programs that interpreted that data and acted on it.
Now, the concepts behind Oslo and M are nothing new. They date back to the sixties. Way, way back when they hadn't even invented digital watches. So it's nothing new. It's pretty darn old, actually. What's new is that it is an attempt to cover all bases of modelling and executing models, something that has never succeeded before. So, that obviously begs the question: will this attempt work? Of course, I don't know. That all depends on so many factors. Some of them which are in reach of Microsoft, like the technical capabilities of Oslo/M. Some of them are out of reach of Microsoft, like the willingness of developers and business analists to adopt a different way of working. I definitely believe that we as developers can certainly be a lot more productive when we use Oslo and M. Microsoft is aiming high with their goals for M:
"Oslo" is the code name for the Microsoft's next generation application development platform. The goal of "Oslo" is to provide a 10x productivity gain across the application lifecycle (design, development, and management). "Oslo" leverages domain-specific models, languages and tools to achieve this goal.
10x more productive than now? Who believes that? Isn't that Microsoft marketing talking here? No, I don't think so. The whole purpose of Oslo/M is to get rid of all the plumbing code in our applications and to be really able to respond to changing requirements. I truly believe that we could gain productivity that we prefer to expres in factors than in percentages.
Anyway, I'll blog more on my thoughts on Oslo and M soon. My next post is about SQL vs. MSchema. What's the big advantage of MSchema over SQL? And I don't mean to imply that MSchema is a substitute for SQL, I just want to explain what is so conceptually different about MSchema when you compare it to SQL...
P.S. For anyone who has missed our user group meeting, the PowerPoint presentation and the demo's can be found here.