This has happened to me twice on my current project; the last time it was passed from me to two other people in the team like the common cold. 

Although I'm hoping to steer this blog from a "To do X perform these steps" snoozefest into a more meta-ish discussion of software development, I record the solution here for the benefit of super annoyed developers everywhere.

Problem:  Automatic checkout on edit in Visual Studio has stopped working.

Possible causes:  Visual Studio crashes; project files are corrupted in source control by these crashes.

Always check first:  Tools -> Options -> Source Control -> Environment -> Editing: -> Check out automatically

Ready?  Put on your grass skirt, grab your totem, snort some yopo and do the following:

1. Check in everything
2. Close visual studio
3. Make sure every file is set to read only in the solution directory (set it on the root solution folder and configure it to propagate to children)
4. Search for all files under the root projet directory *.user and *.vssscc and delete them (this might be overkill; one or the other may be the culprit but deleting both types won't hurt you)
5. Open VS and load the solution
6. Check everything back out and then check everything back in

Some of these steps may be cargo-cultish, but the problem is so nebulous its not for us to fully understand the meaning, but to mindlessly repeat the rituals so the source control gods will once again be in their good graces.  Step 4 is definitely required; the others may be unnecessary.  I'd test it but I hate when this bug happens; its like a paper cut in between your fingers.  Not anything to stop you from functioning, but damnably annoying.

... And what to do about it.

I'm giving a presentation today to graduate and other students at USC about software development.  I wrote a slideshow about it.  Like to see it?  Here it goes.

I present to you a first peek at... Calculator 2008!

(Yes, its a joke.  Picture ganked from this great article about ribbon UI at MSDN)

Took some of my lunch break to listen in on today's conference control on Silverlight with Scott Guthrie. 

As expected, Silverlight 2 is RTM and will be available on the 14th of October.  Scott took the first few minutes bragging about Silverlight's recent accomplishments, such as all the records for streaming broken by the Olympics broadcast by NBC.  He also spoke about all the major players that will be releasing Silverlight content with the release of 2.0.  Examples include BlockBuster, who will be using Silverlight for movie reviews, and AOL, who will be releasing a browser-hosted e-mail application using the plugin.

Probably the biggest news is that Microsoft is going to partner with Soyatech to bring Silverlight development to Eclipse on Windows and, later, on other desktops.

Another interesting bit of news is the creation of the Silverlight Control Pack project on Codeplex.  I don't see it yet, but supposedly it has 11 controls ready to go and they are  looking to hit 50+ controls in the coming few years.  This is good news for people developing Silverlight apps as the default controls are a bit lacking.