 Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Role Reversal?
I attended an event yesterday at PDC where a member of the C++ product team was discussing the new features for C++ in Whidbey. He kept repeatedly emphasizing that C++ developers are the smartest and most talented developers in the world. There was something oddly familiar about the way he kept defending his existence as a programmer that was feeling sort of deja vu-like.
Then it dawned on me - it seemed an awful lot like in the past when I have heard VB developers getting defensive about their language and their skills when they were around C++ developers, or more recently, VB.NET programmers around C# programmers. It takes on a whiny “no, I'm important, REALLY!!!! Come on, guys!” sort of sound after awhile.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no laguage bigot. I'm primarily a C++ background, with my language of choice being C# these days. I think you should choose whatever language makes the most sense for the task and your skill set. .NET has done an amazing job of leveling the playing field with that respect.
I do sort of question the productivity of using C++ in the managed world though. There are certainly many specialized tasks where C++ has power that the other languages may not. But as always, with power comes responsibility to not misuse it, which is where so much productivity has been lost in the past - chasing down those mis-uses and fixing them.
I just found it amusing (even as a C++ guy myself) to see that C++ guys are having to justify their existance so vigorously in the face of the adoption of C# and VB.NET for the bulk of .NET development.
Blog education
I had some great conversations with Robert, Jon, and Drew yesterday about blogging. Learned a lot from their experiences. Robert and I discussed the challenge of managing the flood of information to consume through blogs. I think I will switch to NewsGator, sounds like a great tool. I think I am very glad I went with dasBlog for posting/hosting. Seems like a consistent theme is that people would like to have their blog hanging off their own site instead of Radio.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Milestones
I figured PDC was a great milestone to get started blogging. One of those things I have been intending to get around to, now there is so much new stuff to talk about, it just has to be done.
Between Longhorn, Whidbey, and Yukon, developers have a tidal wave sized bow wave of technology coming at them. For those still reeling from the adoption of .NET and trying to master the fundamentals of .NET as a development platform, brace yourselves. You need a new gear. The good news is that you can for the most part keep doing what you are doing, using the .NET framework even in v2 the way you have been with little modification to what you know. The bad news is that if you take that approach, you will be letting that bow wave wash over you and pass you by, not taking advantage of some incredible new capabilities in these new platforms, and that is just not good for you.
In the coming weeks and months, I plan to blog on the many aspects of the Whidbey, Yukon, and Longhorn that I will be working with for development of materials for articles and hopefully a book. The growing popularity of blogging could not come at a better time for getting the word out there about these new technologies. It is a great mechanism for sharing knowledge, insights, opinions, and yes.., trivial facts and observations.
So stay tuned for lots more info.
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