Development – Page 5

Today, MS South Africa ran what they call “Microsoft Connect” – basically a replacement type event for the old Dev Days. For ONCE, the architect track was actually REALLY good! The last Dev Day’s was about 2 yrs ago – a few months before VS.Net was originally launched. At that time the architect track had none of their demo’s work, and they spoke about concepts that nobody really understood yet (well I can only comment on the 1st two sessions, I moved to the Developer track after the 2nd session in a row was a total failure)

Today was different, we had Kim Midgley and Peter Munnings from NewSolutions, who did the “FootBall247.Net” demo. We got DVD’s with all of the session’s on them (as presented by the guys who made the demo, from Microsoft EMEA), and the DVD’s have a whole bunch of Patterns and Practices PDF’s on them. (Exactly the stuff I’ve been trying to read for a while now).

And to top it all off I won 2 books and a T-Shirt during the day (for questions asked, or answered). I got a white Visual Studio t-shirt (I really wanted the black ones, coz they have the funky .Net blocks on them), a MS Press book (“Application Architecture for .Net: Designing Applications and Services”) which is basically a printout of one of the Patterns and Practices that I started to read a few months ago, but never finished, and a REALLY cool book called “Writing Secure Code, 2nd Edition” which has a quote on it by Bill Gates which says “Required reading at Microsoft”… so clearly it means something to the guys up there in Redmond, so I guess I should try read it too.

Yay!

And I’m busy finally writing a few small apps that I’ve been wanting to write for a while. I’m probably about 20% of the way through one app which has cool things like “multi-threading”, image manipulation, getting extended properties out of files, and interfacing with digital cameras. I’ve written most of the “work” code in some or other form already (except for the image rotation, and display code), and I’ve got the basics of the application UI up and running. It has 3 main sections, and I’m probably about 90% through the 1st one. I have about 5% of the code for the 2nd section already written, and the 3rd one will be totally new. So you could probably say that I’m actually about 31% through the app as a whole. I’ve already had to get Threading working which is really cool… now I just need to do the image rotation and 2 sets of display code, and I’m done. I’m not sure if the code could be used by anyone else out there, but once I’ve finished it off I’ll post it here. I also think I’ll write out some kind of overview/tutorial on various bits of the app and post those to SADeveloper.Net (a cool South African Development community (focussed on Microsoft Technologies).

Anyway, I better get to bed.
[Listening to: Elysium – Gladiator Soundtrack – (04:18)]

I was wondering… are developers, or more accurately “coders”, the replacement for the factory workers of the industrial age? Albeit we’re paid more, have more rights, better working conditions, etc… Even with the better working conditions we have health risks – back problems, carpal tunnel, RSI’s. In the overall scheme of IT companies, a new “coder-only” is the lowest paid… Well, as far as I’ve seen its actually the new “techie-only” that’s the lowest paid. By “coder-only”, and “techie-only”, I mean the grunts that are just paid to do what they’re told. Nothing more.

I guess each industry, and each company has its “factory workers”, but I wonder if any of them see themselves as such, or if they grasp the implications of that… and if they don’t are they really prepared to look at the problem, or will they (as with so much else in this “instant” generation) simply ignore it, because it doesn’t suite them, or because they are afraid of what they might find. So why exert the effort when you can just drink another sip of the pre-packaged, “ready to drink”, meal-replacement life?

I guess the big difference now days is that we are more able to learn and progress. It may take time, but a house-cleaner or a person at the checkout counter at a grocery store could study part time towards their desired career. But how many do? Do you? Do I?

Do we even see beyond where we are, and what we’re in, to where our hearts want us to go, and who we were made to be?
[Listening to: This Is Your Life – Switchfoot – The Beautiful Letdown (04:18)]