My.First.Checkpoint

It has been one month now since I've joined Microsoft and you must be wondering how am I doing? I'm doing great at the moment and things are getting more and more interesting by the day. There are tonnes of resources to read, loads of beta products to dogfood (test) and lots of field experience to learn. I also get to do what I always wanted to do which is to be part of some development that is related to .NET. Well, my wish was granted. I'm now one of the Consultants who specializes in .NET. So, apart from the usual gripe on traffic and high-cost-small-servings of food, I can say that I'm quite satisfied with my new job.

What do I do? At the moment, my core focus is on .NET and I will be providing consultancy in that area to customers who are planning to migrate their applications to .NET. All that exposure in application architectures and developing frameworks like Paladin have helped me a lot. I'm currently reinforcing my knowledge in the patterns and practices. There is just so much for me to cover right now and I'm taking it a step at a time.

Is that the only thing I do? Not really. Because of my near-decade experience in software development (a techie at heart) and exposure to Capability Maturity Model (CMM) when I was a project manager, I've decided proactively, to broaden my scope to Visual Studio Team System (VSTS). Therefore, I'm also looking at Visual Studio Team Suite, Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) 4.

I believe it is natural for me to grow with Visual Studio. The focus-shift from 'developer-centric' to 'development-centric' is just what I needed. With my background, I should be able to contribute soundly to compliment VSTS in providing end-to-end software lifecycle management solutions.

Do I still need to write code? I'm still required to write code when the need arises i.e. developing proof-of-concept prototypes, sample frameworks, critical modules and etc. but mostly, I will need to read code in order for me to advice on best practices and provide architecture guidance.

So really no more code huh? Well, you know it is really impossible to keep a code-monkey like me away from coding. That's why I'm also looking at WinFx. To me, .NET is today, VSTS is tomorrow and WinFx is the future. I'm really impressed with the remarkable work they have done in WinFx. Developing software in the near future will be much more exciting than it is today.

Because WinFx is such a huge framework, I'm strategising the areas where I should focus first. I will start off with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and then move on to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). I'm putting Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) last because I'm not really a 'graphics person' since I spend most of my time in the middle-tiers.

What will happen to Paladin? Paladin is now frozen and I don't think I have the time to develop it right now. Furthermore, there were no more developments planned after release 0.9.0 because I was initially thinking of developing Paladin-II using .NET 2.0. I'll be releasing the source-code of the RTM version of Paladin 0.9.0 soon when I have the time. At the moment, I'm hoping that my friends in SGDOTNET will continue to maintain the project. I was told that Hannes from South Africa has already made progress in fine tuning the framework.

I'm also asked to present Paladin to my fellow consultants since some of them seemed to be interested after hearing about it. A few have also seen it. I've yet to prepare for my presentation as I'm focusing more on ramping-up in VSTS and WinFx. I hope I can do it soon so that I won't disappoint my colleagues.

Any disappointments so far? The only disappointment I have right now is not being able to experience Aero Glass on my new notebook. I was given a new Toshiba notebook with a whooping 128MB GeForce 6600 TE graphics card. Unfortunately, I've been too advance this time as NVidia has yet to release any drivers for it on Windows Vista. I guessed I will have to wait a lil bit longer.


That's all for now. More updates when I reach my second checkpoint ;)