CloudSocket

I never started helping the community years ago to get this award.  I am very proud and humble to have been nominated by friends and peers in the .NET community for the MVP award in SQL development and thankful that Microsoft thought I was worthy enough to sit at the same table as all of the other MVP’s.  I am a little taken aback to be in the same company as the people I have been reading and following since moving over to .NET development back in 2003.  This honor will only intensify my work in the community and to give back to .NET developers and friends.

Thanks to all of my friends that supported me and helped me get to this point in my career.  I will not forget it!!!

Have you heard of devLink and the great time you will have there learning from such .NET greats as Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell, Paul Nielsen, Ted Neward, Wally McClure and Charlie Calvert? If that was not enough I will also be speaking there!!  If that is not excitement to get you there and you live in Michigan or Ohio there is also the devLink Bus that will be leaving first from my town of Grand Rapids and travel through Michigan and Ohio to bring the cool kids to the MTSU campus for the devLink conference.  Sign up now to get your seat due to demand and sponsorship the cost will be low and highly prized.

I am taking up the Mike Eaton Challenge and documenting my programming history.

How old were you when you started programming?

I was 12 years old developing on an Apple II and TRS-80.

How did you get started in programming?

I bought a used Apple II and received a TRS-80 for Christmas roughly the same time.  I was fascinated by the games I could play and wanted to learn how they programmed them and to see if I could make a game or two just for fun.  My first game was a helicopter game styled similar to Defender (old arcade game).  Was fun but did nothing more than move around and shoot.  I was 12 and I thought it was very cool though.

What was your first language?

My first language was BASIC on the Apple II.

What was the first real program you wrote?

The first really real program I wrote was a program that determined the electrons in each shell inside an atom.  I wrote it for projects in both high school computer science and advanced chemistry.  My teacher actually took and let others use it and I think passed it around after that school year.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

I have used quite a languages through the years from jr. high school until now: BASIC, Pascal, Prolog, C, C++, Smalltalk, Lisp, Powerbuilder/Powerbasic, TSQL, PLSQL, Python, Object Pascal/Delphi, C# and probably a few I have forgotten.

What was your first professional programming gig?

My first real gig was working for ANATEC out of college.  I worked as a consultant in Detroit doing Powerbuilder and then Delphi programming.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Yes for sure.  Great hobby and career.  May have gone into different directions in my career but never regretted working in software development.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

I would tell all developers to learn soft skills and get up to speed on the business side of software development.  Too many younger developers do not know how to communicate effectively with co-workers, bosses and the end users.  They also need to learn the costs and factors for estimating, planning and managing software development projects.

What's the most fun you've ever had programming?

The most fun may have been working on software for the start up I joined early on and working my ass off with a bunch of great people.  Working in a start up is the most fun any developer can have in my opinion.  Working for a new start up is like a new baby that you can watch grow up.

"And, in the end, the love you take/ Is equal to the love you make." – The Beatles

So with a lot of new energy around the Community there is a need to clarify some of my thoughts around why we as Community Leaders give and for what reasons.  I would be lying of I said that I did all the speaking, helping to lead a .NET User Group and volunteer to work on community events totally out of the goodness of my heart.  I can tell you that I try to give more than I take from these endeavors in the community.  My wife can agree with that statement when she sees the spending I do for the travel, lodging and food for the events and also the time away from my family.  She knows and understand the reasons why I work so hard for the Community.  So why do I do what I do?

1. I received a lot of support starting out and view my involvement as a way to Pay it Forward.  I also wish I would have had more support in my career during the rough times and had a group to listen and be heard.  This is probably the #1 reason why I work in the community.  I want to share what I know and make my industry stronger and improve the quality of software and technology.  I hope I do that within my company as well as the Community.
2. Exchanging ideas with other like minded technologists and developers.  We cannot work in vacuums and/or just inside the walls of our companies if we want to grow and become better at our professions.  We need to seek that outside influence and make ourselves uncomfortable by learning beyond sometimes our current capacities.  We also need to share what we have learned with others so that others can share in that discomfort that we all need to be better and grow.
3. To speak on a subject to people makes you learn more about your profession.  When I speak I have to not only learn the subject thoroughly but I have to be able to speak about it.  That second part is difficult and will make most people learn not only about the specific technologies but the adjoining technologies also.  if I speak on ADO.NET Data Services I also have to know quite a bit about Entity Framework so that I can speak on a complimentary/foundation technology for ADO.NET Data Services.
4. The message in #3 also rings true for mentoring.  Everyone should have a Mentor and be a Mentor.  That is part of the Community I strive for.  Interact with a single person instead of a room of people is just an impactful for you and the person you are mentoring.  I started mentoring 6 months after college and have gotten10X more from it than anyone I mentored through the years.
5. You can make some very string friendships by working in the Community.  I have friends I have made at all the events and Community groups I participate in and I am a better person from them.  I hope those people feel the same way.  No matter if those friendships are entirely online or are people in your area you see routinely, they help you as a person and professional be better and also allow you to have that support we all need in our lives. Always answer the call for help from your friends and ask for help when needed.
6. Finally I work in the Community for selfish reasons like reputation, networking and career building.  I want to have the best career I can have and so does the next guy.  What I have learned through the years is that if you help people get to better places they tend to help you also.  We can think of it as karma also.  No one can expect to just be handed everything just by demanding or expecting it.  I work hard keeping my contacts, friends and business acquaintances relationships strong so that if I ever need help I can reach out and get the help.  I cannot however expect that help if I never give when others are asking for help.  We should never expect anything in return though when asked for help. That is my highest rule in regards to faith, family and work.  if I ever expect anything in return, I am not really giving but making that person or people obligated to help me when the time comes.  They should want to help for the the same reason i do.

I am glad I got this off my chest.  I also hope the reader of this post already knows these views and lives by them.  So go out and help the Community and make others better.  I bet you will realize that you are much better for it.

Keith Elder and I have been planning, working and now freeing to the public the newest and soon to be world dominating podcast Deep Fried Bytes.

About The Show

Deep Fried Bytes is an audio talk show with a Southern flavor hosted by technologists and developers Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff. The show discusses a wide range of topics including application development, operating systems and technology in general. Anything is fair game if it plugs into the wall or takes a battery.

Episode 1

In this episode Keith and I sit down to discuss the show and explain how we came up with the name, what the show will be covering in terms of content and how to contact us with comments and questions.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW

About Our Designer

A big thanks goes out to Ingrid Henkel who worked with us on the design and creative side of the site.  Ingrid is a great person who is very creative and helped Keith and I to take what was in our heads and move that to the web.  She also has a blog and several things listed on her portfolio.

Date -- June 2, 2008

Time -- 12:00 to 1:30 PM

Place -- Bull's Head Tavern in downtown Grand Rapids

We will meet the first Monday of the month (if holiday second Monday) at a different local restaurant in or near downtown Grand Rapids.

The purpose of the Grand Rapids TechLunch is to get like minded business and technology influencers from Grand Rapids and Western Michigan together to meet, exchange ideas and maybe even create some new ventures that will help the region.  There are 3 team members for the group: Joel Ross, Matt Davis and myself.  We need more motivated and passionate people to help us Build GRTechLunch.

If you wish to come share a meal and be a part of the group please RSVP in the comments of the most recent announced lunch event at the GRTechLunch website.

I have been curious in learning more about the Semantic Web.  Very interesting ideas when the network is smart enough to understand the data and metadata transmitted through it.  Are we there yet?  Partially, with applications like Twine and <another SW app>.  We are in the middle of the Social Network era when connect with others through applications the foundation applications email and IM and the new applications LinkedIn, Facebook, TripIt and MySpace.  There is not much intelligence in the Social Network but the amount of information is amazing.  What happens when these two networks collide and integrate?  As I discovered you find the Metaweb.

Here is a great view of the progression of the technologies that have progressed during the Internet age.  It is incredible the amount of progression that has happened in the last 28 years since 1980.

The official site for the Ann Arbor Give Camp is now ready for volunteers to sign up and pledge a weekend of development to local charities.  Jennifer Marsman, Patrick Steele, Bill Wagner, Todd Bohlen and John Hopkins are the organizers of the 3 day event that pairs up developers with charities to give these charities some needed technology to benefit not only the charity but the people they server on a daily basis.

"GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations"

Want more information about what a Give Camp is?  Go right to the definition on the event site.

I will not be able to make the actual event but I will be working with the charities to gather requirements and writing specifications to hand off to the teams at the beginning of the event.  if you feel that you can give 3 days or even 1 day to the event and the great cause please register.  There will be food, drinks and event XBox 360's to play when a break is needed.

I was going through some boxes of old books to send to the recycle dropoff when I happened upon some old Delphi books from the late 90's.  If my readers do not know I was a Delphi developer for the most part 100% from 1995 until 2002 and used the IDE and language until 2004.  I started developing in Delphi shortly after graduating college at the end of 1994.  I worked for a consulting company called ANATEC in Southfield Michigan.  ANATEC was a very large consulting company that mainly developed client-server applications in Powerbuilder.  I started for the first 6 months working with Powerbuilder and Sybase for a few projects.  I was on the bench when our VP of Technology asked if another developer on the bench and I would enjoy going to see a demonstration of a new development tool Borland was showing off.  I had used Borland Pascal in high school and at home on Apple II's so I knew the company and their tools.  What I saw at the demo really blew me away.  I saw a great environment that would allow me to build Win32 compiled applications with the ease of Visual Basic.  I could get down to the Win32 API and do things that most C++ were doing at the time while still developing UI's quickly with drag and drop visual components.  Here is a rundown of what I really miss and loved about developing in Delphi.

• The ease of connecting and working with data
  • This is a blessing and a curse.  I agree that many old Delphi developers used the visual data aware components as a crutch to build really brittle applications.  In the hands of a skilled Delphi developer these controls were like magic and the features they gave were a blessing.
• VCL
  • In my opinion the VCL was the foundation for the .NET Framework.  It was a great control library and allow the Delphi developer to work with the Win32 system in OOP ways.  Anders Hejlsberg was the Chief Architect of Delphi and also was one of the creators of the VCL.  I believe he brought this subject matter and new ideas to Microsoft to help developer .NET Framework 1.0.  In the end the VCL was a great tool and gave me the power to move into C# and .NET quickly.
• IDE
  • What can I saw about the IDE?  I loved it!  I enjoyed every day working in it.  It allowed the Delphi developer to see both the code and the visual interface at the same time.  I sometimes miss that today in Visual Studio.  Having the IDE broken into multiple windows was also nice and allowed interesting add-ins to be developed by third party developers.
• User Components
  • The controls developed by Borland were no the best but there were so many and the creation of new controls/components was not difficult so that the developer could either inherit or create new controls quickly to give new wonderful capabilities to their applications.  There were also so many free and affordable components on the market that it was sometimes hard to choose or find the best one to use.
• The Datawindow
  • May have been the most undervalued part of Delphi's application development experience.  It gave the Delphi developer a way to not only store and share code and functionality between windows but also allow for the developer to see the controls that were in the Datawindow.  This might not appeal to all developers of today but it really was helpful keep the software logically organized for team development.
• Object Pascal Language/Delphi Programming Language/Modern Pascal
  • Object Pascal was often laughed at my C++ and C developers. In the end it gave the Delphi developer all the power we needed to get the job done without the overhead of C++.  I could do all the OOP I wanted (except multiple inheritance) and create object hierarchies that allowed my software to be flexible, stable and maintainable.  In Delphi the classes were broken down into an Interface and Implementation sections that organized the class well for reading the maintaining.  The language inherited from the influential imperative and procedural programming Pascal language.  Easy to learn and also powerful to produce great software.

//**blank form unit
unit Unit1;
interface
uses
Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Classes, 
Graphics, Controls, Forms, Dialogs;
type
  TForm1 = class(TForm)
  private
    { Private declarations }
  public
    { Public declarations }
  end;
var
  Form1: TForm1;
implementation
{$R *.DFM}
end. //this ends the unit

• Finally the Community around Delphi
  • This may be what I miss the most about developing in Delphi.  The list of people and online resources are too extensive to list out but there was first the Delphi forums on Compuserve that allowed us all to reach out and exchange ideas and get help before the WWW became the destination for the conversations.  I am not very good with remembering all the great people in the Delphi community but there were many like Mark Miller, Marco Cantu and Dr. Bob and the great sites like Torry's Delphi Pages, Delphi Super Page and the Delphi JEDI Site.

Today I love .NET and would not go to any other development platform for my work.  The community around .NET is on par and slightly better than with what we had 10 years ago in Delphi.  The Internet today allows for stronger online communities.  I may and did miss many other aspects, people and resources that were and continue to be valuable to the Delphi community.  I apologize for forgetting anyone and anything that people loved Delphi for.  Add them to the comments so all of us and remember and enjoy the great memories.

After many weeks of preparing and delays, my new podcast is up and running with the first 2 episodes.  I expect the podcast to improve over the next few months with maybe new theme music and better production.  It is a little rough but it is alive.  I am going to try to post at least 1 new episode each week.  Here are the first 2 episode details:

Episode 1 -- Introductions

This is the first episode of the new CloudSocket podcast.  It covers who the host Chris Woodruff is and what Chris will cover for the life of the podcast.  The podcast will be a mix of audio and video interviews along with software development demonstrations.  Chris' passions are software development and architecture, business/entrepreneurship, innovation and finally software user experience design.

Episode 2 -- NuSoft Framework and Joel Ross

The second CloudSocket episode is an interview with Software Architect Joel Ross covering the topic of the open source project NuSoft Framework. Joel's blog is at RossCode.

Go here to get the feed for the podcast.

I was in Redmond a few weeks ago doing some work with Microsoft Learning regarding their new .NET Framework 3.5 Professional exams they are developing for the MCPD certification.  I cannot say too much but the entire process to develop exams at Microsoft is interesting and way more complex than I anticipated.

The picture is me before going into Building 41.  The building in the background is Building 40 where the super smart people involved in Developer tools are located.  I also ate in the cafeteria between 40 and 41 so I saw quite a few people eating like Anders Hejlsberg and John Lam that I respect as developers.

Alan Stevens (who is a great friend and I recommended for the MS Learning work) and I did so many things for the 3 days we were there.  The people we met at the exam sessions were all very cool and great to chat with about the work they do and their views.  We also got to meet many people in the evening and hang out with some "famous" people.  My wife did not know any of them them but they are famous to me and probably most that read this blog.

Thanks to all the new friends I met in Redmond those three days.  I knew most from Twitter but only knew them by a icon and a username.  Great to put a face to their digital identity.

The second annual West Michigan Day of .NET is looking to be a slamdunk this May 10, 2008.  We have the same great venue as last year.  Davenport University is a great modern facility that allows us to have great classrooms and meeting spaces as well as a short walk from cars into the building.  But what makes this year's event better than the last is the line up of returning and new speakers.  I do not want to brag but honestly how can people not attend this year?  Look at the list of speakers and topics and tell me that you would not drive to be a part of this great day.

Register for the event here.

Amanda Laucher - http://pandamonial.blogspot.com
A look at F# (300)

Jay R. Wren - http://jrwren.wrenfam.com/blog/
An Introduction to Boo and DSL (300)
An Introduction to MonoRail (200)

Jeff McWherter - http://www.mcwherter.net/blog
ASP.Net Performance and Optimization (200)
Much ado about testing ()

Joel Ross - http://www.rosscode.com/
Continuous Integration: What, Why and How (300)

James Bender - http://benders-blog.blogspot.com/
Reliable Messaging in WCF (300)
Working with WCF (200)

Wallace B. McClure - http://weblogs.asp.net/wallym/contact.aspx
Deepdive into the ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel (300)
Introduction to ASP.NET AJAX (100)
Sql Server CLR Objects (300)

Nick McCollum - http://nickjmc.blogspot.com/
Developing custom ASP.Net applications on top of WSS (300)

Tim Wingfield - http://blog.timwingfield.com/
Getting started with ASP.Net AJAX to beyond the update panel (200)
Intro to the ASP.Net MVC Framework (200/300)

Josh Holmes - http://www.joshholmes.com/
How to Architect Rich Internet Applications (200)

Steve Schofield - http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield/default.aspx
IIS 7 for Developers (300)

Don Burnett - http://www.donburnett.com/
Improving the Designer Developer Workflow (100)

Dan Rigsby - http://www.danrigsby.com/
Introduction to Windows Communication Foundation (200)

Dan Woolston - http://www.danwoolston.com
Internet Explorer 8 For Developers (200)

Michael Eaton - http://michaeleatonconsulting.com/blog 
LightReader - The Anatomy of a Silverlight Application (300)

Patrick Foley - http://patrickfoley.spaces.live.com/
MicroISVs ()

Steve Mushkat - http://stevesps.blogspot.com/
MOSS Workflows with VS 2008 (300)

Bruce Abernethy - http://blog.bruceabernethy.com/
MVC First Impressions, Tips and Tricks (200/300)

Joe Wirtley - http://joewirtley.blogspot.com/
Pragmatic Software Architecture and the Role of the Architect (200)

Dan Hounshell - http://danhounshell.com/blogs/dan/
SEO for ASP.NET Developers (200)

Brian H. Prince - http://brianhprince.blogspot.com
Soft Skills – They’re not just for humans anymore! (200)

Paul Hacker - http://www.phacker.wordpress.com
Test Driven Development with Visual Studio 2008 (200)
Web Testing with Visual Studio Team System (300)

David Redding - Http://www.geekswithblogs.net/davenet
The C# Variety Show! (200/300)

Aydin Akcasu - http://a-vision-inc.aydinakcasu.com/dnn2/
Wii Will Wii Will Rock You! !! !!! (300)

Dan Hibbitts - http://twitter.com/MobilityMatters
Windows Mobile tool-chain improvements for 2008 (300)

I have been a little tardy with posts to the CloudSocket blog for the last 6 weeks.  Well all that will change now that I am wrapping up the last details of the work to move this blog from Wordpress to SubText.  Between having issues with the server the blog is on and doing to content move it delayed this announcement a few weeks.  Now that this is behind me, I will be doing many new posts.  I hope you all enjoy the new direction and stay with me while the kinks are worked out.

I also would like to announce that I have started recording interviews for the new CloudSocket Podcast and will be getting the first episodes on this feed soon.  The podcast will be both audio and video covering many topics I have passions about: software development, social networking, business development and design and innovation.

I will be leaving this morning for a 2 day speaking tour in Wisconsin. I will be speaking to the Wisconsin .NET User Group in Milwaukee tonight March 11 and tomorrow night March 12 to the Chippewa Valley .NET User Group in Eau Claire.  Both talks will cover ADO.NET Data Services (AKA Project Astoria) and the Semantic Web.  I am looking forward to both and meeting all the great people in Wisconsin.

I have not dropped away from the Cloudsocket blog.  I am just getting prepared for the next month when the Cloudsocket podcast will be released.  Stay tuned in!!  I have 5 new blog posts being developed for this week and the first podcast will come this weekend.