development
Stagnation Station, What’s Your Motivation?
Stagnation occurs - in my opinion - when you no longer have the energy to continue learning something new at least every day. Unfortunately with projects like my home renovations and the contract with Tobyhanna Army Depot I am unable to devote as much time as I’d like to my own knowledge development. However, I find plenty of time to share the knowledge I have already acquired with colleagues at the job site.
I am learning plenty of things about ASP.NET that I hadn’t known before. But I’m learning on the .NET Framework version 2.0. And here, Microsoft has already begun working on .NET version 4.0. How is a guy to keep up? Microsoft’s pace is certainly not a fault, however, I’ve noticed that many “Microsofties” spend so much time keeping up with the most recent Microsoft technologies that they have no idea how to use CSS. Or… anything else for that matter.
I don’t fault those people for these things. I do however, blame Microsoft at least a little bit. The problem is that Microsoft is enabling them to put the blinders on while Microsoft handles the heavy lifting. Microsoft provides themes, GUIs, and other tools to reduce the amount of actual code that a developer needs to be concerned with.
I consider myself a different breed, though. I am one of those .NET developers that rarely uses “Design Mode.” Design Mode in my opinion is sacriligous. I need to be able to see everything that is going on. I live in the source. If I can’t understand what is actually going on behind the scenes then I’m not learning. I’m not expanding my thoughts. If I were to just settle for using the same old Microsoft provided controls, and the same old Microsoft provided interfaces, then I’d be like one of those zombies in the Matrix. I’ve got the lining pulled over my eyes. They’re spoon feeding me my regulated dietary requirements. My wings will never be spread, my legs never stretched, my eyes never to see.
So I’m glad I have a somewhat different perspective. So maybe I’m not a Microsoft MVP - yet - but I am damn good at figuring out how and why things work. Then by transferring that knowledge, I help improve everyone’s condition.
And with that… I’m out. It is about 23:23 and I’m already awake 2 hours and 23 minutes past my bed time.
A List Apart Survey 2008
If you are a professional web developer and you haven’t yet taken the 2008 ALA Survey you may want to consider doing so. It provides some interesting insight on the career landscape for people of our expertise and trade. I for one like to see what the world marketplace is like for my chosen career path. In my opinion the ALA Survey has proven its worth in that regard. ALA publishes some nice graphics depicting major points that are shown by the data set provided by people from around the world who have chosen to take the survey.
Project Announcement: ELK Lighting Inc.
I have been contracted to program the wholesale functionality of the new ElkLighting.com.
The project is slated to be completed in two weeks. Beta versions not available to the public are to be finished January 5th. While the final revisions are to be in place by January 15th. The same day ELK Lighting is hosting a national light manufacturers’ convention. This will be the grand unveiling of ELK Lighting’s new website.
The project calls for multi-tiered pricing for thousands of items in the existing product database. This project will save ELK Lighting Inc. time and money by moving vital product information to the internet. This information will be made available for sales representatives and resellers.
Intel Threrading
I was getting my daily fill of Slashdot when a typo in an ad caught my eye. This rant is about that typo. Read on if you dare…
The ad in question is a flash advertisement for Intel’s line of software development tools. Mainly those which aid in the creation of multi-threaded applications. Which are only helpful to those with multiple cores and/or processors. The part with the typo is displayed in the image below.
I find this absolutely hilarious because more and more I notice that there are people who work with computers every day of their lives and depend on them so much that they’d be unable to make any money without them. Yet many such people don’t know a thing about them other than how to use certain applications. Many years ago you had to really know what you were doing to be able to call your “work” computers. Nowadays just about anyone can call them their business.
Personally I wouldn’t have even seen that ad unless it had the typo in it. So maybe they were actually using their heads. That is a smart tactic. Clientele who know their trade would spot that typo with their heads buried in a C# book or Java Manual. So this could be what the advertisement creator was thinking. Though if I were an Intel exec. in charge of this advertisement I would have been just a bit wary of trying such tactics in such a wide-reaching ad.
Perhaps what I’ve done is actually illustrated their “unconventional” marketing tactics. I’m just sad that I can’t use that tactic. The kind of clientele I look for are those who can’t program web sites. Or maybe they can’t program their VCRs. Either way I felt the need to rant about it for some reason. Hopefully you have enjoyed following my 4:30am thought process.