I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to ride down to CodeMash 2009 from Detroit MI to Sandusky OH with Keith Elder, MVP, INETA Speaker, and co-host of the Deep Fried Bytes podcast. Having some one-on-one conversation time with Keith was awesome, and best of all, the microphones were turned off.
The conversation was surprisingly non-technical; we discussed owning dogs, personal financial strategies in these tough economic times, production techniques he uses on his podcast (okay that was a little technical), past CodeMash experiences, etc
At one point I stated "I like .Net because I can go from an expert to a novice in the same day". Keith immediately sent that quote out on Twitter with his mobile phone. At first I was a little embarrassed, my thought was "Great! Keith Elder just announced to the twitter-verse that there is a lot of .Net that I don't know. Ouch!".
As I thought about it further, I felt reaffirmed in my original statement. Like most technical people, I love to learn new things; that is what attracted me too many years ago to the computer industry as a teenager.
I realized that my initial embarrassment was a mistake. I have to work on what is currently paying the bills and my time to explore new or unfamiliar areas of the .Net Framework and CLR languages will never be as much as I would like it to be. I'm certain this is a common experience for all good .Net developers.
Every day I look forward to learning how to do something familiar in a more efficient or elegant way, or learning an entirely new technique. Working as a developer still excites me, even after more than twenty years working in Microsoft languages and technologies (yes they have gotten better over time).
Thank you Microsoft for giving me and many others the chance to have a good paying career that makes me look forward to going to work every day. May it never end!
So which portions of the .Net framework am I a complete novice at? I'm not saying ....
Joe Kunk
Microsoft MVP
Okemos, MI
