 Friday, March 11, 2005
Brendon and I got together with Paul Wilson over some burgers and chicken fingers and chatted with him about what’s been going on in his life. We talked about work, side projects, Paul’s MVP status, and more. I’ve actually been sitting on this material for a week now, so I figured I’d get my act together and write it all down where the rest of the community can read it. So here’s our Tale of Paul Wilson…
We were talking about how we all got started working with computers (Atari and Commodore and whatnot) when we got into how Paul got started working professionally with computers, especially since his education prepared him to be a math teacher. Once Paul decided that he didn’t really want to be a math teacher, he turned to computers. Paul actually got started with Delphi programming, something he, Keith Rome, and I have in common. Gradually his Delphi work became VB work, and he was off and running. His association with .Net applications began while he was working at a company as a regular employee. Paul’s projects at work weren’t really that exciting to him, so he started working on his personal website to learn more about the things that interested him. Now his website is a great tool for him, both as a teaching tool and example. Have a question about how to do something in ASP.Net? Ask Paul and he might send you to part of his website as an example of the solution.
Paul’s received no small amount of praise for his O/R Mapper, but he’s got more that just an O/R Mapper to keep him busy. We talked a bit about what he’s been doing in his “spare” time. Paul’s been working on a UI Mapper, an extension to the MasterPages class, and more. For a onetime fee you can get a lifetime subscription to all the code that comes out of Wilsondotnet.com. Ask Chris Wallace if he thinks the subscription is worthwhile. Paul spent a lot of time impressing on us is firm belief in the KISS principle – Keep It Simple, Stupid! This is actually the real reason he started creating his O/R Mapper and UI Mapper – he saw a need for a product and there were no simple products out there to meet his needs. Paul’s main drive is to keep things simple. He’s the first to admit that there might be other products out there that do some of the same things his products do (for example, NHibernate), but his strive the easiest to use. He’s not trying to address the entire market, just the cases where a simple and elegant solution fits. As far as what the future holds, Paul is working on something new, but he’s so early in the process that he didn’t want to talk about it before he proves it a viable concept to himself.
Paul shared a great story with us about what he feels lead directly to his being awarded the MVP distinction by Microsoft. It all began with that company he was working at where he first started using .Net technologies. That company was in the process of closing its doors, but it had several projects it was required to keep running for a long period of time. So Paul was in the maintenance phase of the project life cycle and he was able to spend time looking at the next technologies he might use. This is when he started working on his website. He was a frequent visitor of the brand new (at the time) ASP.Net forums where he was looking for solutions to his own problems. He started answering questions other people posted as he learned more and more. Because he was able to invest a lot of time in his website, ASP.Net in general, and the ASP.Net forums, his ranking as a top poster was stratospheric. This got him noticed by the powers that be over at MS and he was awarded the Most Valuable Professional award by the Microsoft MVP team. The funny thing about the award is that Paul feels it casts him as “Mr ASP.Net” when he has expertise in other areas as well. Fighting this exact type-casting is one of the things that eventually lead to the Wilson O/R Mapper – he wanted to prove that he could do stuff in other areas. That incredible job eventually with all the extra time ended; you can’t be paid to do nothing forever. Now that Paul’s working full time again, he doesn’t spend as much time on the message boards as he used to. He does visit when he gets the chance, and he is a very active local blogger.
So now we all know where to find Paul online if we need to ask him questions – the ASP.Net forums and his own blog. The next question we had for him was where does Paul Wilson go for help when he needs it. Paul told us that he does occasionally look in some newsgroups and websites, more often some reference books, and he told us that he stands on the shoulders of much smarter people than himself. He didn’t mention any names (to protect the innocent) but he told us that if he brought some of his brightest friends to chat with us, we’d all feel quite stupid in comparison. Brendon and I both felt Paul was being a bit modest, but we accepted the story that where Paul is smart, some of his friends might be brilliant.
We wrapped up our conversation with a quick talk about the Atlanta .Net Regular Guys’ mission. Paul’s been a strong online presence for quite a while now, but we don’t get to see him in person all that often. With the exception of the upcoming Code Camp, Paul doesn’t have any plans to present at any of the User Group meetings. So we asked him what we could do to draw him out of his house and into the community a bit more. While he wouldn’t actually commit to anything, Paul told us that he was very appreciative of our efforts to publish the user groups’ calendars and keep him informed of who’s coming to speak at which events. He mentioned that he might be enticed into coming out to hear some of our future presenters.
Well, that’s about all that I have for this Tale from the Trenches. Stay tuned – the next episode should show up in about two weeks.
— Matt Ranlett
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Brendon covered this interview for me, as I was once again struck down by the plague. This time I went to the doctor’s office for a quick once over and some meds. With all the antibiotics rampaging through me by now, I’ll be healthy as an ox. Or at least as healthy as I was before I got the plague.
Chris Wallace is the star of the inaugural publication of “Tales from the Trenches” brought to you by the Atlanta .Net Regular Guys. Chris met with Brendon at the Visual Basic.Net UG meeting and hung out afterwards for the traditional pilgrimage to Chili’s for food, beer, and more talk. I want to thank both of them for braving the terrible weather and adjusting to the fluctuating schedules of everyone involved.
Chris is a .Net developer and the brains behind the Tamasii.com blog which was, until recently, hosted by DotNetJunkies. Working for the Gwinnett Hospital Systems as a senior systems analyst, Chris has helped his department tremendously with his knowledge of .Net development. Read on for a synopsis of Brendon’s interview.
“Do all programmers watch CSI and Without a Trace or is it just that me? Chris and I are that cool and we have a lot in common. It appears he works on computers all the time (like 18 hours a day) and still enjoys learning – file this fact under “What Brendon and Chris have in common”. Yes I know you work more than 18 hours a day on the computer; put your name in the comments and maybe I will talk with you next. =)
Let me tell you, this guy is a one man shop. We talked about how he has control of the servers that he works on and how this is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse because he has to maintain them, but he has the ability to change whatever he needs for his applications.
We were talking about how he used to be hosted on DotNetJunkies and would blog there, but changed over to his new site (www.tasamii.com) where he has made some modifications (or mods, for those cool people) to his version of .Text. He switched his web host over to http://www.webhost4life.com which really looks like a great deal for unlimited bandwidth. He said since his switch he has seen a little bit of drop off in the number people that read his blog, but he is hoping that people just haven’t totally moved over yet. Move People! Move!
I was going to ask the standard questions that people wanted us to ask, but he was such a nice guy and kept the conversation moving so well that he answered those things without me having to ask. You wanted to know things like, “Why did he pick .NET?” Well, he had been working on HTML, ASP, and VB and it was simply the logical next step. Actually one reason he moved to it is that he has a web app that hits the server about once every minute or so. Now this started out with a client size of about 10, but then grew to be a ton of people so he need a performance boost. .NET gave him that boost by cutting his CPU performance from 80% utilization to under 45%. He can comment on the actual numbers if I got them wrong.
Chris’s current project is a scheduling app that uses colored buttons to tell different type of information. Something cool that he is working on now is reading about GDI+ and he is going to come up with a way to create the button from different colors on the fly and different text from the database so he doesn’t have to create a graphic every time there is a need for a new button color. I had asked him if he worked on any mobility or tablet pc or anything and unfortunately he hadn’t, but he said he is going to buy one at the beginning of March and he did have a cool Blackberry phone that he showed me my website from at the restaurant. After seeing that, I guess Matt and I better work on making it more mobility friendly.”
— Matt Ranlett
This is a dump of ideas just so I won’t forget them, if you want to wait for Matt to clean it up that should come tomorrow.
Oh sorry that was William, but I had a great time either way talking with Chris who is the first person to do the “Tale of Trenches” aka “Atlanta RockStar Lounge” not that I support anybody being a RockStar I just liked the name. While re-reading that last sentence I thought that might have a chance for longest run-on sentence ever. Any, we had a great time and I am very glad he made it out to the VB.NET Study Group first with me and then talked to me at chilies afterwards. I am not really sure how we are going to do the posts for this segment, but I am just posting my ideas for tonight so I will not forget them. I don’t want to do a poor job because Chris made the effort of coming out for the night even though I think we had a flash flood. You can tell this is a little choppier than so of our usual posts because Matt was sick and could not make it out to the User Group meeting or the talk with Chris. Now that I have you caught up on what happened up to this point I will move on with the Tale. Ohhhhhhh
Do all programmers watch CSI and without a trace or is it just that me and Chris are that cool and have a lot in common. It appears he works on computers all the time (like 18 hours a day) and still enjoys learning. Yes I know you work more than 18 hours a day on the computer, put your name in the comments and maybe I will talk with you next. =). I am a little tired so don’t take my jokes the wrong way please. In fact we might not have this post up tomorrow, just depends on the format. Back to our story.
Let me tell you this guy is a one man shop. We talked about how he has control of the servers that he works on and how this is a blessing and a curse all at the same time. This is because he has to maintain them, but he has the ability to change what he needs for his applications. We were talking about how he used to be on DotNetJunkies and would blog there, but changed over to his new site where he has made some modifications (mods for those cool people) to his version of .Text that he has running. He switched over to http://www.webhost4life.com which really looks like a great deal. He said since his switch he has had a little bit of drop off in the people that read his blog, but he is hoping that people just haven’t totally moved over yet. Move People Move. I was going to ask the standard questions that people wanted us to ask, but he was such a nice guy and kept the conversation moving well that he answered things without me having to ask. You wanted to know things like why did he pick .NET, well he had been working on HTML, ASP, and VB and it was the next step. Actually one reason he moved to it is that he has a web app that hits the server about once every minute or so. Now this started out with a client size of about 10, but then grew to be a ton of people so he need a performance boost. .NET gave him that boost by cutting his CPU performance from 80% utilization to under 45%. He can comment on the actual numbers if I got them wrong. This app he has worked on is a scheduling app that uses colored buttons to tell different type of information. Something cool that he is working on now is reading about GDI+ and he is going to come up with a way to create the button from different colors on the fly and different text from the database so he doesn’t have to create a graphic every time there is a need for a new button color. I had asked him if he worked on any mobility or tablet pc or anything and unfortunately he hadn’t, but he said he is going to buy one at the beginning of March and he did have a cool Blackberry phone that he showed me my website from at the restaurant. I guess matt and I better work on making it mobility friendly. Matt might go have some lunch with him and get more info, but for now at 12:15AM that is all I have. We will clean this up and come up with a format to let you know about him in a more organized way, but thanks for reading. Have fun and let us know if you have a good story to tell.
--Brendon Schwartz
Saturday, February 19, 2005
A little while ago Brendon, the local vocal community, and I came up with an idea to help bring us all closer together. Brendon and I, your humble Atlanta .Net Regular Guys, would invite some local member of the community out to lunch or dinner and chat with them about their personal experiences with .Net development. We'd then summarize and paraphrase that interview and post it to this blog for everyone to read. No one is sure about what will come of this, but we're hopeful that some helpful information might leak out. It might be interesting to hear what people around you but outside of your own development teams are doing, succeeding at, and struggling with.
"Tales from the Trenches" - beginning Thursday, Feb 24th.
Our inaugural interview will be Chris Wallace, a VB.Net developer who works as a one man development shop in the medical field. Expect the first post to be Thursday night or Friday. We are not sure yet if this will be a weekly or semi-weekly feature, but we intend to have some fun with this. If anyone has any interview topic requests, start sending them in!
-- Matt Ranlett
© Copyright 2010 Atlanta .NET Regular Guys
Theme design by Bryan Bell
newtelligence dasBlog 1.7.5016.2  | |   | Page rendered at 9/3/2010 3:09:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
Reset | Slate | Movable Radio Heat | DasBlog | Just Html | Candid Blue | Discreet Blog Blue | Movable Radio Blue
|
On this page....
| | Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|
| 29 | 30 | 31 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 1 | 2 | | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
Search
Navigation
Categories
Blogroll
Sign In
|