Hey, it's been a while. This site is still active. I just don't seem to have much to write about. I still work in software. January 2017 marked 20 years doing this work. It's a pretty good career all in all. The pay and benefits are good.
Back in late 2015 I switched jobs and joined my current employer. It's pretty good here, and it has been a positive change. After RIM ended abruptly in 2014, my previous employer gave me a job when I was out of work in the summer of 2014. I appreciate them for that. It was what I expected and I don't have anything bad to say.
When I joined my current job the initial plan was around factoring out a piece of a large monolithic Java application so that it could be called from a .net client. As things turned out I pretty quickly ended up working on the .net side. There has been a smattering of Java here and there since then but primarily I've been working in .net and C# for a little over two years now.
I'd never done anything in C#, .net, or Visual Studio before. I'd heard some good things about .net but it was new to me. So at this point I have about 4,000 hours in on the Microsoft stack. It does make a difference being at it this long. Still learning and still not quite mastered. 6,000 hours to go I suppose. Though working with it for several thousand hours does make a big difference in proficiency and speed.
The .net stack including ReSharper is really quite good. Really well thought through, powerful, and easy to build applications with. Coming over from years in Java, the whole developer experience from C# to Visual Studio, to the .net libraries, it has been a very positive experience. C# is an excellent programming language. Powerful and well thought through. And LINQ is just incredible, and built right into the language, the intellisense.
Java and Eclipse is a great developer experience too I will add. I'm not going to declare a winner, both approaches are very well done and developer friendly.
I've done a lot of Web stuff with the .net implementation of MVC. And the Microsoft take on MVC with Razor is an excellent implementation. Everything is just there and just works the way you would expect. Microsoft really has worked hard on this and done a great job. I'd never really understood MVC before and now I've seen it done right it is a great approach to the Web. It was a great decision to have MVC right out of the box as a first class Microsoft module, it was very wise differentiator for Microsoft to own the MVC, instead of leaving it to the whims of third party vendors or open source for better or for worse.
Also I've worked more with the SQL Server database the last two years. Mostly Oracle over the years before coming where I am now. I've gained a lot of respect for MSSQL and SQL Server Management Studio. I didn't know much about MSSQL, but I will say it's a great database and does a number of things very well.
