In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. : General

Bad, bad...

oleglv — Tue, 06 Jan 2004 11:37:00 GMT

Yes, I admit it - I have been bad. I haven't posted in quite a while - although I do have quite a few ideas for the new posts. Not to get into the lame details, but lots of things have been going on in just about every area of my life which kept me quite thoroughly occupied. Some of those have been work-related and I actually have more material to post now...
Anyhow, things appear to be mostly improving and I expect to start posting in the nearest future... just as soon as I manage to defrost ( it has been pretty cold down here... )

On career development, cluefulness and derivatives

oleglv — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 23:05:00 GMT

I think this is pretty fantastic. And scary in a way. In fact I have been thinking something along those lines for a while, just was never able to clearly articulate it.

I guess it just confirms the fact that nothing happens by itself and that sometimes we are "so busy doing our job, we forget to do our job" - in a larger sense, anyway...

I guess it all comes down to this - why have you chosen to be a developer? What does it mean for you to be one? Sure, our direct responsibility is to write code, get it to a good quality and ship it. The very feeling that you have helped someone is pretty powerful as of itself, but the reality is, there needs to be more to this. Eventually every person needs to ask themselves this very selfish question "what's in it for me?".

And that is a totally valid question to ask - sometimes work can be tedious, exhausting and demanding, so there must be a rewarding part somewhere. And I'm not talking about a delayed gratification of shipping - no-one ships once a month, so there should be something that keeps you going. The mere "I just like writing code" almost never covers all of it. There's always more to it. You may like to learn new things, to work in a certain environment, to earn certain income, to gain recognition ... or all of the above. But it is important that everyone understands what it is that is really driving them and if there is anything that is driving them - otherwise they may find it very hard to go that extra mile we all have to go every now and then.

And it's trivial, but sometimes we loose it somehow - a career is not something that just happens to you all by itself, even if you work for a major company and steadily climb the ladder. More importantly, career is not something objective - of two people doing the same job, one can be deliriously happy and the other quite miserable.

I suppose, while I'm on the topic, I should probably say what it means to me. I completely agree with Eric there - it's all about "cluefullness" for me. I need to know that I have learned more, that I have a broader and deeper view of the world. Why does it matter to me that the CLR custom attributes are a little funny? That you shouldn't be using DllMain in MC++ DLLs if the current release of CLR and why? I have no idea. It just does. It makes me high. It makes me feel empowered... and of course, it also helps me with my everyday work.

PS It goes without saying... but let me say this anyway:

The content of this site are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway. In addition, my thoughts and opinions often change, and as a weblog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time snapshot you should not consider out of date posts to reflect my current thoughts and opinions.

Hi, my name is Oleg and I'm technologically-compulsive

oleglv — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 06:08:00 GMT

Intro entries are for blogs are what "Hello world" applications are for most books - you need to have one, they all look alike - although everybody wants theirs to look different - and everyone (including the readers) are very happy to be over with them and move to the real stuff.

So this is mine... and of course it's special :)

I'm a developer on SQL Server " Yukon " team - more specifically Business Intelligence (BI) Unit. We are working on quite a bit of very new and exciting stuff, including Analysis Services, DTS and Reporting Services ... most of which I can't talk about yet :) ... but I will as soon as I can.

I have been with Microsoft for 4 years - in fact, exactly 4 years on Oct 18^th. It's been one of the most professionally fulfilling experiences I have ever had, but this is not what I intend to write about here. You see, I'm your typical geek - I get a kick out of strange and interesting technical stuff. Also - for some strange reason - I find it really exciting to know how things really work and what can be done to make different things work together. I don't know why - I just do. And the reality is, sometimes this information is quite difficult to come across, but that's what this makes it all even more exciting.

I'm a very curious person and every time I start doing something I tend to try to get to the bottom of things, which at times turns into a obsessive-compulsive search for the inner peace ("why does it do that? why??? Must. Find. Out.")... and that's not always very productive( shh... don't tell my managers ). At times these campaigns bring some unexpected discoveries or what I consider interesting tidbits. And this is what this blog is for me - an outlet for my geeky compulsion :=)

OK, seriously. Integrating with new technologies is tough. Things are moving pretty fast. And it doesn't really help you much if you happen to be employed by Microsoft. Well... it does help, just a little, but not very much. You see, Microsoft is a very large company, which may look like a huge monolith to the outside world, but the reality is that internally we are facing exactly the same issues our customers see externally - many teams, may moving parts, new things come about every day.

" Yukon " team started using CLR, C# and VS.Net long before they became publicly available - in fact I recall that C# was referred to as "Cool" back then. It's been a pretty wild ride, and I guess now I feel compelled to share some of that experience with you. And this what this blog is also about.

While I'll be rambling about a lot of stuff, mostly I'll be talking about technologies I have been working with for the last 3 years: CLR in general and integration with VS.Net(The latter is in fact just un umbrella topic, it includes Office-based VS.Net AddIns, a very little known "Designer Framework" owned by WinForms team (this one is pretty mysterious - all interfaces are fully public and some topics are selectively covered in a bunch of articles, but the whole picture is somehow not out there, which is a shame, because it is really cool) and the very hard-core low-level API behind it all - VSIP (Visual Studio Industry Partner Program), which went public several months ago). Now I have been using all this stuff from managed code, which - of course - means that I will have to talk quite a bit about COM Interop as well. There will be some stuff on SQL Server/Business Intelligence too ... let's just see how it all comes along.

It is important to note that I do not work within Developer Division (which includes VS.Net and CLR), which means I'm basically in a similar situation as just about everybody else. Sort of an insider look from the outside, if you will (or is it outsider looks from the inside?). This means that while I can speculate why things are implemented in a certain way - and I will - you'll have to take that as just that - my judgment. What I am always really interested in is how things work... and how to make them work they way *I* want them to.

OK, this entry is getting waaaay longer than I wanted it to be, so I'll just wrap up. I should say that if you should definitely check out other GotDotNet blogs If you are interested in CLR and Interop, I would definitely recommend reading Chris Brumme and Adam Nathan on a regular basis - you'll be getting as much technical information as you can handle... and probably more :) If you are interested in VS.Net extensibility, the you also should check out Craig Skibo's blog - you'll know much more about the seemingly straight-forward EnvDTE... which is really not all that simple. :)

So... the "Hello World" entry is over... Let the "real" part of this blog begin.