The Visual Basic Team : Interview

Community Interview with Doug Rothaus (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:00:03 GMT

This past month we've been posting interviews with the team from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole. This time we have Doug Rothaus, a writer on the documentation side. Doug has blogged up an XML cookbook here on the team blog with a bunch of "recipes" on how to use different features of XML Literals and LINQ to XML in Visual Basic.

Check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Doug:

1. Nice to meet you Doug! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

I live in Woodinville, in Washington State. It’s about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the main Microsoft campus in Redmond. I grew up in Washington, so it’s nice to work so close to home.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

My official title is “Programmer/Writer”. I write reference, samples, and so on that you read in the product documentation. I feel very strongly about getting useful documentation out to the community and customers. If we don’t document it, how are you going to use it?

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

Being a “data guy” from way back, I love LINQ. To be more specific, though, I love the XML Literals and XML Axis properties that come with VB and LINQ to XML. Most of the source data that I work with is stored in XML and XML literals make my life much easier.

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

I have worked for Microsoft for almost eleven years. I started in Developer Support answering questions and troubleshooting problems over the phone, by e-mail, and in chat sessions for customers working with ASP, ADO, and Visual Interdev. For the last seven years I have been writing documentation and samples for ADO.NET, ASP.NET/Visual Web Developer, and for the last (almost) two years, Visual Basic and Visual Studio.

Before Microsoft, I worked as an application developer, security analyst, and instructor for a large aerospace company in the Northwest US that you may have heard of.

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?

I love that VB serves all developers well from the novice to the expert. I think one reason for this is the way VB is descriptive in much of the language. For example, “NotInheritable” is more descriptive than “sealed”.

6. Have you ever been to Italy?

I did take a trip to Italy (and other European countries) when I was seventeen years old. I visited Florence, Venice, Pisa, Rome, Naples, Pompeii, and Sorrento. I loved Sorrento. Someday I plan on visiting there again. Of course, everywhere I went in Italy the food was delicious. (My friends tell me I describe every place I’ve been to in terms of food)

Most of my time is spent with my wife and three children. I also play/sing quite a bit of music in my free time. I have a small home studio and a collection of instruments (2 electric basses, four guitars, one mandolin, one keyboard/workstation, congas/percussion). My other hobby is motorcycles. I ride them and race them at the track. I’m a MotoGP and World Superbike fan as well. Have they heard of Valentino Rossi in Italy? :-)

8. Who is your favorite musician?

I have to pick one? Out of a very long list, I will submit Mark King (of Level 42). Awesome bass player—and he flawlessly sings lines counter to what he’s playing.

9. What’s your favorite food?

Pizza. It contains all of the four necessary food groups!

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and telling us more about you!

Community Interview with Lucian Wischik (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:00:34 GMT

Here's a community interview from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time with Lucian Wischik, a Developer on the team. I'm just getting to know Lucian but he is a very interesting and bright person who is just a pleasure to talk with (I hope he starts blogging a lot more). When I told him that out Italian community had sent some interview questions over he responded to them in Italian! I feel totally lame that he speaks fluently and I don't, although he had the benefit of actually living there... oops I don't want to ruin the interview.

Anyway, please check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Lucian (in English and his own Italian):

1. Nice to meet you! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: Where are you from?

· Hello! I'm Lucian Wischik. I was born in Australia and lived in England for twenty years.

· Ciao! Mi chiamo Luciano. Sono nato in Australia. Scusa mi per il mio italiano... non l’ho parlato per cinque ani.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic team member, but can you tell us something more about your role inside the team?

· Spec maintainer. Also developer - implementing new features and bug-fixing.

· Programmatore! Creo nuovi features, e faccio lo bug-fixing.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature, in the language and/or the IDE? What makes VB a great programming language?

· It's hard to pin it down. Once I used to be a C# and C++ programmer. But, working with VB, each day I'm reminded that there's something uniquely pleasing about it. Most of all, VB is the integration between the IDE and the language -- this is what made it great 20 years ago, and it's still going today, and it's beneficial for new programmers and experts alike. In its guts, VB has already anticipated to some extent modern scripting languages. And, more and more, VB gives practical fun programming that's founded on solid modern computer science theory - "monads" gave us linq, also "list comprehensions", and comega/xduce gave us xml literals. It makes me excited about the future of VB.

· É dificile identificarlo. Una volta ero un programmatore di C# e C++. Ma, lavorando con VB, ho ogni giorni il senso che sia qualcosa specialment piacevole con VB… Soppratutto, VB è l’integrazione tra IDE è linguaggio: era questo il triomfo di VB venti ani fa, e continua oggi, e aiuta i nuovi programmatori ed i esperti insieme. Dentro il cuore del linguaggio, VB ha già anticipato (per esempio) i moderni scripting languages. E, sempre più, VB si basa su dimostrati, solidi concetti teorici – “monads” ci hanno dato linq, anche “list comprehensions”, comega/xduce ci hanno dato xml literals. Sono molto eccitato per il futuro di VB.

5. What brought you to Microsoft, and how long have you been working there?

· I was a university researcher in Italy with a small group working on concurrency. Five years ago I got a phone call from Redmond asking me to come do the same work at Microsoft, so I did!

· Era ricercatore à Bologna per un pò, con Professore Cosimo Laneve. Ricordo che una volta in inverno, il primo giorno di neve, egli avuto bisogna di visitare la famiglia à Puglia. Ho devuto scusarsi ai suoi studenti. “Boungiornio” gli ho detto. “Laneve non c’è oggi!” Cosimo era un professore splendido. Sono arrivato à Microsoft cinque ani fa.

6. What’s it like working for Microsoft?

· Stimulating. I get to work with intelligent and fun people. The company has generous benefits, and America is still a land of opportunity.

· Stimolante. Lavoro con gente intelligente e divertente. La firma ci da compensi generosi, e America è ancora una terra d’opportunità.

7. Tell us something about your life outside of the office (how do you like to spend your free time, when you go out, when you’re at home, etc.)?

· Here in Seattle I've discovered a passion for sailing. I bought a small sailboat, and dream of one day sailing the Northwest Passage.

· Qui à Seattle ho scoperto una passione per le barche a velo. Ne ho comprato uno, e sogno di navigare il Northwest Passage.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

· Bach, Morricone.

9. What’s your favorite food?

· Buffalo Mozarella.

· Mozarella di buffola.

10. Have you ever been to Italy?

· Yes!

· Si!

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and telling us more about you!

Community Interview with Adrian 'Spotty' Bowles (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:00:25 GMT

This past month we've been posting interviews with the team from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole. This time we have Adrian Bowles (who's nickname is Spotty), a Tester on the VB Compiler. Someday Spotty will have to tell us how he got his nickname.

Please check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Spotty:

1. Nice to meet you Spotty! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: Where are you from?

England via Philadelphia (9 years prior to moving to Redmond)

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic team member, but can you tell us something more about your role inside the team?

I’m a tester on the Visual Basic Language and Compiler team. I’m Involved in testing extension Methods, UAC Manifest functionality, Collection Initializers during the Orcas and current product cycles.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature, in the language and/or the IDE?

Extension methods – it’s the greatest feature ever !!!! :-) Both me and developer of the feature agree on this. It’s used extensively to provide the LINQ functionality but provides so much more. XML literals is pretty cool as well.

4. What makes VB a great programming language?

VB is a great language, it’s easy to use and allows for a huge range of users (from complete novices to experts) to easily develop a wide range of applications. This has been evident over the years from VB 1.0 and has been a constantly evolving product. The language has English like syntax making code easy to understand and providing the vast majority of functionality as other languages. VB users are passionate about the product – it allows them to get the job done quickly and easily.

5. What brought you to Microsoft, and how long have you been working there? What was your occupation before joining the VB team?

I was a developer using VB and did some work with Microsoft trying to identify performance problems with an application I started work on. I loved the experience of working with smart guys and the environment. Applied for a position and got an offer. I’ve been working here for 3 years but used VB since V1.0 / VB for DOS

6. What’s it like working for Microsoft?

Best company I’ve ever worked for, super smart people and constant new development taking place. It’s a place where the teams work hard, but enjoy the work – this is not a 9-5 job as such but one where people get carried away with their work and the next thing you know its 9pm – time flies by when you’re having fun and having fun at work makes you to look forward to each day at work.

7. Tell us something about your life outside of the office (how do you like to spend your free time, when you go out, when you’re at home, etc.)?

I’m pretty active, I’m a skydiving instructor, with over 4500 jumps and used to compete when I live in UK – with 13 national titles, I ski with the mountains in Washington only 70 minutes away and whistler,BC a not much further. Since living in WA, I’ve developed a love of wine and often visit the wineries/vineyard.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

I like lots of music and don’t really have a favorite as such but U2 would be up on the list of always in my music collection.

9. What’s your favorite food?

All sorts of food – I’ve traveled quite a bit and will eat most things. I like eating real “foreign” food. That is authentic non-generic American food. It’s unfortunate that a lot of food becomes Americanized over in the US. So I enjoy seeking out authentic local food and treat oversees trips as truly an opportunity to try local foods – you won’t see me running to the nearest generic fast food chains. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy - I’d be happy with a simple fresh baguette, some cheese and a glass of wine.

10. Have you ever been to Italy?

Yes, but not recently. When I lived in UK I traveled around Europe a lot and have been to Italy a couple of times. My grandmother was in fact Italian.

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and telling us more about you!

Community Interview with Sophia Salim (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:00:55 GMT

This past month we've been posting interviews with the team from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole. This time we have Sophia Salim, a Tester on the VB Compiler. I'm very happy to see Sophia reach out to the community and am looking forward to more interesting posts from her here. I'm always interested in what really goes on inside that compiler.

Check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Sophia:

1. Nice to meet you Sophia Salim! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

Karachi, Pakistan

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

I am working as an SDET for the VB compiler team

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

It has to be XLINQ!!

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

2 years (almost) … It has been software engineering ever since I finished school

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?

Because you can literally use it out of the box. It is so easy to learn, and you can do amazing things even with the most basic knowledge.

6. Have you ever been to Italy?

Nope, but I would love to go

It mostly revolves around friends, but nothing beats reading a good book over a hot cup of coffee

8. Who is your favorite musician?

These days it is Coldplay

9. What’s your favorite food?

Chocolate, esp. the darker kind

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and letting us know something more about you!

Community Interview with John Stallo (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:00:28 GMT

Here's a community interview from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole with John Stallo, a Program Manager working on RAD tools. I first met John on my interview loop at Microsoft. What immediately stuck me when I met him was his Italian name but he has a very cool Australian accent. Being that we both have an Italian heritage, in the first part of my interview we talked about where we were from. That broke the ice quickly and I think I did well in the rest of the interview. :-)

And if you haven't seen them already, check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with John:

1. Nice to meet you John Stallo! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

I was born and raised in Perth, Western Australia, and now live in the Redmond area since joining Microsoft. My connection to Italy is special because both my parents are originally from Taranto, Italy, and I grew up surrounded by many Italian family friends. I was 19 years old when I first visited Italy and I got to meet many relatives for the first time. It was an awesome experience and I fell in love with the people and culture, returning several times afterwards. I guess it may seem a natural progression that I also met and married my wife in Italy, herself a native of Puglia.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

I work with other team members on building RAD tools that help developers consume data in rich client applications. I love my role as a Program Manager because of the creative aspects of designing user experiences, plus I get to work with VB developers and make a difference in helping them be more productive. Some features that I’ve worked on are RAD data binding, local data caching, web service tools, and Class Designer.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

XML Literals - it’s a great example of a feature that helps you focus on the domain (in this case, XML), rather than .NET’s view of the domain.

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

I joined Microsoft in early 2001 after graduating from Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. I’ve worked on several teams here but always part of Visual Studio – I love building productivity tools for developers!

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?

One of the reasons VB is a great language is because it attracts such a diverse set of users. I first got into programming by recording macros in Excel and dabbling around with the VBA code that was generated. It may seem quite basic, but when you think about it, that experience in Excel enables users to be very productive.

I also remember when I was in my first year studying Computer Science, and in my own time I was learning how to build user interfaces with VB. At the same time, one of my courses at university was “Programming Windows UI” - but it was all in C++ and using the Win32 API. I had to understand about how things like Windows message pumps worked to build even the simplest UI forms, and as a student I couldn’t understand why things just couldn’t be as simple as what I was learning in VB!

So with many VB developers coming from similar experiences like that, I find that most have high expectations of being productive in their tasks. This has contributed to the VB user experience – the language, IDE, and tools working together – to always be focused on developer productivity and ease of use.

6. Would you like to tell us something about your life outside the office (how do you like to spend your free time, what do you like to do when/if you go out in the evening or when you’re at home and so on)?

Food and great company go well together! Some of my favorite evenings are when we’ll cook something special and invite friends to join us. I also recently got into motorcycles, and riding around town on a warm afternoon is a great way to relax.

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and letting us know something more about you!

Community Interview with Eric Knox (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 07:00:26 GMT

Here's another community interview from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time with Eric Knox, Development Manager on the VB IDE Team. I got to know Eric at TechEd this year where we had a lot of fun floating in the pool on bright pink inner-tubes. ;-) You can also see Eric in the interview I did with the IDE Team a while back on Channel 9.

Also check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Eric:

1. Nice to meet you Eric Knox! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: Where are you from?

I’m from Maryland, about 20 miles from both Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic team member, but can you tell us something more about your role inside the team?

I’m currently the Dev Manager for the “Developer Experience” or IDE part of the team. That means that I focus more on scheduling and oversight of VB than I do on any one feature.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature, in the language and/or the IDE?

Definitely - Intellisense as of VS2008. It’s become a *huge* crutch that I depend on more than I realized.

4. What makes VB a great programming language?

It’s easy to read *and* has full access to all of the .Net Framework.

5. What brought you to Microsoft, and how long have you been working there? What was your occupation before joining the VB team?

I have been at Microsoft for 14 years, and before VB, I worked as a developer in Access, Visual InterDev and even Microsoft Consulting Services as a developer consultant (doing mostly VB5 business objects in classic ASP).

6. What’s it like working for Microsoft?

I find that at Microsoft, I work with a lot of passionate, responsible and incredibly bright people. It’s fantastic to work amidst that much technical horsepower and commitment.

7. Tell us something about your life outside of the office (how do you like to spend your free time, when you go out, when you’re at home, etc.)?

I have a wife and two elementary-aged kids, so most of my non-work time is spent doing family-oriented things: going to soccer games, skiing lessons, swimming pools and even playing Wii (because I still think my kids are too young for a lot of Xbox games just yet :-)).

8. Who is your favorite musician?

Over time, the ones I always come back to at some point or another are Garbage and Billie Holiday (but there are so many more, depending on my mood).

9. What’s your favorite food?

Ahi tuna (and many other kinds of seafood)

10. Have you ever been to Italy?

:-( No, although I have been thinking about how and when for many years.

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and telling us more about you!

Community Interview with Bill Horst (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:00:32 GMT

Continuing the community interviews from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time we have Bill Horst, a tester on the VB Team. You might know Bill from his awesome series of blog posts on Converting SQL to LINQ.

Also check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Bill:

1. Nice to meet you Bill Horst! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

I’m originally from Ellicott City, Maryland (USA). Now I live in Seattle, Washington.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

I am a member of the VB IDE QA team, which means I test VB IDE features through automation and some targeted manual and ad-hoc testing. I have a general ownership of VB Debugging, and also worked on VB LINQ Queries for our most recent release. I also work on designing our test tools and methodologies.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

Generally, I like the debugging features (probably because I’ve spent so much time working on them), and the new LINQ and XML language features are my favorites from VS 2008.

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

Five years, all on VB IDE QA. Before that I was in college.

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?

· Good IDE support (such as Intellisense, background compilation)
· Easy to learn
· No semi-colons, fewer {braces}

6. Have you ever been to Italy?

No, but I hear the Ice Cream is great!

My lovely wife and I got married a year ago. We are active in a unique Seattle church called “Church of the Undignified” (see recent article), and do our best to serve God and help people who are hurting in the city. She is hoping to open an iced cream shop next year, and has been inventing flavors in our kitchen. Naturally, that means I sample a lot of tasty things, too. Beyond that, we enjoy reading, spending time with our friends, and occasionally playing a good game of “Pearball”.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

Hard to say, but I’ve been enjoying Sufjan Stevens a lot lately. I have a fair number of musician friends, so I tend to favor them, too. My good friend Eric Miller is one I recommend.

9. What’s your favorite food?

My wife’s yam tacos

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and letting us know something more about you!

Community Interview with Me! (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:00:04 GMT

Here's another community interview from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time with yours truly. ;-) I decided to release this one today since it's my birthday.

Don't forget to check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well. My picture up there is from a couple years ago when the Oakland A's went to the playoffs... ahh.. memories....

Anyway, here's my interview with Alessandro:

1. Nice to meet you Beth Massi! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

I was born in San Pedro, California but I moved to northern California in 1991. I had a very brief period where I lived in Seattle for 8 months in 2002 but I’ve lived here in the San Francisco Bay Area ever since.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

I’m a Visual Studio Community Program Manager and I work with the Visual Basic team on engaging with their communities and producing and managing content like blogs, videos, articles, webcasts and of course lots of presentations! I also manage the content on the Visual Basic Developer center on MSDN, which gets a ton of traffic. I also now work with the Visual Studio Office Client Team (VSTO) managing their online content and community on the VSTO Developer Center and participate in many third party community sites. I get to work across a lot of different projects internally as well -- they keep you busy here ;-).

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

There are so many but I think LINQ and XML Literals are my favorite recent features. XML Literals can be used in so many interesting ways and coupled with LINQ you can be extremely productive as well as very clear about the intent of your code. Less code means less bugs, I love it!

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

I joined Microsoft in March 2007. Before that I worked for a variety of software companies and software consulting firms. I began my professional career after I graduated college in 1994 but I wrote my first program with BASIC on an ATARII 400 in 1981. I have always focused on business applications and information systems and building application frameworks for that type of software. I started making money writing code in Clipper and then FoxPro (can anybody guess how old I am now!?). I was active in the FoxPro community until .NET came around and I learned Visual Basic.NET and fell in love with the platform and the language.

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?

Because it’s case insensitive and is very easy to read, and with the background compiler and IntelliSense VB is your main guide into the vast .NET Framework. It didn’t take me very long to learn the language syntax because it just made sense and it helped me quickly spot trouble with its instant feedback (background compiler) as I typed. I think this is why it is a great teaching language as well. I learned BASIC when I was only 8 and even though the language has drastically changed since then, its principles are the same – there’s a low barrier to learning it and becoming productive.

6. Have you ever been to Italy?

Yes! I have been there twice and all over Italy. My nona and nono were from the island of Ischia and so I love it there. I think my favorite city is Roma because I love the city lifestyle as well as the ancient Roman history.

7. Would you like to tell us something about your life outside the office (how do you like to spend your free time, what do you like to do when/if you go out in the evening or when you’re at home and so on)?

I love cars (I’m selling one by the way), mountain biking, hiking, dancing and wine drinking. Most of all I love laying in the warm California sun listening to an Oakland Athletics baseball game on the radio.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

I love a variety of electronic music and classic rock, so it’s hard to say. One of my favorite DJs in San Francisco is Miguel Migs.

9. What’s your favorite food?

Hands down, my mother’s manicotti.

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and letting us know something more about you!

Community Interview with Matt Gertz (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:00:04 GMT

Here's another community interview from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time with Matt Gertz. Matt still posts frequently on the VB Team blog even though he's changed roles (look at how big his name still is in our tag cloud on the right ;-)). Matt is a great technical leader here at Microsoft and he really loves the Visual Basic community so we welcome him here on the Visual Basic "virtual" team!

You can also check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Matt:

1. Nice to meet you Matt Gertz! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

That’s a tough question to answer, not simple. :-) I was born in Pensacola, Florida, but I moved around quite a lot – my family has lived in eight different states (some of them multiple times), a couple extra countries, and I personally have had about 28 different addresses. I’ve been in the Seattle area for about 14 years at different addresses, and before that, the longest time I’d spent in any place was a city called Monroe, Michigan, from about age 9 until age 18.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

Actually, I’m not a VB Team member directly anymore. (I’m getting all of your questions wrong! :-)) I’m the Development Manager of Developer Division Tactics, and I manage the engineering process strategy for the Developer Division, which includes .NET, Visual Studio, and Visual Studio Team System. Before this job, I was the Development Manager for Visual Basic, and was in various other jobs on the VB team before that.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

Well, I’m a UI guy, so I really enjoy features like IntelliSense, the prettylister, and snippets. If I had to pick one, I’d say IntelliSense. It’s amazing how versatile it is, and how much time it saves me each day.

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

I’ll have been here for 14 years in December 2008. I started out on the “Blackbird” team, which was supposed to be a designer for content on the proprietary Microsoft Network. When MSN became an internet service in 1995, we all started working on Visual InterDev, which later merged into Visual Basic. (Here’s a true story: I knew almost nothing about Microsoft when I applied for the job in 1994, except that they wrote “Summer Games” for the Commodore 64 back in the 1980’s – I mostly wanted to get out of the academic life and live in the Pacific Northwest. Microsoft just happened to be where I wanted to live.) Before I came to Microsoft, I was completing my Ph.D. in Computer Engineering (focusing on robotics) at Carnegie Mellon University, and before that I was an undergrad at the University of Michigan.

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?

Because it makes sense! Seriously, I used to do all of my hobby coding in C++, but I’ve totally switched to VB now. I have all of the power of .NET, but the code is understandable and intuitive. Reading VB code is like reading a book.

6. Have you ever been to Italy?

I love Italy! I’ve been there several times. My family lived just outside Napoli when I was in college, so I would visit them there during holidays. My favorite thing to do was ride the trains just to see what I could see – this day in Sorrento, the next day in Roma, the next day in Pompeii… there was just too much to see! I’ve visited Firenza, Pisa, Ercolano, Milano, Cumae, and so many other places in Italy. I also wish that I could have visited Venezia, but I never quite made it that far – maybe someday I’ll get there! I did do some skiing in Cervinia, which was wonderful – the Alps are beautiful. The best part was how friendly the people are. I speak some Italian, but not very well, but the people in Italy always were very kind and helpful to confused tourists like me.

Right now, I do a lot of work on my property in my spare time – we have chickens to take care of, vines to tend, and lots of other ranch-related work. I’m a big fan of opera, symphony, musicals, and plays, so my wife and I try to get out as much as possible to those (which hasn’t been often, since we have three kids – fortunately, the oldest is now big enough to babysit his brother and sister, so we’ll hopefully be going more often now). I’m also an avid reader and enjoy music quite a lot.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

That’s another tough question, since it depends on my mood – I have a pretty big music collection, and I like lots of different genres and artists. Alan Parsons has always been a favorite musician of mine, as has Billy Joel, and I’m a big fan of the Beatles and the Eagles. Interestingly enough, I don’t have a lot of contemporary favorites – my tastes are based in the 1960’s through the 1980’s when I was growing up. I don’t think that’s because the recent music is any worse – I do enjoy recent songs (for example, “Viva la Vida” from Coldplay is a current favorite of mine) – it just seems that nowadays I tend to focus on the song and not the artist as much. On the classical side, I enjoy Rachmaninoff tremendously, as well as Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Strauss, plus contemporary composers like John Williams and Howard Shore.

9. What’s your favorite food?

I tend to prefer Italian cuisine, coincidentally enough. (One of my mother’s friends used to run an Italian restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and it was favorite place for me to take a date when I was in college.) My favorite meal is a prime steak cooked very rare (or even served tartare) under a mushroom-wine sauce, served with asparagus and pasta, with a fine merlot or cabernet to wash it down, served with a good Italian bread, and preceded by an appetizer of calamari. I’m also quite happy to visit Mexican, Thai, Chinese, and Indian restaurants – I’m not picky.

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and letting us know something more about you!

Community Interview with Jared Parsons (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:00:19 GMT

Here's another community interview from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time with Jared Parsons, a Developer on the VB Team. Jared is a great developer and loves the community. You can check out his personal blog here.

You can also check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Jared:

1. Nice to meet you Jared Parsons! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

Born in Kentucky, raised in Tennessee, lived in Alabama for awhile, then back to Tennessee and went to college in Georgia. Usually I simplify it by saying I grew up all over the southeast.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

I’m a developer in the VB team. I started out on the VB Compiler several years ago. Towards the end of Visual Studio 2008 I switched to the VB expression evaluator (aka debugger, watch, immediate window). This role expanded to other parts of the VB IDE experience including a lot of features users will be (hopefully) really excited about for the next release of Visual Studio.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

My favorite VB feature is usually whatever I’m implementing at the moment I’m asked this questionJ. Luckily I’m in between features at the moment so I can give an unbiased answer. XML Literals are my favorite VB feature. It really allows me to seamlessly integrate my data and queries into my application. I feel like I find a new way to use it every day.

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

I’ve been working at Microsoft for 4 ½ years now. I joined Microsoft immediately after college in the in the Visual Studio Team System division. More specifically I was a developer on Team Developer and Team Architect. After shipping Visual Studio 2005 I was eager for new challenges. I spent a good deal of my time in college working on low level systems and being a teaching assistant for an introduction to compiler courses. I was interested in getting back to these roots. A job opened up on the VB compiler team and it was the perfect fit.

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?

We have a tie here: flexibility and IDE. VB is an amazingly flexible language. It lends itself to whatever task I’m trying to do. On one end of the spectrum I have XML literals to work with my data and at the other end generics and lambda expressions to really geek out on a problem. The IDE support is also very good (I promise I’m not biased here). It’s really difficult to express everything the IDE offers to the programmer. The best way to understand though is to get out notepad and try and code up a VB application. That will really give you a handle on what the IDE is doing for you.

6. Have you ever been to Italy?

No but it’s definitely on the list of places to visit.

Outside of work I still lead a largely geek lifestyle; lots of programming, blogging and book reading. I do manage to leave my geek role by playing a variety of sports. Right now I’m playing soccer (indoor and outdoor), softball and football. I’m not very picky when it comes to sports. As long as it’s athletic and preferably outdoors I’m there. It’s a great way to get release after a day of programming.

Of course there is the occasional Rock Band party as well.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

Much to my parent’s disappointment, I don’t have an ear for music (read that as 100% tone deaf). As a consequence my taste for music is … bad according to my friends. I prefer to think of it as blissful ignorance. On that note (pun intentional) I love a good punk album or some techno while coding.

9. What’s your favorite food?

The hands down winner here is French Fries.

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and letting us know something more about you!

Community Interview with Patrick Dengler (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:00:12 GMT

Continuing the community interviews from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time we interview Patrick Dengler. You can take a look at the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Patrick:

1. Nice to meet you Patrick Dengler! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

I was born in New York, grew up in California, then moved to Redmond, WA

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

I’ve managed many different things as I have been on and off the team over the last decade or so. The first versions of ADO. NET, XML/DataSet Designer, Database Tools integration, WebServices…oh the list goes on. I am now focusing most of my time on making development even more approachable, easier and less cumbersome.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

I just love the language overall. I started developing in Basic 30 years ago now (eek!) and have watched it grow since then.

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

I’ve been at Microsoft since 1992. Before that it was mostly high school and college jobs to pay the bills. Between 1997-2000 I took a leave of absence to create ONYX Software with 3 other Microsofties.

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?

I once worked for a great guy who was famous for making the statement “Assembly is self-documenting”. I find it easier to read VB than other languages.

6. Have you ever been to Italy?

No, but I got close. I was working my way through Germany, Switzerland, and Austria about 20 years ago, but then lost my passport.

I’m a family guy so I love to work with my kids on their homework and doing fun outings. I also enjoy video games too much (if you play Team Fortress 2 email me and I’ll add you to my buddy’s list). I’m also a musician which I wish I spent more time on.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

Hands down, no hesitation, challenge me if you will: RUSH

9. What’s your favorite food?

Anything not in our cafeteria.

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and letting us know something more about you!

Community Interview with Jonathan Aneja (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:00:41 GMT

Continuing the community interviews from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time we interview Jonathan Aneja, VB Compiler Program Manager.

Remember that you can take a look at the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Jonathan:

1. Nice to meet you Jonathan Aneja! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

Toronto, Ontario – one of the few places in Canada that’s actually *south* of Seattle :-)

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

I work on the compiler/runtime as a “Program Manager” (yeah, I don’t know what that means either :-)). Every week’s different, but typical stuff would include writing specs and taking notes in our language design meetings, dogfooding the product a lot to find bugs, prototyping features, and working with teams like ASP/MSBuild on how the compiler integrates with them. Even did some test automation back in Orcas!

I think the most important part of the PM role is understanding the customer and being able to “think like a VB developer”. Thankfully I’ve always been one – used every version of the product other than VB2 and VB5!

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

Probably the background compiler. Case insensitivity too :-)

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

Graduated in June 2005 and started as a contractor working in ISV Advisory Services. After about 9 months of that I moved out here to Redmond to join the VB team – 2.5 years and counting so far…

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?
I think it’s really approachable and readable. It uses simple English terms like “Or” rather than requiring a beginner to learn a symbol like “|”. The IDE provides a ton of productivity features like Error Corrections and an amazing IntelliSense experience. The VB App Framework provides things like the My Namespace and application-level events automatically instead of making you wire all that up.

Features like “Handles” give you a powerful way to deal with events while abstracting away more advanced concepts like delegates. There’s still full support for delegates when you need to dive deeper, but for the simple case it reduces the concept count that the developer has to deal with. That’s a big part of the language’s philosophy: keep the number of concepts you have to remember low. This lets you focus on actually solving your business problem instead of learning every nuance of the compiler.

6. Have you ever been to Italy?

No but I’d love to visit someday :-)

I really like Basketball, strategy board games (Settlers, Powergrid, Risk etc), and music. I’m also really interested in solutions to 3^rd world poverty and organizations likes Compassion International.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

Impossible to pick just one, but I’ll try to keep it to three: Chris Tomlin, Hillsong, and Casting Crowns

9. What’s your favorite food?

Chicken Tikka Masala

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and letting us know something more about you!

Community Interview with Lisa Feigenbaum (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:00:08 GMT

Continuing the community interviews from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time we interview Lisa Feigenbaum, now a Visual Basic Community Program Manager! Cool!

Remember that you can take a look at the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Lisa:

1. Nice to meet you Lisa! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: Where are you from?

Los Angeles, California

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic team member, but can you tell us something more about your role inside the team?

My current role is Community Program Manager. This means that I get to work on team community activities, including the MVP program, the VB team blog, conferences, and more. I find ways to get the product team involved in community activities, and help make sure we are satisfying our *large* user base of Visual Basic developers. :-) I also work very closely with Beth Massi who runs the VB online community activities, including the VB Dev Center.

Before my current role, I spent several years as Program Manager for the Editor and Debugger. This included fun features like intelliSense, code snippets, edit-and-continue, and more.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature, in the language and/or the IDE?

First, let me tell you that everyone is biased on this question. :-) I predict that every team member will suggest his or her own feature (except for the ones that try to prove me wrong!) Here is a video that Beth conducted with the language design team, where this very same incident occurred!

Following with that prediction, my favorite Visual Basic feature is intelliSense. It saves you typing, it saves you time, and it helps prevent errors before they happen – it’s the quintessential VB productivity feature!

4. What makes VB a great programming language?

What makes VB great is really the whole experience – the language, IDE, and tooling support combined. It’s the RAD drag & drop, it’s the background compiler instantly reporting errors and warnings, it’s the prettylister that inserts your parens, the dropdowns to insert event handlers, it’s the With statement, it’s XML literals, it’s the awesome query support, and more! It’s the language that lets you achieve your maximum productivity.

5. What brought you to Microsoft, and how long have you been working there? What was your occupation before joining the VB team?

Maybe first I should answer what brought me to software… My M.S. & B.A. degrees are in Applied Mathematics, so my first exposure to programming was in math and engineering classes, where we used Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, and Python. There were several occasions for programming. One was to visualize solutions to engineering problems in some kind of UI. Another was to compute results from the discrete models we approximated for analog equations, using numerical analysis. Outside of school, I did a series of internships that were software-related: a website for the Caltech seismology department, cardiology software for Cedars-Sinai hospital, and visual effects for Digital Domain.

When talking with Microsoft recruiters, I was very interested in the company and in the role. I liked the fact that Microsoft brings together so many different industries. I like that the Program Manager role involves both design & technical work, opportunities for creativity, and lots of people interactions, both internally and customers. I was very happy to work on Visual Studio. I remember my experience senior year when they finally let us use VS for the first time our school projects, and I was so thrilled by the product! Tasks that used to take 10min were reduced to 1 or 2. Very cool product.

I’ve been on the VB team for 4 years now, and just celebrated my anniversary by bringing 4 batches of home-made banana muffins for the team!

6. What’s it like working for Microsoft?

Exciting! So many technologies and industries to keep up with. So many smart & analytical people to work with. So many great opportunities to learn, grow, and make a difference. I’m not bored yet. :-)

7. Tell us something about your life outside of the office (how do you like to spend your free time, when you go out, when you’re at home, etc.)?

I love playing softball, tennis, skiing, swimming, running, camping, traveling, making art, karaoke, and dancing.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

Dave Matthews band, Fiona Apple, Mariah Carey, Blackstreet, Jurassic 5, Justin Timberlake, Nelly – those are a few that I like. Pop, hip hop, and salsa are my favorite genres.

9. What’s your favorite food?

This is a tough question because it is always changing… I usually eat my favorite food too often, then get tired of it and need to find a new one! Growing up, Italian was always my favorite. When I lived in Boston, I got really hooked on Indian and Thai. Since working at Microsoft, my favorite has been Mexican. But now I am also really into Vietnamese!

10. Have you ever been to Italy?

Yes! It was excellent. :-) I traveled during a week-long spring break while I was in college. I visited Rome, Florence, Naples, and Venice. Rome was probably my favorite, with so many exciting historical sites to see; Florence was absolutely beautiful – I enjoyed the museums there too; Naples had great pizza; and Venice the unique canal system. I used to do a lots of glass art in high school, so it was really interesting for me to see all the glass blowing shops in Venice. Of course, every city had great food and wine, too!

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and telling us more about you!

Community Interview with Paul Vick (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:00:53 GMT

One of our Italian Visual Basic MVPs, Alessandro Del Sole, sent over some interview questions for the Visual Basic Team members to get our thoughts on the language and favorite features but mostly to share some of our personal interests to help you get to know us better. I also learned some fun facts about the team as well! Alessandro is also translating these interviews and posting them on the Italian Visual Basic Tips&Tricks site.

You can take a look at the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios of those team members who aren't shy. ;-). The home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center will also display the team photos and a link to these interviews that we'll be post here over the next month or so.

This first interview is with Paul Vick, VB Language Architect. Although Paul is moving teams to work on Oslo, he'll still continue to participate in the VB language design process and work to ensure the VB language specification is kept complete and up to date.

Here's the interview with Paul:

1. Nice to meet you Paul Vick! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

I’m originally from Durham, North Carolina, but I’ve lived in Seattle long enough that I consider myself more of a Northwesterner.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

My main role has been the language architect, which really means three things: running the language design meetings, answering a lot of questions, and keeping the language specification up to date.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

I’ve worked on so many, I don’t really have a favorite. OK, maybe case insensitivity…

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

I came to Microsoft sixteen years ago straight out of college.

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?

I think VB is a great language because it takes a very practical, relaxed stand on things. Case insensitivity is a good example—rather than being stickler about casing, which in most cases really doesn’t matter, we accept different casings. Overall, I like that approach a lot.

6. Have you ever been to Italy?

Once, when I was in high school. I studied Latin and we took a trip to visit Rome, Venice and Florence. It was a wonderful trip, and I hope to come back some day!

Well, I’ve got twin boys who are about two and a half right now, so they tend to consume most of my time outside of the office! I am looking forward to going back to running and indoor rock climbing at some point in the future…

8. Who is your favorite musician?

I like a lot of different styles of music, but I grew up listening to R.E.M., so they have a special place in my heart.

9. What’s your favorite food?

Also a difficult question, but it’s probably something Southern and fried, maybe fried chicken or hushpuppies.

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and letting us know something more about you!