I have wanted to blog for about two years now. With all of the blog sites out there what held me back you ask? Two big questions: Where and What. The where was answered for me when Donny Mack responded to my request to blog here at DotNetJunkies. I can only imagine that he is not making an abundance, if any, profit from this venture so I appreciate very much the opportunity he is giving me to enter into the world of blogging on this site.
Some bloggers that I have worked with that are worthy of mention. Scott Stewart a mentor and friend who not only helped me get my first job programming in .NET but also helped me with the unavoidable learning curve coming from VB 6.0. Also, a brief encounter with Johnny Papa has left me with appreciation for, not only his prolific blogging skills, but also his project management abilities. Not many men come along that can walk the tightrope as effectively as he can.
Now for some bloggers that I wish I had worked with: Rocky, Scott Hanselman, Joel, Don Box just to name a few. Makes you wonder if some day "Andreas" will be enough to identify my blog, that's when I will know that I have really made it!
So, now that the "where" of my blogging aspirations has been addressed, the "what" comes to bear. As my blog theme indicates, I favor an object oriented approach to software development. I have come to appreciate, over time, that the "quick and easy" solutions are never really quick and are often less than easy to maintain. A true object model has saved me many an hour "hacking" what I would have built otherwise. I don't consider myself a purist by any means, but I will assert that most "programmers" that I have interacted with just do not get it. Somehow there seems to be a bit switch somewhere in the VB.Net (and beyond?) programing world; either you are a "just barely above Access" programmer who has heart palpitations whenever the "drag and drop" method doesn't work and you actually have to (shudder) edit the actual code, or you are an astronaut who is too intellectual to actually write code that works, you are far too busy discussing SOA, and other mystical Design Patterns. Not that design patterns are bad but let's be real; words mean things. If we are going to say we are "Object Oriented" let's actually do it, or if our decision is to be "Service Oriented"; that's OK, just be "Service Oriented".
That is all I have to say, for now. If you want more you will just have to wait along with all of the rest of the desperate masses. ;-)