It’s official, I’m now working at Microsoft. I have an office in building 42 and they have supplied me with a phone, an email account, and a computer. I even have a whiteboard in case inspiration hits me (it currently is blank).
I’m excited about the job. I was hired to work with the ASP.NET MVC team to build content around ASP.NET MVC and act as a liaison with the MVC developer community. I get to play with what Phil Haack and the rest of the ASP.NET MVC team is building when it is brand spanking new. I get to interact with the developer community and show off what Microsoft is creating.
I’m excited about ASP.NET MVC. New frameworks for building web applications emerge very rarely. I’ve been building websites by taking advantage of Microsoft technologies for a very long time. I started with IDC and HTX templates, progressed to Active Server Pages, and then made the leap to ASP.NET. ASP.NET MVC is still very much a part of ASP.NET, but it embodies a very different approach to building web applications.
ASP.NET MVC is an alternative, but not a replacement, to using Web Forms when building applications with the ASP.NET framework. If you are an Agile developer, or you are excited about ideas from the Agile community, then you’ll find ASP.NET MVC very attractive.
I’m very much a mainstream ASP.NET developer. I like Web Forms and I have built a lot of really great websites by taking advantage of Web Forms. However, I think that there are many valuable ideas and practices that mainstream ASP.NET developers can learn from the Agile world. You might have noticed that I have been posting entries on Test-Driven Development, Mock Frameworks, and Design Principles and Patterns on this blog during the last few months. One of the primary goals of my new job is to get mainstream ASP.NET developers excited about these ideas.
I admit, I am a little intimidated about what I need to learn. This is new territory for me. I’m leaving my safe home of ASP.NET Web Forms and entering the savage wilderness. I suspect, however, that this adventure will be worth it.
Oh, one last thing. I redesigned the look of this blog. I added a prominent picture of myself to the banner thinking deep thoughts (What should I put on that whiteboard? What should I put on that whiteboard?). Let me know what you think of the new design.
