Contents tagged with Off Topic
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2008 – The Year that Was
I know if I were to do a retrospective, it should have been last week, but now is as good a time as any. 2008 was a busy year for myself that I managed to challenge myself and push myself in many different ways. From joining CodeBetter to speaking at conferences, there has been a lot of things going on. I’ll focus on three areas, the personal, local and more global levels.
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let Matt = CodeBetter + 1
Joining the CodeBetter Community....
#light
type FullName = string * string
let FullNameToString (name : FullName) =
let first, last = name in
first + " " + last
let blogger = FullNameToString("Matthew", "Podwysocki")
I'm pretty excited to be joining the CodeBetter gang after following for so many years. I want to thank Jeremy Miller, Brendan Tompkins, Dave Laribee, Greg Young and others for welcoming me to the fold. No, this blog won't be going away, but instead will also serve as a host for my posts.
So Who Are You and Why Are You Here?
So, just to introduce myself, I work for Microsoft in the Washington DC area. I'm active in the developer community in whether it be in the .NET space, Ruby, or less mainstream languages (F#, Haskell, OCaml, Lisp, etc). I also run the DC ALT.NET group since the November timeframe of last year and helped plan the latest incarnation in Seattle.
The number one reason I'm here is to help better myself. Deep down, I'm a language geek with any of the aforementioned languages. I'm one of those who strives to learn a language every year, but not just learn it, let it sink in. That's really the key. Sure, I can learn a certain dialect, but it's not quite being a native speaker. That's how I can take those practices back to my other languages to try to apply lessons learned such as functional programming paradigms (pattern matching, currying, first order functions, etc).
I also have a pretty deep interest in TDD/BDD, Domain Driven Design and of course one of Greg Young's topics, messaging. Right now in the world of messaging, I think we're in a pretty important time in the development world when messaging, multi-threaded processing and such is going to be more mainstream and hopefully less hard than it is now.
I'm also a tinkerer at heart. I'm looking at testing frameworks to help make my TDD experiences easier. I'm looking at IoC containers to help make my system just a bit more configurable. I'll look at the tests to see how each one does what it is. That's the fun part about it.
I'm also on the fringe with such topics as Spec# and Design by Contract. I'd love nothing more than to see many of the things being done at Microsoft Research become a bit more mainstream and not just seen as a place where we might see something 10 years down the line. Topics such as Spec#, F# and others have real importance now and it's best to play with them, give them our feedback and such.
So What Do You Want From Me?
Here's the thing, since I'm always looking to better myself, I'll need your help along the way. I value your feedback along the way and hopefully we'll learn from each other. Now that this is out of the way, time for more serious topics...
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ALT.NET Seattle Registration and Mispronouncing My Last Name
Just a reminder that ALT.NET Open Spaces, Seattle registration is still open, although we are sold out at the moment, we are taking stand-by's just in case some drop out. So, if you hadn't registered with us, go ahead and do so, and don't let the sold out scare you. Just keep in mind that you may not be selected, so I wouldn't make concrete plans if you are traveling to get there.
I'm hoping to finish up about 5-6 posts that have been sitting around since last week on F#, the Unity Application Block, Mocking versus Stubbing and so on. Hopefully today I'll get some of that done, so stay tuned. That and there is a DC ALT.NET meeting this Wednesday as well.
So, I know this is a random post, but if you caught over the weekend, the "This Week on Channel 9: Feb 15 with Scott Hanselman!" episode on Channel9, you may have noticed I was mentioned around minute 11, and it was a struggle to Brian Keller on how to pronounce my last name. Don't worry about it, people, it happens all the time, and I usually let people struggle with the first part for a while before I have to hop in. It's a definite way of telling who knows me and who doesn't... It's like "Podwa Podwe Probably not gonna work here anymore, that's for sure!" from Office Space.
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Why am I here?
Sorry I never posted a welcome notice to this blog. Anyhow, welcome to my new home on the net. If you don't know me already, my former blog is at geekswithblogs.net. If you're here for the first time, great!
So, who am I? Well, I live and work in the Washington, DC area and actively involved in the .NET and Agile side of things in the area. I run DC ALT.NET with the help of Phil McMillan, who ought to blog more BTW.. I'm also active in planning the ALT.NET Open Spaces, Seattle event coming in April. We're going to have a great crowd there, but space is limited.
Anyhow, my interests are many including:
- Agile/XP
- Functional Programming (FP)/Object Oriented Programming
- Compilers
- ASP.NET
- BizTalk (pays the bills)
- SharePoint
