SharePoint User Group.

I tried to post this earlier in the week, but failed when it came to pushing the publish button, so here is an edited version - now in past tense.

Last night I presented at the Canberra SharePoint User Group.

This was my second presentation to the group, and it was following the theme applying of agile methodologies and practices to SP development.

I shared my experiences on using TypeMock, with a specific emphasis on Isolater for SharePoint.

I will (hopefully) post a link to the web cast later in the week.

P.S. If you are developing for SP and you aren't using TypeMock - you should!! Not only will it save you time and money, all the cool kids are doing it!

Epiphany

A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend. - Richard Matheson

So most people by now are probably asking themselves, what is with the name of the blog? and what is with the quote at the top of this post?? Well there is a story behind that, so here goes...


A few years ago I was sitting in my manager's office having my annual performance review. It wasn't going very well, in fact it was fair to say I was getting a bollocking. I was getting quite agitated, as most people in that situation would. You see despite my performance being slammed, it was not the quality of my code, nor the amount of code I was writing, nor my tardiness, nor my unit testing results, and so on. There were no criticisms of my performance in writing software, rather the criticisms centred around things like my reluctance to take on a project management role, my reluctance to engage customers in a sales relationship, my reluctance to... and to be honest at this point I completely tuned out, so I have no idea how the rest of the lecture went.


While I was being read the riot act, I came to the sudden realisation, in fact it might be fair to call it an epiphany. I felt an overwhelming sense of clarity - Like Robert Neville at the end of the book I am legend (see quote above), suddenly life was much simpler to me.


I am a developer.


Fortunately for me, unlike Robert Neville, my moment of clarity wasn't an ironic realisation that came immediately before my death (I hope I didn't spoil the book for you!). I want to write software, I want to write information systems, I want to work with new and exciting technologies, I want to be agile, I want to be test driven. I am not a salesman, I am not a project manager, I am not an account manager. Nor do I want to be at this point in my life - this might change in the future, but for now: I am a developer. Then I dropped the 'a' to be more cool and sound like the book's title. I am developer.


So what is this blog about? Well it is about my journey as a developer. It will contain a fair bit of technical stuff, and to a lesser degree it will contain some stuff around personal experiences and my thoughts on various things...