Agreed. When the problem is a difficult one, my first-cut solution will be complex. A beginning programmer might review the code and conclude "this guy is Smart! I could never write code like this." Then I take some time away, come back, boil it down and refactor into something clean and elegant. The same beginner would then review it and conclude "of course this is correct, this is the way I would have coded it."

That "MVVM without binding" project was such a failure that the last time you flew in a commercial jet, the turbine blades might have been shaped by that software :-D My clients (industrial machine builders) wouldn't know a Framework from a Core from a Standard unless I whacked 'em on the head with them.

I have a one-man-show small business with a complex, mature and utterly reliable .NET Framework 4.6.1 WPF app and associated libraries, etc. I'm always busy adding requested features and doing customizations for my customers. My question is - how important is it that I drop my income-generating activities and port all of this to the latest .NET 6 or whatever? I would value advice from those who have done this upgrade...

Agreed. C# is such an elegant language and well written C# code is understandable at a glance. Much of this new stuff is just WTF??

I've been coding for over 30 years and never had "friends who code." However, I have lots of friends who I ride dirtbikes with - and I hooked up with most of them via FB Groups. Try that!

With a MS/EE focused on control systems and having written CNC machine control software for 30 some years, I believe myself to be an actual Software Engineer. However, I am unregistered, so if I get pulled over I might get impounded.

Giving new meaning to the expression "Soup up your PC"

I've been writing C/C++/C# professionally now for 30 years in the critical realm of industrial automation. I've never done formal unit testing. I write code carefully and deliberately, refactoring as necessary until it looks clean and efficient. I then run some tests to confirm the expected functionality - and then I move on. The key to success is following SOLID principles and not moving on until the code is clean and methods/variables are well named. A method that works will continue to work, and clean well-named code is easy to work with later.

I feel you! I LOVE creating the tools and I LOVE the satisfaction of customers using my tools, but actually using my tools myself is BORING. Check out my toy... BuilderHMI[^]

Yup! Brightness at 25% on my ultrawide monitor and zero eye fatigue. I much prefer dark characters on a white page.

I tell my kids that writing a complex C# program is like writing a novel except that if one word is misspelled then no one can read the entire thing.

I have T-shirts that are older than many of the engineers that I work with these days. It amazes them that I instantly have solutions to almost all of their programming problems. I'm getting bored with saying "been there, done that."

Spoon full of cream and a bit of raw sugar. I like that hint of molasses flavor.

I drink two 12oz cups of coffee in the morning and one cup early afternoon. That is my ideal "dose" for optimal productivity!

I'm nearsighted. Long-distance glasses for normal life plus a much weaker pair of computer glasses for coding. The computer glasses never leave my desk, and I just switch glasses when I sit down to work. Works great for me!

"I tend to... make my iteration operations explicit and long hand." Thanks! I thought I was the only one. So much more readable when I come back later, IMHO.

6PM January 5, Pacific Time (PT) is 2AM January 6, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) Ouch! I hope that you are a night owl!

I'll be giving a companion presentation to my CP article on January 5th. Demo, code review and discussion for folks who have an interest in my BuilderHMI.Lite project. Hosted by the Portland .NET Users Group (PADNUG). Would be great to see some CP peeps in the group! BuilderHMI.Lite - Simple Drag-and-Drop WPF Layout[^] https://www.meetup.com/PADNUG/events/jscxtmycccbhb/[^]

As I am perhaps one of the greatest developers of all time, I've never understood the Imposter Syndrome thing? ;P In all seriousness, you've written some very cool stuff. How in the world could you ever doubt your competence?

Yup! I wrote an amazing little tool that reads in an Excel spreadsheet specification document and generates an entire buildable C# project from it. I spent a ton of time refining it... and only used it twice. The tool was great fun to develop though!