OK, this is a little more off-topic than most, but I don't do much social media outside of CP, so I wouldn't know where else to post it. I finished a book a while back -- my first! (authoring, that is, not reading; I've finished a few of those, too, though.) I'm pretty sure it's pretty good. I like it anyway, and a few of my kids and their friends do, too. At least that's what they tell me. Maybe they're just polite. (Kids these days!) It's an adventure book of sorts. (About 3 young kids who live/hangout at the White House. No politics of course. Just zany antics and goofball adventures. Protecting the world from the devious plots of a couple international spies. That sort of thing.) If any of you want to read it online, I'll send you a link. Anyways, now I'm on to the sequel. I like writing. It's hard, but rewarding, so I enjoy the process and the product. What I DON'T enjoy is trying to get published. I've sent off a formal proposal to a half-dozen publishers and literary agents, but after 6 months I haven't heard back a peep. (OK, well maybe a couple "peeps", but definitely no "pops".) So now I'm trying to decide whether I'm on the right track or not. Is it crazy to be writing the 2nd book when I haven't even sold the 1st? Sure it's fun, but is it worth the investment? The first book was the hardest thing I've ever completed. Took 7+ years of weekends, on & off. This second one should be a bit easier, but it still takes a lot of time. (Time I could be spending with my kids, instead of writing about somebody else's!) My dream would be to find a publisher (one of those niche outfits; not a meat grinder) who would give it a look and say, "I think you're on to something here." I've looked into self-publishing too, of course. But that's just not my gig. Maybe my ego is getting in the way, but I think the book has enough quality to earn a stamp on the spine. So now, I'm just curious: what would you do? Keep writing just for the fun of it, even if it never sits on anyone's shelf but the grandkids'? Or quit and just take the family on a hike?

I got the same this morning (temporarily), but only on Edge. Chrome worked fine.

Brilliant! I need to offer more ice cream cones to my QA team.

Religious freedom is the freedom to say that one plus one plus one does not always make three. Scientific freedom is the freedom to say that parallel lines in a non-euclidean reference system may shake hands.

I must say, that page comes across as a wall of words with a pretty picture of Buzzword Soup at the bottom ("Mmm! Tasty chunks!") I've never read the book, but this sample doesn't bode well.

Slow Eddie wrote:

It does seem to be primarily aimed at, and populated by, web application developers.

Actually, if you look at the results of this recent survey, it would appear that web devs are actually outnumbered here by "Business/Office" developers. (Although, I suppose, that does not necessarily imply Desktop applications.) That's certainly the boat I'm floating these days, anyways.

Marc Clifton wrote:

JIRA sucks for preserving notes, as completed tasks disappear from any ability to search for them, as far as I can tell

You (or your Jira admin) are definitely using Jira wrong. Long-term storage and searchable-archive is one of Jira's most important and useful features, in my experience. Completed tasks are definitely searchable, unless your admin has set up your Jira-server in a very strange way. I strongly advise watching a refresher tutorial on Jira queries & JQL. I consider Jira-fu to be an essential skill for a productive developer.

It seems like all the demo pages are pretty slow to load. Painful even (although slightly more bearable on subsequent loads). Is that an artifact of the framework itself?

And now, an even higher res picture I just found... https://twitter.com/kmote/status/1115991794678784000

Glad you liked it. Most people's eyes just glaze over when they see it.

Just released: Stunning hi-res image (first ever!) of the super massive hole at the center of our galaxy! #EHTBlackHole… [https://t.co/1jyuV4gFX0"](https://twitter.com/kmote/status/1115991794678784000)

In my house I have some lighting fixtures that are hard-wired to the wall/ceiling (~tight coupling). Others just plug into an electrical outlet (~loose coupling). Guess which ones are easier to switch out for new models? And when I do so, I can be confident that the new lamp will work as long as it has a matching interface (which, in this country, is AC 120V). So at work, when I am testing code that includes a DatabaseConnection Object, if that object was injected rather than hardcoded, I can happily swap it out with a mocked version that shares the interface. So, thanks to that loosely-coupled DB object, my tests run much faster.

I'm not exactly sure if this is what you're looking for but Atlassian Jira handles most of what you described. It has become the lifeblood of our organization for issue tracking and workflow management.

The one I heard yesterday (although, its probably old as the woods): "I used to be addicted to the Hokey Pokey. Thankfully I turned myself around."

F-ES Sitecore wrote:

you don't need a NuGet package to use JSON ;-P

I've only just recently started using Newtonsoft for JSON. I assumed there was probably another way to get it besides NuGet, but I haven't had the time to research alternatives. Can you take a moment to describe your workflow in this regard?

To all the nay-sayers in this thread, I humbly suggest that you may be missing out on some very productive development sessions. Personally, I find nothing more envigorating than sitting around a whiteboard with a team of creative and engaged developers mapping out a strategy for a complex coding task... and then moving to a computer and working together to wire it up. It feels like being in a group of surgeons collaborating on a complex surgerical procedure, or being on a team at Pixar creating a new movie. Somebody in the thread mentioned the boredom of watching someone else type, but that misses the point: I'm never bored in group programming because I'm constantly working things out in my head, evaluating ramifications, anticipating next steps. Obviously this type of work is not for everybody, but if you've never had the privilege of working together on a common goal with a creative team, don't miss the next opportunity to try it. It's addictive. (Pro-tip: putting the least-experienced person at the keyboard is one of the best ways I know to bring that person rapidly up to the level of the rest of the team.)

Well, O'Griff, I just want to let you know that I personally just submitted three of my precious VS votes on that very issue JUST YESTERDAY, and so I am fairly certain that you can credit ME for pushing this issue over the threshold of visibility in Redmond. Scene: Redmond Office bullpen. Desks covered with paper and stained coffee mugs. Suddenly an alarm sounds and blue lights flash. PocketProtectorGuy: "Whoa! Was that what I think it was?" BirkenstockGal: "Oh yeah, baby! The VS Browser Issue just got green-lighted! We must have broken that 1283-vote barrier! Way to go, VS community! Leave it to ol' KDMote to put us over the top!" PonyTailGuy: "All right, gang! Let's get busy! I don't want to miss the window for getting this fix in for VS2020!" GrayBeard: Now now, boys and girls, let's not get too hasty here. Your giddy exuberance must not get in the way of prudent requirements solicitation and planning. I'll begin drafting the first 100 pages of the SRD just as soon as I schedule the first meeting to discuss the strategy for designing the specification for the design-requirements development sprint.

While I completely agree with those who suggest that you need to start earnestly networking, resume-submitting, and interview-practicing, that doesn't mean your work here is done. If I were interviewing you for a job and you told me about your current situation, I would want to hear all about what you did to resolve this situation ammicably. These new leaders sound like fresh and idealistic newbies, but that doesn't mean that they are completely unreasonable. It's time to get into their brain and find out what motivates them. You're all part of the same team and you all want to "win"; you simply have different strategies. You need to find a tactful way of helping them to learn that their current strategy has some flaws that they might not have considered. Your job right now (if you truly value your company and the mission it stands for), is to win their hearts and earn their trust and let them know that you want THEM to succeed. THEN you will be in a position to help steer their thinking away from the precipice that they are now rapidly approaching. (And bonus points to you if you convince them that the course-recalculation was THEIR idea in the first place.)

You really have two questions: "What should I learn?" and "What does my company need?" I applaud your interest to return to your early ambitions of programming. Despite what people say, it's never too late to learn. I would recommend Python as a great place to start. Simple but powerful. But that's not what your company needs. You say your business is unique, but what you have described are generic business needs that just about every company I know needs to address in one form or another. There really are tools available. Investigate the Atlassian Suite. (Confluence for meeting minutes with auto-distribution; JIRA for issue tracking and workflows). Both are very reasonably priced for small teams.

Richard Deeming wrote:

available in Windows 8 or higher

"Ah, that would explain it," said the man who's company is still firmly set on Win 7. "Thanks anyways!"

Richard Deeming wrote:

File" in the ribbon - it has options to open a command prompt

Mine doesn't. I wonder if that is an optional setting somewhere?