I am working on a project in .Net which is an addin to office. The issue is that the solution needs to compile addins for Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 while sharing the same business logic between these. What is the best way to accomplish this and still have a maintainable solution? Ideally I would like to NOT use different development machines for the various office versions, and use only one version of Visual Studio (2010)

Well said

I definitely agree with your point about an office. It never ceases to amaze me how many executives write an office for developers off as unnecessary when he/she will be spending most of his life in there. Open plan offices / cubicles are so impersonal that it's no wonder people cannot hang onto their staff. What message are they trying to send?

Definitely having an office vs open plan desk. This allows me to get in "the zone". When it's easier for people to ask me something because they sit next to me that to use google, it breaks my concentration and a lot of productivity is lost getting back into "the zone". I know there is a theory that open plan offices increase communication. I agree, it does - but only the amount of low quality, general, disruptive communication. To discuss things of business value, you most likely need the privacy of an office.

You aren't by any chance responsible for the large hadron collider are you? :)

Do you not see the size of your company's market shrinking as languages become more and more interoperable?

Nope, I am a programmer for an engineering firm

Yes I know, my question wasn't a degrading one, I was genuinely simply inquisitive about what he does from day to day to keep code project running

Out of interest, what elements of the game do you work on? Language? How big is the company?

Hi Chris, Awesome! Can you elaborate a little on what 'running code project' entails?

Most of us have average, maintenance-type programming jobs. While they mostly pay well, they don't make for legendary status. If you are one of the few lucky ones to have an "awesome" jobs envied by the masses of programmers, tell us a bit about it here.......

If IE loses it's market share and something else (lets say firefox) gains enough market share (let say about 30% or so), remember that you would then have to make SURE that your code works in all browsers. This means more cost, and more complex code. At the moment, the fact that IE is so dominant makes our lives as developers much much easier. If I could have my way, I would have them have a 100% maket share.

Maybe you could invent a new diet? You could call it the "keep your cookies at home" diet. It will be based on the concept of keeping the amount of food (x) at a place (y) inversely proportional to the desire for food (x) that you feel at place (y)

In your opinion, who should be the key contact person on a project for the customer? The Project Leader or the Business Analyst?

For a more in context explanation, see http://www.faithalone.org/news/y1997/97sept2.html[^]